by Ealdrin

Hello everybody!

Last week we released 3.12.2 to the public, and since then we’ve been working on further post release support. Today we’ll be going into some of the things we’re planning for a 3.12.3 release. Currently we’re looking at next Thursday as the tentative release date, but we’ll keep you posted.

Following the deluge of feedback from the release of The Machine Age, 3.12.3 will include the following changes:

• Selecting the “physical” path for Synthetic Ascension will unlock the advanced machine traits from the Modularity path for Machines.
• Selecting the “virtual” path for Synthetic Ascension will unlock the Virtual Economic Policy from the Virtuality path for Machines. (Though the policy has been rebalanced.)
• The unique planetary features added from the Transformation situation are now kept when turning a planet into an ecumenopolis or restoring a shattered ringworld.
• Synthetic authorities have been rebalanced.
• The Commodities Consolidation situation will now show if you are on track to produce enough consumer goods or if you do not have enough storage space to the quota.
• The Virtuality, Modularity and Nanotech tradition trees now have agendas.
• Cybernetic Creed:
  • Embracing a Cybernetic Creed no longer forces a template onto your species.
  • Embracing a Cybernetic Creed now gives +10% Faction Approval when they become your sole Spiritualist faction (This does not apply if you unite the Creeds).
  • Embracing a Cybernetic Creed now awards a unique country modifier for that Creed.
  • Non-Spiritualist pops in a Cybernetic Creed empire now only have the Cybernetic Creed traits removed instead of all Cyborg traits.
• Synthetic Fertility:
  • Your choice in the Virtual Salvation event now influences the Synthetic Society Shift in the Digital Refactoring event chain.
  • Finishing the situation now grants access to the Subsidized Identity Backups and Optimized Identity Creation edicts.
  • Completing the Synthetic Fertility event chain will now grant additional robot modification trait points and picks and award a unique free trait for your synthetically ascended population.
• Refugees won’t willingly resettle to the Synaptic Lathe anymore.
• Dark Matter Engines have been reduced from +60% Resource Production to +40%
• Virtuality Adoptions grants a -15% metallurgist and artisan production

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As a small QOL UX improvement, if you can construct Arc Furnaces or Habitats, the tooltips for solar systems will now include a summary of the system potential for both megastructures.

Long have the conquered Hyper Relays of your fallen enemies been the bane of your economy, however in 3.12.3, this will be changing with the addition of the ability to dismantle select kilostructures.

Kilostructures that will be allowed to be dismantled (for a moderate energy and time investment) will be limited to:

• Gateways
• Hyper Relays
• Dyson Swarms
• Arc Furnaces

As always, modders will have the ability to extend this to their megastructures (and make us weep in horror).

The pesky UNE will soon have their railway network dismantled!

Even better if you have a Scavenger civic, dismantling buildings, districts and kilostructures will give you a slight refund on any physical resources used to construct them.

We’ve added the ability for Civics (and other sources of country modifiers) to easily modify the length and variance of election terms along with the government screen now showing the length of election terms in your empire. Two civics have made use of these changes

Worker Cooperative now has a -50% to Election Term Length making it have the same as a regular Democracy.

Meanwhile, Shadow Council now grants +5 to Election Term Variance, as the powers-that-be in the shadows ensure elections never occur on a regular basis.

If all goes according to plan, next week’s dev diary will be the 3.12.3 release notes. I expect that we’ll have one more release after that before we head off for the summer, so keep on submitting bug reports and suggestions, they’re very helpful for allocating post-release support resources.

See you next week!