Hello everyone!
The 1.1 version of Interstellar Space: Genesis, a major free update from the previous version, and a huge upgrade from version 1.0 released in July of last year, is now available for public testing on Steam's unstable Beta branch.
You can find the full change log for this update below. This update will be released to the default branch for everyone soon. Due to the extensive nature of this update, we're going to do things a bit different this time. So, we have released it on the unstable branch first to get some final testing so that everyone can have the smoothest 1.1 release.
If you want to help test this release, you just have to right-click over the game in your Steam library, then choose 'Properties', then the 'Betas' tab. Select "unstable" from the list. I remind that this version may not be stable enough and might have game-breaking bugs.
We will be monitoring your reports for major bugs and fixing them. Please use our official forums to post the bug reports, since it's easier to upload saves and images. However, you can also post your bug reports on our Steam forums using the "1.1 unstable bug reports" subforum. Alternatively, you can use Discord to post your bug reports.
Compatibility note: Saves from previous versions are not compatible with 1.1. Also, custom races designed with previous versions will not work with this version and may cause game corruption. Please delete all your current custom races (via the game's New Game screen or by deleting them in the folder C:\\Users\\\\AppData\\LocalLow\\Praxis Games\\ISG\\Races\\).
Thanks!
The Development Team
Praxis Games
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------- VERSION 1.1 (unstable) ------
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# NEW
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- Completely new 3D ship models for all playable races! These are highly thematic and beautiful 3D models, with some animations too!
- Complete revamp of the colony view with hand-crafted 3D terrains for each biome! These are highly atmospheric landscapes with animations, ships passing-by and environmental effects like sand storms and blizzards!
- New Population Migration mechanic! You can set colonies for emigration and others for immigration to move population around.
- New Gigantic map size available! (double size of previous bigger map available: Huge).
- All planet specials (example: Meteor Storms) now have pictures to improve immersion!
- New Space Monsters! These are smaller space monster versions, their offspring, and they attack colonies.
- 5 new colony leaders added! Meet Zaxar 'Twister', Merigo 'Fluffly', Varis Morbian 'Morb', Channing Sitchen 'Enlightened One' and Charr-Baryk 'Frontier'.
- 5 new events added! 3 new galactic events: 'The Minstrels', 'Overpromised and Underdelivered' and 'Delicate Delicacies'; and 2 new colony events: 'One of our Own" and 'A Limitless Future'.
- New space combat isometric view now available! Also possible to rotate the combat view. Previous top-down view is also available.
- New "Zoom & Shoot" view in combat when the target is about to be destroyed shows a close look on both the attacker and the target!
- New 'Suppress Combat Popups' option in the game settings, allows to switch off combat popups caused by non-rivals (fleets entering systems controlled by the player with which the player has a treaty of any kind).
- The 'New Game' screen now also remembers the settings for players picked, as for the difficulty levels and the player's production and research speed settings.
- Score and Hall of Fame added! Now, a score is attributed to the player at game conclusion. Also, a Hall of Fame now displays the top scored games!
- New Galactic Wonders panel in the Empire Overview screen shows how many wonders a player has built and where they are located. Also a new notification is sent to all players when a galactic wonder is built.
- New 400+ diplomacy dialog lines! More than 400 new lines of race-specific dialog were added to the diplomacy screen!
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# AI
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- The AI empires now deal with multiple new war declarations more sensibly. Before, the AI could enter into too many wars, when fewer ones would be preferable to allow them to focus a bit more.
- AI now equips Point Defense weapons and the ECM Jammer special system more sensibly. Sometimes the AI was bringing a bit too many point defense weapons and the ECM Jammer also a bit too much than really required by circumstances.
- The AI ships now gain crew experience bonus when they fight among themselves. Previously, they would only gain crew XP when fighting against the human player (this was actually a bug).
- AI now tends to bring slightly more powerful invasion fleets in the higher difficulty levels, especially at 'Impossible'.
- AI now slightly more aggressive in the higher difficulty levels, especially at 'Impossible'.
- AI now considers adding and using the Tractor Beam special system more.
- AI now much more keen in going after space monsters.
- AI ships with leaders a bit more likely to flee when approaching critical condition than before. This applies to both manual combat and auto-resolve.
- AI now tends to specialize their infrastructure a bit more, so it will benefit more from the "full unlock" bonuses provided when all infrastructure perks of a given field are picked.
- AI now specializes their colony's infrastructure more inline with what each race values.
- AI now flees from combat more sensibly. It could leave too soon in some particular scenarios.
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# BALANCE
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- The frequency of 'Greedy', 'Envious', 'Philanthropic' and 'Trusting' traits generation on leaders was reduced.
- Neutronium Armor Coating beam defense bonus reduced from previous -25% damage to armor from beam weapons per source of Neutronium to -20%.
- Ship Attack (accuracy) bonus from Targeting Algorithms increased for the earlier algorithms technology, making it easier to hit ships in the early game. Targeting Algorithms now provide +40/60/80/100/120% SA (before was +25/50/75/100/125%).
- Some changes done to missile weapons. Nuclear missiles damage increased from 6 to 7; Polaris missiles damage increased from 12 to 14; Quantum missiles damage increased from 18 to 22; and Nightmare missiles damage increased from 30 to 40 and Nightmare missiles was also moved to weapons tech level 8 (was 7 before).
- Missile defense against point defense weapons now a bit stronger and scales more with better drive technology. Missile defense is calculated from the missile speed, which is modified by the current engine drive technology. The missile speed formula is: 10 + (bestDriveSpeedInGalaxyMap * 3), where before it was (* 2).
- The FAST missile weapon modification now provides +8 speed instead of previous +4, which also makes missiles harder to hit by point defense weapons since they now enjoy from more speed with this modification and the missile speed determines the missile defense.
- Scrapping ships and buildings now returns 12.5% of the initial cost of the item instead of previous 25% (scrapping was returning too much money).
- Credits conversion from Trade Goods increased from 10 production to 1 BC to 8 production to 1 BC (trade goods now provide a little more money than before).
- Building construction bonus from Civil infrastructure perks now provides +25/50/100% construction bonus instead of previous +20/30/40%
- Plasma Torpedo now loses only 2 damage points per square traveled in combat by the torpedo (the previous specification was 5).
- EMP Defenses special system now provides +75% Ship Defense (dodge/evasive ability) instead of previous +50% against ion weapons.
- Electronic Counter-Counter Measures missile modification (ECCM) effect increased. It now negates 75% of the ECM Jammer effect where before it negated only 50%. This will make the target's ECM Jammer less effective and increase the chances of a missile with ECCM to hit a ship with the ECM Jammer.
- Asteroid Trade Exploitations now provide +5/10/15BC per exploitation in small, medium, large asteroid belts, respectively. Was +4/8/12BC before.
- 'Autonomous Land Processing' technology now provides +15% planetary engineering bonus (+25% previously - although it was not functional, as explained in bug fix below). Also, the Infrastructure Development speed bonus was increased from +50% to 75%.
- Helmsman ship leader skill bonus increased from +10/20/30% Ship Defense to +15/30/45%.
- Tactician ship leader skill bonus reduced from +4/6/8 combat speed to +2/4/6.
- Trans-dimensional race trait now provides +4 combat speed (and corresponding +20% Ship Defense by that extra combat speed), where before it was providing +6 combat speed (and corresponding +30% Ship Defense), which was too much.
- Battle Sensors special system now provides +20% Ship Attack (accuracy) per scanner tech level (e.g. Quantum Scanners - scanner tech level 3 provides +60% SA). It provided +25% per scanner level before.
- Orbital Stations crew experience is now higher leading to higher accuracy and defense (star bases, battle stations and star fortresses).
- Orbital Stations now have more marines. The marine numbers were doubled, making them harder to board.
- Crew Experience now provides a bit less Ship Attack and Ship Defense bonuses, especially in the higher experience levels. Crew XP now provides +0/15/30/45/60/75% SA and SD for Green, Regular, Experienced, Veteran, Elite and Ultra-Elite, where before it provided +0/15/30/50/75/100%.
- Crew Experience now provides a bonus to weapons damage beginning at the Veteran level. It provides +10/15/20% weapon damage on Veteran, Elite and Ultra-Elite experience, respectively.
- Crew Experience boarding bonus at Ultra-Elite reduced from +30% to +25%.
- Polar Shift event research setback cost now scales with how advanced the game is.
- Number of planets available for colonization reduced slightly.
- Imperial Archive production costs increased from 1600 to 2220 PROD.
- Framing now produces slightly higher negative diplomatic modifiers, and the negative cap was also slightly increased for all races.
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# GAMEPLAY
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- To lose and get out of the game, empires must only lose their colonies now, where before an empire would have to lose all colonies and all outposts in order to be eliminated.
- The 'Rotate' operation in combat is now based on the combat speed of the ship, instead of being 45º for one action and 90º for two actions for all ships. Ships will turn less now, making weapon angles even more meaningful.
- All space monsters now have ion weapon defenses (against Ion Cannon and Ion Discharger). This is akin to the EMP Defenses special system.
- A couple space monsters now have structure and internal systems (organs) regeneration ability (akin to the Automated Repair Bots special system).
- The 'Asteroid Mining' technology now provides 1 free freighter fleet.
- Freighter fleets now buildable since the beginning because they can now be used not only for asteroid exploitations but also for population migration.
- Diplomatic hits by framing a 3rd party after a spy job increased a bit.
- Hurrying construction was still too costly. It's now a bit easier to 'buy-out' (hurrying) construction projects.
- New entry in the manual added to explain taxes, income and research and culture allocation. Also a new tip to clarify how to split ships into different fleets.
- 'Construction Slot' concept clarified in the corresponding tooltip in the colony view.
- Combat 'Heat' mechanic now explained in the corresponding 'Heat' tooltip in space combat.
- After refitting/upgrading a ship, if the ship had a custom name the name now remains the current custom name only and not the old custom name plus the new name of the new design.
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# PERFORMANCE
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- Starting a new game and loading games much faster now.
- Memory optimizations allow for less memory consumption.
- When the game is launched for the first time it will now launch in 'Medium' graphics quality by default and will attempt to switch to 'High' quality automatically if it detects the system can handle it. It will also drop the graphics quality automatically to 'Low' if it detects the system can't run the game well in 'Medium' quality. The player can then change the graphics quality setting as seen fit. However, it is advised not to choose a too much high quality level or the game may crash because of that.
- Performance increased when showing colonies and ships in the overview panel. Particularly, showing ships in the overview panel in a late game could lag a bit.
- Save game files size was reduced by around 25%, which speeds up auto-saving also helping make turn processing a bit faster.
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# UI / GRAPHICS
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- The entire UI was improved and tweaked to provide a new more artistically pleasing style.
- A more in-depth diplomacy screen revamp which aimed at making the diplomatic experience more immersive.
- Improvements to the space combat UI, including new explosion effects, ship engine trails, new ship selection effect and new nebula background graphics.
- Improvements to the galaxy map with new effects like shooting stars and distant supernova effects.
- Improvements to the system view. Improved planet's graphics quality.
- Icons improvements for all culture perks, unique abilities and infrastructure perks.
- Phasor stun hits now produce visual feedback in combat.
- When leaders can't captain a starship because they don't have enough Command skill points (the ship assignment is grey in the ship leaders assignment screen), the UI now displays that the leader can't captain the ship in the ship tooltip.
- New 'TAB / Space' hotkeys in combat: automatically selects the next ship once the current one is out of action points.
- New 'C' hotkey in combat to center the ship in the combat screen.
- New 'Q' hotkey in combat to mark a ship as 'done' in that combat round.
- New 'Enter' hotkey in combat to end the combat round and proceed to the next turn.
- Tractor Beam special system tooltip revised to better explain its functioning.
- A note was added to the strategic resources tooltips explaining where those strategic resources can be obtained if none are available.
- The darker red color used in the diplomacy tooltips for the negative opinion modifiers is now slightly brighter to make it a bit easier to read.
- The 'Ideal' green color for both ideal biome and ideal gravity conditions was tweaked to contain a bit more blue to help with colorblind people where the previous 'Ideal' habitability green used could be very similar to 'Tolerable' yellow. Hopefully, it will be easier to distinguish now.
- Unassigning a leader with a desire that gets automatically unfulfilled if the leader is unassigned now raises a warning.
- Resource trade deals now show a countdown for the deals to end in the strategic resources tooltips.
- The 'Special Abilities' tooltip in the race customization screen now includes a revised and expanded note describing that some special abilities are mutually exclusive.
- Crew experience tooltip in combat expanded to describe the Ship Attack, Ship Defense, Weapon Damage and Boarding bonuses it provides.
- The usage of the Armistice unique ability was made more clear in the tooltip. It now explains the steps necessary to enforce the Armistice.
- Ion Discharger effect now provides a notification when it hits a ship saying it is disabled. Also, the ship "DISABLED" status now has a tooltip saying how much time left until ship is operational again (in both the player's and enemy ships).
- Technologies that offer ships (free freighter fleet by Asteroid Mining and free support ship by Offworld Support) now explain in the tech tooltip that those bonuses are only conferred when the player actively researched those techs.
- Marine tooltips added in the ship design screen and enemy ship combat panel in combat.
- Marine numbers information now also provided in the ship tooltip in the galaxy view and on the hangar ship overview information.
- Fleet stationed icon a little bigger now.
- New boarding information provided in the marine tooltips to explain how boarding works.
- The events text is now displayed as paragraphs instead of a single block of text, to ease the reading and improve the presentation.
- Intro cutscene updated to show the new colony ship and escort frigate 3D models.
- Missiles size in combat increased a bit.
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# SOUND & MUSIC
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- New fleet assignment sound, when sending a fleet to a destination now has a sound.
- Missiles firing and flee action sounds' volume reduced a bit.
- The Kaek Titan's Mind Control unique ability now has a sound.
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# BUGS
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- Fixed a bug where sometimes the AI could colonize a world inside the player's territory, because the order to colonize was given in a time the system was not yet under control of the player. Now, the AI will never colonize a world inside the player's territory unless the empires have an alliance.
- Fixed a bug in the Plasma Torpedo that was not reducing its damage with space traveled as per weapon specification.
- Fixed a bug in the Tractor Beams usage where the reduced speed of the tractor beam was not being reflected in the target ship's ship defense from the ship speed. The tractor beam now decreases the ship defense from engine speed.
- Fixed another bug in the Tractor Beam where the extra ship's maneuverability and the race Transdimmensional trait were still contributing to the ship's defense even when the ship was completely immobile by the tractor beam (also happened when the ship's engine was broken, that was also fixed, and those bonuses will not apply in that case as well).
- Fixed yet another bug in the Tractor Beam where an error would be raised after applying the tractor beam and then feeling. Also, the next tractor beam applied would also raise an error and malfunction.
- Fixed a bug in the boarding mechanic where only half of the defending marines were being taken into account when defending from boarding. Now all the defending marines are accounted for the boarding fight.
- Fixed an issue that was allowing a damaged engine (halved combat speed) to still provide a full Ship Defense bonus from combat speed. Now the Ship Defense bonus is also halved.
- Fixed an issue that was preventing the leader's Tactician skill and the Sulak's Titan maneuverability bonuses from being accounted in the ship's defense calculations. Both of these add combat speed, so the ships under these conditions will have better defense now (i.e. more evasive/dodge capacity).
- Fixed an issue in the Trade Goods tooltip. The "BC" reference was missing.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes orbital stations would choose a target that was too far and out of range and not fire when there were enemy ships nearby. The orbital station now chooses the nearest target if it cannot reach the optimal target when this happens to be out of range.
- Fixed a bug where it was possible for wars to be declared between players that had not made official contact yet.
- Fixed a bug that was allowing ships to flee with engines broken. This happened when the flee command was issued before the ship's drive was destroyed.
- Fixed a bug that was causing all resource trade deals to be terminated with all empires when one Trade Treaty was terminated with one empire, and not just the ones of the empire we just terminated the Trade Treaty with.
- Fixed a bug that was not allowing ships to equip new and better drives that we just exchanged with an AI.
- Fixed a glitch that was not allowing a sector to be picked for remote exploration when a fleet was on top of the exploration icon.
- Fixed an issue that was leaving recently conquered colonies from the AI in colony automation. Conquered colonies now default to colony automation set to OFF.
- Fixed a glitch when showing the "Galaxy View" in combat encounters where the galaxy map "situation map" did not correctly adapt to the map size.
- Fixed a glitch in the diplomacy status screen that was causing the 8th player's attitude towards the player to not be seen (was behind the 7th player's widget).
- Fixed an issue that was allowing the mouse middle button to choose an event option, leading to a possible miss-click. Now, only the left mouse button is allowed to select the event option.
- Fixed a bug that was preventing the 'Autonomous Land Processing' technology to provide its planetary engineering bonus.
- Fixed an issue in the race customization screen that was allowing both Small Homeworld and Large Homeworld to be chosen when only one can be since they are mutually exclusive options.
- Fixed a bug in the colony view screen where increasing or decreasing production by 1% in "sliders mode" would not update the credits being shown from trade goods in the UI.
- Fixed an exploit in combat involving the ship rotation function which allowed to rotate the ship without it costing an action in doing so. This was possible by initiating the rotation and then clicking the rotation button without assigning the rotation.
- Fixed an issue where "Ultra Defenses Weapons Tech" was described in the weapons tooltip in combat where "Ultra Weapons Tech" was meant.
- Fixed an issue with enemy orbital stations not showing the Crew XP tooltip in combat.
- Fixed a bug in the enemy panel tooltips where some of the values were using the wrong bonuses. The tooltips were using the player's bonuses instead of the AI's (e.g. weapons extra damage from hyper techs or leader weaponry skill).
- Fixed a bug when exploring ruins with multiple leaders present in the fleet, the text did not always relate to the best explorer.
- Fixed a bug that was allowing a ship disabled by the Ion Discharger to still be able to fire its point defense weapons.
- Fixed a bug where it was possible to scrap enemy buildings when expert deep cover was used in enemy colony.
- Fixed a bug that was allowing AI governor automation function of enemy colonies to be manipulated when expert deep cover was used.
- Fixed a bug that was allowing the colony name to be renamed of enemy colonies when expert deep cover was used.
- Fixed an issue that was allowing the leaders panel to be opened when clicking the "leader star" in the enemy fleet panel.
- Fixed a bug that was allowing disabled ships to flee.
- Fixed a bug where planetary assault sabotage was allowing multiple sabotage actions to be performed, when only one is to be allowed.
- Fixed a bug when saving a very late game save in a large galaxy map. Also, save files size was reduced by around 30%.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes the game failed to set the current desktop resolution when the game was launched for the first time.
- Fixed a glitch that was allowing two games to be started, and two galaxies to be generated, when clicking very quickly and repeatedly on the "Star Game" button in the New Game screen.
- Fixed a bug that was causing all missile types to have the same 3D model. Now, the 4 different missiles have their own looks.
- Fixed a bug where the wrong siege icon indicator was being shown when in fact the system was being blockaded and not under siege in systems with both colonies and outposts.
- Fixed an issue that was causing the label in outposts to not show the sphere of influece tooltip. This tooltip informs when a system has an outpost inside a rival's sphere of influence (the small colored square to the right in the system label).
- Fixed a glitch in the combat layer toggles which was causing the layers' icon state (e.g. show possible movement positions) to not always correspond to if they were active or not.
- Fixed a glitch with the "PD All Targets" checkbox in combat, sometimes it wouldn't accept mouse clicks.
- Fixed a bug where the 'Set this ship as done for this turn' button was being used and in the next turn (or next combat) the button would start inactive (disabled).
- Fixed a glitch that was allowing production allocation to be set in 'Triangle mode' when it was not possible (when infrastructure development was full and planetary engineering was disabled/complete).