Hello everyone! Version 1.1.3 of Interstellar Space: Genesis is now available for public testing on Steam's unstable Beta branch! Please note that 1.1.3 unstable is an optional beta patch. If you want to help test this update alongside us you have to manually opt in to access it. In your Steam library, right click on Interstellar Space: Genesis -> Properties -> Betas tab -> Select the "unstable - Unstable Beta Branch for Testing" branch. Due to popular demand, this update adds the ability to choose different ship sets, race appearance, affinity and the Titan ability when creating a custom race. There are also many other improvements, AI enhancements, QoL improvements, UI tweaks, balance changes and bug fixes. We will be monitoring your reports for major bugs and fixing them. Please report in our official forums, on the Steam forums, on our Discord server or if you prefer just send an email to contact@praxis-games.com with a save and the Player and Player-prev log files you can find in this folder: C:Users<your_username>AppDataLocalLowPraxis GamesISG Compatibility note: Saves from previous versions are not compatible with 1.1.3 unstable. 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<your_username>AppDataLocalLowPraxis GamesISGRaces). Modifying them and saving may work, but it's preferable to just delete the current custom races you may have. Thanks! The Dev Team Praxis Games Version 1.1.3 unstable ------------------------ # NEW ------------------------ Now possible to choose a different ship set, race affinity, appearance and titan ability when creating a custom race! The research screen now shows icons next to every tech representing the tech's type (achievement, ship component, ship special system, planetary improvement, empire project, wonder or planetary engineering project). Two new defense technologies added: 'Advanced Evasion Algorithms' and 'Ultimate Evasion Algorithms' provide +50% Ship Defense and +100% SD, respectively. With these achievements, ships will be harder to hit. One new Targeting Algorithms tech added: 'Ultimate Targeting Algorithms', provides +175% Ship Attack, making it easier to hit ships in combat. New icon presented when a fleet is stationed on a system with only civilian ships in it: a 'cog' icon is presented; when there are military ships present it shows a 'shield'. 'Affinity' tooltip added when creating custom races and choosing a specific affinity explaining what personality traits a specific affinity has and what it provides; tooltip also added to the AI empire status panel (when inspecting the AI empire information in the diplomatic status screen). The colony leader's 'Warfare' primary skill now also provides +0.5 Crew experience per skill point per turn to all military ships currently in orbit, along with the existing +10% Ground combat strength per skill point in the colony. The ship leader's 'Command' primary skill now also provides 25% bonus experience to the leader from combat for each additional point when it reaches Command level 10 or more. The ship leader's 'Initiative' primary skill now also provides +1 combat speed for each additional initiative point to the leader's ship in the first combat turn. New 'Freighter fleet' scrap function added. New 'All PD Targets' game settings option added (tells if a ship equipping point defense weapons shall target all missiles passing by or only the ones targeting that ship). The default option is ON. Mining Treaties now offer +200 production distributed between all colonies per active mining treaty. The 'Improved Logistics' technology now offers a free outpost ship. ------------------------ # AI ------------------------ The AI now favors equipping different special systems in ships depending on the race's affinity/personality. The AI now equips special systems in ships more sensibly. The AI now researches better shields, armor and weapon technology even more aggressively, especially in the higher difficulty levels. The AI now tends to play more aggressively in tactical combat. The Draguul AI personality/affinity will now tend to play more offensively in combat. The Draguul AI affinity now likes their demands being accepted more; it also gets more offended when others break treaties than before. The Human AI affinity likes gifts a bit more now; also likes more when others accept their alliance requests and disapproves more when others refuse their diplomatic demands. Also a bit more keen in proposing treaties to others now; will also make more requests of allies than before, and certainly more than other affinities. The Kaek AI affinity likes when their demands and alliance requests are accepted a bit more now. They get more angry when someone razes their settlements and colonies now. The Moltar AI affinity likes warmongers even less now and likes gifts a bit more. Gets more upset when others make demands of them and when they break treaties or raze their settlements. The Nova AI affinity favors treaties even more now. They like when their diplomatic requests are accepted more; like warmongers even less and get more upset when others declare war on their friends even more. Also a bit more upset when others break an alliance and when someone razes their settlements. The Sulak AI affinity likes being given gits a bit more now; get much more upset when others make demands of them, but they forget that more easily than others. AI now equips Point Defense weapons (against missiles, fighters and bombers) more sensibly. AI now equips weapon modifications more sensibly, in general, giving priority to certain weapon modification combos that prove to be very effective in specific circumstances. The AI is now a more aggressive in the strategy layer, especially in the higher difficulty levels. The AI now gets a negative diplomatic modifier when the player makes demands of it when these are rejected. This is actually a fix since the AIs received this negative modifier from demands from other AIs, but not from the human player. ------------------------ # BALANCE ------------------------ The Mothership, the Starhammer and the Punisher ships discovered in ruins are now found a bit later (were being discovered a bit too soon). The miniaturization production cost reduction was revised to 90/80/70/60/50% for level 1 up to miniaturization level 5 (was 75/55/40/30/25% before). This means that ship components don't become as cheap now as they would before this change. Some equipment could become way too cheap with miniaturization. The 'Heavy Mount' weapon modification now costs 4 times more production than normal mounts. Previously, it was 2 times more. The 'Heavy Mount' was too cheap for the big tactical advantages it provides, especially the double range bonus and the decrease of the damage and accuracy penalties with range. The 'Auto-Fire' weapon modification now costs 3 times more production than normal mounts. Previously, it was 1.5 times more. Auto-Fire is a very powerful modification that was a bit too cheap. Auto-Fire now reduces Ship Attack (accuracy) by 25%, was 20% before. The 'No Range Dissipation' weapon modification was removed from Phasors; was added to Neutron Beam. 'No Range Dissipation' now costs double the amount of production of a standard weapon. Previously, it only cost +25% more. The 'Continuous' weapon modification space requirement was reduced from +50% space than standard weapons to +25%. Phasors now cost 130 production per weapon installed. Previously, it was 120. Phasors are a very versatile weapon so the added cost is justified. The 'Armor Piercing' weapon modification production cost increased from +75% the standard weapon cost to +100%. Armor Piercing was also a bit on the cheap side. 'Shield Piercing' production cost increased from +75% to 3 times more (+200%). This is a very special and powerful weapon modification, that was too cheap before. Fusion Beams now allow the 'Armor Piercing' modification. The 'Doom Cannon' weapon now does 250 damage (was 80). The cooldown penalty was also removed (can now fire every turn). Spinal Mount weapon modification "No damage lost to range dissipation" effect removed. Was unbalancing the spinal mount modification in favor of beams over kinetics since the latter already enjoy from that effect. Quantum missiles now have 14 base hull points instead of 12. Nightmare missiles now have 20 HP instead of 16. Neutronium Armor Coating now provides a +7.5% bonus to armor per source of Neutronium in the empire. Was +5% per source before. Enhanced Shields now provides a +7.5% bonus to shields per source of Helium-3. Previously, it offered +10% per source. Propulsion -25% research penalty removed from Feudal government. ------------------------ # GAMEPLAY ------------------------ Support ships now have to be explicitly selected in order to be moved to a different system where before clicking on a fleet and sending it elsewhere would bring the support ships with it automatically. All espionage actions now take a minimum amount of 5 turns to set up. Certain spy assignments could take only a couple of turns to set up which would lead to excessive micromanagement. Tractor Beam range increased from 25 grid spaces to 30. Ion Cannon now doesn't allow the Heavy Mount weapon modification (Ion Cannon was a bit overpowered with the HV mount). Leaders with the Xenophobic trait now only work for certain empires of specific race affinities. Before they only worked for a certain race type/appearance. Diplomacy music also linked to the race affinity now. -------------------------- # PERFORMANCE -------------------------- The overview panel rendering was optimized making the late game handling of the overview panel, and other panels significantly faster. Now faster to open and close the colony view screen. Late combat performance increased. Firing at the bigger ships could lag a bit in the late game. ------------------------ # UI / GRAPHICS ------------------------ Research screen revamped to show more space between the tech fields. Tech names are now displayed in lower case; tech icon types were added and a filter to highlight techs of one type. The ship tooltip information is now presented in the ships' overview panel also when hovering on the ship name now (previously, only showed the tooltip when hovering on the ship's picture). The attitude tooltip information is now also presented in the Galactic Council when hovering on the two empire leaders running for Galactic Emperor. The race's ideal world background is now presented in the empire status screen. The miniaturization tooltip now describes the levels and the benefits in the ship design screen (on weapons, shields, and special systems). Race affinity/personality information added to the AI empire status screen, since it's now possible to select a different affinity for the custom races, different from the race appearance, the ship set and even the titan ability. Planetary improvements now shown from the cheapest to the more expensive to build in the colony view. Asteroid exploitations that require freighters now tell when freighters are available and when the freighter fleet requirements are met. Before, an exploitation requiring freighters could still say that freighters were needed for that particular exploitation even if it was already active and enough freighters were available. New sort/filters added to the asteroid belts' overview panel for production, trade, research and volatiles exploitations; allows seeing all exploitations of each type at a glance. New "vacant only" filer added to the strategic resources' overview panel, shows only sites that are not yet settled to help identify potential sites available for exploitation. A new tooltip in the fleets overview panel now shows the fleet composition when hovering the "?" in each fleet entry. Wormhole tooltip now provides full information on how wormholes are revealed including information on their stability, and not only when the system scanning level is basic or advanced. Note added to the difficulty tooltip clarifying that the AI will be more aggressive in the higher difficulty levels, starting on 'Hard'. The information on the ship's equipment load out in the ship selection screen (when hovering a ship design in the ship design screen) could sometimes be presented with some misalignment. The information is now better aligned. The 'Medium' and 'Large' galaxy icons displayed in the New Game screen are no consistent in both shape and sizes; previously, the large galaxy icon arms were too thin and with a small core. Explanation added to the 'Fighter Bays' and 'Bomber Bays' special systems in the ship design special system selection panel and to the technology tooltip on how many hit points fighters and bombers have. Sentence added to the 'Trade Treaty' and 'Research Treaty' tooltips to clarify the initial expenses: "The fees are reduced gradually during the first 10 turns of the deal, after which income (or RP in the case of the research treaty) starts to be generated.". The parenthesis included in the type of star text in the system view were removed. A few tweaks were done to the empire information displayed at the top. The text has a bit more contrast now and the panel with the buttons on the top right was cleaned a bit to make it look more crisp. The colonies' overview panel now shows more colonies at once in the Ultra-Wide resolutions. Sometimes the remote exploration notification could lead one to believe new information was obtained when in fact nothing new was revealed. The sentence of the notification was reworded to clarify this. Note added to the 'Asteroid Mining' technology to clarify that an available freighter fleet is required in order to establish 'Production' or 'Volatiles' exploitations. More context was added to the 'An Offer You Can Refuse' event notification explaining why we got a technology for free from a choice made by an AI player on that event. More space added to the area where the playable races are displayed allowing for one more race to be displayed without needing to use the scroll bar. Space combat "Zoom & Shoot" animation now brings back the combat HUD a bit later, only after the "kill cam" finishes and the view is restored to normal, allowing to see the explosion without it being mostly obscured by the HUD popping up. ------------------------ # BUGS ------------------------ Fixed a bug when using the 'Tractor Beam' special system, it was being allowed on ships that were out of range. Fixed another bug involving the 'Tractor Beam' where it could not be used on other targets in the next turn after the first target was destroyed. Fixed a bug when presenting the damage applied by a weapon with the Auto-Fire modification. More damage was being shown as being inflicted than the damage done. The actual damage was ok but the displayed damage was bugged. Fixed a bug when using the 'Clairvoyance' unique ability, the last two sectors to reveal could sometimes lead to a locked state where it would not be possible to proceed to the next turn. Fixed a bug that was allowing AI ships to be controlled by the player after they jumped near the player' ships using the 'Combat Jump Displacement' special system. Fixed a bug that was causing space monsters to freeze and not attack the player until the end of the combat in the rare case the player passed the ship from the front of the monster to its back. Fixed a bug that was causing the 'Ancient Artifacts' planet special to give 'Ultra' techs and not allowing them to be researched again. Fixed a rare bug when the AI attacked a planet defended by an orbital station, the combat would not take place and the AI could assault the planet bypassing the orbital station when fleets from other empires were also present in that system. Fixed a rare bug where a negative production percentage could be presented in the colony view when the production was maxed out on one aspect. Fixed a bug in the 'Graft and Corruption' event where its negative effects could not be cancelled after the colony changed hands. Fixed an issue in the remote exploration screen where the automatic remote exploration toggle and text would overlap the zoom controls in the 21:9 ultra-wide aspect ratio resolutions. Fixed an issue that was allowing the "Number of Missiles" weapon modification to be shown in the tech tooltip for Torpedoes, when Torpedoes have unlimited ammo. Ammo information was also being incorrectly presented for torpedoes in the ship design screen. Typo fix: Weapons tooltip (all weapons types), last paragraph "superseeds" now "supersede". Typo fix: Leader notification when returning to duty from leave -- "prolongued" was misspelled (no "u"). Typo fix: Under Planetary Deflector Shield last sentence: Meteor shower, shower was spelled with two W's. Typo fix: In the overview panel's strategic resources filters the tooltips titles displayed "Ammount", corrected to "Amount". Fixed an issue where the ship leader Chomm Slues'es nickname was too long to display, renamed to just "Lieutenant." Fixed an issue where the tourism bonus tooltip in accretion disks would mention "resort outpost" in a few passages which could lead to confusion if different outposts were available to build. It says only "outpost" now. Fixed an issue that was allowing a system to be clicked before the turn ended processing completely, which could lead to game corruption. Fixed an issue that was causing a few plants to appear as they were floating in the Terran biome. Fixed a bug that was causing the empire ranking graphs to appear as they were going off-screen. This was happening when loading a save from another game and then displaying the graphs. It only showed once in that turn and then cleared up. It is fixed now. Fixed an issue that was causing the empire ranking graphs to not show for all empires when loading another game. Fixed a glitch that was causing the max damage to only display up to the first 3 digits in the ship design screen. Fixed a bug when generating an automatic design for a ship, choosing a different class from the original one would still generate a design for the previous class. Fixed another bug when generating a design for a ship and leaving the ship design screen without saving would still save the design. Fixed a graphical glitch when displaying the Nova character 'Friendly' animation in diplomacy. Fixed an issue where the ETA for a tech in the research screen would show "1 turns" instead of "1 turn" when only a turn was left for the breakthrough. Fixed a glitch in the Galactic Council, at around 300 population the numbers would start to break a line. Fixed an issue in the remote exploration screen that was causing the remote exploration panel to be hardly visible on huge maps as the 'scan' icons would be rendered on top of the panel. Fixed an issue that was causing the "Periodic Auto-Gen" state to not persist. The checkbox would revert to OFF when exiting and loading a game. Fixed an issue that was causing the empire effects from 'Neutronic Rejuvenation' to not show the correct effect. Was only reporting the effect for 1 source of the Neutronium strategic resource even when more were available. The morale modifier effects from the Neutronic Rejuvenation were also not being shown correctly. Fixed an issue in space combat when marking a ship as 'Done' it would still display the movement grid as if movement was still allowed. Fixed a bug that was causing damage to be considered at the front of a ship when the shot was made at the back in the rare case a rival ship would move past a player's ship. Fixed an issue where the Warp Interdictor icon was still being displayed beneath the system label for 1 turn after the present colony holding the Warp Interdictor was conquered or razed. Fixed a damage rounding issue in the ship design screen and in the combat tooltips when the 'Beam Accelerators' bonus from Helium-3 was being used. Fixed an issue in the diplomacy dialog for the Nova empire, where the empire names were switched in a particular dialog instance. Fixed an issue in the 'Heavy Mount' weapon modification tooltip. It said "Large platform mounted versions of a weapon that inflicts three times the normal amount of damage". The correct value is "one and a half times". Fixed an issue where production overflow was being taken into account when producing 'Trade Goods' when displaying the total production going towards trade goods even though the calculations were correct. Fixed an issue in the colonies' overview panel, the eco level could be cut and not be displayed in the 16:10 aspect ratio monitors and other resolutions. Fixed an issue with the events' description scroll bar; it was not resetting its position from one event to the next causing the text to not always show from the top. Fixed an issue when hiring leaders, the opinion bubble wasn't centered exactly as it should be all the time. It fell below the line. Fixed an issue in the Space Amoeba Progenitor and Offspring. An attack from those space monsters could cause a "phasor" stun effect but the weapon was not a phasor. The stun effect was renamed to the weapon name in question. The weapon tooltip describes the stun effect. Fixed a bug where some weapons could still show as operational even with zero internal system points in the ship in specific situations. Fixed an issue when attacking an empire you had not officially met yet, the game would warn war would be declared, which is not the case for empires where contact has not be made yet. Warning reworded appropriately. Fixed a bug in the combat AI that was causing ships attacking a battle station to stop attacking all of a sudden to only resume combat a few turns later. The AI fleet was preparing to board the battle station but did not approach it enough to be able to do so. Fixed a bug in the kinetics overload action where only the first kinetic weapon slot would get an extra shot; fixed also the Auto-Fire kinetics, which were not benefiting from the kinetics overload action. Now, AF kinetics fire 4 shots in a row at a single target, instead of the nominal 3 shots without the overload. Fixed a glitch on the combat ship selection sound, where the music could sometimes cut out when selecting ships consecutively.
My first feedback after a very large series of space battles: 1) Neutron Beam vs Laser: This is pretty competitive now. Neutron Beam inched out the Laser in Damage/Space in most cases...but the laser brought a solid cost benefit, so I used a mix of both. 2) AI is using Tractor Beams more effectively (and by that I mean at all!). I'm seeing them freeze a frigate and then flying around it, preventing its ability to fire. 3) I saw the Sulak switch to SP particle beams and completely caught me with my pants down, ripping through a couple of key ships in a tight battle, so kudos to them. 4) The new mining treaty is much more enticing now...maybe too much. That amount of extra production early game is crazy good. 5) It still feels like the AI ignores Shield IV and above for too long. I am still fighting Shield II and III while I have Shield IV and Wurtzite Armor, and that's on Impossible Difficulty. 6) It maybe worth looking at the cost of the x3 structure for ships. The AI always uses it after the very early game, its the absolute default. 7) While I noticed the cost increases on mods, it didn't really change my decision making too much. I've noted before that effectiveness is king, the cost benefit has to be REALLY noticeable to be my deciding factor, and it wasn't in most cases. 8) I don't like the font change (or size, something is different) on the Tech screen. Overall I found it harder to read.
Thanks a lot for your feedback on 1.1.3 unstable, this is very helpful input. A couple of comments/questions on some of your points. At what turn more or less were you at this point? And, which faction were you attacking? What resolution do you play with? By the way, could you send me a couple of saves of your recent game? Perhaps the latest one you have and one at mid-game if you happen to have a save point. That would be very helpful so I can contextualize your input better. Saves can be found here: C:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\LocalLow\Praxis Games\ISG Thanks!
1920 x 1080 @ 60 HZ I started playing new games so I don't have an organized save for what you want. However, I'm happy to run a game and save periodically to give you some good saves. Where are the saves actually stored so I can pull them out and give them to you? EDIT: Hehe, so in starting my new game for you....I got the Starhammer from a ruin on Turn 1! So clearly that delayed ruin change isn't fully working.
Saves can be found here: C:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\LocalLow\Praxis Games\ISG Oh that shouldn't happen. Thank you for letting us know.
Here is the save showing the Turn 1 Starhammer. Also, here is just a quick package of saves showing a very solid early game Dragul play (I scrapped the Starhammer as I didn't feel it fair). They ran ramshot on me, taking my second planet, and kept pressure up the entire time. Ship design was okay, ultimately they switched to Shield II somewhat late, but they just beat me with raw units and power. Btw, is there a way to keep more than the last 5 autosaves? Ideally I will keep the saves for an entire game so you all can have the entire history if you want it. EDIT: I add a Turn 1 save from a new game. I have never seen a neighbor this close to me on this map settings (which are my defaults so I play them a lot). So just checking to see if its intended.
Thanks for the saves. I'll have a look at what may have happened for your Turn 1 Starhammer Nice to read the Draguul are keeping you busy No, it's not possible to keep more than the last 5 autosaves. Having the latest autosave and the occasional save point you could make every 10 or 20 turns, for example, would be great. Having a close neighbor is unusual, but it can happen, especially if there are many players in the map. Also depends on the map size. The game tries to distribute everyone evenly, but sometimes it can generate homeworlds that are a bit closer. It's good for variety, I think. Thanks!
So here's an example of a recent late game. I have attached a save package as well but the screenshot below is somewhat telling. A few notes I'm seeing in the very late game: 1) The new defense buffs are really strong. I have seen ships consistently whiffing my Titan! That suggests they are not investing enough in attack bonuses, or the new defense buffs are a bit too strong. 2) The AI is doing better on designs (as noted in the screenshot). Its got a solid Phasor at its core damage, a nice flak cannon shield against missiles. But its still not keeping up with me (and I'm only Number 2 in Tech and Production so in theory the AI has the tools to beat me, its not that I have destroyed the galaxy and the AI is on its last legs). But I have IX level shields AND much bigger ships. I've had Titans for a long time, and I barely see battleships from the AI at this point. Note that I am the Nova Vida....so the AI has no excuse not to be racing past me in weaponry. The cruisers are spitting missiles which are 100% worthless. I don't even have flak cannons, I'm just using good old cheap as hell lasers as my PD....and I never get hit with missiles. The missiles buffs aren't nearly enough to make them competitive. Just spitballing an idea...what if missile hits also had a chance to increase heat (because there are massive nuclear explosions hitting your hull). That would be an interesting and unique way for missiles to impact the battle in a different way. Of course they still need significantly more survivability but its an idea. 3) The battle calculator is very poor currently. It is calculating basically a coin flip with a slight advantage to itself. My assessment looking at these ships is that they will be lucky to scratch the paint off one of my ships (spoiler: I was right). I'm not even talking using sneaky advanced human tactics....I literally just moved these ships forward and shot the first thing in range. The calculator is fundamentally misunderstanding just basic combat strength. 4)
Just reading the dev log indicated that the game has been tilted to the defence. Leaving everything aside, I will focus on one point only. This alone has done more to neuter the offence and aid the defence then everything else combined. This means, in simple terms, less firepower on ships across all classes, and throughout the game. In addition, this impacts smaller ships more as they have less space to begin with. While I noted the reasoning provided by Praxis, I suspect that this may also have been done to aid the combat AI. Up until now, the AI could not use miniaturization well, now neither will the player which should levell the field somewhat, (but not enough to make a difference). All this will do now, is make Frigates obsolete on turn one, Destroyers will become the new Frigates, Cruisers the new Destroyers etc. A move like this, which limits player choice, tilts the game more towards defence... may not have been the best way to approach the problems it tried to address.
Just noting a possible bug with Fusion Beam damage. I am trying to watch closely to ensure its not just miss chances but I am routinely seeing my fusion beam ships doing significantly less damage than I expect. I have ships that can 30 damage at point blank range, and are doing 3 even with a 97% chance to hit. I'm going to keep watching to see if I can nail it down but just putting on the radar.
On the miniaturization change, what was changed were the production cost requirements, not the space weapons require. So, you can install the same amount of weapons as before, they will just cost a bit more when they miniaturize than before.
Thank you for clarifying that. This would be a very moderate change then, in practical terms a player may have a ship or two less by a given period in the game, but not much else would change. While I am pleased that space requirements have not been affected... it may leave the AI exposed to players that design ships in a manner that focuses on taking full advantage of miniaturisation. I must admit, I don't envy what you are up against at times... Edit Reading through the rather extensive changes more carefully, it seems you are focusing mostly on production costs in an attempt to re-balance certain aspects of game play, in particular weapons. I would think this may give slight effects at best. I do prefer this approach however, better to make slight adjustments and gauge their effectiveness rather than more dramatic changes that may need to be undone.
So here's a good example of some production issues from the AI. According to the stats, I am 3rd in production right now. So my AI neighbors should be dominating me in fleets. But....where are the ships? I see a handful of destroyers and cruisers and 1 battleship from the Moltar. Now I give the Moltar credit, I am seeing some decent armor and shields finally, but there are simply not enough ships being built to be a threat. I am wondering if the AI is getting lulled into overconfidence due to our treaties and thinks I would never attack them, but with those weak fleets, I can take over their entire space with ease.
Well, nothing stops you from backstabbing your opponents. Be prepared to lose a hefty amount from the current research and trade treaties though I inspected the Moltar. They do have a good fleet. More than 1 battleship. I can share the fleet amount details with you if you want. \Edit: I also see you're playing with the Sulak, the 2nd most aggressive race in the game, and you didn't pick the Draguul for that session. So, effectively you played with the more peaceful races this time. The militaristic races would have a considerably bigger fleet, and would give more trouble in the beginning. Also, Gallean, your big source of Antimatter is in the Moltar's heart, so that may fall, and you'll lose your other imported antimatter too. Will be interesting to see how it goes.
I would love the fleet details, mainly so we can be in sync on what constitutes a "good fleet". If there is an easy way to do that myself I'm also fine to do that. And as far as how it went....hehe two turns later the election occurred and I won the game, so no major battle I'm running another game but I may come back to it just to attack the Moltar and see if they actually could hold their own.
Certainly. The Moltar had 3 battleships and 7 cruisers. A titan and one more battleship were on the way. They had good tech from what I could tell. You had 2 battleships and 6 cruisers. Congratulations on your win. You may also consider going with the highest difficulty level, Emperor. You should find a greater challenge there. Also, adding the Sulak and the Draguul to the game should also provide a more challenging impossible run.
Here is a ship building suggestion: In general I find Shield Piercing is an all or nothing endeavor. Either the whole ship is going to penetrate shields, or I won't use the mod. This ship is still going to hit the shields with its plasma cannons, so the shield piercing isn't working to a good benefit. I actually find SP is very good on smaller ships for a few reasons: 1) Since they do less damage, the shield block and shield regen matters more. 2) Small ships that fight at close range are the ones that most commonly deal with multiple shield quadrants, just due to the dynamics of the battlefield. As such, they often have to chew through more shields than ships that stay back and blast from range. Also, if I am using SP...I want to place it heavily in my fleet. Again, SP doesn't do much if my first ship hits the armor, but my second ship hits the shields anyway. So while SP may not be a fleet wide commitment, I normally ensure my "kill squads" that work to kill a ship together or either all SP or no SP.
So one thing I'm noticing in the late game with the new defense technologies: The moltar ship has a 300% defense due to the Star Fortress and likely an Airdefense Nexus. I both like it and hate it at the same time. On the one hand, in theory it makes battle sensors practically mandatory in the late game. But it also may make missiles more palatable again if their survivability is addressed. It does make smaller ships more useful as defenders, as they are practically unhittable by normal ships. The destroyer in the screen took 10 rounds for me to kill with the entire fleet after I killed the Star Fortress as most of my ships where at 1-3% hit rates (I think the majority of my damage actually came from my flak cannons).
1.1.3 unstable 2 A small update to 1.1.3 unstable was released a couple of days ago on Steam's unstable Beta branch. This was version 1.1.3 unstable 2. The changes in this 1.1.3 unstable 2 update were: New 'Continue' button added to the main menu to allow resuming the last saved game. You begin at the point when the game was last saved or autosaved. The AI now more researches shields and armor technology a bit more aggressively, especially in the higher difficulty levels. The AI now researches technologies more efficiently. Sometimes the AI had unfinished technologies in the tech queue for too long. Auto-fire weapon modification moved from Phasor to Plasma Cannon. Spinal Mount weapon modification added to Plasma Cannon. The Research screen font size was increased. Technology names now a bit bigger for better readability. The leader level up and crew level up icons now show the up arrows in green, since it's a good thing (was red before). Small tweak done to the freighters number in the empire info panel, the value could be displayed slightly on top of the freighters' icon. Small tweak done to the population amount value presented in the colonies overview panel, the information could not fit in the designated area sometimes. Fixed a bug that was allowing the Starhammer advanced ship to be found in ruins too early. Fixed an issue in the Ship design left panel showing the ship composition at a glance where the Ship Attack and Ship Defense stats were not aligned. And, the Missile Evasion value is now displayed when the ship has the ECM Jammer installed and shows the correct value now. Fixed an issue in the New Game screen when selecting the galaxy size, the 'Medium' and 'Large' galaxy icons were not being rendered with the same quality level as the rest. Compatibility note: Saves from 1.1.3 unstable are compatible with this new version. However, a few changes require new games to be played to take effect, namely the weapon modification changes. I remind that the 1.1.3 update is not yet available for everyone. To play the '1.1.3 unstable 2' version you need to opt in for Steam's Beta branch. On the Steam client go to Games -> View Games Library -> Right-Click on Interstellar Space: Genesis -> Choose Betas tab -> Select the "unstable" Beta branch. The game shall start updating to 1.1.3 unstable 2. Please send us your feedback in our official forums, on the Steam forums, on our Discord server or if you prefer just send an email to contact@praxis-games.com with a save and the Player and Player-prev log files you can find in this folder: C:Users<your_username>AppDataLocalLowPraxis GamesISG Thanks a lot for the feedback everyone! Please keep it coming. Adam
