[save-game compatible]

*removed supremacy localisation overwrite since supremacy was changed in vanilla and it's not necessary to overwrite it anymore ... thx to Gatzek for pointing this out
*changed automated dreadnought npc ship speed (was too slow once you took it over) ... thx to Imperialist Hyena for pointing this out

[save-game compatible]

*updated some polish localisation files ... thanks @Gatzek who provided the necessary files here
*increased aquatic dragon speed that has been too slow before ... thanks @Princezilla for pointing this out

[save-game compatible]

*added previously missing localisation update i.e. eternal citadel localisation description for starter menu

[save-game compatible]

*added better starbase naming declaration in UI that should enable you to better/faster see which starbases are f.e. meant to be used for building up your fleet etc.
*added emissive recoloring for aquatics science ship (previously missing) => now all aquatic ships have the same emissive recoloring

[NOT save-game compatible - NEW game required]

... including also substantial improvements for ACG

Graphics
*reworked and implemented the whole aquatic DLC graphical shipset into ACG (incl. new ship models for ACG's additional shipclasses)
*drastically improved cinematic hit effects: in vanilla almost every turret will focus on only one target locator of an enemy ship. leading to every turret shooting at only one point (usually the center of the ship). this doesn't look very immersive AND it's potentially causing graphical issues (when too many effects overlap). therefore i drastically increased the amount of target locators for all playable shipsets in game (ships only for now, graphical starbase improvements will be added later on) and also increased the amount for some NPC ships like some guardians. if you want to see what i mean => fight a vanilla guardian with a huge fleet that does not have any shield hit points and you will see all shooting effects are going to one point of the graphical model (usually the center) => with ACG now you will see spreading and shooting of the graphical object everywhere => it looks way better and will also help performance
*fixed vanilla bug: aquatics hangar bay section bug (wrong localization name) causing error log to show bug
*improved pirate turret scaling
*slightly further downscaled tempest interdictor ship model graphics
*improved necroid supercarrier and juggernaut graphical ship model hitting box (more accurate and immersive than vanilla)
*fixed vanilla bug: aquatic dragon graphic bug where one weapon and graphic would not work (only two out of three before my fix)
*slightly downscaled supercarrier bombers (they are still bigger than standard bombers)

Balance Improvement/Reworks
*tempest fleet composition changed. amount of interdictors doubled but their stats have been nerfed => this will let empires better decimate their crisis fleets over time without having to face an almost full fleet everytime because all of their ships would survive many battles. now more of their ships will die during battles
*added new debuff for jump drive using fleets => once you used jump drive your fleet will have a shield debuff of 50 % now as long as the jump drive cooldown lasts (but still no weapon debuff like in vanilla)
*increased naval capacity gain per pop from 0.1 to 0.3
*increased first tech cost for LGate Clues by 50 % and all subsequent levels by 20 %. in addition increased lgate final opening tech cost by 50 %
*reduced ship upkeep by 20 %
*drastically increased war exhaustion for defensive armies to better reflect how much it hurts if you loose a planet (in vanilla war exhaustion gain on offensive armies is high and on defensive armies is basically non-existent leading to the absurd situation that if an empire looses planets (and defensive armies) it won't get war exhaustion but the attacker gains war exhaustion because he lost some offensive armies... with ACG it's the opposite: loosing offensive armies causes a bit war exhaustion but loosing defensive armies causes a lot of war exhaustion)

AI Improvements
*improved AI fleet composition. AI will use better templates of fleet composition depending on their current state of technology
*improved AI fleet building process: AI empires will now build more and bigger fleets at a faster pace => this does have a substantial impact on difficulty settings. don't be surprised if the game seems much more difficult now if you use the same difficulty setting compared to before
*added reworked AI economic plan

Special File and Code rework
*had to add 00_admiral traits.txt and 00_ruler_traits.txt files again instead of previous new individual overwrite files that would only overwrite some traits but not all of the traits of those vanilla files because the game trait files can't be partly overwritten but only fully (otherwise it won't know which traits to take which can cause bugs)
*changed prefix of component templates, component sets, component slot templates, global ship designs, scripted variables, section tempaltes, static modifiers
*added traditions for overwriting
*removed 06_static_modifiers_apocalypse.txt file => now only a replacement file will be used (for replacing jump drive debuffs)

Other
*updated polish translation for ACG ... thanks to "Gatzek" for providing the necessary translation files
*from now on you only see a limit in your UI for supercarriers titans and so on if you got the technology for it

Final Note
I will add more vanilla graphical improvements in the future but since there are so many ships and stations that i want to improve, it will take some time. all those improvements will be save-game compatible. so i did not want to let you wait any longer until you can play with ACG and the aquatics DLC. Hence have fun and i am looking forward for the next improvements on the way!

[save-game compatible]

*final rebalance update for tempest crisis ships weapons and hitpoints: after another extensive testing i decided to optimize tempest fleets even more, by tweaking their damage, speed and hitpoints, in order to reach a state where they still deal devastating damage to the galaxy but yet some empires might survive. the goal is to let players still experience a very difficult crisis but yet don't let everybody else in the galaxy vanish if players manage to survive (many empires will still die if the crisis gets triggered though)

*improved planetary shield building: apart from giving - 50 % bombardment damage modifier to planets, this building now also provides +1 researcher job and +1 soldier job, making it clearly less worthy than standard soldier or researcher buildings but yet somewhat more useful than simply sacrificing one building slot only for the bombardment reduction

*starbase self-repair timer was adjusted (increased): once starbases have been attacked, it will take longer until they start repairing. therefore they enter a "vulnerable" state where enemy fleets can attack them while they are still weak. therefore it will become even more important to defend vulnerable starbases until they got fully repaired again

[partly save-game compatible ... please read note below]

NEW CONTENT - PLEASE READ
transport ships received a major overhaul. from now on each transport ship will carry a custom-made civilian weapon => please note:

I. if you start a new game then everything will work just fine from start.

II. if you use an old savegame then this change won't be directly applied to already existing transport ships. those already existing transport ships won't have a weapon component but as soon as you land your armies and embark them again, those transport ships will get their weapon component. it's not game-breaking if your (or the AI transport ships don't have a weapon component) but it will lead to a different transport ship combat behavior than if they had their weapon component (see below)

1) transport ship behavior in vanilla: once transport ships get into battle they will start running in a small circle without doing anything (stupid)

2) previous transport ship behavior in ACG: transport ships will flee and try to run away (more immersive) but unfortunately this lead to some hunting-loops where it would take ages for some fleets to hunt those transport ships (immersive but frustrating in those situations where it takes too long)

3a) new transport ship behavior in ACG: transport ships will engage the enemy fleet and try to defend themself (since they have weapons to defend themself now)

3b) new transport ship behavior in ACG with transport ships that don't yet have weapon components (this only affects transport ships that have been created in previous old save-games prior this update): transport ships will partly behave like in vanilla (making small circles) since they don't have weapons to defend themself. this will only be temporarily though and over time every transport ship in the galaxy will have weapon components anyway and then they will behave like described in 3a)

New transport ship design: each transport ship now has a custom made civilian weapon incl. custom point-defense weapon component incl. working and rotating turret graphics!
this new weapon will be able to shoot at enemy ships or strike-craft but it is much weaker than the standard point-defense weapon carried by corvettes or other military ships. *to make this clear: even a very big transport fleet will still be killed easily by even a small military fleet (game is still balanced and you can't abuse massive transport ship fleets for space-battle purposes).
but they will still try to defend themself as good as they can (immersive + more fun to watch) and hope that in the meantime some backup-forces arrive to help them out (instead of stupidly moving into a small circle while dieing like in vanilla or taking ages to hunt them down in some situations like previously with ACG).

the new transport ship design was implemented into every vanilla graphical shipset (humanoid, molluscoid, ... etc) and even every crisis faction got their own custom-made civilian weapon (incl. custom weapon graphics) for their transport ships i.e. 5 different and unique fallen empire, 2 unique AI and Cybrex AI, and 1 unique Scourge/Swarm weapon components

further game improvements:

BALANCE
*rebalanced (reduced) time it takes to upgrade ships (no more will it take ages to upgrade your ships) ... so with ACG it will usually take longer to build ships but you will be faster upgrading your fleet and won't be stuck in shipyards forever to upgrade your fleets non-stop
*all ship-classes are now affected by the combat movement reduction (previously some civilian ships have been unaffected)
*slightly reduced tempest escort ship weapon beam range
*reworked standard/default and swarm ship behavior
*decreased evasion of transport ships
*increased base ship speed of transport ships (their speed is still slower than corvettes, so you can still catch them if you want to, but it won't take such a long time for them to move like before)

VANILLA BUG FIXES
*i checked every turret graphic in the game (mesh files) and found out that several turret-fire-muzzle points (locators) have been misplaced in vanilla leading to wrong graphical muzzle-shooting effects (so the shooting effect would f.e. not come from the turret but somewhere else from the ship, sometimes it was just slightly misplaced and sometimes it was completely misplaced). so i fixed and improved every turret where i found those locators to be misplaced. in total 18 turrets have been fixed/improved (5 pirate, 1 avian, 1 fungoid, 4 humanoid, 2 lithoid, 1 necroid, 1 nemesis, 3 reptilian)

... so this update will work best in a new game but you can still continue your old game and profit from several improvements!

[save-game compatible]

*rebalanced tempest crisis fleets
after receiving a lot of feedback about the tempest crisis event and after a lot of testing, i decided to implement some adjustments that many ACG users have asked for i.e. tempest crisis fleets have been nerfed. the first time when tempest crisis fleets appear, they will still be very challenging and most likely roll over parts of the galaxy. but after time players (and the AI) are now better able to hold ground. please note: you will still face the same amount of enemy ships, the rebalancing was done by adjusting tempest weapons, tempest strike-craft, tempest defensive abilities and tempest weapon ranges leading to weaker (but still challenging) tempest fleets


*added new tempest bomber weapon and hit effects for more variety and more epic space battles (tempest fighter animations unchanged)

[save-game compatible]

(1) improved ship/fleet behavior:
*previously it happened that some ships moved back once the combat started, because the fleet was spreading out. this fleet behavior should be gone now. ships will stay in formation and move together until they reach their optimum position
*fleet formation was changed: formation is now more widespread and there is more space in-between ships
*slightly reduced combat speed reduction in battle (ships will move a little bit faster during combat now)
*space battles will be somewhat shorter from now on (but still very epic :P )

(2) rebalanced strikecraft partly also as consequence of (1):
*improved strikecraft movement behavior
*increased strikecraft rebuild rate
*slightly decreased strikecraft speed
*strikecraft bomber wings got +1 bomber

[save-game compatible]

*reupload of the previous update because a file was not uploaded correctly