–RELEASED 04/20/2015–

Galactic Civilizations III Beta 5.3 is live! This update adds pirate bases, improves performance (particularly on large maps), fixes bugs, boosts the AI, and polishes up the interface. What’s not to love?

Features

Added Pirate bases

Added the game setting option to disable tech trading

You can now obsolete player made ships, it won't delete the files, but will remove them from the lists

Performance

Made more of the debug messages only show up if the game is the debug version (improves performance)

Before deciding whether to focus on a particular enemy or look at their most vulnerable sector the AI will check to make sure they're at war with someone (to avoid unneeded expensive calcs)

EndTurn diplomacy evaluations for a player are aborted if they haven't met (avoids lots of expensive calcs)

A number of diplomatic modifiers (CalcStatusOfModifierCondition()) are no longer used IF the number of players is greater than 9 (only counting major races). For perf reasons (and at some point, they are pointless because if you have enough players you'll get a muddle)

Created a GetVictoryProgressByPlayerIndex() function so that if you have the index, you can avoid looping through the list via ID (if you have 100 players this starts to add up)

Added some sleep(o) before QueryPerfCounter to make sure other threads get a shot

Particle Engine thread's IsReadyToUpdate() now uses a semaphore to avoid calling the perf counter so much and reduce CPU usage

GalCivShell::ISreadyToUpdate now uses a semaphore instead of a checktick to reduce CPu usage dramatically

Reduced memory usage by 1.1 Gb on insane maps

Fixes

Fixed crashes

Fixed an issue where the Exporters Ideology trait doesn’t grant an extra Trade Route

Fixed the Prolific Ideology trait so it correctly gives the free colonists to new worlds

Innovation Complex improvement now gives Research (as listed) instead of Influence

Fixed an issue keeping the Labor Mission from being buildable

Fixed an issue keeping the Labor Oracle from being buildable

Fixed the icon for Artocarpus Viriles

Fixed an issue causing Navigational Sensors to give Ship Mass instead of Sensor Range Mass

Fixed an issue causing Interstellar Sensors to give Ship Mass instead of Sensor Range Mass

Fixed an issue causing Survey Modules to give Ship Mass instead of Sensor Range Mass

Fixed an issue causing Sensor Arrays to give Ship Mass instead of Sensor Range Mass

Fixed an issue causing Field Detectors to give Ship Mass instead of Sensor Range Mass

Fixed an issue causing Subspace Sensors to give Ship Mass instead of Sensor Range Mass

Fixed an issue keeping Chaff from costing Maintenance

Fixed an issue keeping ECM from costing Maintenance

Fixed the “CanColonizeExtremeWorld” tag on techs

Fixed Master Accelerator Assembly to reduce Kinetic Manufacturing Cost (as listed) instead of reducing Kinetic Mass.

Low Cost Shield systems now reduces Shield Costs instead of increasing them.

Master Shield Assembly now reduces Shield Costs instead of increasing them.

Low Cost Point Defenses now reduces Point Defense Costs instead of increasing them.

Counter Measure Manufacturing now reduces Point Defense Costs instead of increasing them.

Master Point Defense Assembly now reduces Point Defense Costs instead of increasing them.

Low-Cost Armor now reduces Armor costs instead of increasing them.

Armor Manufacturing Focus now reduces Armor costs instead of increasing them.

Fixed a broken prereq for the Diplomacy tech (if you selected Influential Voice you couldn’t tech up to Diplomacy)

Fixed an issue causing 2 of the 3 Manufacturing Focus specializations to show up blank

Fixed an issue allowing the player to build pirate shipyards

Fixed an issue making the Prototype Guardian build without weapons

Fixed the Dense 1-4 traits to correctl effect the Mass Capacity of ships

Fixed bug that was preventing ships from becoming defenders

Fixed bug where living player list and total player list were using player indexes interchangeable (stability)

Fixed the dependency for the Zero G Arena starbase module (to correctly set it to Zero G Ballet)

Fixed the dependency for the Franchise Center starbase module (to correctly set it to Starbase Promenade)

Fixed an MP issue where all players see the "do you want to fight the pirates?" message

Fixed some typos

Didn't add any new typos! (hopefully)

Fixed an issue where sometimes you would get a message from a player and the player wouldn't be in the scene (the "Kona went to the bathroom bug")

Fixed an issue where attachment points can be to large on tiny/small ships

Fixed Resilient 2, 3 and 4 to correctly apply their bonuses

Fixed Tough 2, 3 and 4 to correctly apply their bonuses

Fixed Resilient 1 to give +15% repairs instead of +50% as it was doing incorrectly before

Fixed the Maintenance and Manufacturing Costs of Nightmare Torpedoes

Balance

Rebalanced all the starting faction traits (so they comply with the same 5 available points as custom factions)

Nerfed influence improvements dramatically

Reduced power of defenses to be more in line with the new weapon values

Armor no longer provides all 3 defenses, just armor

Removed most of the starbase module maintenance. Cost should come from having the starbase, not improving it

Rebellion points will no longer be added if the other guy's influence isn't at least 2X yours

AI

Drengin do a bit more to avoid going broke

All AI players now hooked up with the weapons tags so that they will intelligently research their preferred weapons

Modified battle rating formula to give a bit more weight to HP

AI now gets very mad if you park a transport near their planet

AI is now better at creating defenders to fortify planets that are being threatened

AI targets transporters more readily

AI Decommission is a lot less aggressive. Will no longer decommission a ship just because it isn't the latest/greatest

CheckForDanger Path evaluator will not engage if that unit can make it to that destination in a single turn

Created a separate ColonyShip specific target evaluator

Constructors now value taking unclaimed resources over built ones

Target default score now uses the battle rating of the unit to choose its targets

Colony ships are now biased to target higher quality planets at the expense of closer ones (to a point)

AI will now declare war if they feel threatened enough even if they can't build transports AND have a weaker military

Modified the logic on when the AI votes for a supreme leader

Added some new AI conversations

AI is better at colonizing

AI can now surrender to a player other than its conquerer

UI

Added graphs

Added hull size and logistics to the ship tooltip

New medallions on the custom faction screen

Added a tooltip to the Tech Age bar

Tweaked the influence lines to look better

If you click on a foreign controlled planet you now have a button to speak to the player or see an intelligence report on them

Added a number in the tile if the tile contains multiple fleets