Matrix Games Forums

A comment under a video on taxes and funding, stated that some of the info in the video might be outdated:

To people who are watching this video now: The colony growth funding has been heavily nerfed recently. I think its effect is only a third of what it used to be or something like that, so maybe now it's better to focus on colony happiness instead of growth funding? I dunno.

Not being aware of that, I wanted to learn more about it. So I opened that changelog for the Mercantile Update, and searched for funding. Didn’t find anything pertinent. I then went in the forums to do a search, and found the following in the changelog for version 1.2.9.5 (March 7th, 2025):

> ECONOMY
> adjusted ratio of empire funding (Research + Colony Growth) down from 50% to 25% of total Research and total Growth, thus ensuring higher baseline research and growth rate even without full bonus funding

Which, if I understand correctly, is a 50% nerf of the effect of growth and research funding. Important information to know about that game mechanic. But that info is completely absent from the Mercantile update changelog.

As you note, the change related to empire funding happened before the Mercantile Update. As far I remember, we haven't done anything additional that would've affected this further with the Mercantile Update. Are you seeing otherwise?

We normally don't call changenotes from previous updates, unless there's a relevant fix or piece of info related to it, specific to a new update.

First, to be clear, I'm talking about the changelog on the FTP site (https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/Distant ... atsnew.pdf).

I've always assumed that the final changelog posted there for each of the official updates, including the Mercantile one, contains all the changes made to the game since launch, up to that update. Which is a good source of information when you want to verify if any changes were made to a specific aspect of the game, in situation like the one described in my initial post.

And that changelog should contain the changes made to funding in version 1.2.9.5. But it doesn't (at least not the change mentioned in my initial post).

It is possible that specific change didn't make it into the final changelog. We'll confirm whether if that's the case.

Thanks. I believe it's a fairly important change that should appear in the complete changelog.

A suggestion if I may: a permanent (pinned) post in the forum pointing to the complete changelog. I know that log exists, and I know where to find it; but I'm pretty sure that many who would benefit from it have no idea where to find it... or even if it exists or not.

It might also be a good idea, when you post a changelog for an official update in the forum, to include a link to the complete changelog in there too.

There are so many changes made to the game since launch, some big ones and/or important ones, that aren't documented in the Galactopedia or elsewhere in the game, that a complete changelog is, from my perspective, an indispensable part of the game's documentation. And I believe that anything that contributes to a better / more complete documentation of the game will, in the end, result in more love for the game.