Changes in 1.1.6.5 (August 16th, 2023)

CRASH FIXES
- further crash fixes for Stride rendering

DISPLAY AND HDR
- improved display mode selection to prevent issues when using DXVK/Vulkan with multiple monitors
- improved HDR setup for some systems

PLANETARY FACILITIES
- colonies will now upgrade planetary facilities when higher facility in same family is available, and when planetary facility construction is automated and can afford
- ensure Terraforming Facilities are built on colonies even when have no damage (when planetary facility construction is automated)
- improved management of automated facility funding level so that more likely to have spare maintenance funding to build and upgrade facilities

FUEL AND RESOURCES
- improved mining station construction so that do not overbuild when already met required rate for specific resource. This will reduce the overall number of AI-built mining stations and freighters, thus also lowering overall fuel usage
- lowered required rate for construction resources to more accurately reflect actual usage
- now indicate excessive oversupply for resources in New Mining Locations list, thus helping player avoid overbuilding mining stations for resources where supply already meets demand

ECONOMIC BALANCE
- AI empires can now detect and attempt to recover from excess maintenance costs that turn cashflow negative (also applies to player empire with appropriate automation settings)
- this can often happen when an important colony is lost through conquest in a war, thus suddenly removing a large portion of empire income
- faction in this situation will attempt to retire or scrap excess military ships, fleets or troops until cashflow recovers

RESEARCH, SHIP DESIGN AND SHIP BUILDING
- ensure Repeatable Techs also add Weapon Damage Falloff when modifying range
- improved weapon component selection by preferred weapon families for research and design (more focussed on these)
- rebalanced automated military ship building amounts to more closely consider current threats, i.e. do not build too many military ships until face threats from other factions

PATHFINDING
- fixed rare nebula pathing issues when assigning fleet missions to destinations inside nebulae

HIVE THREAT
- fixed rare situation where Hive threat could wake up earlier than intended
- Hive fleet now selects attack targets slightly closer to player

Changes in 1.1.6.6 (August 25th, 2023):

PERFORMANCE
- important fix for a major memory usage and stability issue; this fix should reduce memory usage significantly as well as increasing stability

SHIP BEHAVIOR
- fixed military ships sometimes still attempting to refuel at dangerous locations
- fighters are now more active in attacking target of parent carrier, even when not at war with target empire
- point defense weapons now more responsive to intercept incoming weapons fire
- automated exploration ships will now explore/survey asteroids with hidden resources when there are no other missions to perform (more thorough exploration of entire system without getting waylaid by often inconsequential asteroid resources)

CONSTRUCTION
- ensure Construction Yards list properly updates ships incoming for repair or retrofit
- when cannot afford to build new base, can no longer right-click on locations to assign build missions to construction ships
- now allow retrofitting bases when at colonies of other factions (e.g. independent colonies)

SHIP DESIGN
- ensured Ion Bomb (Teekan) and Ion Pulse weapons have component families assigned for preferred weapon policy purposes

PIRATES
- pirates now unlikely to cancel a protection agreement when relation trend is positive, thus less likely to get protection cancelled soon after being accepted

RESEARCH
- fixed excessively high priority for Administrative Facility research projects

PLANETARY FACILITIES
- no longer build Terraforming Facilities at colonies that are already at 100% quality

DATA
- minor updates to various data file values for artifacts, game events, planetary facilities and troops to fix a variety of reported issues

Changes in 1.1.6.6 + 1.1.6.7 (August 29th, 2023):

PERFORMANCE
- important fix for a major memory usage and stability issue; this fix should reduce memory usage significantly as well as increasing stability

SHIP BEHAVIOR
- fixed military ships sometimes still attempting to refuel at dangerous locations
- fighters are now more active in attacking target of parent carrier, even when not at war with target empire
- point defense weapons now more responsive to intercept incoming weapons fire
- automated exploration ships will now explore/survey asteroids with hidden resources when there are no other missions to perform (more thorough exploration of - entire system without getting waylaid by often inconsequential asteroid resources)
individual ships in a fleet with Prepare and Attack mission will now auto-commence attack against target at waypoint even when rest of fleet have not yet arrived. This covers an edge-case where the target ends up being at the waypoint (which is usually a different location). In those cases the ships that had already arrived sometimes did not engage the target, because they were waiting for the rest of the fleet. So now they will engage the target if it happens to be at the fleet waypoint. No need to wait for the entire fleet in that case, because they are already at the target and likely under attack from it.

FUEL TANKERS
- ensure fuel tankers always completely deplete fuel cargo when refuelling nearby fleet before obtaining more fuel

CONSTRUCTION
- ensure Construction Yards list properly updates ships incoming for repair or retrofit
- when cannot afford to build new base, can no longer right-click on locations to assign build missions to construction ships
- now allow retrofitting bases when at colonies of other factions (e.g. independent colonies)
- ensure spaceport construction always follows colony population limit set in empire policy (do not build before reach required population level)

SHIP DESIGN
- ensured Ion Bomb (Teekan) and Ion Pulse weapons have component families assigned for preferred weapon policy purposes

COLONIZATION AND MIGRATION
- fixed colony ships sometimes loading wrong population when some colony population policies are using Resettle policy
- fixed bug where colonies that somehow got zero-population could break various things (e.g. Kasim)

PIRATES
- pirates now unlikely to cancel a protection agreement when relation trend is positive, thus less likely to get protection cancelled soon after being accepted

RESEARCH
- improved AI research prioritization in various areas (weapons, planetary defense facilities, colonization, ship hulls, etc) to avoid queueing excessively long research projects
- fixed excessively high priority for Administrative Facility research projects

PLANETARY FACILITIES
- no longer build Terraforming Facilities at colonies that are already at 100% quality

DATA
- minor updates to various data file values for artifacts, game events, planetary facilities and troops to fix a variety of reported issues
- ensure Mortakosh battleship stays at starting location instead of roaming the galaxy

Changes in 1.1.6.8 (September 15, 2023):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed a number of Stride rendering crashes
- upgraded DXVK rendering option to version 2.3

PERFORMANCE
- improved general performance, especially in larger games

GALAXY SETUP
- added new game startup setting - Hostile Races Near Player: allows specifying how many neighboring factions are hostile to the player. This can be used to effectively increase game difficulty
- added explanatory tooltips to Default Events in Start New Game screen (Victory Conditions step)

FLEET BEHAVIOR
- lead ships for fleets are now always selected as strongest ship at location with majority of fleet ships, i.e. try to avoid changing geographical fleet center when changing lead ship
- fleets auto-assigning attacks against queued enemy targets now consider targets in queue order, instead of proximity to fleet, this will make fleets more responsive to player queued targets
- fleets auto-assigning attacks against enemy targets (queued and non-queued) now make extra considerations for refuelling on way to target, thus extending their attack range
- ships in fleets with Prepare and Attack missions now immediately begin their attack against the specified enemy target when the target is at the waypoint location and is already attacking any other ship in the fleet
- fleets assigned to refuel and repair will now consider ships with damaged components to also need repair (not just destroyed components)
- fleets and military ships now better at breaking off attacks against enemy fleets that jump away and are thus now beyond their specified engagement range
- improved fleet Move To missions so that:
1. complete Move To mission in timely manner
2. fleet ships move closer to target
3. fleet ships avoid colliding with one another and pushing each other off course
4. avoid excessive short-range jumps (especially when have hyperdrives with unusually low accuracy values)

FUEL TANKERS
- fixed fuel tankers sometimes not loading fuel when empty
- improved fuel tanker ability to avoid dangerous locations when accompanying fleets

SHIP BEHAVIOR
- ships now determine optimal attack range by including ranges from all of their weapons (ion, intercept, area, etc) when have no main weapon types (standoff or close-in)

SHIP CAPTURING AND RAIDS
- ships in fleets with Capture missions now check for incoming fleet ships with assault pods (not yet at location) before completing mission due to lack of assault strength
- improved display of current assault strength in Selection Panel when ship is attempting to capture an enemy target
- successful raids on research stations or other bases now better at falling back to money bonuses if target empire has no research projects to loot that raiding empire has not already researched

CONSTRUCTION
- increased repair speed for very high tech abandoned ships (e.g. Planet Destroyer) so that can complete in reasonable time and use in the game

RESEARCH
- fixed repeatable tech research for planetary facilities and ship hulls only applying most recent repeatable tech changes
- further tweaked research priorities for automated research so that AI factions are better able to pursue and use all tech

CHARACTERS
- ensure all automated admirals with fleets are always onboard the lead ship for their fleet
- removed Uninhibited as a positive character trait, thus no longer gained from Rivalry Gizurean event

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- fixed some premature message notifications about Hive fleet sightings
- fixed cycle next/previous key-presses sometimes not moving to next item (cycle colonies, cycle exploration ships, etc)

Changes in 1.1.7.1 (September 22, 2023):

IMPORTANT NOTE: Among other important changes, this one changes how we build DW2 so that it should be more compatible with Linux/Proton, for those Distant Worlds fans who prefer to play DW2 on the latest Quameno-designed operating system. While Linux is not officially supported by DW2, this should make it quite possible to get it working. If you have been struggling with DW2 on your Linux systems, please give this build a try and let us know how it works for you!

LINUX SUPPORT
- changed game executable to better support Linux/Proton

CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash when rendering Message list
- fixed crash when repairing ships

FLEET AND SHIP BEHAVIOR
- fixed fleet ships so that can always rectify jumping inside planet, even when various edge-case factors could previously prevent this
- changed Defense Fleet behavior so that will now defend locations within range even when system is not part of empire territory (e.g. base outside territory)
- fleets can now only assign Capture missions when at least one of their ships has current active assault pod availability
- ships are now better at retaining their Capture mission when other ships at the location have current assault pod availability but they do not
- further improvements to Capture mechanics are coming in a future update.
- ensure automated fleets only investigate dangerous locations when have targets that they could conceivably attack (i.e. are enemy or unknown)

FUEL TANKERS
- when fleet fuel tankers are distant from fleet ships, prior to refuelling a fleet ship they will now check whether another fuel tanker for same fleet is closer than them and can handle refuelling in more timely manner
- fuel tankers in fleets now attempt to retrofit at the same time as their fleet to maximize their availability

COLONIES
- can now abandon a colony, making it independent (action button under Selection Panel)
- Abandon Colony button is disabled when the colony is your empire capital or is the last colony in your empire
- ensure reset colony population policy to default (assimilate all races) after invasion or rebellion

COLONIZATION
- tweaked automated colonization so that Colony Ships with preassigned colonization targets now seek other targets if original target becomes uncolonizable for some reason
- Colony ships that start with a specified load race will now only load that race (even when load colony population composition has subsequently changed), helping to ensure suitable races are used for new colonies
- differentiated Queue Colonization buttons to more clearly indicate when using an existing colony ship to fulfill a colonization mission

DANGEROUS LOCATIONS
- ensure dangerous locations exclude threats that are not really dangerous, e.g. bases from unfriendly factions that are not currently at war with
- freighters no longer attempt to fulfill resource orders from dangerous locations (e.g. Kasim)
- passenger ships always exclude dangerous locations when assigning migration or tourism missions

RESEARCH
- fixed ship hulls on tech tree (e.g. fighters) always resolving to human race hulls when research project is disallowed for player's race

MESSAGES AND NOTIFICATIONS
- fixed messages sometimes being prematurely expired because other filtered messages were being included in calculation of remaining screen height. This should resolve the sudden notification stack wipe issue.

GAME EVENTS
- now exclude dormant pirate factions in various situations (e.g. Kasim pirates) relating to pirate events
- lowered dormant junkyard pirate base tech levels (prewarp home system events) to ensure they are not stronger than active pirate factions

GALAXY MAP
- Refuelling Location icons in system badges now reflect current fuel levels (i.e. they will not show up if spaceports/mining stations are currently out of fuel) to help decide on construction/refueling orders from the galaxy map level

DLC FIXES
- Various minor ship hull, model, data and event fixes to both DLCs

Changes in 1.1.7.2 (September 28, 2023):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash when assigning ship mission
- fixed crashes relating to mining prioritization

PERFORMANCE
- improved general performance, especially in late-game when there are many ships

COLONY POPULATION POLICIES
- implemented first pass of automated colony population policy settings for Resettle policy when unsuitable races at colonies
- fixed double-up of population policy races when reset colony population policy after conquest

FLEET AND SHIP BEHAVIOR
- now properly handle threat evaluation at deep-space locations outside systems so that enemies more likely to attack each other
- improved accuracy of enemy strength evaluation at invasion target so that invasion fleets more likely to invade colonies
- improved accuracy of range calculation when fleets evaluate whether to attack target, thus more likely to attack

FUEL TANKERS
- fuel tankers no longer attempt to refuel ships with any kind of attack mission

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- manually upgrading a design will now automatically disable Auto-Upgrading for that ship hull
- manually setting troop garrisons will now automatically disable auto-garrison for the colony

RAIDS AND CAPTURES
- Selection Panel now shows more comprehensive information on current Assault Pod strength for selected ships (when has assault pods) and fleets, thus helping to determine when a fleet or ship can undertake a raid or capture mission

GAME EVENTS
- now prevent pirates from accidentally investigating ruins in rare cases
- fix for issue with ancient ackdarian spaceport ping

Changes in 1.1.7.3 (September 29, 2023):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash when fuel tankers evaluate refuelling targets

Changes in 1.1.7.4 (October 5th, 2023):

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- fixed rendering issue in Selection Panel
- general performance improvements, especially in late-game

TROOP TRANSPORTS AND COLONY INVASIONS
- automated troop transports bringing reinforcements to invaded colonies will now cancel their mission as soon as the colony is conquered (instead of continuing on to the colony). Alternatively, if they assess that they might be able to retake the colony with their own invasion, will instead change their Unload Troops mission to Attack the conquered colony

EXPLORATION
- system map info from salvage now properly explores all locations in system to at least level 1

DATA AND STORY IMPROVEMENTS
Please note - Data and Story improvements are only available when starting a New Game.

- BASE GAME
- Mortalen story event "Destroyed Boskaran Troop Transport" has a lower discovery level so that players don't colonize the world prior to finding the event which makes it independent

- IKKURO/DHAYUT DLC
- Ikkuro "Web of Destiny" storyline has been rewritten: it should now be possible to lower the odds of Damazy rebelling if you put the effort in with money or research

- QUAMENO/GIZUREAN DLC
- added description for Scouring reputation impacts (not just 'General Incidents')
- Degenerate Gizureans story world has been reduced in quality to prevent it from being overpowered
- Quameno story project no longer stolen
- Kasim population no longer disappears suddenly

Changes in 1.1.7.6 (October 19th, 2023):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed rare crash when calculating model scale
- fixed rare crash when ship is picking up debris

FLEET AND SHIP BEHAVIOR
- automated fleets will now always remain at their current location to defend if an incoming enemy fleet is detected for that location
- military ships in fleets are now more careful in threat evaluation when determining whether to upgrade attack mission against a target to use their entire fleet to ensure they always honor their fleet engagement range
- fixed edge case where ships and fleets were sometimes assigning futile attack missions against targets that were in hyperspace and were too hard to intercept
- troop transports in a fleet will now hold off loading further troops once they have adequate troops to invade their target colony (attack point). This makes invasion fleets more generally responsive and available for invasions, especially when have troop transports with large troop capacities
- troop transports in a fleet no longer unload troops at vulnerable frontier colonies, but instead focus on loading adequate troops for their invasion target. However troop transports which are not in a fleet will still ferry troops to vulnerable colonies to fulfill army template requirements

FIGHTERS
- fixed fighters sometimes not properly landing at colonies (planetary fighter bases)

TROOPS
- automated troop recruitment now focuses on recruiting one troop at a time on a given world, completing recruitment of any existing troop before queuing a new one, thus minimizing costs

UI FIXES
- selected ship or fleet no longer unintentionally receives mission assignment when right-click on navigation panel in Research Screen

DATA CHANGES
- updated weapon intercept targeting values for all weapons
- updated planetary defence weapon values, especially weapon effects to make sure planetary defense weapons are visible when firing at enemy ships near the planet
- updated Ikkuro fusion beams

Changes in 1.1.7.6 (October 19th, 2023): UPDATED

CRASH FIXES
- fixed rare crash when calculating model scale
- fixed rare crash when ship is picking up debris
- fixed crash when updating use interface control tooltip positions
- fixed rare crash when generating Hive ship

FLEET AND SHIP BEHAVIOR
- fixed fleets sometimes attacking targets beyond their engagement range
- improved fleet willingness to persist with attacks against defined attack point instead of getting unnecessarily distracted with other targets
- improved fleet retreat evaluation - no longer prematurely break off attack while en route to target. Will also consider other nearby fleets en route to same location
- improved invasion fleet evaluation of defending strength when at target colony, will wait until other attack fleets clear target if necessary
- automated fleets will now always remain at their current location to defend if an incoming enemy fleet is detected for that location
- military ships in fleets are now more careful in threat evaluation when determining whether to upgrade attack mission against a target to use their entire fleet to ensure they always honor their fleet engagement range
- fixed edge case where ships and fleets were sometimes assigning futile attack missions against targets that were in hyperspace and were too hard to intercept
- troop transports in a fleet will now hold off loading further troops once they have adequate troops to invade their target colony (attack point). This makes invasion fleets more generally responsive and available for invasions, especially when have troop transports with large troop capacities
- troop transports in a fleet no longer unload troops at vulnerable frontier colonies, but instead focus on loading adequate troops for their invasion target. However troop transports which are not in a fleet will still ferry troops to vulnerable colonies to fulfill army template requirements

FIGHTERS
- fixed fighters sometimes not properly landing at colonies (planetary fighter bases)

TROOPS
- automated troop recruitment now focuses on recruiting one troop at a time on a given world, completing recruitment of any existing troop before queuing a new one, thus minimizing costs

UI FIXES
- selected ship or fleet no longer unintentionally receives mission assignment when right-click on navigation panel in Research Screen

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- now allow ship multi-select in most Civilian lists: All Civilian Ships, Freighters, Passenger Ships. This means can multi-select any ships in list using shift- and ctrl-click and then mass-scuttle using the Scuttle button under the Selection Panel

DATA CHANGES
- updated weapon intercept targeting values for all weapons
- updated planetary defence weapon values, especially weapon effects to make sure planetary defense weapons are visible when firing at enemy ships near the planet
- updated Ikkuro fusion beams

Changes in 1.1.7.9 (October 27th, 2023):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed a number of Stride rendering crashes
- fixed Selection Panel cycle item keypresses sometimes causing game to hang

FLEET AND SHIP BEHAVIOR
- improved willingness of manually assigned fleets and military ships to stick to current attack target (instead of switching to other target), thus improving ability to focus fire on enemy targets
- prevent individual fleet ships sometimes recklessly attacking targets that are too strong for them to handle
- improved Fleet Topup function so that trim correct number of excess ships based on fleet template (when 'Trim Excess Ships' is enabled)
- properly review and clear all relevant fleet escort data when a ship leaves it's fleet (fleet ships avoid escorting ships that have left the fleet)
- improved fleet lead ship selection so that more focussed on ships in main body of fleet
- improved ability of newly-added fleet ships to move to fleet location

CONQUEST AND CAPTURE
- now immediately review refuelling, repair and construction locations when conquer colony so that any ships or fleets can immediately refuel or repair there
- now immediately review refuelling, repair and construction locations when capture fuel mining station or spaceport so that any ships or fleets can immediately refuel or repair there

EXPLORATION SHIPS
- fixed exploration ships sometimes waiting near sleeping Hive ships without reassigning missions

DIPLOMACY
- fixed defeated empires sometimes being included when honoring defense treaties
- fixed some faulty requests to honor defense treaties when already at war with attacking empire

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- added explanatory tooltip to Load Designs button, outlining how this works

GAME EDITOR
- changed game editor so that removing a planet now properly also removes entire planet location (all related moons, asteroids, ships, bases), thus avoiding orphaned items
- fixed faulty Add Bonus dropdown in Game Editor

Changes in 1.1.8.1 (October 31st, 2023):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash when generating ship design name
- fixed crash when ship unloads cargo
- fixed crash when resolving default mission for hovered ship
- fixed crash when cannot save game settings due to simultaneous file writes

FUEL TANKERS
- Fuel Tankers will now attempt to first completely refuel their fleet prior to retrofitting

SHIP DESIGN
- fixed Load Designs button often not loading designs even when meet tech requirements of current game

PIRATES
- fixed multiple messages when pirate faction destroyed
- fixed pirate ships acquired from destroyed pirate factions sometimes then switching to other pirate factions

Changes in 1.1.8.7 (November 17th, 2023):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed a possible crash on starting a new game
- if any 2D character animations fail to load, an entry will be written to the session log and a crash dump will be generated but the game will no longer crash

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- late game performance improvements (time reduction, partitioning) to economy and ship pathing systems

COMPATIBILITY IMPROVEMENTS
- improved support for HDR by hopefully insuring that Windows’ AutoHDR is off and not interfering with DW2.

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- added a new distance measurement ruler tool, to activate hold shift and left click, release left click but hold shift and drag
- holding shift will also turn on distances in various hover info cards and mission descriptions

MODDING SUPPORT
- added --skip-splash option to skip the splash screen to help power users and mod devs who find it annoying
- added --new-game and --continue command line options for power users and mod devs
- mods should be able to use suffixed GameText.txt (e.g. GameText_*.txt) files that append new entries without replacing the whole GameText.txt

IKKURO AND DHAYUT DLC
- some minor changes to Damazy and also to the defense based around Kasim

Changes in 1.2.0.0 (January 11th, 2024):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash when reviewing colony events for main view header
- fixed rare crash when performing research or making trade offer
- fixed crash when retrofitting ship
- fixed crash when determining research modifier with faulty mod data
- fixed crash when drawing ship damage report
- fixed crash when determining resource priorities
- fixed crash when determining fleets to attack target
- fixed crash when finding nearest neutral location
- fixed crash when could not access SessionLog file
- fixed crash when generating graphics node for missing planet
- fixed several fleet-related crashes
- fixed a possible crash on starting a new game
- fixed crash when attempting to find the nearest unthreatened location for an empire
- fixed crash when fleets check if they have an attack target
- missing ship summary will no longer crash victory condition checks on loading a saved game
- fixed a difficult to reproduce per-location weapon effects desync related crash

COMPATIBILITY AND LAUNCH ISSUES
- Further improved support for HDR by hopefully insuring that Windows’ AutoHDR is off and not interfering with DW2. If enabled, Auto-HDR could cause a crash on startup.
- if any 2D character animations fail to load, an entry will be written to the session log and a crash dump will be generated but the game will no longer crash

PERFORMANCE
The “Fleet” update had some performance regressions relative to the “Hyperspeed” update, partly because of the improved fleet and ship logic. This round of updates entirely resolves that performance regression and improves performance even further.
- major performance improvements for late-game and large galaxies (2000 stars)
- extensive performance and memory optimizations, especially in very large battle scenes with many ships and fighters
- reduced memory pressure in a number of ways, thus reducing .Net garbage collection pauses
- path finding (and path timing) performance improvements
- fixed an arbitrarily long delay on updates of explorer ships mission assignment because it doesn't need to grab a lock on pathing info anymore
- general performance improvements - locking is now cooperative
- reduced memory garbage generation when operating on shared and indexed lists in general
- reduced memory garbage generation when calculating stock levels
- visibility system related performance improvements
- rewrote lock-heavy 'nearby orb' check used by selection panel for in-system ships getting a background image
- late game performance improvements (time reduction, partitioning) to economy and ship pathing systems

FLEETS
We’ve continued improving Fleet and Ship behavior, based on feedback after the release of the “Fleet” update. We hope this round of updates will address all remaining issues. Please note that many reports we get on fleet and ship behavior are still because of player tactical and policy settings conflicting with their expectations– please check and understand those first to make sure your fleets and ships do what you would like.
- extended functionality of Fleet Topup action button so that will now build new ships of up/downgraded roles for missing ships (from fleet template) when cannot build ships of higher roles (no hull/design). But only when fleet template has 'Ship Role Up/Downgrade' enabled and the template items do not designate a specific design (i.e. any design for hull or role)
- fleets are now more careful to check whether first need refuelling before returning to home base
- improved fleets attempting to avoid risky attacks against stronger targets when other strong fleets already assigned to target
- improved fleet coordination with fuel tankers for refuelling in various edge cases
- fleets now better at maintaining cohesion when attack target jumps away and fleet ships attempt to track jump (fleet tracks jump as whole and all ships either succeed or fail with tracking). This avoids lone fleet ships attacking target while rest of fleet fails to jump
- fleets moving to non-specific destination (i.e. galactic coordinates instead of specific planet/base/etc) will now jump directly to destination when within jump range and not passing through nebula
- fixed fleets sometimes continuing attack mission against target after becomes part of their empire
- no longer disable retrofit fleet button when construction yard wait queue is too long (but include warning in button tooltip)

COLONY INVASIONS
- invasion support fleets (Attack, Raid) will now take on other targets when arrive at enemy colony but have no invasion capability and invasion has not yet begun (invasion fleet has not yet arrived), i.e. will not keep reassigning pointless mission against fleet Attack Point
- improved Invasion fleet willingness to invade other enemy colonies when not enough troops to prevail against main designated Attack Point
- fixed colony troops sometimes mistakenly ending up on invading side

SHIP BEHAVIOR
- fixed bugs in recent changes with jump pathing (e.g. Exploration Ships sometimes not assigning new missions)

SHIP DESIGN
- fixed some component types not being able to be added to design component bays

PIRATES
- slow down rate of pirate tech progress
- prevent pirate factions from salvaging tech from debris, which combined with the tech progress adjustment should fix the situation where pirates had started advancing in techs faster than empires

AI IMPROVEMENTS
- tweaked AI determination of when empire is in economic shortfall (cashflow and cash on hand) and thus reduces ships and troops (when these are automated), i.e. less aggressive at disbanding ships and troops when economy cannot support to avoid overreaction to brief economic downturns

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- added a new distance measurement ruler tool, to activate hold shift and left click, release left click but hold shift and drag
- holding shift will also turn on distances in various hover info cards and mission descriptions
- added summary of game starting situation to right of Load Game file screen (click on a savegame in the list to see a preview summary of the game before loading)
- Select Ship Hull screen now includes fighters when filter is set to 'State Ships' (creating a new ship design)
- minimum and maximum effect rate sliders added to options menu (set both to 1.0 for always pretty effects)
- fixed missing ship and base symbols at location zoom level

MODDING SUPPORT
- now include any additional flags from mods in player flag selection dropdown in Start New Game screen
- added --skip-splash option to skip the splash screen to help power users and mod devs who find it annoying
- added --new-game and --continue command line options for power users and mod devs
- mods should be able to use suffixed GameText.txt (e.g. GameText_*.txt) files that append new entries without replacing the whole GameText.txt

IKKURO AND DHAYUT DLC
- Ikkuro “Secrets of Life” event adds additional population growth.
- some minor changes to Damazy and also to the defense based around Kasim

GIZUREAN AND QUAMENO DLC
- Quameno “Integration Studies” event scaling changed to make it a significant penalty under typical circumstances.
- Quameno “A Piece of the Puzzle” event now adds population growth for the Quameno
- Gizurean “Waste Nothing” event was fixed to no longer complete the current queued tech most of the time, but to function as intended, which means it will pick randomly from any more advanced techs on the retired/salvaged ship and only award tech boosts within those categories, not necessarily full techs. This will allow it to function as a good way to catch up tech-wise, but not as a way to race ahead.
- Gizurean “Scouring” event was fixed to function as intended, which means it will pick randomly from any more advanced techs on the conquered planet and only award new techs within those categories. If the planet’s previous owner had no more advanced techs, Conquest and Scouring will not award techs. This will allow planetary conquest and Scouring to function as a good way to catch up tech-wise, but not as a way to race ahead.
- Gizurean “Tribal Conflict” event has a more significant happiness penalty.

Changes in 1.2.0.2 (January 18th, 2024):

CRASH FIXES
- Fixed crash with some game controllers
- Now properly extend path finding system time array when add new star system to galaxy (either via game editor or game event), thus resolving all of the IndexOutOfRange errors in various situations

RESEARCH AND SHIP DESIGN PREFERENCES
Continuing the work started last year to allow more guidance for automated Design and Research, we have now added a new Weapon and Component Focuses section to empire policy settings. If you are not handling Ship Design and Research manually, this will greatly help you in prioritizing the automation's choices.
- This new section consolidates pre-existing preferred weapon family settings with many new settings that allow fine-tuning how research and ship design work
- Note that the alternate preferred weapon family settings have been removed to streamline the user interface for this section (e.g. 'Preferred Close-In Weapon Family 2')
- Can now control the level of each weapon category and when they are used
- Also now allows tweaking focus for fighter bays, hyperdrives, reactors, shields and engines
- Note that each faction has their own unique policy settings in this area, further differentiating their ship designs and that race-specific technologies still carry additional weight in terms of the automation's choices

FLEET BEHAVIOR
- Fixed fleet topup button sometimes not working properly
- Fixed fleets sometimes incorrectly overriding engagement range to attack dangerous locations when they are in the same system as the fleet

COLONIES
- Fixed an issue affecting growth rate calculations. Colony populations now calculate growth rates per race, so that less suitable races for the colony grow slower

OTHER
- Fixed resource mining rates not being updated (error introduced in 1.2.0.0)
- Fixed instances where single ship was sometimes the only selectable item when zoomed into location view