this update contains a variety of changes to the underlying state of the game, both to make it more focused on the feeling of being a planetary governor, hopefully more understandable, and very importantly (to me at least) improving the frame time during game day ticks (when it ticks over to a new ingame day).
rework of production sites. before each site had a level that changed how many people could work for it, in the new system sites have workers distributed from all working population in the sector and level only affects a smaller throughput modifier. this change should decrease the focus on upgrading levels and prevent the problem where as planets become higher population levels have less of an effect, but will probably take a while to rebalance, BUT hopefully will make it easier to work with and play with and fix my personal biggest issue with the game right now, that its both difficult to make changes to production and it feels aimless and unconnected to the rest of the game.
added to character and faction interactions. this includes a new "trial" interaction where prisoners can be sent to trial, with the option to accept the trial outcome, reject it, or demand a retrial. there are different chances on outcomes depending on the number of punishment reasons and different effects for these outcomes. there are also options to more intervene in conflicts, including demanding either side surrender, demand a white peace, join either side, and sometimes receive requests to intervene. these conflict intervention options are available in the conflicts tab of the forces window, while trial is available on the prisoner himself. on top of this, now factions can attempt to take characters hostage, where they may try to escape, or may ask the player for help, or the hostage holder may ask the player to punish the hostage. you also have options to request they release or give you the hostage on your own.
previously many things in code used string IDs, which meant they could have meaningful names in data and save files, and could be used as localisation keys. however this is slower than integer numeric IDs for things like dictionary key hash lookup (which is very common on day ticks) and not every type of ID needs these things. now many of the things that don't need string IDs just use int IDs and the things that do use a system that converts between string IDs in files and int IDs at runtime, so there is much less slowdown at runtime when days tick over while both keeping meaningful names in files and also making string IDs available at runtime when needed for things like localisation keys. on top of this, many more things also cache a reference to the value in dictionary at runtime which decreases the amount of dictionary key hashing, improving performance / increasing fps / reducing slowdown on game ticks more.
summary of other changes made, mostly copied from past opentest branch update posts:
added "starting advice notifications" gives some starting notifications that when clicked on opens relevant menus for things to set at start.
added settings menu gameplay option for starting advice notifs.
added a button to skip starting text.
made the load menu saves list use a recycling list like the planets list.
added order flip button to load menu lists.
fixed issue with battle view being open when battle ends.
added an "all units" view to battle icon click menus, showing all units involved in ongoing conflicts in the sector.
added sector name to battle view ui.
updated ongoing conflicts list in forces window with recycling lists and improved design. conflict selection shows who is on each side, and selected conflict shows surrender progress and battles list properly.
added notifications when a battle ends that involves the player's side, which when clicked on opens the forces window conflicts tab.
added passive surrender progress descriptions to conflict view (right now this only shows passive from too many days and passive from losing).
made losing surrender progress not activate when zero sectors are controlled and when attacker controlled number equals defender controlled number.
player action on character tooltip shows success chance and hideability.
fixed issue in line graph where production line history is showing all points as being the same value even though going through days the number changes, changing all points on the line to the same value of the current day as each days value changes.
changed production and consumption history to store the same amount as the rest of history (about a years worth) rather than only the last 7 days.
added a sector "weariness" value: while there is a battle in a sector, gradually increases a negative modifier to reduce production, which gradually returns to normal when there are no more battles in the sector.
added option in forces window conflicts tab to join the selected conflict on either attackers or defenders side.
updated player interactions with characters to store info under the hood to allow setting things like a specific conflict.
added picker for player interactions with characters that allows choosing extra specifics, for example when asking a faction leader to surrender in a conflict, picking which conflict.
added faction leader pickers to conflict view that automatically opens character interactions, so the player can easily find relevent faction leaders and player interactions right there.
made changes and additions to ingame events, faction actions, promises, and promise hooks to allow for promises around intervening in conflicts. i should have never made all this stuff user modifiable its so much more work.
fixed various bugs in data files.
added various things to scripting, effects, limits, names, etc.
implemented promises failure hooks behind the scenes code.
added production, consumption, and stockpile lines to line graph for total of all items.
decreased average rate of conflicts.
added sort type dropdown to load menu for planets list and saves list, with options to sort by folder modify time or alphabetical.
added new law category for conflicts, which can grant arrest reasons against faction leaders under relevant conditions at the cost of opinion with all factions.
for now changed arrest interaction to not automatically use up arrest reason when arrest is successful.
added hostage filter to character list filters.
resized character filter lists window to fit better.
changed character action likelyhood removing faction leaders having a higher chance, and adding characters with no job have a higher chance (more free time to scheme).
added character action for characters with no job to try and take another character's job.
a character is now have a higher chance to ask to leave or leave without asking if he has no job and will never do either of these if he is an advisor.
secrets now have a set punish reasons count, so instead of all secrets giving 1 punish reason, now they can give a different amount for severity.
secret punish reasons now also includes criminal traits, which remain as long as the trait is public knowledge and only goes away if the character gives up (or appears to give up) that lifestyle.
when punishing for punish reasons, no longer removes punish reasons for things player doesn't know about. it still removes punish reasons that the player knows but aren't public to prevent the game pushing you into feeling you have to min-max when you punish versus reveal.
denouncing now uses up all known punish reasons.
simplified and fixed up code for deciding if a character will give up, or appear to give up, publicly known illegal traits.
added character action to ask player for forgiveness for secrets if the character has any secrets that are either public or knows player knows, and added related event.
added wargoal for attackers to free hostages from another faction.
significant code refactoring.
now pre-calculates item tags' modifiers instead of calculating every day, since it only cares about planet types that are only set on load anyway.
made item civ type modifiers be seperate per body, so bodies with different civ types can say have different rates of consumption. same for base tribute values.
made vsync and audio settings save properly.
made right hand bar in game screen's default tribute fill view stop using up so much time and GC allocation per frame.
updated how total sector population is handled in various places so it still counts population being held by militia during conflicts as part of the total.
reworking and filling out damage to affect current men in unit, including both killed and otherwise knocked out of combat (wounded, fled, or whatever else).
made a bunch of things care about only fighting-capable men and not knocked out from conflict men.
added a default icon for notifications instead of a square.
replaced some unnecessary hashsets with lists.
started work on allowing effects to output a target directly, so other effects can use a specific target such as one effect creating a conflict then another could start an event targeting that same conflict. currently only implemented for character/faction actions and for start_conflict_1v1 effect.
made localised strings keep working without throwing exceptions if they can't get a target, needed for new ability to set targets after character action is first created.
made law categories use data text files.
added audio clip when an event pops up.
decreased rate of characters asking for appointments.
balanced out how population starts in generation so there isn't as sudden loss in the first few days from working population being suddenly converted into specialised manpower before the fill-back system is ready.
changes since last opentest branch:
fixed windows build not having all changes moved over by version control.
fixed demand for retrial not working.
fixed code for changing job to make sure if character stops being a controller that he is replaced with another character of the same faction, before it was incorrectly only doing this if he changed to the same type of controller.
fixed some jobs not showing in character info.
fixed bug that prevented opening interactions with faction leaders in conflicts not with loyalists.
fixed text in conflict tab overlapping button.