Update 6 for A Lot of Zeroes released

I made a decision roughly 3 weeks before update 5 that I'd release A Lot of Zeroes as a standalone TTRPG and did a large amount of heavy lifting cutting rules out of the game to make it standalone.

And then just after release I had an idea for something else I could add that would fix what I felt was a minor problem in the game.

Three weeks later I'm happy to announce update 6 for A Lot of Zeroes is out. The full release notes run longer than the entire notes for update 5 for both this game and Sixty Years in Space. The idea I had to add fragments which you would gather up from civilisations to build towards questions ended up touching practically every part of the game. And while I was there I rebuilt a bunch of it to just work better.

By way of apology I'm making the first 48 pages available for free.

The full release notes follow.

Searching system infrastructure and megastructures in civilised sectors now gives your crew fragments which they can use to compile badges or questions. Use the Explore decaoperation to find them and the Compile decaoperation to convert them.

Reduced the starting age of mortals to 1D6+1 decades.

Added crew, spacecraft record sheets and a calendar.

Lineage bodies now have hazardous resistance, for the new hazard system that this update adds.

You get a social badge every time the galactic politics changes.

Andromedan politics is now a galactic political type rather than always applying. Added Earth has fallen, Eclipse phase, Intergalactic war, Petri dish, Titanomachy and War in Heaven galactic politics types.

Dark universe is now Red galactic politics and Hothouse Guilds are now Purple.

Fixed Concentric zones so that you round up instead of down to determine the zone number.

Clarified what information is available during the route building phase of travel.

You now always use fast generation of sectors unless you are flying blind — flying blind now cannot use fast generation.  Fast generation now also generates the full sector of interesting stars, which doubles chance of small planets being generated and skips any systems without either small planets or debris disks.

You now generate the accretion disk after stellar metallicity and before placing stellar objects.

Updated solar system folio with correct details and improved ability to specify contents of each orbit.

Ruins now indicates ruined frontier infrastructure (or interior if ascended). World ruins can also be present in many solar systems.

Starships crewed by other crews now roll for events that affect that crew until they leave. Added a number of circumstances where this occurs.

Simplified system economies so that they only apply for placing megastructures. Economy numbers increased by 2. Regularised placement of megastructures. Added accretion disks, sun diver tracks and stellar semaphores as additional megastructure types. Changed it so that megastructures can’t act as other megastructures.

You determine the development level and type of immigrants during the system infrastructure chapter. Added spark tables called forms tables for generating immigrants.

You can now claim a debris belt or ring regardless of your Capital ability.

Decaoperations can now kill mortal crew if the system is hazardous or can make crew go extinct if the system is doubly (if a megaoperation) or triply hazardous. Million year mega operations cannot be performed in doubly hazardous systems. Hazards include: a) a hazardous stellar object; b) the system decapopulation has the same toposophic level as the crew (development levels 12-15); c) the system politics is war or anarchy. Actions against or in megastructures are doubly hazardous. Systems taken over by gray goo are triply hazardous. Various other events can increase the hazard level of a system.

Added Genocide and Mass destruction decaoperations. These are atrocities which permanently mark crew who perform them. Added the Compile and Listen decaoperations. Moved the megastructure specific decaoperations to the Megastructures chapter. Renamed the Biography decaoperation to the ET Life decaoperation.

The Explore decaoperation can be used to find breakthrough cubes, hidden politics and answers within megastructures. The Enter decaoperation has been changed to become a prerequisite for most megastructure specific decaoperations.

There must be a debris belt, ring or world present in a system when you perform the Refuel decaoperation - mini-Neptunes must have Helium in their atmosphere to be usable. Clarified that the beam-rider spacecraft only needs to be refuelled once to be able to stop as a starship.

Renamed observation, computation and biography data disks as physical. mental and social questions and clarified that data disks can be used to carry questions or answers (1 per disk).

Questions can now be traded directly for decaoperations.

Reduced the amount of questions generated by rare stars.

Removed degradation of questions over time.

Crew can now retire, and will contribute a question if they have collected 10 or more fragments.

Black holes now only have Physical answers orbiting them.

Significantly reworked the majority of Physical badges and renamed them to better distinguish between Travel and Highlights badges. Removed the Galactic Bulge badge.

Added the Defragment, Giant planet hunter and Infrastructure hunter Physical badges. Removed the Planckatron Engineer badge, which will return in a new supplement, to be written. The Deep Time badge becomes a mental badge and always takes effect, even if not active.

Added the Authority Red, Aestivation Red, Builder Green, Individualist Orange and Unity mental badges. Simplified the Home World (now) White badge so any system you perform a megaoperation in becomes your home world. Simplified the Architect badge pre-requisites.

You can no longer deactivate mental badges freely. Removed the dependencies of Mental badges on specific galactic politics.

Combined the Uplift libraries and Vault mental badges (now called the Uplift libraries badge).

Changed the badge dependencies on the Free Trade Orange and Hot House Guilds (now) White badges so that every answer now unlocks a badge.

Increased the number of badges allowed by the Hothouse Guilds, Legacy, Megastructure METI,  Vault and Wisper badges to 2. The Hothouse guilds badge deactivates in a system if you convert all worlds to hothouses, rather than if you don’t.

Renamed the Galactic Goo badge as the Subverted badge and simplified it.

Population growth when performing a megaoperation now depends on the length of the megaoperation being performed and the type of population control in place. It can also result in population loss. If the system politics is War or Anarchy, this takes precedent over population controls.

Significantly reduced world population limits (by 10^13 times). These will be calculated better in a later update.

Performing a megaoperation increases the development level of the system to the crew’s toposophic level (normally 4) plus 10.

If you increase the decapopulation of a system by performing a megaoperation, the new system politics depends on the colour named in your Mental badge (if any) and is set via a Political Change event otherwise.

Removed the Biography, Biogenesis, Drift, Explore, Good Goo, Graser BH, New Home and Surveyor badges and megaoperations.

Removed the hyperstructure fixation related badges and megaoperations and replaced them with a Hyperstructure Fixation mental badge.

Significantly reduced the number of questions required to form an answer to allow wisps to be practical and make the game winnable in a normal amount of time.

The Highlights megaoperation now applies additional changes to the crew for turn lengths of 10, 100 and 1000 million years.

Added the Short range travel decaoperation and Home sector megaoperation to allow you to more easily travel around the current sector.

Added the Solve megaoperation which allows you to generate Physical or Mental questions or answers around B0-2 main sequence stars that you have enclosed with Dyson bubbles, swarms or Graser BH lenses.

Stellar evolution can now occur for some stars when you perform million year megaoperations in the same sector, including going supernova.

The Landing beam megaoperation now requires a minimum development level of 10 in the destination system: if the development level is below 14 this can result in the system population going extinct which makes the megaoperation doubly hazardous.

The Star lift megaoperation allows you to increase the number of orbits occupied by instruments and accretion disks. It now takes a million years.

The Subvert megaoperation starts with a larger area affected and can scale to larger structures. The Scavenge megaoperation does not locate the answer. The Scavenge megaoperation is now how you convert megastructure mass to mass streams for infrastructure you have subverted.

The Synthesise megaoperation is now how you convert complicated answers to uncomplicated answers. This use of this operation, and the Toposophic lift operation now both take 1 billion years which means they have to be performed in a system which will not explode over this time period. Billion year megaoperations also force the crew to retire.

Fixed a number of badges that required the Highlights megaoperation to work — these now also require the Highlights badge as a pre-requisite. The SETI badge now needs the Galactic core badge as a prerequisite.

Renamed consciousness as development level. Renamed the first column of the Megaoperations table to event.

Replaced the Crew extinction event with an Increased hazards event. Replaced the Political shift event with a Political change event, which changes the system politics.

Replaced the Covenant shift with a Hidden politics shift. Replaced the Supraspecies shift with a Species shift.

The Smart Citizens shift now also changes the population control method and makes it short term; the Control/Drift megaoperation now changes it and makes it long term. Removed the Wave fronts shift and added the Population control shift, which changes the population control method.

A number of systemic shifts now alter the population if the system politics matches the systemic shift politics.

The Grey goo shift now makes the system a Grey curtains system.

Crew can destroy part of a megastructure or depopulate the highest decapopulation world in a system using a mass destruction decaoperation to prevent a systemic shift or complication occurring.

Megastructures with at least 2 sections built can prevent or slow the effects of systemic shifts.

Megastructures have fragments which you can discover by entering the megastructure. Larger megastructures allow you to get multiple fragments as you further interact with them.

Megastructure sections now have many of the system attributes generated by system infrastructure, which are applied to the section only, including section politics. One section politics result gives you the opportunity to explore to discover the hidden megastructure politics; in some instances if you do the megastructure reacts unfavourably.

Completely reworked megastructure answers to depend on the megastructure age, orbits occupied by solvers and (for solar-powered solvers) the luminosity of the star it orbits. You now need a question to get an answer and can only do so from mature and older megastructures — you can also exchange questions with maturing megastructures.

Fixed the Virtual interrogation answer so it doesn’t rely on game terms from Sixty Years in Space.

Exploits acquired within a virch directly increases the crew’s toposophic level maximum. These exploits come from the crew’s fragments, and the crew retains these as fragments along with 1 fragment from within the virch when they escape.

Fixed bad index.