Interstellar Space: Genesis

Version 1.3 unstable

NEW

• New 'Surrender Pact' diplomacy option! Empires facing inevitable defeat can now offer or agree to sign a surrender pact thus removing the need to completely eliminate them from the game. As subject empires, they provide their overlord a hefty percentage of their surplus credits, research points, culture, ship support and strategic resources each turn. Subjects vote for their overlord and contribute to all victory types. An overlord and their subject can make diplomatic coordination requests as if they were allied, but a subject's options are limited. 56 new lines of dialog were added to accommodate the surrender pact diplomacy interactions.
  
• New 'Alliance Victory' condition - When an empire wins, all its allies share victory. It can be enabled or disabled in the new game set up screen.
  
• Steam achievements feature added! 57 achievements, which include 3 hidden ones and 7 for the first expansion pack, Natural Law. The achievements are also displayed in-game in a dedicated 'Achievements' screen.
  
• Maximum number of players is now 10 (was 8 before).
  
• One more zoom-out level available in the bigger map games.
  
• Now possible to set production and research speeds for each player as low as 1% and high as 300%, with a granularity of 1% steps (the 25% steps option is kept along this new high granularity option).
  
• New Government biases provide for additional flavor and early tensions between empires with different and opposing government types. The effect wears off with time, faster in the easier difficulty levels.
  
• Diplomacy UI revamped! The diplomacy dialog screen is now displayed in full screen and the ambassador character is presented much larger, allowing for much more of the character to be seen and the different animations depending on their mood.
  
• New UI-scale slider option in the 'Game Settings' allows enlarging the galaxy map icons and labels, and also the information presented in the system view, which may be especially useful when playing the game in very big monitors and TVs.
  

AI IMPROVEMENTS

• Significant improvements made to the AI in how it invades outposts. It now takes outposts more diligently and at all times it finds it's opportune, especially in the higher difficulty levels.
  
• The AI now plans better on what ships are best suited to be used as escorts given the current circumstances (e.g. to escort civilian ships on their colonization, exploitation or exploration missions). Before, the AI could use ships as escorts that were best suited for other roles (e.g. invasions, defense) leaving systems unprotected or taking too long to launch an invasion.
  
• The AI now goes after Space Monsters more, especially when they guard particularly important systems, not only for their colonization rating but also for their exploitation potential.
  
• The AI now considers building more capital ships and bringing more ships to battle and is also a bit more aggressive in the late game in the higher difficulty levels.
  
• The AI will not send suicidal runs against orbital stations addressed (e.g. 1 frigate against a starbase).
  
• The AI will not be as reluctant to go to war as before (more likely to go to wars in the higher difficulty levels than before, especially early for the warmonger race affinities).
  
• The AI will now make it less obvious where it is amassing its ships when preparing for an invasion.
  
• The AI now considers razing enemy colonies and outposts (it didn't before for design reasons).
  
• The AI now considers asking for a peace treaty more if they happen to be in a very bad situation even if they are furious towards their rival.
  
• The AI algorithm to consider establishing outposts was improved which resulted in a more diligent and aggressive approach to establish (and re-capture) mining and tourism sites on accretion disks, especially when these have strategic resources.
  
• The AI now fires all its weapons in combat when it cans where before it could miss the opportunity to fire some weapons due to not having enough angle aperture to fire at their primary target. Now, AI ships consider other targets if they cannot fire at their primary one.
  
• The AI ships now focus and spread their fire in combat more sensibly, resulting in more aggressive, concentrated and effective attacks.
  
• The AI now also more effective at finishing off their targets more when they are in bad condition where before the AI ships could change their targets in the middle of the fight and not finish off AI ships when it would be better if they did.
  
• AI combat enhancements made to make sure ships spend all their actions in the best way possible, prioritizing firing actions and making sure ships can and will fire all of their weapons as much as possible.
  
• The AI ship design algorithm now considers equipping weapons with different fire arcs more when they think it can result in more effective designs.
  
• The AI now refrains from using tractor beams on its own mind controlled ships.
  
• AI now considers using tractor ships before other AI ships fire at targets.
  
• AI combat improvements on which ships the AI chooses to use first in battle and in which order.
  
• Mind control Titan ability now being considered by the auto-resolve algorithm.
  

BALANCE

• Ship construction cost reduced from +50% to +25% in the 'Low' Ship Support penalty level (less than 10 negative SSP).
  
• Ship Attack and Ship Defense penalties reduced from -20% to -15% in the 'High' Ship Support penalty level (less than 25 negative SSP).
  
• New 'Very High' Ship Support penalty level causes -20% Ship Attack / Ship Defense, +100% ship construction costs and 50BC maintenance per point below the -150 SSP mark.
  
• New 'Extreme' Ship Support penalty level causes a 25% reduction to all ships' Ship Attack (accuracy) and Ship Defense (evasion rating), +300% ship construction costs and 250BC maintenance per negative SSP point when SSP goes below the -350 mark.
  
• Auto-resolve improvements: Point Defense weapons were too much of a factor in countering missiles; also, fleet size had too much weight in the combat auto-resolve algorithm.
  
• Interstellar Geology culture perk now provides a flat +2 strategic resources' bonus instead of a +50% bonus, as that was causing too much production and other excessive effects.
  
• The Neutronium armor coating tech now provides immunity to beam damage when 8 sources of neutronium are available, where before 5 sources were enough to confer immunity making the effect a too powerful one. Each source now provides +12.5% beam damage reduction per available source, where before it offered +20% per source.
  
• Gifts not as powerful of an effect on the Sulak, Cerixx and Human race affinities in diplomacy deals.
  
• Gifts' positive effect wears off faster on the Draguul, Sulak, Human, Palacean, Kaek and Nova race affinities.
  
• Space mirror array now costs 15 BC to maintain, was 10 BC before.
  
• Utopia government now has a -25% research penalty on defense technologies.
  

GAMEPLAY

• Warrior Code unique ability now grants +15% morale per ongoing war (Draguul affinity, also available to custom races).
  
• When the odds are overwhelming in favor of the invader, during a planetary assault, the collateral damage applied when it loses were halved.
  
• Tamara Adams had incorrect leader skills that resulted from a development testing mistake. She now has the scientist, astronautics and activist skills, as designed for this leader. She had espionage skills before.
  
• An Alliance pact now provides information on all colonies and fleets the allies have to their allies, like the espionage intel-gathering expert skills does. This was designed but not working as intended. Now it is in the game.
  

PERFORMANCE

• Turn-time performance improvements, especially noticeable in the late game.
  
• Loading games much faster now.
  
• Significant combat performance improvements. Combat could start to lag after several combat sessions. This was fixed.
  

SOUND & MUSIC

• Diplomacy "angry" tunes now play when an opponent's ambassador leaves when treaties are broken and demands are made that are accepted by the ambassador.
  

UI / GRAPHICS

• The unique technologies found in ancient ruins are now displayed in the tech tree in a specific panel dedicated to these.
  
• All the game and galaxy map options information is now presented in the in-game menu screen (e.g. number of space monsters, number of planets, resources, which victory conditions are enabled, etc).
  
• The empire widgets displayed in the diplomacy status screen now show the biome art behind the ambassador's portrait. Biome art now also displayed behind the rulers running in the galactic council's election.
  
• War declaration notifications on the human player are now clickable, showing a much larger rival ambassador's character in the new diplomacy screen, including the war declaration statement, for increased immersion.
  
• The successful and failed invasion notifications for the Human player are now shown in purple.
  
• The diplomacy screen is now automatically displayed when an AI player declares war and attacks the Human player for a more dramatic notice.
  
• Clicking on ships or fleets in the overview panel on the left now centers the map on that fleet or ship.
  
• Notice added to the tech tree's galactic wonders tooltips indicating if a wonder was already built, and if so by who and where it is located.
  
• Several icons received some touch ups to make them more crisp and clean (e.g. capital icon, ruins icon and several notification icons).
  
• The ships' crew experience is now displayed in the ships' overview panel on the left for each ship.
  
• Auto-fire weapon modification animation speed increased a little.
  
• Combat HUD now hidden during Auto-Combat for a more cinematic experience.
  
• Floating damage notices now a bit faster in super-fast autocombat. It could lag quite a bit when there were many floating notices.
  
• The fleets' ETA is now displayed in the fleets' overview panel on the left.
  
• The leader icon in the ships' overview panel now has a more comprehensive tooltip. And clicking on the leader icon takes you to the leaders screen.
  
• New keyboard shortcut 'SHIFT + O' can be used to show/hide the Overview panel.
  
• The 'Larger Text in Tooltips' option in the Game Settings now provides for even bigger text in tooltips (font size was increased).
  
• Galactic council tooltip text revised to clarify that the terms of refusing the new galactic ruler is bound to human player decision only.
  
• The 'Offer Ships' diplomacy option now has a tooltip to clarify that ships can be gifted only if they can reach the capital system of the player receiving the ship gifts.
  
• The 'Ice Age' term used in the corresponding planet special where a planet is cooling down rapidly at a global scale was replaced with the more appropriate "Global Cooling' term.
  
• New game loading hint provided for the different ways on how leaders can gain experience.
  
• Applied a bit of transparency to the 'Constructions built' panel in the colony view.
  
• Tooltips added to treaties in the diplomacy screen treaties list.
  
• Tribute requests now have a tooltip in the diplomacy screen with information on how much credits are expected to be obtained from the deal.
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug that was causing too few Space Monster offspring to be spawned.
  
• Fixed a glitch in the gravity tooltip in the colony view (the one at the top of the colony screen). The color presented was correct but the information presented in the tooltip was not.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented a game to end, and show the corresponding celebrations cinematic, when that game was started right after ending a previous one without quitting to desktop first after ending the first game while choosing the "Just one more turn" option.
  
• Fixed a rare bug that would cause the game to hang when a gifted ship could not travel to the giftee's territory or to anywhere else and would remain in the origin system without exploring it. If a combat encounter would happen there the game would hang.
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause bigger save files than usual when starting a new game right after exiting a previous one without quitting to desktop first.
  
• Fixed a bug that was causing the wrong empires to be considered and sometimes notified when making an alliance coordination request when only AI empires were involved.
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing the human player to control their AI allies' production allocation, construction options and even scrapping buildings in their colonies.
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing ships with stunned crews caused by neutron beams to flee from combat.
  
• Fixed an issue that could be causing a bit too many treaties to be broken by the AI at times.
  
• Fixed an issue in the spy detection chance tooltip. The value was being applied correctly but it could show an incorrect value in the "Pick an espionage mission" tooltip screen when hovering over the Detection Chance for the race that has this bonus.
  
• Fixed an issue that was not allowing the star distance measuring tool to be activated with 'shift' key.
  
• Fixed a glitch that was causing the 'Remote exploration' tooltip/panel to sometimes open up on top of 'Overview' text when the overview panel was closed.
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing panning the map to be too slow with the arrow and WASD keys (mouse dragging was fine though).
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing fleeing fleets to sometimes go back to the system they once were and fled from.
  
• Fixed a glitch that could sometimes present the minimum damage to be slightly superior to the maximum damage in the ship design screen in some particular circumstances.
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing the tourism strategic value to show only 1 decimal place in the corresponding accretion disk tooltip.
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing a 'Psy-Ops' leader influence action to be requested from the player when none could be performed in some scenarios where no rival leader could be influenced or the rival simply run out of leaders to be influenced.
  
• Fixed a bug that was not allowing a colony leader with the 'colonize a planet' desire to fulfill their desire after the planet where the colonization request was made had suffered a planet construction action (e.g. a Barren planet). Now, the barren world can be (re-)constructed and after colonization the leader will see their leader fulfilled.
  
• Fixed a glitch that was causing the race modifiers' text to not be displayed in the 'Race customization' screen in a few specific monitor resolutions when using the window mode.
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing the construction ETA to be incorrect in very specific cases where production overflow was involved. The ETA calculations were correct but the displayed value was not.
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing some AI ships to flee under a containment field (Cerixx unique ability) in rare occasions.
  
• Fixed the 'Maneuverability Bonus' Titan ship special ability to clarify the Titan ship does not gain its own bonus but only the surrounding ships. Also, the Ship Attack (accuracy) bonus was missing and the Ship Defense (evasion rating) bonus was not being displayed correctly in the tooltip, although the value was being correctly applied in the calculations.
  
• Fixed tractor beams sometimes left on the battlefield or left hanging with no identified source or target during auto-combat.
  
• Fixed an issue that was not allowing access to strategic resources tech options when conquering a colony that had the Galactic Space Port. The tech options were unlocked when building the Galactic Space Port but not when acquiring it.
  
• Fixed a glitch that was causing the fleet set for Humans to reset in the New Game screen to one belonging to a previously selected player. This issue was only visual and would clear up after using the humans alternative fleet set switch for the first time.
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing the wrong difficulty symbols to be presented for the 'Hard', 'Severe' and 'Impossible' difficulties. It now shows the rook for the 'Hard' difficulty, queen for 'Severe' and the king piece for 'Impossible'.
  
• Fixed an issue in the 'Galactic Council' with the ultrawide resolutions where you could see bars for the two candidates extend beyond the bounds of the election window. Also, the empire info panel above was shown and could be interacted with.
  

Change list

NEW

• 'Auto-Combat' option now also available directly from the combat encounter screen. When pressed, the combat starts in 'auto-combat' mode (computer plays both fleets) at the fastest speed (auto-combat can be disabled at any time though).
  

AI

• The AI will now commit even bigger forces when invading in the higher difficulty levels (starting at 'Hard' and especially at 'Impossible').
  

GAMEPLAY

• Refusing diplomatic coordination requests from allies is now more penalizing and can lead to alliances being broken more often when that happens.
  
• War declarations now slightly more penalizing to diplomatic relations, especially after the 2nd and 3rd declarations on the same rival.
  

UI / GRAPHICS

• The looks on the 'hull reinforcement' and 'number of shields' options were tweaked to suggest the options are clickable. The tooltips also say that those options need to be clicked on to change their values. It was not evident enough that these were options that could be changed.
  
• The tooltip shown when building an outpost on an asteroid belt now describes the size of the outpost that is currently selected, to clarify which belt is to be built an outpost on.
  
• Acid worlds now slightly less bright. Were a bit too bright before.
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug that was allowing non-allies to make diplomatic coordination requests to empires they were not allied with. Now, an empire can only 'convince' other parties to make peace if they are allied with both. Also, tweaks made to the peace treaties 'by peace conference' to better explain why peace was achieved between the empires in question.
  
• Fixed a rare bug that could cause the last colony to be invaded to still be part of the old owner preventing the game to end. This was caused when the last colony of the last rival was razed instead of invaded.
  
• Fixed a bug when leveling up a leader and two skills were presented, they were not both spy skills but the description of the second one could still be for a spy skill in rare occasions.
  
• Fixed an issue that was allowing the fleet panel to sometimes open on top of the selected fleet. The 'Unexplored panel' now also doesn't open on top of the selected unexplored system.
  
• The measuring tool function on the bottom left of the galaxy map now displays the 'shift' hotkey in its tooltip, which can also be used to use the measuring tool.
  
• Revised the wording of the auto-combat hint displayed at game load/start.
  
• Fixed a glitch that could cause the galaxy map to become locked almost entirely off-screen in rare occasions and it was not possible to get it back centered. Now, the map is re-centered when/if this happens again.
  
• Fixed a bug that could lead to a freeze due to a follow-up event being raised for a colony that no longer existed (that was razed in the meantime) [Hotfix].
  

Version 1.2.3

NEW

• Dark nebula has new graphics. These nebulae are now darker and have a slight glow effect around them making them easier to spot and more pleasing to look at.
  
  
• New 'Colonizers' special ability available when creating custom races. Races with this ability start the game with 2 colony ships instead of 1.
  
  
• Many new hints added. Hints are displayed at game start and when loading a game. Also, several revisions made to the existing hints.
  
  
• Now possible to change the color of all empires during a game session. Particularly useful to help with color-blindness but also interesting to change colors if they are too close other empires' colors or just for fun. Colors can be changed in the Empire Overview panel for the human player and in the AI Empire Status screen for the AI empires (info icon in the diplomacy status screen).
  
  
• Now possible to (de-)select the races shown in the graphs in the empire overview panel. So, you can compare empires more directly now.
  

GAMEPLAY

• When a leader levels up, and two skill options are provided, if one option is a spy skill, the other one now is not.
  

SOUND & MUSIC

• Ruins search sounds toned down (were too loud before).
  
• Sound effects added to the tech type selection dropdown in the research screen (when selecting all 'Achievements', 'Wonders' etc).
  
• The reset tech queue option in the research screen also has a sound effect now.
  

UI / GRAPHICS

• Galaxy map UI improved across the board. Examples: empire info panel in the top left (e.g. more space between the information and easier to read, new buttons for increasing/decreasing taxes, research and culture); game systems' menu in the top right improvements, map layers in the bottom left; turn button on the bottom right. All those panels now look a bit cleaner and crisper.
  
• System labels revamped. The labels' background now have a gradient color effect, a new border which makes them easier to see and distinguish from outposts, the text in the label is not uppercase now and font improvements make labels more crisp and easier to read.
  
• The galaxy map background nebula graphics were improved to add more color and presence, with more background stars now and more of them twinkling. As a result, we think the galaxy map is now more pleasing to look at and provides a better sense of being in space without being distracting.
  
• The Planetary and Supernova Remnant nebulae now have an animation effect that provides a bit more of life and also a bit more of color to them.
  
• Stars of the same color now have slightly different sizes. This helps in giving the galaxy an additional sense of depth.
  
• Icon improvements for the fire arc, extra maneuverability, shield facings, and most of the weapon modifications in the ship design screen. They are cleaner and crisper now.
  
• Added function-key shortcuts to open all the various options in the upper, right-hand panel (e.g. Remote Exploration, Research, Leaders, etc). Function keys F1 to F8 available to open all the options. When one of the screens is open, pressing the key again will close that screen.
  
• Next item in the production queue is now displayed in the 'construction just finished' notifications. Now it shows the project or ship just constructed and the next one, if any is in the queue.
  
• Fleet icon is now slightly bigger both when stationed (a shield) and when the fleet is traveling (little ship icon). The stationed shield icon was improved to make it easier to spot and also more appealing.
  
• The ruins searching process can now be skipped to accelerate the search text being displayed, if desired.
  
• When Trade Goods are on a colony production queue and a new project is added to the queue, this construction project is added before the trade goods and not after, as was previously the case.
  
• The stationed fleet icon now blinks when the game starts. This is particularly helpful for new players, so they can identify their initial fleet more easily.
  
• Zoom scrolling is now a bit faster.
  
• The initiative tooltip in the combat encounter screen now clarifies that a space monster always has the initiative (always attacks first).
  
• The close button in the system view and leader desires screen now displays the correct "close button" graphic (was displaying an older style UI button). This makes it particularly helpful in the system view as it's more clear when the player wishes to decline an attack when combat is possible in the system view.
  
• Improved the research choice buttons' looks (in the research decision screens - e.g. Helium-3 tech choice). They now have better contrast when hovering and clicking on the buttons (previously, it could be hard to tell they were buttons that needed to be clicked).
  
• Subsurface Vault's description revised to clarify that it doesn't offer an ideal environment to the extra population it can hold in the planet but only enough new space to hold more people.
  
• The 'Deep Cover' spy skill description now clarifies that on top of revealing information on a rival's outposts and colonies, it also reveals all the rival empire's explored systems.
  
• Improved the toggle checkboxes in the race customization and new game screen, which makes it easier to grasp if an option is or not selected.
  
• Fleet panel close button now slightly bigger.
  
• Planetary Prospectors' culture perk description now clarifies that a settlement is either a colony or an outpost.
  
• The race rulers are now fully displayed in ultra-wide resolutions to take advantage of the extra space available on these wider resolutions.
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed an issue that was causing the ship model to reset the animation and zoom level in the ship design every time the fire arc option was changed.
  
• Fixed an issue that was not allowing orbital stations and space mirror arrays to be seen in the colony view of Lava and Barren worlds (now they can always be seen in these worlds).
  
• Fixed an issue in the remote exploration screen where the 'Brown dwarfs' and 'White Dwarfs' graphics were missing when inspecting the panel of what could be revealed in a specific sector.
  
• Fixed a glitch that was allowing getting back to the main menu after starting a game, resulting in a corrupted UI state.
  
• Fixed a glitch in the colony screen on the triangle allocation icons (infrastructure, construction, planetary engineering), the hovering color would persist if the colony screen was closed when hovering those icons.
  
• Fixed an issue where the effect that greys options in the background was not covering the full screen in ultra-wide resolutions.
  

Change list

UI / GRAPHICS

• The ships' abbreviations displayed in the 'Request Defense Fleet' desire tooltip now show the full ship class name (e.g. Frigate) instead of an abbreviation (e.g. FF). Note: Requires new desire to fire to reflect the changes.
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug that was causing technologies to be all hidden even when the option 'Show Techs' was set with random techs. When going with random techs (option in the New Game screen), the player can go with either the 'Show Techs' or 'Hide Techs' options. The former shows the random techs in the tech tree while the latter option hides them ('Unrevealed' status).
  
• Fixed a bug in the 'Influence Leader' spy action that required the player to influence a leader even when none was left in the rival empire to influence. This happened when the psy-ops agent was ready to influence a rival leader in the same turn the player raided and conquered one of their planets capturing the rival's only remaining leader to influence in the process.
  
• Fixed a bug in the 'Ancient Ship' galactic event that was not allowing the player the pick the 'Nothing happens' option when the survey ship was sent to another system before the event choice was made.
  
• Fixed an issue in the 'Heat status' tooltip which was not listing all the possible effects when heat reached critical level on a ship.
  
• Fixed an issue in the colony research tooltip when listing the bonus from the 'Exceptional Fossils' planet special. It was showing double the amount of the bonus provided. The calculations were correct, but the value on the tooltip was wrong.
  
• Fixed an issue in the weapons damage tooltip in the ship design screen. A space was missing between the damage value and where it read "From Weapon Base".
  
• Fixed a bug in the space combat which could cause a freeze when the AI used the 'Illusion Materializer' special system. [Hotfix]
  
• Fixed an issue where notifications for ship crew XP level ups could be presented for destroyed ships in battle if they happened to gain a new level in that battle. [Hotfix]
  

VERSION 1.2.1 (changelog)

GAMEPLAY

• Emigration now possible from colonies with maximum population capacity.
  

UI / GRAPHICS

• Now possible to alternate the fleet set for the Human default race directly from the new game screen.
  
• The ideal biome habitability icon is now displayed with a green teal tone in the planets overview panel, to help differentiate the ideal habitability (green) from hostile habitability (red). Hope this helps the colorblind folks.
  
• Information added to desire to captain a certain type of ship tooltip clarifying that the leader's ship cannot be destroyed or captured in battle for the leader's desire to be fulfillable.
  
• New alternative dark brown color for the Nova added to replace the previous alternative grey color, which was too similar to the main color of the Cerixx.
  
• Internal log viewer toggle removed from the game settings.
  
• Colonization possibility tooltip now also shown on the planets overview panel (planet icon and name).
  
• Information added to the boarding panel to clarify that boarding actions can go with up to 50% of the currently available marines.
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug that was allowing player's ships to sometimes flee when in 'Auto-Combat' mode even when they were instructed not to.
  
• Fixed a bug that was causing the AI to not trigger the 'Stellar Blast' titan ability when missiles were on the battlefield. The AI was only using the ability when fighters or bombers were present.
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing ships to move again when clicking a new destination when this was done very quickly after all their potential movement range was exhausted for that turn.
  
• 16:10 Monitor Research Screen UI misalignment fixed (reset queue widget was on top of tech ETA text).
  
• Typo fix in the description of the Neutron Beam, it needed a space after "Moderately powerful beam weapon".
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing the 'Violent Tectonics' planet special to sometimes be present in Eco 3 planets.
  
• Fixed a bug that was causing the Ultra techs' level 2 to cost the same as level 1. The 2nd level costs 2x the base RP, the 3rd costs 3x the base RP, and so on.
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing the population pressure modifier to show the wrong percentage value in the population growth tooltip. The calculations were correct, only the tooltip information was wrong.