Update 0.15

Hello everyone, today I am releasing the 0.15 update into the main branch. If you have been following the experimental branch, the only things that are different are as follows:

• Project Costs have been increased by 100%

• Resource income has also been increased by 100%

• Terrain on outer planets has been fixed

• Titan's oceans are now actually oceans

• Many instances of "Tax Base" multipliers have been reduced or replaced by resource income multipliers instead

• Unrest is now much more dangerous, and will require garrisons in the form of manpower and industrial capacity to maintain law and order.

• New unrest map mode

• Assimilation is more consistent in territories with none of your primary culture

• Leader level-ups are now always automated (will be changed in the next update with a more permanent solution)

For everyone else, I will go over everything that has been put through the experimental branch over the past few weeks.

Politics

• You can no longer customize faction privileges

• Each faction has an unlimited number of possible privileges, but the cost now scales exponentially (similar to projects) for each one you enact.

• Each privilege can be leveled up to a certain maximum, but the cost scales exponentially per level. (Again, similar to projects but with stability instead of money)

• Reforms which would increase the maximum number of privileges per faction now decrease the cost of granting privileges for that faction.

• Privileges can now be revoked to refund 66% of the invested stability.

• Each privilege will now manipulate the power and loyalty of the faction you give it to. Generally, each privilege will make every other faction 1% less loyal, but make the privileged faction 5% more loyal, resulting in an overall small decrease in total loyalty.

Stability Rebalance

In order to maintain stability, you need to keep your factions happy, as the stability you gain from Culture Tech is now dependent on the approval of your factions.

Faction Privileges

Faction Privileges now have their own icons, which are color coded to the faction they belong to. In addition, Factions' desire for reforms have been slightly altered, making them more interested in reforms that they should like, and there is a larger penalty for going against your Factions' wishes.

There are also some new privileges that allow you to take advantage of a faction or reduce its power, but for a cost.

New Spending Items

There are a few new reforms which go over government spending. These are sort of WIP, especially for the balancing side of things. Not really sure how I want fiscal policy to work yet.

Regional Politics

Regional Faction control is now determined by many more factors, and no longer has seemingly random oscillations. It is now significantly harder to monopolize the politics of your entire country to a single faction, but it is also more rewarding to do so.

Situations

Situations are a new mechanic which offer variable empire-specific content and new opportunities for you to engage in over the course of the game. Each major power starts with at least one of these, and most of those are special for that specific major power, but there are also situations that can be added or removed during the game, giving you the opportunity to experiment with new gameplay options.

Situations have variables and interactions, which allow you to do special functions and gain modifiers you otherwise would not be able to. As these are situation specific, there are many new options to discover.

The American Dominate retains some aspects of the former Republic, but for how long? Each of these actions will interact with Congress in order to give you something, so there is good reason to keep an eye on these.

The Seventeen Council's vision for humanity will not be realized overnight- it will take centuries of careful planning in order to bring utopia into reality.

Other major civilizations have their own special situations, and even some smaller situations like the Saturnian League, Tricorp, and Thule have their own.

Ascension

Some technologies present us with unique opportunities to integrate ourselves with them. In Solar Nations 2, you can now evolve humanity using the powers of Genetics, Cybernetics, or AI. Once you research the relevant technologies, you can acquire extremely powerful bonuses through the strengthening of your new species. This is done through the aforementioned Situation system, where you can add the powerful Ascension Situations once you unlock the necessary technology and for 30 stability.

Organization Changes

Organizations now have types, which define exactly what they are and how they work. There are currently four types, each with their own utility:

Military Alliance

The military Alliance gives bonuses to the military of its member states. It is the most basic kind of organization, and most of the starting organizations are of this kind.

Research Cooperative

Research Cooperatives give technological bonuses based on whether or not a faction member has completed a technology. This only applies to technology, and not culture.

Cultural Exchange

The Cultural exchange is effectively the same as the research cooperative, except that it only works on culture techs and does not apply to anything else.

Economic Union

The Economic Union has two main advantages: first of all, it lowers your trade barriers, making trade easier, as well as increasing income from resources. However, the most powerful thing about an economic union is that it can be Federalized.

Federalization

Federalization allows you to integrate all members of your organization, but it requires you to maximize the Cohesion of the organization in question, which is a long process. It does not give any accepted cultures, but will increase your progress towards the creation of a larger formable nation which could give you accepted cultures on that territory.

Currently, the organizations and their situations are relatively basic, but these will serve as the basis for the European Union as well as NATO in 2025, which is why I have been working on them.

2025

I have more or less finished the 2025 scenario, but it may not be balanced properly so keep that in mind when playing. 2025 differs from 2092 in quite a few ways, the most important being the Polycrisis Situation that most countries have, as well as a much more polarized level of development/education across the world.

Polycrisis

"The Polycrisis" refers to the collection of problems that seem to be facing practically every major country right now. I decided to represent all of these problems as a single Situation for simplicity's sake, as having 4-5 simultaneous crisis situations demanding attention was kind of annoying to play with. For the most part, the Polycrisis makes expansion more difficult, but allows you to more easily reform your government, which should make the early game more focused around building yourself up for domination once everyone emerges from the problems of the current day.

East vs West

The world in 2025 is split primarily between three alliances, NATO, CSTO, and the Belt and Road. Almost half of the world's nations are involved in one of these alliances, making expansion difficult, since a single guarantee of independence could spark World War III.

Nuclear Armageddon

The US, China, and Russia all possess very large nuclear stockpiles, and are not afraid to use them if needed to achieve victory. You should be careful to avoid escalated warfare with any of these three powers until establishing point defense around your Empire to lessen the damage done by these weapons of mass destruction.

The AI loves intervening in conflicts and with how many organizations there are, you should prepare for nuclear war.

Notes on Balance

Some things about the 2025 scenario are not going to be 100% accurate to reality since Solar Nations 2 is not a hyper realistic game. There have been some alterations made to the scenario in order to make it more fun and balanced than realistic.

UI/UX

A number of miscellaneous improvements have been made to the UI, especially in regards to Terrain view, something which I didn't explain very well. It is now very easy to see what terrain any region has, as well as what that means for units there.

Current Character System definitely doesn't produce the most accurate results

• Added edge scrolling (disable in settings)

• Region constructions can now be reordered via drag and drop functionality

• Unit Templates can now be created and customized

• Unit Designs can be deleted when not in use

• Unit Recruitment now shows advanced statistics for unit using the template in question

• Project listings will now tell you how many of a project is under construction

• Uncontrolled territory now has brighter borders

• Deposit mapmode has been fixed

• Population, Education, and Development map modes now display better data, and have better statistics.

• Fixed occasional click-through errors

• Slight alterations to quite a few menus

AI

• AI now colonizes more frequently, but with less manpower

• AI has less desire to leave factions, but still does it eventually

Other

Cosmetic Editing

It is now possible to edit the cosmetic aspects of your country without using the scenario editor with a new button added in the country panel.

• Recapture of rebellious territory no longer requires integration

• Fixed intervention bug that let you go to war with yourself

• You can now always see allied units on the map