Greetings Explorers, As teased yesterday, during the 20th Anniversary of MOO 2, today we've released a new update for Master of Orion. It brings significant improvements in various fields, and it also introduces the highly demanded “mod support” feature.

Main highlights of the update:

• Mod support (Single Player)
• New Pollution mechanics*
• New Gravity mechanics*
• Improved AI
• New interface for Tactical battles

Master of Orion - Patch Notes v51.2

Modding

• Mods can now be used in the game to enrich the experience even more.

General

• New Gravity mechanics:
  • Races with Low-G tolerance have a -25% penalty in Normal-G worlds and -50% penalty in High-G worlds.
  • Races with High-G tolerance have a -25% penalty in Normal-G worlds and -50% penalty in Low-G worlds.
  • Races with Normal-G tolerance have a -25% penalty in Low-G worlds and -50% penalty in High-G worlds.

• New Pollution mechanics:
  • Pollution is now generated by Population and Production output.
  • New ongoing effect: If pollution in a colony goes up, it pollutes the soil and reduces cells’ food output.
  • Pollution Cleanup project is no longer available.
  • Biome tolerance and Pollution cleaning from buildings are now flat values.

• Pollution Processor moved to Molecular Compression Technode. Core Waste dump cleaning value increased.

Galaxy Generation

• “Planetary density” added to match options.
• Tiny planets added (Updated size chances and Gravity table).
• Galaxy generation improved to support the new gravity mechanics.
• Monster quantity by galaxy size increased.
• New Gravity Tolerance perk influences the player’s Home Planet’s gravity.
• Tweaks to better support low gravity planets.

Perks

• Races with Low-Gravity tolerance now have the "Low Gravity Homeworld" perk.
• Races with High-Gravity tolerance now have a "High Gravity Homeworld" perk.
• Creative perk research bonus increased to +50%.

Animations

• Polished animations and blending of emperors and advisors

Cinematics

• Cinematics now play when defeated instead of the old pop-up
• Removed the narrator and subtitles from Custom Race’s cutscenes.
• Cinematic cameras, now uses real mesh distances in tactical battles.

AI

• Improved selection of defense points.
• Improved evaluation of Declare War On.
• Improved how the AI manages space pirates while being at war with other races.
• The AI is now better at building bombers.
• The AI is better at considering transports for other targets.
• Expansionism trait improvements.
• Improved invasion by allowing multiple invasion targets at once.
• Improved invasion by building troop transports in advance.
• Improved invasion by making troop transports move together with all military fleets.
• New Planet Rating heuristic for civilizations, now uses estimated outputs.
• Racial Grudge is now used in strategic analysis.
• Re-balanced pacifist trait in General Strategy to make it more noticeable.
• Refactored Racial Grudge so it has degrees and is not binary.
• The AI now plays smarter in Cluster Galaxies.
• The AI now plays smarter in Huge Galaxies.

Tactical

• Improved opening moves for the AI.
• Automatic toggle on a weapon/s when receiving general/weapon focus order.
• Tactical Weapons can now be fired manually.
• Changed how the AI chooses and changes squadron formation.
• New Auto-Pause option on screen.
• Reduced cinematic "Missile Cam” occurrence.
• Reduced time compression smoothness.
• Back end now use the new system for focus fire.
• Formations have been rebalanced to make them more meaningful.
• New Plasma Web FX.
• Clicking on a ship now selects only that ship, double-click selects the whole squadron.

Tactical combat – Balance

• Re-balanced Fighters:
  • Fighter Bay size reduced (40 -> 30).
  • Bomber Bay size reduced (50 -> 35).
  • Heavy Fighter Bay size reduced (60 -> 40).

• Tweaked Tactical Battles Pacing:
  • Tweaked Hull Visual Scales
  • Increased Max Speed for Most Hulls
  • Reduced Rotation Speed for Most Hulls
  • Reduced tactical health scale
  • Increased CDs on all weapons to keep DPS and Battle Length similar to previous iteration.
  • Phasors Damage Nerfed 35 -> 30
  • Gauss Cannon Damaged Buffed 35 -> 40
  • Pulson Missile Damage Nerfed 50 -> 40
  • Zeon Missile Damage Nerfed 70 -> 60
  • Energy Absorber CD increased 15 -> 25
  • Shield Capacitor CD increased 20 -> 30
  • Removed a Redundant Instance of Cooldown on the Pulsar Entry.

UX

• Added Automatic Formation Icon.
• Added pulsing animation to "Victory Is Nigh" notification.
• Citizen transports can now be built in bulk.
• New fully configurable ship mass production picker.
• Limited bulk building to 5 ships max.
• Added a “below max recommended player” count in the galaxy generation menu, to use as initial value of each galaxy size.
• Disable Intro Video Option.
• Set the recommended player count instead of the max count when a new galaxy size is selected.
• Added Scroll and Close functionality to notifications.
• Added new feedback for new pollution mechanics.
• Added missing tooltips that add necessary information in the ship design menu.
• Improved feedback for Blocking and Guarding commands.
• The Guard order can now be issued anywhere.
• Added new formations functionality, weapons and specials functionality in the tactical combat interface.
• Added status effect icons in the tactical combat interface.
• Added tooltip Auto-Pause for tactical battles.
• Added Status Effects to the tactical combat HUD.
• Numerous tooltips improvements.
• Added cost, command points, attack rating, defense rating, armor penetration, and drones system tooltips in the Ship Design menu.
• Added new feedback to Economic victory.

Controls – Modifications for “Tobii eye tracking” devices

• Cursor stays on planets when camera is shifting on extended view.
• Improved gamepad warp by adding cursor clone.
• Look at a planet and push left stick to see tooltip.

GNN

• Added intro animations for GNN
• Added New Economic Victory GNN trigger