[save-game compatible]

**** Bug Fixes
*fixed bug where minor artifact stockpile could be reset after reloading a game. this bug emerged because pdx devs seem to have changed how to overwrite strategic resources. so i had to add the full 00_strategic_resources file now instead of overwriting only minor artifact code like i did in the past... thanks to {EXP} Sky Gaming for pointing this bug out

**** Compatibility
*updated ACG for the most current UIOD update

[save-game compatible]
HOTFIX

**** Bug Fixes
*fixed bug where subjects with bulwark technology would apply some bonus to defense platforms (there are no defense platforms with ACG, hence removed thsi bonus) ... thanks to AelidEye for pointing this out
*fixed rampart starbase module and ancient overcharger starbase building wrong descriptions: they are not applying any defense platform modifiers anymore ... thanks to AelidEye and Lotussy for pointing this out
*fixed UI Espionage showing icons wrong ... thanks to VanGatzek for letting me know about this

**** Rebalancing
*slightly increased starbase reactor power output for some levels

MAJOR ACG UPDATE FOR 3.7.* - NEW GAME REQUIRED
... if you want to use your old save games please use ACG legacy version

**** ACG Return of the Ancients
*unrest event file was moved from ACG into ACG Return of the Ancients for compatibility reasons
*implemented new restrictions for fallen empire origin empires that will prevent other empires from using their components when they are in a federation with them
*for non-machine FE origin players: hidden curator vault planetary deposit will still be available after restoring the eucomenopolis on the capital homeworld
*civics eager explorers was overwritten so this civic can't be chosen with acg fe origins
*added new cloaking components for ancient fallen empire origin players (only available to first contact dlc owners) that will enable those fallen empire players to start with cloaking abilities!

**** ACG main mod + all submods
*added full compatibility for 3.7.*
*adjusted ship designer UI in order to make ACG better compatible with UI Overhaul Dynamic and Stellaris
*added one auxiliary slot to corvette late game bomber variant (this will enable cloaking option for first contact dlc owners)
*all archaeo weapons do have their own unique new icons, weapon graphics and animations (purple color) now consistent with ACG (in vanilla many weapon graphics are simply the same like other already existing weapon graphics)
*added new XL archaeo laser beam weapon
*added new archeo late game technologies that further improve archaeo weapons and archaeo components to be basically on par with or even slightly better than many of the best weapons and ship components in game (except fallen empire tech, which is still the most powerful)
*added new custom archaeo strikecraft variants (fighters, bombers and different variants for different ship sizes) consistent with ACG - not only one variant like in vanilla
*rebalanced all archaeo weapons and components in order to fit well into the ACG gameplay experience
*with max tech archaeo components can be better than Tier 10, sometimes even better than dark matter tech. however, it will still be weaker than fallen empire tech and there is less choice for archaeo components compared to non-archaeo components
*removed archaeo missile and archaeo mass accelerator component (replaced their archaeo techs with other beneficial techs)
*added better AI behavior when it comes to choosing the right archaeo components at the right time

[save-game compatible] .. but if you are using ACG Return of the Ancients then starting a new game might be beneficial
UNSCHEDULED HOTFIX

**** Bug Fixes
*fixed bug for "ACG Return of the Ancients" submod where you would not get enough districts for mining, energy and food after starting the game on your ruined home world
=> if you already started a game and managed to survive despite this disadvantage of not having enough districts on your ruined homeworld, then you do not necessarily need to start a new game. you can continue your save-game if you want to. but if you want this fix (i.e. more districts on starting homeworld for ACG Ancient Empires) to be applied in game then you need to start a new game ... thanks to Mitsuha for letting me know about this
*fixed typo mistake where i wrote "Loose Access" instead of "Lose Access" ... thanks to Devidose for pointing this out

**** Compatibility
*moved a file from ACG main mod into the ACG Return of the Ancients submod. This was done in order to only make ACG Return of the Ancients incompatible with another mod and not both mods (i.e. the main mod ACG and the submod ACG Return of the Ancients).

MAJOR UPDATE - NEW GAME REQUIRED
... if you want to use your old save games please use this ACG legacy version


****Content Addon: ACG Return of the Ancient
*added 5 new playable ancient empires with unique ship graphics, unique components, jobs, buildings, technologies, events and much more (for more details check out the new addon mod description)
*included everything related to the new content addon: ACG Return of the Ancient into the ACG main mod EXCEPT some small files to activate the mod
*this new content addon mod is OPTIONAL - if you don't want to use it and don't want the AI to use it, then don't subscribe to the new content addon mod
*however, if you want to use it then you will need to follow the instructions on the new mod's steam page AND you will need the Ancient Relics DLC (required for new content addon mod) in addition to the Apocalypse DLC (required for ACG) and you will need to use ACG + UI Overhaul Dynamic together with it! (See new Content Addon mod description)

**** Graphics - New Feature: Debris, Graveyard!
*added new spaceship graveyard feature. ships will spawn new ACG graphically designed debris when they are being destroyed. this feature can be disabled/enabled any time in game + you can clean the whole galaxy anytime you want from all debris => a window will pop up once you start the game and show you where to find the icon to activate the ACG Debris Menu ... many thanks to Mzilli who allowed me to use and rework his event code for generally spawning debris for ACG which made it easier for me to combine it with my new ACG debris graphics and menu actions!

**** Graphics - Combat, System, Galaxy
*added 33 new target locators for all playable graphical cultures starbases and also for some special non-playable graphical cultured starbases. this will greatly improve the graphical combat experience with and against starbases since ship won't only shoot at the middle of the starbase now (like with vanilla which has only 0 i.e. 1 target locator for each starbase exactly at the middle)
*reduced random height between stars on the galaxy map. as a consequence hyperlanes won't be going up and down that much and will be more flat ... thx to Moertimer for the suggestion
*adjusted camera and reduced max level of zoom out - the maximum level was slightly too far
*reworked distance and shape of ship-shield appearance on system map (ship's shield graphics will be closer to the ship and will be better adjusting themself to the shape of ships)
*increased planet scaling on closest zoom option
*improved muzzle effects for some titan and ion cannon weapons
*reworked some ACG lithoid explosions that have been too big in the past

**** Graphics - Icons
*improved new ACG ship designer icon frames - added extra symbols for point-defense/flak, fighters, bombers, X-slot and T-Slot weapons for making them better distinguishable
*completely reworked and remodeled all combat computer icons making those icons now far better distinguishable

**** Balance - Technologies
*ships > destroyer do now require some additional prerequiste engineering technologies to be researched first and their technologies will only appear after having researched those engineering technologies (there is a tooltip added for those engineering techs informing players about the fact that those techs are now required for new shipclass technologies)
*rebalanced technology costs: tech tier 1 - 5 costs: unchanged, tech tier 6: cost increased by 19 % - 34 %, tech tier 7: 34 % - 50 %, tech tier 8: 51 % - 69 %, tech tier 9: 70 % - 91 %, tech tier 10: 93 % - 116 %, guardian and fallen tech costs have increased even more and are now more costly than tech tier 10. repeatable tech costs have been increased vastly and are now as expansive as fallen tech tier => this will lead to less rushing through endgame technologies and makes each late game tech more valuable
*changed tech tier of several megastructures
=> this will provide more variation between megastructure technologies and costs and also avoids rushing through late game. it also makes those technologies and megastructures more valuable

**** Balance - Ship/Army Stats, Components, Combat
*reduced experience rank bonus for ships and armies for better balance
*reduced ship engagement range bonus for carrier combat computers
*improved dreadnought combat computer
*rebalanced artillery combat computers and reduced damage bonus because range bonus is worth enough
*rebalanced ship damage: where shorter range weapons received a small decrease in damage and higher range received a higher decrease in damage ... all ranging between 5 % and 25 % damage reduction for better balance and making it less easy to just try to go for max range
*rebalanced armor damage modifier of weapon components (reduced) => armor will be stronger and more difficult to break now compared to shield or hull ... thanks to FlixPro for the feedback that made me rethink and redesign armor
*armor hardener now got additional minor armor multiplier modifiers in order to provide armor also with more buff optionality compared to shields
*armor hardener now got a minor negative ship speed modifier => this seemed to be a fair trade-off since armor is now much stronger than before
*reworked and rebalanced all shield, armor and hull regen component abilities. in most cases they have been decreased significantly, in some cases those abilities have been removed from components
*slightly increased base armor hitpoints of all starbases
*reduced emergency FTL timer by 10 % in order to give a more realistic chance of being able to use it during battle
*rebalanced juggernaut and colossus upkeep
*rebalanced shield generator/shield booster bonus
*rebalanced shield regen and armor regen bonus from components (much lower now)

**** Balance - Diplomacy
*changed how important technology is when it comes to diplomatic weight and relative strength of empires
*reduced research bonus from research agreement in order to avoid possibility of ancient empire origins to push AI allies too easily and in order to make it a little bit more difficult vs non-diplomacy friendly empires

**** AI and Performance
*adjusted ACG military power calculation => you will see different values now for fleets, ships and starbases and so on. This was done in order to improve AI behavior
*stopped the AI from spamming habitat buildings and causing late game performance issues. AI will now focus to build habitats only within their capital system (void dweller origin excluded) ... thx to FlixPro for the suggestion
*improved AI fleet composition ... thx to Asteria and FlixPro for feedback

**** Other Reworks
*removed titan/supercarrier shipclass from toxoid salvaged fleet event
*removed carrier role option from battleships/titans (since they don't have any strikecraft with ACG)

**** Localisation
*many english descriptions have been drastically reworked and adjusted ... HUGE thanks to Kusanagi who did a phantastic work here!
*added new localisation for all the new content especially related to the new ACG content update
*ACG incl. the new content is available for: braz-por, english, german, french, polish, russian, spanish, simp.-chinese
*added english descriptions for japanese and korean language

**** Bug Fixes
*fixed bug caused by ACG where sometimes duplicates of opinion modifiers would be applied ... thanks to K. for reporting this bug!
*fixed vanilla bug (not caused by ACG) where science nexus megastructure core was bugged i.e. everytime it was showing mammalian graphical culture instead of other races/graphical cultures
*fixed minor ACG related bug where fighter strikecraft tier 5 (carrier and starbase variants) got slower regen compared to their previous versions ... thanks to Mitsuha for letting me know

[save-game compatible]

*added new improved ship shield base graphics (more fluid look and improved base ship shield lightning effects)
*reduced time until starbase starts to repair itself ... thx to Anzuray, FlixPro, Vecho and Cranky for your input on discord
*fixed minor localisation bug where Improved Orbital Beam Technology did show up with wrong localisation ... thx to Cranky for pointing this out

[save-game compatible]

*fixed minor localisation bug where a frigate bonus was shown in addition to the corvette bonus when researching the standardized pattern technology for corvettes even though there are no frigates with ACG ... thanks to Cranky and Gatzek for pointing this out

[save-game compatible]

*added final ultimate fix for the previously described bug where some ships still got the negative speed modifier even for a long time after battle finished

Background story:
unfortunately the previous hotfix was not enough. there were still some rare occasions where the negative speed modifier was not removed properly. oh dear how do i love event-coding (= irony).. i am sorry for the inconvenience that this might have caused to some of you. i promise i did not try to abuse my users as guinea pigs (honestly).

however i have learned my lesson (hopefully). so i added a new code that will check for the negative speed modifiers approximately every 20 days and will remove it when it's necessary. this should be seen as a final and ultimate fix (previously i tried to find ways to only let it check in some certain circumstances which would have been even better for performance but this obviously lead to too many exceptions for bugs, so i had to give up on this way to do it).

if some of you might ask: "meh why 20 days? why not 1 day i.e. immediately after combat?" then the answer is: i tried to find the sweet spot for performance optimization. i think approximately 20 days ( = equals around 20 sec in game time) is a fair time to let ships charge their travel engine again after combat and it will have a nice positive impact in mid- and late game for performance. if you think you would prefer a shorter timer after combat then let me know and i will maybe provide some submods with a shorter timer but less positive performance impact.

... thanks to FlixPro, Darun, and Karl Maul for pointing out those issues

[save-game compatible]

*included a hotfix for a bug that was caused by the new ACG-performance update, which caused some ships to keep the speed reduction modifier longer than intended (even after battle) ... thanks to FlixPro and Darun for mentioning the bug!

[NOT save-game compatible - NEW game required]

*** INCLUDED FULL ACG UPDATE FOR STELLARIS 3.6 Orion + 3.6.1 Patch
*** updated full compatibility with UI Overhaul Dynamic [mandatory to use with ACG]

>>> ADDITIONAL SPECIAL NOTES

**** COMMENTS ON VANILLA STELLARIS 3.6
*THE UGLY VANILLA STRIKECRAFT BUG WAS FINALLY FIXED! Thank you for helping me bring this bug to the stellaris developers attention by supporting my bug report thread at their forum!
*Stellaris 3.6 is a major overhaul for vanilla Stellaris combat. Some of the changes are interesting and beneficial for ACG, some others are not. ACG only included those changes that i think of as beneficial to the game and i decided to exclude all 3.6 changes that are potentially bad for ACG

**** 3.6 VANILLA STELLARIS VS ACG => WHAT'S DIFFERENT
*removed new vanilla frigate ship class since it's unnecessary with ACG => with ACG you can get a late game corvette-bomber variant which is basically very similar to vanilla frigate style ship class though slightly better and slightly worse depending on the situation
*removed new vanilla minimum range for a lot of weapons since this is in my opinion a bad design choice leading to several potential issues in game and unnecessary on top of it
*new ship disengagement roll chances won't affect ACG since ship disengagement will stay super unlikely and low with ACG. more important is the retreat ability of whole fleets. there are now more options to improve the timer until you can retreat your fleet
*with ACG there are still fighters and bombers and fighters will still shoot at enemy missiles (unlike vanilla 3.6 where strikecraft will now only attack other strikecraft before attacking enemy ships)
*ACG ship behavior is unchanged and not affected by the changes of vanilla Stellaris ship behavior. So with ACG there is no buggy ship behavior like some people experience with other mods or with vanilla stellaris 3.6

**** UI GRAPHICS
*added new ship designer UI for components making the UI look and feel more modern and more in line with the ACG UI overhaul replacing old ugly colored vanilla boxes (if you massively dislike my new UI then feel free to ask for a revert patch - will only be added on demand though)

**** NEW CONTENT + CONTENT REWORK
*missiles and torpedoes have been completely reworked and rebalanced
*all G torpedo slots have been removed except for the late game corvette tactical bomber variant which received a G slot (previously XL Slot with ACG)
*new missiles and torpedoes have been added to the game:
- S + M + L Missiles and Thunderbolt Missiles: Long Range, Versatile Damage Output available to all ship classes (rebalanced, previously only G Slot, now three: S M L)
- M + L Torpedoes: Short Range, High Damage Output available to all ship classes (rebalanced, previously only G Slot, now two: M L)
- XL Cruise Missiles: Long Range, Good Damage Output available to Battleships and Juggernauts only (new, X Slot)
- XL Heavy Torpedoes: Short Range, Very high Damage Output available to Dreadnoughts and Titans only (new, X Slot)
- you are now able to build full missile and torpedo ships .. yes even a full missile battleship or a full torpedo dreadnought!
*new M and L Autocannons are available (similar to Stellaris 3.6 but rebalanced and reworked for ACG)
*new Nanite Flak and Nanite Autocannon are available (similar to Stellaris 3.6 but rebalanced and reworked for ACG)
*new Shield and Armor Hardeners are available (similar to Stellaris 3.6 but reworked for ACG)
*new ship roles have been added and all components and sections have been reworked accordingly (some vanilla 3.6 ship roles that are unnecessary with ACG have not been included into ACG though)

**** BALANCE
*reduced out of combat shield, armor and hull regen. out of combat repairing armor and hull will need much longer compared to shields. all of them will repair and recharge faster than in combat though (in vanilla it was increased, with ACG it stays about the same like before)
*reworked new vanilla aux components to be more balanced with ACG
*in order to give shield and armor hardeners more usability and in order to buff short range weapons at the same time:
- auto cannons got slight shield penetration abilities now and auto cannon damage has been buffed
- torpedoes have shield and armor penetration abilities
- XL laser beams (dreadnought, titan) have armor penetration abilities
- corvette tactical bomb has shield and armor penetration abilities
- swarmer missiles also got shield and armor penetration abilities
- certain npc and crisis weapons got shield and armor penetration abilities
*removed missile battery starbase module and orbital ring module because missiles and torpedoes are now part of the gun battery starbase module (i.e. no G Slot anymore but S M L slots instead)
- so there will only be gun batteries or hangar modules and gun batteries will be used for all weapons (inkl. missiles and torpedoes) except strikecraft

**** GRAPHICS
- added ACG graphics for all new weapon components
- unfortunately i could not add the previously announced starship graveyard content because there is still a bug in vanilla stellaris that is causing this feature to malfunction. as soon as the stellaris developers fix this issue, i will be happy to release this new feature as well

**** LOCALISATION
*all of the new ACG content was translated in every language that is available for Stellaris (i.e. english, german, french, polish, chinese, russian etc.)

**** PERFORMANCE
*reworked and improved how the reduced battlespeed event is being triggered. this should lead to even better mid- and lategame performance compared to before - even though ACG's performance was already better than with vanilla Stellaris as far as i know