Solar Nations cover
Solar Nations screenshot
Steam
Genre: Strategy

Solar Nations

Performance Improvement Patch 1.32
I found an issue with the game that was causing it to consume an inordinate amount of graphics resources on some machines. It has been significantly reduced. There is also now a framerate counter if one was needed.

I am not working on Solar Nations full time anymore so if there are any issues please report them to me either by email or through the discord. Thanks!

1.3 Bug fixes
Changelog:

  • Fixed bug where development was not balanced correctly (regions should reach equilibrium now)
  • Renamed the Forge world upgrade to "Heavy Industry"
  • Fixed bug with capturing enemy logistics ships
  • Fixed localization bug with faction tooltip
  • Fixed bug where the culture interface was not appearing, and social metrics were not applying

Update 1.3 Is out
Major update 1.3 is out now with the new characters system. I will put the changelog here:


  • New Characters System
  • New Cultural Aspects which modify faction loyalty
  • Significant modifications to existing reforms to cut down the number of effects
  • Various bug fixes
  • Send Insult now costs stability rather than granting it
  • AI builds slightly fewer ships
  • Tutorial changes

Update 1.3: Characters!
For the 3rd major update I have sought to rectify a notable absence in Solar Nations, that of individual leaders. However, most Grand Strategy games, at least in my opinion, do leaders in such a way that they either don't resonate with, or actively undermine other systems. As such, the leader system in Solar Nations is very different from what you're used to, but is also specially designed to be interesting while also being easy to understand.


Characters in Solar Nations are represented as a collection of 4 stats, gained by acquiring more traits through levelling up or personality skills. These stats are used to execute missions which cost a certain amount of the characters' health.

There are a wide variety of missions to choose from, ranging from simple investments to forced vassalization of an enemy. Characters are able to gain experience through these missions, which have a number of special powers that could be extremely impactful if well used.

For example: this operation immediately replenishes the morale of your units. It can be used during battles as well, provided the battle is close enough to a region your leader is stationed in.

Your leaders are also not restricted to your borders. You can send leaders into enemy or neutral territory with less than friendly intentions, and there are many operations you can use to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting enemy.

However, you are not defenseless against the intrusions of unwanted leaders. Leaders' subversive operations can be blocked by stationing a leader of your own in the same region, and you can expel a character from a region by dueling them.

Duels are not literal in the sense that the characters don't start fighting with energy swords, they represent a challenge involving all of a characters' skills to defeat an opponent. Since the chance of victory in a duel is rarely certain, it is important to keep multiple characters on standby to repel any intruders.

You may also undermine enemy operators by increasing your stability (which reduces the effects of their subversion skills), or reducing theirs through counter espionage.

Over all, characters provide a nice way of introducing greater depth to Solar Nations without complicating things too much, as what I've shown above is about all there is to it, but as you can imagine, the implications of some of these new operations are quite big.

Update 1.3 will be coming out in a few days after bug fixing is finished (although I'm sure there will be plenty that seep through the cracks).

Update 1.27: Fixed Multiplayer + New Icons
Hi everyone. I have been working on quite a few things behind the scenes with new content for the game, but as I have come across some major bugs in need of fixing I decided to publish a small update today to address the problem. The major fix is that multiplayer should work correctly now- an engine update caused some things to break with the Steam interface and I needed to fix those things. Other than that, there are some quality of life changes and new icons that I think look a lot better than the old ones.

That is all!

Hotfix 7/1/23
Found a small but notable crash thanks to a helpful bug report on discord, happens when someone proposes an alliance and the proposal is accepted. It is now fixed. I have also rebalanced the AI's alliance acceptance to be more in line with what I expect.
That is all!

Update 1.25, Bug Fixes and New Decisions
Update 1.2 was not perfect, and so I have been working on various bug fixes around the game recently. The changelog for this minor update is as follows:


  • Fixed bug where AI continuously built buildings over their cap if they had few regions
  • Fixed event logic editor scope bug
  • Other minor fixes
  • New Decisions for the Mechanist Coalition
  • New Decisions for the Solar Federation (340 start date)
  • New Decisions for the Empire of Man
  • New Decision for the Cygnid Confederacy (1405 start date)
  • New Formable: Trans-Solarian Union (formed by anyone in the general area between Earth and Lativera)


This is a relatively small update, but I thought I'd push it out for quality of life reasons. More changes in the works.

Update 1.2 Bug Fixes Patch
Over the past couple of days I've been working on some internal stuff and things I can't reveal just yet, but as I have discovered a couple of important bugs I've decided to push a bug fix update in order to address the problems.


  • Fixed a crash on declare war
  • Fixed numerous localization errors
  • Fixed upgrades in the 1210 and 1405 start dates
  • Fixed changes to the "factory buildings" not correctly displaying
  • Changed some values around in order to prepare the game for future plans
  • Added ~50 new regions outside the Domain (wild space)
  • Added "Global Region Economy" to the scenario editor (mass population and development editor tool for regions)
  • Assorted fixes for the scenario editor


I hope you all are enjoying the new content in update 1.2 and if you've bought the game recently I hope you like it, if you do please leave a review, it would help me a lot more than you know!

Update 1.2 Is OUT NOW
Update 1.2 is out now with the following major features:


  • Logistics Ships which increase reinforce rate for nearby fleets
  • Buildings
  • Static Galaxy Objects
  • Auras for these objects and buildings
  • Faction Privileges
  • Faction Loyalty system change
  • Defines Editor
  • 3 changed Reform lines
  • Puppets and Overlords
  • New Empire Selection Screen
  • Outliner to easily select fleets and Regions
  • Unit Upgrades
  • Some new Decisions and Events
  • Performance Improvements
  • New Tutorial
  • Font Size Increase
  • Empire in Chaos Changes
  • Faction Regional Control


A lot of back end stuff has changed since 1.1 so if you encounter any bugs or things that feel out of place please report them on our Discord Server in the Bug Reports channel.

Some things to do with the new stuff:

  • Play the new Empire in Chaos Scenario. The Empire's position has been changed as we have turned back the clock to before Sector Solar's revolt against it. The Empire of Man now has many puppets, but all those puppets are disloyal and will soon break free, likely in unison.
  • Check out the new playable countries in each scenario. The new Empire Selector allows you to pick any country which controls territory, rather than before where only some countries were available for play. This opens up many options to play some of the weaker or more obscure countries in each scenario.
  • Experiment with the Buildings. Buildings have a great degree of complexity due to how they can be affected by the auras and adjacencies of surrounding objects. You can combine these effects to greatly boost the effectiveness of their production.
  • Make some mods. The new Defines Editor has its limits, but is very useful for adding content to the game. You can also overwrite existing content by creating something with the same internal name.

Update 1.2: Check your Privileges
Building on the changes to Factions made in 1.1, in update 1.2 I will be introducing Faction Privileges into the game in order to enhance the gameplay for factions and make them a little more dynamic, while also providing more insight into what they want and how the political landscape of the Age of Space operates.

Here you can see that the Imperial Navy has quite a few things I can "request" from them, which have a long list of effects. Each faction has around 5 of these, which range in their function. While some factions, like the Imperialists, have obvious strengths, others are more well rounded. The Libertarian Faction, for example, can give bonuses to your economy, military, or research capabilities.

However, you must choose your privileges wisely. Privileges are limited based on the power of the faction in question, and generally speaking most factions will have 0-2 available privileges. It can be viable to concentrate lots of power in a single faction to get all those juicy bonuses, but there are also significant drawbacks should they get too big for their boots!


Factions can also control regions now, and this helps specify which regions will revolt when the faction in question becomes disloyal. You can also notice that each faction has distinct effects on the regions they control, some of which are provided by the privileges you grant them.
Faction regional ownership increases their power and their disloyalty, but the latter effect is significantly reduced by placing them in the Ruling Coalition.

You'll notice that a lot of these bonuses are a bit extreme. That is because I am rebalancing the game to focus more on factions and upgrades, and less on technology related effects. I think this has a positive effect on the engagement with the game as it rewards people who pay attention to the various systems at work. Keep in mind that every faction, and by extension every country, has access to bonuses of a similar power level, and so there will still be balance.
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