[[RELEASED]]

To enable the patch, please do the following:

Please note: The opt-in is an early preview of the next update and you might experience bugs or other issues. We encourage players who try the opt-in to report any issues to the support forum or via support ticket so we can address them.

Optimization

• Memory: introduced new texture compression for planetary and ship textures to greatly reduce memory usage and dramatically improve startup times.
• Removed legacy stopwatch code from the sound system
• Moved old profiling junk
• Reduced CPU usage of the particles and main graphics threads
• Removed redundant debug output
• Multithreaded the texture loading at the start of game to improve performance.

AI

• AI builds scout ships later in the game to keep exploring very large galaxies
• Dramatically reduced AI >normal economic bonuses (no longer needs them)
• Re-designed the way the AI expands into the galaxy with colony ships so that its expansion no longer stalls on large maps
• Dramatically reduced the amount of time an AI will interact with a player if they are not within ship range
• AI doesn't try to bribe other players to go to war unless they and the other players have a decent military already
• AI will no longer give tech gifts to players with a different ideology (i.e. no more Drengin giving you tech if you're a nice person)
• AI now scales the number of similar ship projects based on number of colonies rather than a flat number
• AI pumps up colony ship production priority if there are a lot of nice planets laying around
• AI pumps out fewer Constructors in general
• Re-designed the way the AI determines which planets should get a shipyard to be more (way more) intelligent
• Updated AI's handling of adjacency bonuses to be more intelligent
• AI values planet quality more when picking planets to colonize 
• AI somewhat more heuristic on tech research
• AI somewhat quicker to war
• Auto Surveying Survey Ships will now survey extra anomalies if the ship has extra movement points.

Balance

• Starbase minimum distance reduced from 5 to 3 tiles.
• AI tends to focus more on tech (generally) than previously.
• AI will build survey ships late in game.
• AI provided with a much wider variety of ship designs to choose from with the various strategies.
• AI weights units much more closely than previously in order to not make one virtually impossible to build.
• Opposing culture diplomatic penalty reduced from 1.25 to 1.1 if AI is benevolent.
• Opposing culture diplomatic penalty increased from 1.25 to 2 if AI is merciless.
• Opposing culture diplomatic penalty increased from 1.25 to 2 if AI is cruel.
• Close to victory diplomatic penalties increased from 1 to 5.
• Ripe for conquest diplomacy penalty reduced from 0.75 to 0.1 if AI is benevolent.
• Ripe for conquest diplomacy penalty increased from 0.75 to 1.25 if AI is aggressive.
• Minimum planet class to be a manufacturing world reduced from 7 to 4.
• Max number of colony ships the AI will construct at once increased from 2 to 3.
• Max slider focus reduced from 95% to 75% (to deal with coercion penalty).
• Coercion forgiveness eliminated (there is always some coercion if you move off from center).
• Maximum coercion reduced from 50% to 35%.
• Colony Capital production points reduced from 5 to 1.
• Civilization Capital production points reduced from 5 to 1.
• Influence Radius root increased from 1.75 to 4 (i.e. influence ZOC will start out much much smaller now).
• Tech inflation penalty significantly reduced.
• Penalty for switching a constructor to a colony ship increased from 50% to 75% (yea, you know who you are).
• Pirates moved further away from starting location.
• Increased the variance for the various settings (minors, pirates, etc.).
• Modified the governor script to provide a bit more flexibility based on planet bonuses when building improvements.
• Colony capital maintenance eliminated.
• Colony capital hub provides a 2 (was 1) level bonus to adjacent buildings if they are population or manufacturing or research.
• Civ capital hub provides a 3 level bonus (was 1).
• Reduced maint. slightly on research buildings.
• Rare habitable planets decreased from 30% to 25%.
• Nebula and black holes and anomalies made much less common on all settings.
• Occasional planet frequency amount doubled from 1X to 2X.
• Common stars modifier increased from 0.9 to 1.
• Common planet frequency amount increased from 0.75X to 3X (this also fixes a bug where common was less than occasional).
• Abundant stars increased from 1X to 1.5X.
• Planet Frequency increased from 0.25X to 3.5X (also fixes bug).
• Tiny map base objects increased from 32 to 120 (i.e. tiny maps will be a lot more filled).
• Small map base object count increased from 64 to 150.
• Medium map Base object count increased from 110 to 200.
• Large map base object count increased from 155 to 300 (i.e. over twice as many stars/planets/etc. in a particular size).
• Huge map base object count increased from 250 to 350.
• INSANE map object count INCREASED from 1200 to 1400!
• Sensor cost components reduced slightly.
• Cargo module cost reduced from 27 to 10 (cheaper colony ships -- but remember, planets now rely more on population for their production).
• Tiny hull cost reduced from 11 to 10.
• Small hull cost reduced from 25 to 20.
• Medium hull HP increased from 100 to 120.
• Large hull cost increased from 128 to 300.
• Large hull HP increased from 250 to 600.
• Large hull storage increased from 100 to 120.
• Large hull logistics cost increased from 7 to 10.
• Huge hull cost increased from 432 to 500.
• Huge hull HP increased from 500 to 800.
• Huge hull storage increased from 250 to 300.
• Huge hull logistics increased from 10 to 16.
• Cargo hull cost reduced from 42 to 24.
• Cargo hull HP reduced from 10 to 1.
• Cargo hull logistics increased from 5 to 6.

Improvements/Bugs Fixes

• Added author fields for maps, factions and ships.
• Starbases will now notify the you that they need to be upgraded after being initially built.  
• Fixed double counting of trade routes for AI diplomacy purposes.
• Fixed late game crashes related to textures on large maps.
• Fixed an infrequent crash on loading large maps.
• Fixed bug that could cause the AI to see tiles in the opposite map position of where they were exploring.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the AI to reduce the priority weighting on colony ship production based on the # of targetable planets.
• If a player faction is set to random in the prefs.ini file, the quick-start tooltip will no longer display an invalid faction.
• Fixed an issue where if you changed the planetary spending wheel, the displayed. manufacturing time for improvements wasn't being updated at the same time.
• Clicking available projects tabs no longer resets the improvement cursor.
• Add ESC to close Ship Designer and Diplomacy screens.
• Starbases no longer incorrectly show the upgrade option when none avail.
• Fixed a crash related to the AI defying the UP.\

If you want to read my Dev Diary full of me complaining and whining and how I worked on the update visit here: https://forums.galciv3.com/480761/ and here: https://forums.galciv3.com/480723