Stellar Monarch 2 version 0.44

Version 0.44 released

This is the kind of version which is very ungrateful to write the changes logs for. Most of the stuff I implemented is not even listed below because it was mostly about internal mechanics, not visible to the player at all but very, very important for the future features (read: battle simulator which is starting to take a nice shape but is not enabled in this version yet). So, here it is, a bunch of fixes, small interface improvements and content updates.

– [feature] All summon to audience options now use Emperor Focus points, can’t be cancelled and have no limit to the number of people summoned per audience (so now all “summon” buttons use the same mechanic). Also, regular governors can be summoned as well, but for a higher cost than governors of megalopolises.
– [feature] Traditions for noble houses (affects initial reforms support, how the house votes, perks, etc). Very barebone for now.

– [misc] Optimized saves filesize (it went a bit excessive).
– [misc] Renamed Hospitability to Habitability which is much more intuitive.
– [misc] Renamed Emperor’s Attention points to Emperor’s Focus points.
– [misc] Note that behind the scenes combat mechanics were changed heavily (but I tried to not upset the current gameplay balance, so ideally you should notice no difference here).

– [content] Added option to summon a head of a noble house to discuss reforms.
– [content] Events: Galactic Stock Exchange, Galactic Bank.

– [interface] Added Relation/Opinion/Favors on noble personnel audience screen.
– [interface] Audience events tooltip for modifiers list all the effects of the modifier.
– [interface] Audience events tooltips improved to make audience effects display more clear.
– [interface] Noble Houses ornamental bar on houses screen (with traditions icons added).
– [interface] Squadrons screen improved.

– [fix] Race descriptions: Outdated Terran race description (race details – society), fixed one wrong alien portrait also added some basic description to all xeno races.
– [fix] Wrong tooltips descriptions for some planets in the Astronomy minimap mode.
– [fix] The back button in the construction menu working incorrectly.

Compatibility note: NO CHANGE, this version works with v0.40+ savefiles (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).