Beyond Sol cover
Beyond Sol screenshot
PC Steam
Genre: Strategy, Indie

Beyond Sol

Devblog: Warmonger
With our recent changes to the diplomacy system, the game has become a lot deeper and more fun, and players now have many diplomatic tools to deal with aggressive AI cities. Players are forging alliances to respond to rival threats and they are thinking more strategically about the implications of their actions. It isn’t a perfect system but it’s good enough that we can move on to the next large problem: managing large empires and fighting wars.

Read the full post to learn about the changes we'll be making over the next few weeks.

Update 0.8.5 - More Zoom Out
This week we focused on bugs and improvements to the game to make the overall experience more solid. But don’t worry, we have some exciting new features coming up very soon like a new type of outpost to help you defend and expand your territory!

Read the full notes on our official forums.

Update 0.8.4 - Alliances
Get ready to build your reputation with other cities because this week we’ve added alliances as a diplomacy option! If you meet the requirements, AI cities will accept an alliance and help you wage war or defend you from aggressors! We’ve also released the new Exeter support ship. As always, we would love your feedback on the new features so we can find any balance issues.

Read the full update notes on our official forums.

Update 0.8.3
This week we made a bunch of tweaks to the economic and diplomatic balance of the game. We added a new diplomacy option (Trade Treaties) that should give you another tool for building reputation with AI cities. We also added our first new Tekla ship which should mix things up when deciding how to build your fleet. Stay tuned for a new Exeter ship next week as well as new diplomatic actions!

For the full patch notes: visit our official forums.

Update 0.8.2
This week, by popular demand, we added some solar system generation options, and we implemented the first of many new diplomatic actions. We also made a bunch of balance tweaks and improvements to AI behavior to smooth out the game experience.

Check our official forums for the full notes.

Devblog: The Coalition Effect
Having played a number of other strategy games we experience the ‘tipping point’ problem – when you become the most powerful player and no one other player can stop you. We wanted to keep the game challenging even once you became the strongest and really push that tipping point into the very late game. We realized that fighting a war versus multiple opponents is very difficult because everyone gets only one fleet so you can’t defend everywhere at once and are forced to make tough decisions. The solution was a coalition effect that would help smaller cities push back larger opponents and keep the game challenging for a long time.

Read the full post The Coalition Effect to learn how it works and how it can help you take down powerful rivals.

Update 0.8.1
Thanks for all the amazing feedback we've received during the week! We are hard at work fixing bugs and improving the gameplay experience. The most notable changes in this update are:


  1. In-game option menu for controlling sound effect and music volume
  2. New ship ability – Shield Boost
  3. New random event – Valuable Minerals in nebulas
  4. Reduced expansion behavior of AI cities


The reduction in expansion behavior of the AI cities is the first step in the game's diplomacy overhaul explained in the War and Peace Devblog. We'll be making further enhancements over the next few weeks on top of bug fixes and new content.

You can read the full patch notes in this forum post.

Devblog: War and Peace
Beyond Sol has been in Early Access for one week and we’ve spent that week reading forums, discussions, watching fan-made YouTube videos, and Twitch streams. Your reviews and comments tell us that we’ve succeeded in making something fresh and fun but our diplomacy needs some work. This blog will explain the overhaul we are currently making to our diplomacy and how we’ll expand this system in the weekly updates over the next month.

It’s important to recognize that the game world is populated by independent cities who are in competition for the resources of the solar system, which breeds conflict. The engine of conflict is the reputation system where each city has an opinion of every other city - including players. A city will want to declare war on any opponent if their opinion is sufficiently low (actually declaring war also depends on fleet strength).

Reputation System



There are a couple problems with our reputation system that we want to address. First, it’s unclear how an AI city feels about you because all you see is a number and you have to guess at what point the AI changes their relationship with you. We’ll add an ‘attitude’ to each AI city which will explain in one word how they feel about you, and this will be visible anywhere you would see reputation. The second problem is that you don’t know when important changes to reputation happen. We’ll give you a notification when AIs transition to an attitude you want to know about so you’ll be less surprised when they declare war on you.

We also have too few opinion modifiers which is why they are so severe. In tomorrow’s update we halved the negative opinion for having sectors that border another city until we can get all of the new opinion modifiers in and rebalance them all. These are important because driving opinion up or down will determine an AI city’s attitude towards you and shape the kinds of diplomatic actions they take towards you. Having low opinion will make them hostile which increases the chance of a war while a sufficiently high opinion will make them agreeable to a variety of treaties and pacts.

Diplomatic Actions



Currently we only have declaration of war and subsequently making peace to end the war, so the only meaningful interaction with AI cities is to fight them. We’ll be expanding the diplomatic actions you can take over the next couple weeks to provide you with more meaningful interactions between cities.

Free Trade Agreements



If cities have a sufficiently positive opinion of each other they’ll be able to engage in a Free Trade Agreement that will provide a mutual economic benefit – more space bucks. Having this agreement in place will also provide a positive opinion modifier. But if the reputation drops sufficiently low the agreement will be canceled so you’ll need to keep working on that relationship.

Pay Tribute



Sometimes a bigger city doesn’t like you and you don’t want a war but you have no way of instantly boosting their opinion of you. You’ll be able to pay a lump sum of credits to another city for an instant reputation boost - a critical tool for the survival of smaller cities.

Mutual Protection Pact



Cities with great relations will be able to sign a mutual protection pact. These agreements will guarantee military aid in the event of a defensive war and will be essential for smaller cities to protect each other from larger cities. This is different from a formal alliance because it won’t help if you are the aggressor in a war.

Alliance



Cities that have long standing peace and mutual prosperity will be able to enter into formal alliances. These alliances will guarantee the participation of its members in any defensive or offensive war. Alliances will have a profound impact on the balance of the game so we will deliver this feature last.

So stay tuned for these exciting new features as well as lots of new content like ships, weapons, and random events coming soon!
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