We have a few additions and fixes for this week's patch. As always, we thank you for your Early Access support and for your helpful feedback and suggestions. Keep them coming!
Patch Notes for 16 December 2016 (ver. 18665)
Changes and Additions
Gremak Distortion Field Generators are now functional. They provide a passive effect that reduces their range of detection to enemy sensors on the strategic map, and an active ability in tactical combat that makes them much harder to hit while the the field is active. The distortion field must be deactivated before the equipping ship can fire its weapons.
In tactical combat, you can now right-click on a weapon in the tactical console to prevent it from firing automatically.
Anti-missiles weapons have new firing animations.
Building a Colony Ship is now disabled if the planet does not have enough eligible colonists to man it and still maintain the existing colony.
Reduced the spawn rates of Ocean worlds in the case that 'abundant habitable planets' is set.
Added reputation indicators to the war/peace status icons in the Faction List in the Diplomacy screen.
Added a summary in the Diplomacy screen for available ships in the Mercenary Exchange.
Adjusted Marauder balance on various difficultly levels.
Bug Fixes
Refitting a Stargate should no longer cause an error.
Fix for a bug that was preventing Marauders from launching raids.
Fix for a bug that could cause planets to silently switch to auto-build mode without ever notifying the player.
Assorted minor fixes for the raiding and ground combat mechanics.
Fix for a bug that could occur when encountering a marauder raiding party.
Fix for a bug that could cause Marauder bases to build unlimited buildings.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
QX for now. Clear ether, spacehounds!
Stargate Update: 7 December 2016
Greetings fellow carbon creature, may your roots always be well watered.
This week's "Stargate Update" patch contains the features needed to make the Phidi and Ashdar Imperials playable (mercenaries and stargates), and so both those factions are now unlocked in the faction selection screen. We also have the usual smattering of tweaks and fixes. As always, we thank you for your Early Access support and for your helpful feedback and suggestions. Keep them coming!
New Playable Faction: Phidi Combine
The Phidi are an aquatic race of enthusiastic traders. Their watery homeworld of Tendao is poor in industrial metals, but rich in Opil crystals, a unique resource that everyone simply must have. Opil enhances the Currency and Influence yields of Phidi markets, amplifying their additional income from Phidi population and trade routes.
Mercenary Exchange Though an economic powerhouse, the Phidi have few military hulls, as they have never been comfortable with the idea of armed conflict. However, they are not above hiring aliens to do their fighting for them, and so the Phidi can use their business savvy within any foreign Trade Charter they have signed to contact the local underground and hire mercenary forces. The Phidi faction must have sufficient reputation and influence to recruit mercenary companies, and must pay each turn to maintain the ships they hire -- but this is no problem for expert riders on the Great Tide of Free Enterprise.
New Playable Faction: Ashdar Imperials
The Imperials are a group of Ashdar that are still living on their ancient homeworld of Ashdar Prime. It is a graveyard of a planet, arid and mostly lifeless, but below the surface is a warren of ancient city infrastructure, providing living and working space and concealing ancient artifacts that boost the scientific output of laboratories. Ashdar Prime is inhabited by both of the Ashdar sub-species: the wealthy Haduir artistocracy, and the harder-working Teros.
Stargates One of the most prominent features of Ashdar Prime is the gigantic ancient stargate that hangs in orbit. For centuries it lay dormant, but now it has reawakened along with the warp lanes, and the Ashdar have used the arcane knowledge hidden within the crypts of the homeworld to unlock its secrets.
An ancient stargate acts as a one-way portal to any star system within a fleet's effective range -- it could send vessels farther, but they would be unable to return. In addition to accelerating the pace of exploration, the stargate allows the Ashdar to keep most of their fleets at the capital, and rush them instantly to any trouble spot.
Patch Notes for 7 December 2016 (ver. 18533)
Changes and Additions
Phidi Combine and Ashdar Imperials are now playable factions.
The Phidi Mercenary Exchange allows the Phidi faction to hire mercenaries from any of the major races with whom they have established a Trade Charter.
Excess wrench production from prior projects will now carry over to the planet's next project, and a planet can complete more than one project per turn if it has sufficient production capacity.
The number of available domestic trade routes has been reduced.
Colony ships and Colony bases now both remove a colonist from the world producing them when they complete.
Phidi and Orthin will no longer be able to colonize Steppes worlds without hostile-environment technology.
Gremak are now able to colonize Arid, Desert, and Steppes worlds without hostile-environment technology.
Gremak now have slightly higher pop caps on Arid worlds, Phidi and Orthin slightly lower.
The yields from using enslaved population for Forced Labor or Experiments now scale with technologies that upgrade Factories and Labs, respectively.
The 'Marauder Raiders' ground unit is now unlocked by the 'Marauder Raiders' tech rather than 'Marauder Weapons.'
Bug Fixes
Entering a save game name with a leading or trailing space should no longer cause an error.
Repackaged the sound effect assets to reduce the game's system memory footprint.
Fixed sound effect configurations of several mid-late game beam weapons.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
Goodbye once and future ally, human.
Development Update: 30 November 2016
Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan armada.
We have a number of minor additions and bug fixes in this week's patch. As always, we thank you for your Early Access support and for your helpful feedback and suggestions. Keep them coming!
Patch Notes for 30 November 2016 (ver. 18391)
Changes and Additions
The size of galaxy maps now scales evenly according to the number of stars selected. There is a new option in Advanced Map Settings to change the density of stars.
The upper limit of stars on 'Huge' maps has been increased to 500, to allow experimentation with larger map sizes. WARNING: maps above 99 stars may cause performance issues, especially on slower computers.
Slaves can now be used for Scientific Experiments for a one-time Science boost, in a manner similar to Forced Labor (which gives a one-time Production boost). To use, click on a slave population in the Planet Status screen, and then click on the "Experiment" button. Note: using slaves as experimental subjects will reduce the slave population, decrease morale, and may reduce your reputation with more squeamish factions and races.
The population description (see above) now includes hyperlinks describing racial traits.
Added the 'Brutal' difficulty level, which gives the AI factions additional discounts and starting advantages.
Adjusted the difficulty of 'Normal' and 'Hard' maps.
Increased missile damage and munitions for all designs.
Excess research from prior projects will now carry over into the next research project.
Added an option to Suppress Notifications for Queued Production Items.
Bug Fixes
Fix for a bug that was preventing human refugees from being removed from a planet if captured by Gremak raiders.
Fix for a bug that could cause AI-controlled planets to construct 'negative improvements', leading to a range of odd behaviors.
Orthin and Threshers should once again be able to farm on Garden worlds.
Lummox should no longer be capable of farming on thin-atmosphere Arid worlds.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
Now are you ready? All systems, Go! IGNITION!
Development Update: 23 November 2016
Welcome to Altair, gentlemen. For your convenience, I am monitored to respond to the name "Arioch."
We have a few tweaks and bug fixes in this week's patch. As always, we thank you for your Early Access support and for your helpful feedback and suggestions. Keep them coming!
Patch Notes for 23 November 2016 (ver. 18304)
Changes and Additions
The current executable type (32- or 64-bit binary) and graphics adapter name are now displayed in the lower-right corner of the start screen.
Made some changes to the Fleet display pane to add a faction badge and to make room for ship status icons (none of the latter being visible in the current build). You may notice that the layout and spacing of ships in the pane have been altered.
Planetary defense bases now have unlimited power, and any mounted weapons have unlimited munitions.
Increased the production yield of enslaved colonists to 2 wrenches each (was previously 1 wrench).
Reduced the prerequisites for the 'Shipyards' tech.
Bug Fixes
The game should no longer crash on launch if the sound system is unable to initialize.
Updated the sound library (FMOD) to version 1.08.14.
Fix for a bug involving the 'Repeat' production item.
Added several missing ship, system, and hardpoint descriptions.
Forming an alliance with all remaining factions should no longer cause a crash; instead you and your allies will be awarded a joint victory.
Fixes for starvation bugs that could occur if you exported food in response to another empire's request for aid.
Fix for a bug that could be triggered by refitting Ancient Stargates.
Fixes for a few bugs in the colonist transport UI's.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the United States!
Development Update: 16 November 2016
Attention big, mean, hostile alien vessel hovering overhead in an obvious attack posture!
We are chipping away at additions to diplomacy and the various faction-specific mechanisms, but this week's update has a few new features in addition to a few fixes. As always, we thank you for your Early Access support and for your helpful feedback and suggestions. Keep them coming!
Patch Notes for 16 November 2016 (ver. 18177)
Changes and Additions
'Star Harpies' will now spawn in new maps. These are packs of space monsters that will attack any ships that disturb their activities.
Added the 'Ocean World' planet type. These are worlds with surface water that is hundreds of kilometers deep and which have no dry land or even shallow water at all, only deep Ocean and Vents biomes.
In new maps there is now a functioning Ancient Stargate in orbit around Ashdar Prime. Ancient Stargates reduce one-way travel time to any system within range to 1 turn.
The old Stargate passive (instant pop transfer time) has been removed.
Added an option to Advanced Map Setttings to disable the undo/redo buttons, for the hardcore players who don't need no wussy undo!
Bug Fixes
It should no longer be possible to use the 'embark colonists' button to steal colonists from other factions.
Fixes for some problematic interactions between the production queue and autobuild features.
Fix for a bug that could be triggered by reverse engineering captured missile cruisers.
Fix for a bug that could be triggered by scrapping an outpost.
Spice mongers should no longer populate colony ships, even if they're the most populous race on the planet.
Added some missing technology, hull and component descriptions.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
In the Works: Super-Dreadnoughts
Some of you may have noticed an unimplemented technology called "Super-Dreadnoughts" deep in the Construction branch of the tech tree. I can now reveal to you the truth! It will unlock a shared late-game super-ship hull with a few special features that will be of interest to galactic tyrants who need something to tide them over on the long road to Dread Stars. We have completed the hull design work, and it will be in-game before long.
The super-dreadnought is an ancient design used in the Great War many thousands of years ago. Aside from its impressive size, it includes lost technologies that give an aspiring admiral everything he or she could want in a capital ship, including fighter bays and power infrastructure to support Orthin-style superheavy weapons. Because of their extensive automation, a few ancient, crippled examples of these ancient warships, their crews long dead, remained active during the long night following the Great War. Trapped in remote systems by the collapse of the warp lanes, they lay dormant for millennia. Now with the warp lanes restored, these ancient super-dreadnoughts are again free to wander from star to star, but what will their moldering automatic systems make of the modern galaxy?
Factions who run across one of these relics -- if they can survive the encounter -- may have the opportunity to capture or reverse-engineer it and its advanced systems, before rival factions eventually learn to develop one on their own.
Goodbye for now, Hunam. I hope you aren't eaten by monsters.
Development Update: 8 November 2016
Ah, they bring a new Commander...
We have quite a few additions in this week's update. As always, we thank you for your Early Access support and for your helpful feedback and suggestions. Keep them coming!
New Feature: Galactic Council Victory
This build includes the initial implementation of the diplomacy event system, more agreement options (including Alliances), and the Galactic Council. The events implemented in this version are mostly related to other factions asking for assistance or suggesting various agreements; we still have a lot more to add here.
You can now form Alliances with friendly factions, if you have sufficient reputation and Influence. The Alliance agreement includes Open Ports (which allows you to use allied systems to extend your fleets' range), and you will share strategic sensor data with your ally, and so be able to see what he/she/it sees on the map. Defensive Pacts have not yet been implement, and so your ally won't automatically follow you into war, but it will be kindly predisposed towards you when the Galactic Council meets to vote. If you eliminate all non-allied factions from the game, you will win a Conquest victory.
Once any faction has gained contact with all other factions on the map, it has earned the option to host a Galactic Council for the purpose of selecting a Supreme Chancellor to rule the galaxy. The number of votes each faction can cast is based on population, and the election requires a two-thirds vote to win. Each faction may vote for any other faction (including itself), or abstain. Right now most leaders will vote for themselves or an ally (if that ally has more votes), though we will add the ability to negotiate for votes. If one faction receives the necessary vote count, it's leader is elected Chancellor and wins the game. The player may choose to reject the Council vote, either to refuse the Chancellor title and continue playing, or to fight it out against the elected Chancellor and those factions who voted against the player.
Patch Notes for 8 November 2016 (ver. 18076)
Changes and Additions
Added alliance and open ports agreements.
Initial implementation of the Galactic Council.
AI factions may now request favors from the player.
It is now possible to convince certain minor factions to join your empire.
Added options in the diplomatic discussion menu to review and cancel current agreements.
New planetary special resources including Artifacts, Rare Gems and Precious Metals will now appear in newly generated galaxies.
Added art assets for planet activities. (Research, Trade, etc.)
Added the 'Mining' activity unlocked by "Industrial Automation".
Added the 'Synthesize food' activity unlocked by "Synthetic Foodstuffs". (The artwork and descriptions are placeholders.)
Added a 'Repeat Build' production option, which when placed in the production queue will indefinitely repeat the previous production task.
"Fusion Artillery" has been renamed to "Primary Artillery".
Discontent colonists will no longer form small fractional groups, but will wait until they can form a full population point.
Marauder-controlled colonies are now equipped with an orbiting asteroid defense base.
Ashdar Imperials now start with an Ancient Stargate in orbit around Ashdar Prime.
Bug Fixes
Altered rebel faction handling to reduce some late-game performance degradation on large maps.
Fix for a bug involving starvation and AI requests for food aid.
Fix for a bug involving transported populations and morale.
Eliminated factions no longer appear in the faction list.
Social Engineering should now function as described in the in-game docs.
The "scrap improvement" option should now display the correct scrap value of the improvement in question.
Attempts to transport Battle Mechs from one planet to another via the Stargate network should no longer cause a bug.
The "restart" option in the exception pane should be more likely to work as intended.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
In the Works: Faction-Specific Elements
Although we already have a number of unique attributes for each faction, we are adding more -- particularly those that will flesh out the two currently disabled playable factions: the Phidi and Ashdar Imperials. Here is a brief look at some of the features we are adding to the various factions:
Ashdar Imperials: Ancient Stargate Ashdar Prime, the ancient Ashdar homeworld still occupied by the Imperial faction, is a relic of the era from before the Great War and the collapse of the warp lanes, and still retains many examples of advanced ancient technologies. Ashdar Prime has the Artifacts special which boosts Laboratory output, and a newly reawakened Ancient Stargate in orbit. An Ancient Stargate allows instantaneous ship travel between its system and any system within normal ship range (it could send them farther, but then they wouldn't be able to return). The presence of the Ancient Stargate also gives the Imperials a leg up on researching stargate technology of their own, and eventually constructing newer (though less capable) modern stargates throughout their territory which will allow instantaneous travel between systems containing a stargate (either ancient or modern).
Phidi Combine: Mercenary Exchange Upon establishing their first foreign Trade Charter, the Phidi will gain the ability to create a Mercenary Exchange, which will serve as a broker for any mercenary companies that are currently operating in that faction's underworld. Assuming they have the requisite reputation, influence and cash on hand, the Phidi can hire mercenary units and use them in battle -- which is, of course, greatly preferred by the Phidi to using their own ships in combat, which they feel could be better utilized in commerce. Other factions may gain the ability to hire mercenaries from specific factions, but the Phidi Mercenary Exchange will have access to all of them.
Orthin Conference: Busbars and Shield Capacitors Orthin mastery of high-energy physics allows them to pack more power transmission infrastructure into their ships than most other races would dare conceive of, and which are needed to power their special superheavy beam wepaons. Orthin ships have built-in supercooled power systems that give then a special "Busbar" hardpoint type which can mount unique enhancements.
The most significant of these option is the Shield Capacitor, which absorbs and stores the energy of weapon hits on the ship's shields for later use. Once charged, the energy stored in the capacitors can be used to replenish depleted shields, or to temporarily overload the ship's beam weapons for increased damage (at the cost of reduced range).
Gremak Empire : Distortion Field The Distortion Field system was devised in ancient times and used by Gremak ancestors to dangerous effect in the Great War, and now this technology has been rediscovered. The device generates a light-bending field that makes the hosting vessel harder to detect and target, though not quite invisible. Gremak vessels equipped with Distortion Fields will be detectable at shorter ranges on the strategic map and harder to hit in tactical combat, though the Gremak ship must choose whether to keep the Field active or fire its weapons, as it cannot do both at the same time. This capability helps to allow Gremak fleets to approach their targets with reduced warning, press in close in tactical combat, and use their short-range Viper weapons to maximum effect.
Humanity: Ship Capture Specialists Having lived for centuries as scavengers, the Humans have developed great expertise in capturing vessels and converting them for their own use. Humanity already has some bonuses in this department in-game, and these will expanded upon. In particular, Humanity will gain a special armored Marine ground unit that can also be used in ship to ship boarding actions. Unlike conventional ground units which can only defend in boarding actions, the Human marines, when coupled with a special Boarding Shuttle system, will be able to use their strength in offensive boarding operations.
Well, that's all for this update. Never give up, never surrender!
Development Update: 19 October 2016
Greetings programs!
The innards of the diplomacy system are still strewn across the workbench, but we do have a few fixes and tweaks in this week's update.
As always, we thank you for your Early Access support and for your helpful feedback and suggestions. Keep them coming!
Patch Notes for 19 October 2016 (ver. 17469)
Changes and Additions
Expanded the mouse-click regions of ship icons on the strategic map so that selecting a fleet is a little bit less finicky. As always, clicking multiple times on overlapping icons will cycle through the available selections at that location.
The map settings now include an option to adjust the frequency of habitable planets.
Modified the way population morale is tracked so that morale modifiers can apply to specific population groups instead of the entire race.
Starvation will now lead to group-specific morale penalties.
Increased the severity and decreased the duration of the conquered planet morale penalty. Note that discontent population can be prevented from revolting by leaving an occupation force on the planet (of at least the same numerical strength as the discontent population; armored units count double for this purpose).
Bug Fixes
Two different empires should no longer be able to absorb the same splinter colony at the same time (a case that can lead to a variety of strange bugs).
Spice Mongers are no longer incorrectly exempted from the morale rules.
Setting a planet to build a ground unit when it is already building a ground unit should no longer result in a loss of accumulated production.
Gremak should no longer receive morale penalties as a result of practicing slavery.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
End of line.
Development Update: 12 October 2016
Incoming transmission!
This week's update has more balance tweaks and bug fixes. Work on the guts of the diplomacy system continues.
As always, we thank you for your Early Access support and for your helpful feedback and suggestions. Keep them coming!
Patch Notes for 12 October 2016 (ver. 17386)
Changes and Additions
AI factions will now build more farms, and are no longer exempted from the normal starvation rules.
AI factions should now build more mines.
Added tooltips for the Research, Trade, and City Planning activities.
Added more information to the undo/redo button tooltips.
Adjusted the behavior of the background starfield during strategic panning/zooming.
The advanced faction options now include a "random faction" setting. By default, all factions other than the player's are now set to "random".
There is now a maximum number of duplicate factions that can be added using the map settings screen.
Duplicated factions will now have leaders with different names.
Lowered the number of marauder factions that may spawn in large maps.
New logic to cap the growth of Marauder fleets.
Added an option to disable arrow-key panning.
Bug Fixes
Changes to the low-level keyboard state handling code that may help prevent bugs on certain systems.
Tweaked the behavior of the dropdown menus in the advanced faction settings pane so that options do not go offscreen.
Reported racial population maximums should no longer be incorrectly rounded down to the nearest million.
Estimated research times should now correctly take science leader discounts into account.
Science stations should now have a fixed construction cost, regardless of the hull they are mounted on.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
That's all for now. Enjoy the *sauce*!
Development Update: 5 October 2016
Salutations and greetings!
As always, we thank you for your Early Access support and for your helpful feedback and suggestions. Keep them coming!
Work continues on diplomacy improvements. This week's patch contains primarily fixes, but we did make some modifications to the planet types to add a little variety to the many Arid worlds that you will often find in your empire.
Patch Notes for 5 October 2016 (ver. 17304)
Changes and Additions
Planets are now rated for atmospheric density (listed in the Planet Status window), which affects habitability. Arid world types can have either "Normal" or "Thin" atmospheres.
Arid worlds now contain a small ice biome in addition to the "arid" biome.
Two new Arid variants: Steppes (cold) and Desert (hot) worlds will now spawn in new galaxies. Steppes worlds have a larger ice biome than normal Arid worlds, and Desert worlds have no ice biome at all.
Added two "normal temperature" Arid skin recolors.
Reduced Spice Monger population caps on Arid worlds.
Admiral Carver now has a custom art asset for his rear view (instead of looking suspiciously like Praetor Yunki).
Science Stations now generate +2 beakers per turn, regardless of the hull size they're mounted on.
Reduced the number of weapons mounts per hardpoint for Defense Primaries to normal (was 3x).
Bug Fixes
Fix for a bug that was preventing scrapped stations from providing metal.
Fix for a rare bug that could occur if your empire was reduced to nothing but outposts.
The "Bionomics" technology should once again function as described.
Scrapping an outpost over a planet with natives should no longer give you control of that planet.
It should no longer be possible to transport colonists to or from a planet on which you have only an outpost.
Fix for a bug that could prevent colonists from taking damage from starvation.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
See you space cowboy!
Development Update: 29 September 2016
Hail, interstellar subjugators!
Development continues. I'd like to once again thank the Early Access participants for their support and helpful feedback. We're interested in what you have to say, so don't be shy.
Patch Notes for 29 September 2016 (ver. 17260)
New Feature: Strategic Zoom
The strategic map can now be zoomed in and out using either the mouse-wheel or the new magnifying glass icon on the top bar (+ and - increase or decrease zoom level, and the icon itself resets to 100%). There are 9 total zoom levels, from 35% to 250%. We've also increased the star spacing, so the map should be less crowded at all zoom levels.
The star graphics are now procedural and scale with the zoom level, as do the planets in their orbits; at higher zoom levels you can now see the relative sizes of the planets and watch the red giant rotate. At lower zoom levels, the orbits disappear and the fleet icons convert to smaller colored versions to reduce clutter.
I'm very pleased with the way this feature turned out, and in addition to looking cool, I think the ability to zoom really helps the player to see what he needs to see more clearly and without fuss.
Bug Fixes
Fix for a bug that was preventing tanks and marauder raiders from being transported via the embark pane.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
In the Works: Diplomacy Additions
Sven and I are currently working on improvements to the new Diplomacy system. The most important of these is the Events system.
Diplomacy is driven by Issues, many of which are created by player behavior. Events are primarily a mechanism through which Issues can be created even when the player is being passive, and may require the player to make some choice with diplomatic consequences, to help further drive interactions and the sense of a living galaxy. Events can take the familiar form of such things as natural disasters, or they can be action cues for an AI faction leader who may have simply gotten out of the wrong side of the bed that morning.
Unlike random event choices in some other games that seem to take place in their own universe, many of our events will have tangible effects on the map. For example, when the Orthin leader calls you asking for help in rescuing a disabled transport in your territory, you'll be able to see that vessel on the map and interact with it using normal game mechanisms... if desired. (Why you would destroy that transport full of refugees?? You heartless bastard!!)
Additionally, we will be fleshing out all aspects of the Diplomacy system; adding more Issues, more trading options, more minor faction options, improving AI responses, and alliances (which will be important when we next tackle expanded victory conditions).
