Hello everyone,
we've just released the 1.0.5 patch! This is a big one and we're very pleased with how the game is at the moment. The update is now available on Steam, Humble and Itch.io.
The highlights are the new production and research efficiency sliders, that give bonuses to the AI or the Human player, the substantial AI improvements, and the graphical improvements for the galaxy map lines (fleet lines, wormholes and exploitation lines), along significant balance changes, gameplay changes and some bug fixes.
The game is now much more challenging in the higher difficulty levels. Expect some serious opposition by the AI now! Average and the easier difficulty levels should have maintained more or less the same difficulty. With the new efficiency sliders, the game setup options are now much more flexible, and you'll be able to play a game as easy or as difficult as you wish. You can even choose different research and production speeds to different AI players, including yourself.
We've been playtesting this version internally and we can report that the game is now more balanced, more stable and much more challenging if you wish to play with the higher difficulty settings. Due to all of this, the game is also much more fun now. I know I had the most fun playing myself with this new version, so please enjoy the new update and let us know what you think!
Compatibility note: The saves from 1.0.4 are not compatible with this new version, so you must start new games to experience all the additions, changes and fixes of this new update. There were also changes made to the playable races, so please delete all your custom races, you can then create new ones with no problem. As usual, if you find any issues please let us know. Check here for the bug reporting guidelines.
If you want to finish your current game with the previous version (1.0.4) you can opt for the Beta branch on Steam and unlock the "unstable" version with password "interstellarsg".
Thanks a lot to everyone who has bought the game, and a special thank you to everyone who has been providing feedback and suggestions. We're always listening, so please keep those suggestions coming!
Have fun!
The Dev Team
Praxis Games
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---- VERSION 1.0.5 ----
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# NEW
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- Added research and production efficiency sliders to allow adjusting a faster or slower production and/or research per player.
- New animated map paths / lines graphics in the galaxy map for the fleet lines, wormholes and exploitations, with different colors including distinction between incoming and not incoming fleets, with ETA for incoming ones.
- New option to enable/disable seeing fleet lines of not-incoming fleets.
- Accuracy (Ship Attack bonus) information now provided in the Ship Design screen and Space Combat UI per weapon slot. This means it's now possible to see how accurate each weapon slot is by checking the value and the tooltip.
- New turn processing visual feedback provided when pressing the "Next Turn" button, lets you see the stage of turn processing.
- Added armor information to the player ship panel and enemy ship panel.
- Added shields information to the player ship panel (was already displayed in the enemy panel).
- Added crew experience information to the enemy ship panel in space combat.
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# AI
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- AI now equips their ships with varied ammo settings for missiles (before it was always equipping 5 shots for missiles), the bigger the ship the more ammo it tends to have.
- AI now researches better defenses, weapons, special systems and targeting algorithms technology earlier in the game (only for the higher difficulty levels).
- AI now gives more priority to researching scanners technology.
- AI now equips their ships much more sensibly, with a full and balanced composition of point defense weapons, long range weapons, missiles (when available), and goes with reinforced hull whenever is found opportune.
- AI now equips the following weapon modifications (was not equipping these before): ECCM, FAST and MIRV modifications for missiles and Shield Piercing, Armor Piercing and "No Range Dissipation" modifications for direct fire weapons (both kinetics and beams), especially in the higher difficulty settings.
- AI now updates their designs and refits their ships more often and more sensibly, leading to better equipped ships at all times, especially in the higher difficulty levels.
- AI now manages their colony building queues better, only adding new projects to the top of the queue when the current ones are not almost finishing.
- The odds presented in the auto-resolve algorithm are now a bit more accurate due to improvements on the AI combat strength assessment algorithms.
- The AI now gives more priority to building warships in times of war. Before, the AI could focus a bit too much on expanding (building colony ships and outpost ships) when it would be preferable to invest in building more warships.
- The AI now brings more ships when invading settlements and the fleet composition is now more varied, composed of bigger ships escorted by smaller vessels.
- AI no longer sends lone ships to systems controlled by a rival player. The AI could be seen sending lone ships one by one towards the player (that is now fixed).
- AI now always sends assault ships when conducting invasions.
- AI now reinforces and defends their homeworlds better.
- Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes concentrate too many forces in a single invasion fleet. The AI now splits their forces more sensibly and in different invasions fleets when found opportune.
- Fixed an issue on the AI where many times ships could not be spared for invasions or raids even when they could be spared. This lead to the AI having more ships available for their invasion attempts now.
- AI now spreads and focuses fire more rationally in tactical space combat.
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# BALANCE
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- Battle Pods special system now grants +25% base space, was +10/20/30/40/50 flat space previously for Frigate, Destroyer.... Titan, which adds considerable more space now for extra equipment.
- Homeworld now grants further +2BC per turn for a total of +4BC (was +2BC before).
- Space Fervor space culture perk now provides +150 flat production to building colony ships in the homeworld, instead of previous +100 (a big boost!).
- Infrastructure development now sightly more expensive to develop in the first levels.
- Infrastructure Civil Developers (buildings construction speed) and Ship Craftsmen (ships construction speed) bonuses changed from +20/40/60% to +20/30/40% for level 1 to 3.
- Orbital stations (star bases, battle stations and star fortresses) now have +25% more space to equip more military hardware.
- Ship Support Points (SSP) penalty thresholds were too low. Now, the "Low" penalty happens with -10 SSP or higher while, while "High" penalty now kicks in at -20 SSP (was -15 before).
- Ship Attack (accuracy bonus) and Ship Defense (dodge bonus) Ship Support penalties reduced from -25/-50% to -15/-25% when below -10 and -20 SSP respectively.
- Research per population unity bonus from infrastructure perks in colony was too much. It now provides +1/1.5/2 research points per pop per level instead of previous +1/2/3 RP per pop.
- Trade Treaties were giving too much money when they reached their full potential. The maximum is now 3.75% of the least developed empire's total production potential converted to BC (was 6.25% before). This doesn't affect the early game or when the trade treaties are established, but only when they reach their maximum potential.
- Tolerant race special ability now also eliminates any negative racial pop growth modifier for races living in ideal biome and gravity conditions. For example, the Moltar have a default -50% population growth modifier. However, when in ideal biome and gravity conditions, their Tolerant trait eliminates the pop growth penalty.
- Galactic Industrial Conglomerate wonder now provides +1.5 production per pop unit in the colony it is built (was +2) and +0.75 prod per pop unit in the rest of the empire (was +1).
- Large Homeworld special ability for custom races now costs 3 picks (it cost 4 before).
- Leaders Attack and Defense primary skills now provide +5% Ship Attack and Ship defense, respectively, per level (was providing +10% per level before, which was too much). To compensate for this in the early game now all basic ship leaders start with the double amount of Attack and Defense skill points.
- Space Mirror Array now offers +1.5 production per population unit (was +2 before). It's also a bit more costly to build now.
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# GAMEPLAY
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- When fleeing from battle the player could instruct the fleet to get back and stay in the same system where the fleet had just fled from. Now it's not possible to get back (player can still choose the destination though, just not getting back from where they left).
- Draguul race initial infrastructure development in the homeworld now starts with Advanced Ship support and Expert Ship Craftsmen by default.
- Warlord races' starting frigates now start with regular crew experience instead of green.
- Draguul race starts the game with the Tungsten Gun kinetic weapon instead of Lasers.
- Orbital stations now tend to have more ammo for missiles where before only "5 shot" missiles were being equipped.
- Reduced prevalence of Ion cannons in orbital stations, especially for the Heavy Mount choice.
- The Railgun kinetic weapon is now a level 4 technology (was level 5 before) making it easier to research.
- Antimatter-catalyzed bombs now level 5 tech, was level 4 before.
- Crew experience added for orbital stations (was missing, leading to too inaccurate orbital stations fire): Experienced crew for Star bases, Veteran for Battle stations and Elite for Star fortresses.
- Targeting Algorithms "Improved, Enhanced and Advanced" techs moved from level 3, 5 and 7 to 2, 4, 6 in the tech tree (when playing with fixed tech trees).
- Warp Interdictor technology now level 5 Propulsion (was level 6)
- Wormhole Stabilizer tech now level 7 Propulsion (was level 5).
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# PERFORMANCE
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- AI run-time performance optimizations.
- Turn processing now faster and committing decisions/pressing buttons also faster now, especially in the late game.
- Save game files now a bit smaller (autosaves increase turn processing speed as by default the game creates an autosave every turn - the autosave frequency can be configured in the Game Settings menu).
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# UI / GRAPHICS
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- Information on the different weapon ranges now provided in the Ship Design screen via tooltips for the different weapon types (point defense weapons range is 10 square spaces where normal mounts have 25 and heavy mounts 50).
- Information on how accurate each weapon type and what their best purpose is now shown in a tooltip in the ship design screen for the different weapon types (kinetics, beams and missiles).
- Ship refit button improved to be easier to find in the colony screen and to provide a better sense if ship refit is possible or not, and if not the tooltip explains why.
- Point defense weapon tooltip in the Ship Design screen now makes clear that PD weapons can target missiles, fighters and bombers but not torpedoes.
- Information on leaders, ship support maintenance and new crew XP now shown in the orbital station tooltip.
- The new game setup screen now shows up to 7 playable races, where before only 6 could be seen at once.
- Tooltip title for the Ship Attack and Ship Defense tooltips now provided in upper case and not bold (the text was a big blurry before).
- Weapon modifications descriptions now lower case in the ship design screen.
- Construction slots value in the colony screen is now sharper (was a bit blurry).
- Weapon modifications status awareness was improved (now easier to understand if a weapon modification is unavailable, available or picked).
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# BUGS
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- Fixed a bug that was causing the Early Breakthrough icon (the purple chemistry goblet) to not show up when an early-breakthrough was made (the information that it was an early breakthrough was also not being presented).
- Fixed a bug where getting the Theory of Everything space culture perk was resetting all current tech progress.
- Fixed a rare late game freeze caused by a rebellion of a player that was already out of the game.
- Fixed a bug where the entire research tree was researched but the UI still demanded a new tech to be picked in a few rare occasions.
- Fixed a freeze in space combat where empires with the same name was causing internal corruption of the combat system leading to the freeze.
- Fixed an issue that was not allowing for the accuracy (Ship Attack bonus) information to refresh in the ship console in space combat when switching weapons ON/OFF. Now refreshes the accuracy value inline with the weapons that are currently selected.
- Fixed a bug in space combat where infinite rotating actions were being allowed after moving and spending 1 operation, for example after moving.
- Fixed a precision issue in the ship design screen where sometimes the space available showed "0" but the ship design could not be saved.
- Fixed a bug in the Planetary Bombardment screen where mass destruction bombing could sometimes be infinite, allowing destroying a colony to oblivion, causing game corruption leading to other errors.
- Fixed a bug where "The Bet" event would not be displayed correctly due to the game phase where it launched leading to the game stopping and not letting the player make a decision.
- Fixed a bug where the Mothership ship found in ruins would not launch its fighters sometimes.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes Fighters and Bombers would not return to the origin ship when they were passing "through" an enemy ship (they would vanish).
- Fixed a glitch in the "All PDs selected" button in the space combat screen. Some areas of that button and text were not clickable.
- Fixed a bug where in rare occasions the next Galactic Council ETA could show a very large number instead of the actual turns left for the Galactic Council to convene.
- Fixed an issue where the wording of the "United Federation" space culture perk 2nd effect for non-allies assimilation. Was "Assimilation time for non-allies", now is "Time to assimilate our race POPs by non-allies"
- Fixed an issue where the Planet Construction description could be misleading. Now it clarifies that you can construct a planet on a barren world, a gas giant or an asteroid belt if no rival settlement is present. You can construct a planet on barren world, gas giant or asteroid belt with a settlement of yours though.
- Fixed a bug where loading a game from a previous version and then creating a new game with the current version right after would cause corruption on the new technology provided by the 1.0.4 patch (Advanced Colonization), causing the tooltip to not show for that tech and the game to stop functioning when the tech was researched.
- Fixed a bug that was not allowing the zoom function to work in the remote exploration grid when the galaxy map current zoom level was higher than the default when the remote exploration grid opens.
- Fixed a glitch where systems from empires not yet known could occasionally appear in the galaxy map and then disappear.
- Fixed a typo on the United Federation space culture perk, where it read "Time to assimiliate" it now reads "Time to assimilate".
- Fixed a bug that would show negative primary skill values on leaders with skill penalties (base value reduced by opinion and traits).
- Fixed an issue where the Habitat Control ecoengineering was not re-enabled after finishing a terraforming project.
- Fixed an issue that was causing ecoengineering to be left enabled in a colony when Habit Control was no longer available (since the colony had already reached the maximum population). Now, ecoengineering is switched-off and the player can then choose to re-enable it again if needed.
