- AI Ground battle interest now evaluates Preemptive Bombing, Scour, Rally, Rise Up, and Academy Strategies, covering all existing in vanilla, also evaluates possible unknown strategies.

- Added missing hacking outcome evaluations for all academy-related and some pirate outcomes, covering all major empire outcomes.

- Swarm missiles added to the list of weapons that cannot be slotted into behemoths, carriers and medium ships heavy mounts.

- AI scout slotting priority for Nakalim is will prioritize a second engine over a second probe module for the third support slot.

- Improved produce a fleet generator: now gets next best ship design when may not be able build the first option (IE lack of strategics), also randomness of options improved.

Adjustment in AI gains due to update of the prepatch version.

Bugfixing:

- Fixed an issue when an enemy had more military, the AI wanted military power dropped drastically. This affects ship building general interest.

Improvements:

- Ship building will, when possible, prioritize smaller ships if the industry capacity of the system is low.

- AI will replace resource boosting planetary improvements less often.

- AI will consider pirates to defend their closest systems, and will keep some interest in defending any front from a non-friendly neighbor.

- Lowered Terraformation interest by 33%.

- Optimized behavior, for relic collection fleets.

- Now heroes can be re-assigned to better systems or fleets.

- AI will be much less likely to abandon a system invasion mission to attend a more important mission when is already on the target system.

Bugfixes:

- Fixes in how pathing works, some issues when fleet was not in orbit, fixes on destination assignations.

- Now properly evaluates if a system is under pacific conversion.

- Fixed some testing code that I left by mistake on the miscellanea buildings generator.

- Heroes now will not try and fail to merge into another fleets.

Improvements:

- Improved complete fleet (merge), will now check properly if merge between two fleets is possible at mission allocation.

- Improved over-colonization interest computation for researching techs, boost to interest if the AI is Imperious.

- AI will avoid making invader fleets and planet destroyers until the design is updated a first time (the very first design has only one module equipped).

Fixes:

- AI will not try to reinforce (merge ships) the Academy Master fleet.

- Fixed an odd issue where AI could get stuck "Playing" when retreating from a battle, landing on another node and trying to move again.

- Fixed an issue that AI fleets could not invade systems under a influence radius that is not the system owner.

- Fixed that AI didn't allocate costs for population upgrade improvements thus giving them an unfair interest.

Second pass on AI ship designs:

- Fixed an error that added a second defense module on all ships before other priorities.
- Minor optimization in module slot type selection.
- Now invader role support ships, colonizers, arks, leechers and rooters will not equip weapons and armor with strategic materials.
- All Behemoths and Carriers, will not equip boarding pods, and EMP interference Weapons (low DPS weapons). Medium ships will not equip those same weapons on heavy mounts.
- Colonizers will try to fill all possible slots as support slots first.
- AI will not put invisibility/detection modules on carriers, will only use support ships.

Improvements

- Improved how a ship is repair/retrofit-able updating possible changes on data sync.

- Now retrofitting checks if the designs is not a side-grade/downgrade based on retrofit cost, and the motivation is now based on the number of design revisions behind.

- Ship bound is now able to Evacuate Brainwashed minor faction systems, and will do so if the population of those minor factions is 0, and if they are closer to their systems than the closest colonizable system.

Fixes

- Ship bound will not try to convert population into essence from systems with 0 population.

- Repair and retrofit will target hero ships properly.

- Arks now are retrofittable/repairable

Fleet Management:

- Huge changes on how fleet behaviors assign paths, now behaviors are able to assign new fleet path when not in orbit, necessary for waiting and when behavior changes.

- Invader fleets will wait for the main fleet if the target is not already secured. They will time themselves to arrive next turn of the main fleet.

- Full support for waiting to a fleet coming for a merge.

- Improved chase behavior, more responsive.

- Task force composition computation will consider if there are already fleets with those designs, not only build-able ships (could potentially disable all front missions on game load), and will skip computation and maintain previous composition when ship designs are not in sync (after a ship design upgrade).

- Enhanced missing pattern when looking to complete fleets, now substitutes existing ships not able to match, tries with same role, later distributes.

- Generator for popping out ships out of the hangar for emergency defense will also trigger if the system is being blockaded, not only if is at war with the offender.

Improvements:

- A 20% more interest boost in searching for curiosities in owned systems, slight boost to restless, boost to Nakalim.

- Added the ability to queue Resurrect Colony (Nakalim Awake System special action).

- Reduced slightly the interest for ship upgrade improvements.

- For colonization: higher interest in systems with ruins for Nakalim.

Fixes:

- Fixed CanAttack, BIG issue where an enemy fleet under a system under AI influence (IE their owned systems....) could not be attacked.

- All choose destination like behavior actions and pathing will consider (and skip) closed border systems.

- CanInvade behavior condition fixed, now check of there are fleets with MP docked, and if there are colonies to check that did a false positive.

- Now upgrading hero ships costs are computed and allocated properly.

- Fixed that hero ships obtained through quests/events couldn't be upgraded by the AI player.

Fleet Management:

- Most pathing generations now checks properly if a guarding empire on a system is an enemy before modifying the path of a fleet to a destination.

- Added extra behavior in the find relics behavior to choose next destination and try to launch a scout probe to avoid locking into not doing anything.

- Added the ability to wait for a merge in the "move to target" behavior subtree: if the incoming merge fleet is important enough and the wait is short enough, will stop and wait for the fleet a few turns for the merge.

Fixes:

- Fixed NextWantedDestination property, loading at nodeindex of 0, now triangulates the node with current fleet position and next node position when is not set (game load and fleet not in orbit).

- Fixed that explorer missions can actually search quest-related curiosities.

- Fixed IsEnemy function properly assessing Pirate faction (not enemy if non-aggression pact).

- InfluenceHostile checks for Minor Faction Peace and alliance.

- Fixed methods HasColony / HasColonyOf, could fail if there is a lost colony in the system (IE razed, hunting grounds).

- Fixed that the hero counted as mergeable when checking for a merge fleet.

Improvements:

- New generator to create siege fleets at medium motivation when there's no fleets to assist in invasion.

- A bit less interest in relics on unknown systems.

- Raised the limit to cancel an invasion assist from 50% more manpower in orbit, to 150%.

- The interest for essence (Ship bound/Volyani) is now affected by the expansion want, less need for expansion more interest in holy proliferation and less interest for alms for essence.

BugFixes:

Most these are not noticeable ingame, but they leave a trail of errors behind the scenes, and probably corrupting savegame data to some degree.

- AI will not try and fail to assign a hero to a fleet if not in orbit, the fleet is privateering, or there's an hero there already.

- AI will not send a truce proposal or a force truce to all the members of an opposing alliance at once.

- When AI sends a force truce, will stop spamming it internally until the internal data is synchronized and can check the result.

- Fixed an instance when force truce is sent, AI will not do anything about it. Now the AI will forcefully accept a forced truce if they cannot afford the refusal cost.

- Missing check of Eternal War Faction Trait in Need Help that transition to alliance proposal.

Improvements

- AI will likely pick the military weakest member of the opposing alliance to propose the forced truce (as now only one of them will receive a proposal).