Salutations, sky marshals!
Welcome to the released version of the game! It’s the achievement of a goal that we’ve been working towards for more than six years, so we’re pretty excited about it. However, this is not the end of the road; there’s still a lot we want to add to the game. In addition to the requisite fixes and balance changes, we'll continue to add features and content with regular updates.
Special thanks to our beta testers and those who tried out Early Access and provided crucial feedback! Your helpful comments and suggestions have helped to make this a better game, and will continue to do so. Keep them coming!
Patch Notes for 19 January 2017 (ver. 19500)
Changes and Additions
- Added a new UI option 'Color planets by Habitability'. This color-codes the planet icons circling the stars on the strategic map by habilitability: white are colonized, gray are uninhabitable, orange have max populations of <8 for your factions, and green have max populations of 8 or more for your faction.
- Updates to the Ship Designer frames.
- It is now possible to access various auto-design features from the Ship Designer panes.
- It is now possible to filter the list of components shown in the Ship Designer panes.
- Anti-missiles can now be placed in light weapon hardpoints.
- All light weapons can now be placed in heavy weapon hardpoints.
- Updated frames and buttons for the strategic ship info panes.
- It is now possible to instantly refit ships using coins.
- It is now possible to rename ships.
- It is now possible to refit a ship to an existing design by accessing the added Hardpoints dropdown menu in the designer UI.
- It is now possible to suppress the display of obsolete parts in the ship design pane.
- Added a 'Mass Refit' option to the ship status pane.
- Weapon damage range information now appears in the available component list.
- The "Embark Colonists" pane now includes an option for loading colonists to transports in orbit.
- Added a "Game Speed" option to the map settings screen.
- Updated the Research screen frames/tooltips.
- Battle shields should now prevent 50% of damage from kinetic weapon fire.
- Force lance attacks should now pierce all shields other than the Temporal Aegis.
- Added new tutorial notifications in the event of founding your first colony and initial marauder/pirate battles.
- New tutorial text explaining the Fertility mechanics (displayed with the first starvation warning notification.)
- Various updates to the in-game documentation text.
- It is now possible to exit the game directly from the game menu pane.
- Added implementation and description text for several missing technologies.
- Fix for a bug that could cause glitches during strike fighter animations.
- Planet disaster events should no longer strike outposts.
- Boarding a ship now requires that one of its shields is down.
- Transporters now function as described.
- All embarked units now increase the crew rating of their cost ship by +50.
- Embarked Assault Marines increase crew ratings by +100.
- Assault Shuttles now make it possible to board mobile enemy ships within range 8.
- Doubled the number of small craft per hangar mount.
- Added the ability to disband ground units via the population info pane.
- Ships equipped with one or more Stellar Surge Beams may now destroy hostile planets.
- Optimized load-pane rendering.
- Researching the 'Planet Construction' technology will now allow you to build planets.
- Added new art assets for Orthin, Yoral and Phidi leaders, Stellar Surge Beam, Transporters and AutoRepair Systems, Farms, Mines, and Markets, and faction-specific fighters and shuttles.
Bug Fixes
- Clicking on a grey 'Propose' button while the trading pane is open should no longer cause an error.
- Removed some rounding logic in the population growth rules that was causing confusing behavior.
- Fix for a bug that could cause a planet to revolt and then immediately rejoin its parent empire, leading to corrupt game data.
- Fix for a bug that could cause an "ai started up a battle during end-turn" exception.
- Fixes for some missile animation glitches.
- Preemptively attacking a raiding pirate fleet should no longer cause a error.
- Fix for a bug that could cause a starvation notification to persist after the cause of the food shortage had been addressed.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
Enjoy the game, and see you again soon!