Hello everyone! Version 1.2 of Interstellar Space: Genesis is a huge free! update and is now available for public testing on Steam's unstable Beta branch! Please note that 1.2 unstable is an optional beta update. So, if you want to help test it alongside us you have to manually opt in to get access. In your Steam library, right click on Interstellar Space: Genesis -> Properties -> Betas tab -> Select the "unstable - Unstable Beta Branch for Testing" branch. The game will update and off you go! 1.2 adds a lot of new features, important QoL improvements, balance changes and bug fixes, many of which in response to player feedback. The highlights include a new tactical auto-combat feature, faster tactical combat animation options, improved auto-resolve calculations, the option to hide future technologies when going with random tech trees, rally points, and much more! See below in the full release note for the details. We will be monitoring your reports for major bugs and fixing them. Please report them 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>\AppData\LocalLow\Praxis Games\ISG Compatibility note: Saves from previous versions are not compatible with 1.2 unstable. Thanks! The Dev Team Praxis Games UPDATES - Version 1.2 unstable 2 was a major update to 1.2 unstable and added the following. - Version 1.2 unstable 3 added the following. Version 1.2 unstable NEW New Auto-Combat feature! This new combat mode allows the AI the fight with both the player's and the enemy's fleets. An optional 'super fast' mode allows the auto-combat battle to unfold very fast. New 'Fast Combat Animations' speed allows for faster combat sessions. You can toggle between standard and fast speed for animations, and the game keeps that setting until changed again. New 'Hide Future Tech' game option! When going with random tech trees, the player can opt to show all the technologies as of now or to hide all future technologies, which are revealed as the player researches a tech in the previous field. Added a 'Reset queue' option to the Research screen. Allows clearing all techs from the queue. Added a 'Tech re-order' function to the Research screen. Allows re-prioritizing techs in the queue. New Rally Points feature! Allows setting up automated routes for new ships to congregate at a designated star system. New game option to group some of the most frequent and less critical game notifications. Options are: 'Show All', 'Group' or 'Don't Show'. Grouped notifications will present a single notification which can be expanded into its individual notifications, if wished. Now possible to load and save game via mouse double-click. New option to go from the colony screen to the system view screen. Combat bonuses for attacking and defending marines now displayed in space combat boarding operations. New 'Rotate Right / Left' arrow buttons added as an alternative way to using the mouse to rotate a ship in battle. AI IMPROVEMENTS The AI now equips more 'Fighter Bays' and 'Bomber Bays' in their more advanced Orbital Stations (e.g. Battle stations and Star fortresses). Actually, 'Fighter Bays' were not being installed by the AI in Star fortresses due to a bug. The AI players now ask for more or fewer credits from their strategic resources deals depending on their attitude towards the other players and also depending on the game stage (deals more expensive in the late-game). Fixed a bug when the AI attacked lonely orbital stations (no guarding fleets) it would always attack the orbital station even if their objective was to take another settlement in that system, leading to small raids against formidable orbital stations. BALANCE Defending marines now benefit from a defensive bonus, making a bit harder to board and capture ships now. Defending marines know the ship and can defend it better! Unique powerful technology obtained from the 'Battle Graveyard' event is now obtained a bit later. This super tech could be offered a bit too soon in the game. Space miniaturization effect slightly reduced in the higher levels. The equipment size reduction is now 100-80-65-50-40-33% for no miniaturization to the maximum miniaturization level 5, where before it was 100-80-65-50-35-25%. This will allow installing slightly less low-tech weapons as before, making high-tech weapons even more meaningful. Ion Cannon max damaged now 10, was 12. 'Habitat Control' formula changed to apply diminishing returns for the amount of planetary engineering production available, causing less of an effect on population growth, especially on colonies with more population, with a slight increase in young colonies. GAMEPLAY Fleet combat auto-resolve improvements: - now factors several key special systems, weapons immunity, much improved missiles and PD weapons calculations and others. Orbital stations now rotate 90 degrees each turn. This will make them a bit tougher. Space monsters not boardable now. It was an unofficial feature till now and not envisaged in the design, and while it could be fun to capture those buggers it was causing many issues as it was not intended to be supported. That said, we have big plans for space monsters going forward. The game now asks if the player wants to use the 'Resilient Settlers' unique ability and colonize planets for which the colonization tech is already available. Before, the ability was automatically used in all planets, since it offered a morale boost, irrespective if the colonization tech was allowed or not. When the player defies the election ruling, all the other AIs now make peace with each other. Before, they only declared war on the defying player, but their current wars were kept going on. Captured orbital stations are now destroyed at the end of the combat. Before, after orbital stations were captured they would still be there in the next turn and had to be fought again. PERFORMANCE Significant performance boost done to the late game, especially noticeable when playing bigger maps with lots of colonies. Opening and closing the overview panel is much faster, colonizing new worlds and many other functions like closing and opening windows resulting in a much smoother late game experience. Optimizations done to the Swamp and Acid terrains to improve the performance when showing colonies in those terrains. UI / GRAPHICS The galaxy map background was brought in closer to the star field and is a bit denser now, allowing for a smoother visualization of the stars that appear to blend better with the background now. Galaxy map planetary and supernova remnant nebulae are a bit dimmer now, allowing them to blend better with the background. The galaxy map star field "corners" were smoothed out a bit to attenuate the "square" feeling, giving it more of a rounder shape. Replaced the Draguul soldier with the proper character and animation (it was displaying an older character from a previous iteration). Tribute deals information is now broken down per empire in the empire treasury tooltip. Displays how much money is paid or obtained, the empires involved and the tribute percentage in question. Added the recommended number of players per map size, viewable in the 'Galaxy Size' tooltip. New 'Number of Players' tooltip in the 'New Game Setup' screen mentions custom races can be created to play games with more than six players. Scrollbars added to the 'Diplomatic Summary' section of the 'Empire Overview' screen to allow listing all treaties with players in the designated area. The colony overview panel now shows a new icon for colonies that happen to have a built orbital station. The Human emperor character is now displayed with better quality, especially in the 'Empire Overview' panel. Also, slight graphical improvements were done to all the characters across the board. All bullet point dashes " - " in tooltips were replaced with bullet points " • ". The Planet construction notification now shows a selection object around the system where the project was finished, highlighting where the planet construction project can take place. Players are now informed when an ongoing 'Planet Construction' project is no longer possible in that system. Combat 'actions' (examples: scan, rotate) were sometimes called 'operations' in the combat UI. This was harmonized and now they are called 'actions' everywhere. Combat 'actions' tooltips were revised to explain the mechanisms better (example: the 'rotate' function usage is now explained better, among others). Combat round number added to the space combat UI next to the "End turn" button. Free ships obtained from events and ruins searching now explain that the SSP (Ship Support Points maintenance) still applies. Ground combat strength value in system view is now rounded. Was showing long decimal value. Outpost labels in the galaxy map are shown a bit brighter to make them easier to see, especially for the darker colors. Technology icons for tech type and associated strategic resources are now also displayed in technologies in the 'Steal Tech' screen when conducting an espionage action. Also, some minor fixes and tweaks to the 'Steal Tech' UI. The 'Economic Capital' production tax bonus is now displayed in the production tooltip as extra money "from Economic Capital" instead of "from Buildings", to make it clear the bonus comes from that empire improvement. 'Available Constructions' renamed to "Construction Projects" in the colony view screen. The color of the colony 'Command Center' building is now associated with the empire color and not the race's default color, as before. BUG FIXES Fixed a bug in the galaxy map generation algorithm that was causing the balanced properties of a generated map to be overridden with the wrong number of ideal and tolerable worlds expected for the difficulty setting of choice. This was sometimes causing too few ideal planets to be generated leading to very bad starts near the player, and some AI players, especially in maps with shorter distances between systems and with more players. Now, the correct and expected number of ideal and tolerable worlds is being generated. Fixed a bug in the galaxy map generation algorithm that was causing the players' homeworlds to sometimes be generated too close of each other even if there was a lot of "empty" space left in the map. This was more of an issue in the larger maps, starting at 'Large' size. Fixed a bug on how population growth was being calculated from the 'Habitat Control' eco-engineering project. Total production towards planetary engineering was still being taken into account and used to full effect towards 'Habitat Control' in the same turn a terraforming or another eco-engineering project was finished, leading to more population growth being generated in that turn than it should. Fixed another issue that was causing 'Habitat Control' to not take into account any spilled (overflow) planetary engineering production that could be available from a previously finished eco-engineering or terraforming project. Fixed a bug in the necessary production to develop a planet to infrastructure level 13. The value was set to 11.5 million production required but the correct value is 1.5 million. Fixed a bug in the leader desires to build a wonder, these were not being unfulfilled when the wonder was built by another empire. Fixed a bug that was not allowing the AI to install 'Fighter Bays' on Star fortresses. Fixed a bug in the 'Ship Design' screen that was allowing the 'Fire Arc' weapon modification to be manipulated when the 'Spinal Mount' weapon modification was installed in that weapon slot. With spinal mount, a weapon has a fixed 90 degrees front firing arc. Fixed another bug involving the 'Spinal Mount' modification where the accuracy value in combat could show less than 100% sometimes even though a weapon with the spinal mount modification will always hit. Fixed an issue that was causing the shields animation to always play despite the fact shields were down or the ship was disabled. Now, the shield effect only plays when shields take damage. Fixed a bug that was disabling the weapons overload action after clicking on an enemy ship even if no weapons could reach or were selected to fire against the target. Fixed a glitch in the 'Research screen' where sometimes the strategic resource icons could show a bit outside the tech buttons' designated areas for them. Fixed an issue that was causing the Kaek ships to display a faulty engine trail in combat. The effect was ok in the ship design screen, but not in combat. Fixed a bug when starting a game in 'Gigantic', going to the main menu and starting a game in a 'Small' map would not display the map (map was not centered). Fixed a few dialog text errors and typos. Fixed an issue that was causing an AI request for another AI to make peace with the human player to cause instant peace without informing the player about it. A notification is now sent to the Human player explaining why the peace treaty happened when it is requested by another AI player. Fixed a bug that was allowing the 'Continue' button in the 'Main Menu' screen to become active and pressable after removing the last save from the saves folder, causing the game to freeze when launching. Fixed an issue in the 'Boarding panel' in the combat UI where the number of killed marines could show the previous boarding numbers at the beginning of the next boarding round. Fixed a bug that was causing ships to gain more crew experience than they should in battle encounters involving the Human player and an AI fleet. Fights between AI fleets were not generating this bogus extra XP to be gained. Fixed a UI display bug in the colonies' overview panel where in rare cases a colony could display the gravity value in yellow even when the gravity was ideal to the race in that colony. Fixed an issue that was not allowing the 'R' key to be used to activate / deactivate the 'Rotate' ship action in battle. Fixed a bug when offspring space monsters attacked a system only defended by orbital stations, the creatures would not prompt a fight and just disappeared. Now they attack an orbital station in that system. Fixed an issue in the space combat boarding screen where the combat bonuses for the attacker and defender marines were showing the incorrect number and were not updating properly. Fixed a bug in the boarding capturing calculation which was producing an incorrect value for the chance of an attacking marine killing a defending marine. Fixed an issue in the boarding screen which was showing the incorrect message upon a failed raid. Now shows "Raid attempt failed" where before it would display "Capture attempt failed". Fixed yet another bug on the boarding mechanic that was not allowing combat to proceed when a monster offspring was captured and there were still other monster offspring monsters of that type left in the battlefield. Fixed an issue in the Ambassador leaving diplomatic message. The incorrect generic sentences were being used in some occasions, where now the correct new messages are being displayed depending on the race in question. Fixed a glitch with how some galactic wonder buildings were displayed in the Terran terrain, which could show the wonders as if they were slightly "on air". Fixed a glitch involving the 'Space Elevator' planetary improvement, which could appear in front of the Colony screen 'Close Button' in some terrains and monitor resolutions, not allowing the colony screen to be closed via that button.
That's a good question. Here's how you do it. You create and delete them using the menu options in the lower left area of the galaxy view. Once you click the create button, it will ask you to click on the source system (which would be producing ships). You then click on the destination system. From then on, any ship produced at the source will automatically head to the destination. You can create multiple rally points and delete them as needed. You can also select to either have it apply to military, civilian, assault, or all ships.
Also having trouble finding the animation speed up option. I am liking the station rotation a lot, makes them much more competitive in the late game. The rotate left/right arrows in the combat screen are very useful, I've always hate having to manually rotate my ships. One tactical issue I see with the AI. Sometimes one of my ships gets hit by a big missile barrage which drops my shields. However, the AI doesn't capitalize, they continue to hit other ships. Now the ships they are hitting would normally be a good target, but they aren't taking advantage of the moment of weakness where another ship has been greatly wounded and they may score a key kill by changing targets.
Here Karas: Noted. The AI may change targets depending on the current combat situation. So, it may make sense to attack one target at one time but then change tactics and focus fire on another target if they perceive it to be a bigger threat at that time. The AI does have a life on their own in that respect, and their behavior may not reflect what a Human would do at all times. That said, finishing off important rival assets is an important objective, so it could be worth having a look at it. Thanks.
I would love if fighters/bombers got a bit quicker in the late game. I find that it simply takes them too long to get to targets unless you combat jump in and release them (in which case their speed doesn't matter much). At this point I am using fast missiles and heavy mount weapons as my primaries, so taking 2 rounds for a bomber to get to the first target is simply too long.
Another thought (which is both this version but also extends a bit to the last patch). With the Shield Piercing changes, its hard to equip even a single SP Railgun or Phasor onto a Frigate without sacrificing a number of other things (such as engines, which are key to survivability for frigates against much stronger ships). This is a concern because I find that SP is what helps keep frigates relevant. Even though their damage is low, SP allows them to ignore the shield reduction (which is significant when you only fire 1-2 weapons), and it lets frigates maneuver around ships without worrying about hitting a full fresh shield wall. Maybe this is simply only an option for the very very late game (Weapon IX level)...but I prefer to bring those kind of frigates in sooner in the game.
I've also noticed that the combat evaluator is overestimating the strength of Battle stations in many fights. While the new rotation does help, when you have a couple of a battleships or a titan that station is going down unless it has good support, yet the evaluator consistently shows the station winning that fight 80-90% of the time. Here's a recent example, the odds are lower but still in the stations favor, where I feel 100% confident I will win this fight. And to note, I did win the fight handily. Didn't use any special tactics, I even had really lacking PD defenses so a lot of missile damage got through. But at the end of the day, 3 battleships are just too tanky compared to a single station.
Here is another example of the combat projector being way off. This battlecruiser doesn't even have the firepower to damage my Titan, let alone destroy it. This should be a 100% chance on my side for the victory.
One possible bug. I lost my homeworld and then freed it. However, my people revolted and went back to the Nova Vida! I wasn't expecting my homeworld to revolt against me, but I could believe that. However, the message given is not good news!
Fighters are much faster than regular missiles. Bombers are only slightly faster than regular missiles. Missiles equipped with the FAST modification will be faster than both. All of these get faster with better drive technology. However, it's not only about the speed. Fighters and bombers will keep doing damage when they reach the target, while missiles have to be fired in rounds, so they must travel each time. Also, fighters and bombers have unlimited ammo (they get back to the carrier for rearming and refueling) while missile ammo is finite. So, there are many factors to consider here. Changing bombers speed needs to be thought about very carefully, or it could have ripple effects that could make them overpowered. Shield Piercing is a very powerful modification. Sacrifices need to be made, otherwise those SP frigates could get out of hand fast. So, if it was impossible to equip SP in frigates, then that would be an issue. However, if there are choices to be made, then it may be fine. Extra miniaturization could also help offset that and allow FRs to equip SP weapons more comfortably. Also, it's worth to keep an eye on extra maneuverability, which FRs get much cheaper than the bigger classes. For these examples, it would be very helpful to have access to the save games that originate these battles as many things about the auto-resolve are case-specific, and it's very hard to reproduce scenarios that are approximate to those, as it depends on the loadouts in question. So, if you run into other scenarios where you think the auto-resolve could receive improvement please try sending a save so I could have a look. Save files can be found here: C:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\LocalLow\Praxis Games\ISG\ Well, I guess the assimilation process by the Nova Vida that invaded your homeworld went really well to see your people revolt to you when you went back to "free" them. I guess they thought they were doing just fine with their new Nova Vida masters More seriously, it could be the case that the rebels had access to much better equipment than you (i.e. the Nova Vida rebels could be benefiting from better ground combat gear). And that influences the outcome of battle in a possible rebellion. Also, having assaults patrolling the skies or a garrison built quickly will also help squash a possible rebellion. Thanks a lot for your feedback!
Having played more late game battles on the beta I will agree with your notes. Now it should be said that at this point in the game I always use fast on missiles, the speed and especially the defense are too good to ignore (so to me missiles are faster than fighter/bomber). But even saying that, I find late game battles so far that the fighters/bombers are very useful. I will start to note save games for my future feedback. The last bit I have before I start doing that. I played in an epic battle, both sides bristling with titans, battleships, and swarms of lesser ships, and I was against a star fortress as well. However, as scary as it looked, all said and done, I lost 1 cruiser and a few destroyer. The AI lost 1) 4 Titans 2) 6 Battleships 3) Countless destroyers The main reason I am seeing that is the following: 1) The AI is not making its titans defensive enough. I don't think they are using repair bots with their designs (that should be mandatory for titan ships....that ability is way too good at giving titans extra staying power, I never even consider a titan without it). 2) A strong lack of PD support. I have battleships bristling with nightmare missiles, that completely destroy an enemy battleship in one volley, and can do tremendous damage to a titan. I always have carrier swarms going to work on the titans....and the enemy fleet has little PD fire to deal with them. Meanwhile, the enemy is throwing wave after wave of missiles at me, which my PD screens are mostly handling (a good amount is still getting through but my shields are able to tank). Also, just once again want to applaud the faster animation and auto-run features. They are a godsend in late battles, the animation is useful the whole time, and then I switch to autoresolve when its cleanup time and I'm just dealing with the "riff raff". A note on Neutron Beams, my jury is still out on them. On the one hand, I have a titan with 21 neutron beams currently that stuns any enemy titan the majority of the time....which seems very strong. On the other, in comparison to the other weapons I have the damage is lacking, so it is a tradeoff. I do see more stuns in general than when it was on the Phasor. UPDATE: So the AI seems to be adapting its Titans in the late late late game (I'm at Ultra Weapons IV late game). I am seeing more titans with PD and armor repair. It looks like the AI is preferring Disruptor Beams over Flak Cannons for its PD. Looking at the stats, D Beams are close on damage but when you also add in the FC extra accuracy bonus I feel its no contest. I don't know why you would use anything else for PD once you have flak cannons. That said, the AI isn't always consistent with its titan defense. Some titans get armor repair, some don't....which I think is a mistake.
I am loving the new rally points, especially for assault ships. One difficulty is on the color scheme. It would be nice to have different colors for different types of rally points...otherwise I can't tell which ones are military vs assault only, etc.
Custom rally points, the ones set for specific type of ships that are not the default you see in the rally points panel, are displayed in darker purple, while the default ones are shown in brighter magenta. It's not a color for every type of ship I'm afraid, but at least it tells you the dark purple ones are not sending the default type of ship. Then, you can check in the system view which specific types are set there. Since we have several types of ships, I believe it would be way too many colors to consider. That said, thanks for your feedback as maybe not the color but perhaps something else could be done to distinguish the rally lines.
Here is a saved game from the game I spoke of earlier. Just ripped through another group of 5 titans like paper, I think one of them had repair, and none had the PD to stand against each one battleship throwing 18 nightmare missiles at them.
Quality of Life Request: It would be nice to put all of the "active use" special abilities in the front of the ability list (see screenshot below). I am actually having to scroll to use one of my abilities, and it would be nice to have those always at the left, as those are the ones I care about looking at 99% of the time.
Let me also note that Neutronium Armor is incredibly powerful in the late game. It is not hard to collect 5 sources of it on large+ maps, and it makes beam weapon useless in the late game. Even if the enemy doesn't have a big neutronium source now, why would I ever risk they may acquire some and therefore nullify my beam ships? (and even if they only get 2 lets say, that's a 40% reduction in damage for beams...making them garbage vs any other weapon type). I personally wish the beam reduction was taken out entirely, its just too good. I am all for a much bigger armor increase to compensate. Though if you did want to keep it in, you could do something like: "-20% damage to beams (requires 2+ sources of neutronium)." That way it doesn't scale at all. Even 20% reduction is a big deal.
The auto finish feature (where the battle is decided before its run) often provides much more casualties than I would take if I run the battle using the auto-runner. I may lose like 1 ship, where the auto finisher has me losing 5. Its gotten so bad in the late game that I never risk using the auto finisher, even if I have a very high chance of winning (90%+)
