Really looking forward to the new features and improvements! For those of us on Humble who can't access the beta, do you have any kind of guesstimate as to how long you're expecting 1.2 to be in beta?
We're still not sure how much time we'll be in Beta with 1.2. It will depend on the amount of issues that are found in the meantime. If you can use Steam, you could always use your free Steam key that goes along with your Humble purchase and participate in the Beta that way. If you need help finding your Steam key let me know.
So in my second very late game playthrough (5 civs on a large map), I am seeing a large amount of game slowdown. I didn't not notice that much slowdown in my first game (same settings) so I thought its worth bringing up. Its everything from the time to press a button, to watching the animations in a combat.
Thanks for reporting this and for sending the save. The game state in that save had an issue where much more data was being stored in the save and in memory than really required. More than the triple amount of data. This was caused by starting a new game after finishing a previous one without quitting the game first. A few special events happened that stored too much unnecessary data. This could have been generating the slowdown you report, especially the turn processing time which is now much faster in that game. The issue is resolved and a fix will be available in the next update. In the meantime, please find attached a fixed save at turn 223. In case you wish to fix a more recent save in that game let me know and I can fix it for you until the new update arrives.
So here is a summary of my thoughts on the update so far (includes some of my scattered threads above, though it best to consolidate). This also includes some 1.14 feedback towards the end as I have put in more games. 1) Rally Points: Once I was shown how they work, creating and adjusting them is very quick and easy. I can make or remove rally points very quickly, and I commonly use the military one and the assault one especially (the assault one is a godsend for late game). I will say that the rally point mechanics are a bit spread out. For example I just recently noticed that there is rally point information when I click on a system (played several games before I noticed that). So that's more of an instructional issue in terms of how to educate players on these new mechanics, but the mechanic itself works great. 2) The station rotation was a good change that ultimately adds just a bit of resiliency but doesn't fundamentally change the scope of combat. While the stations hold up a bit better, against an assault that "should" take out a station... I'm still taking them out. Aka I'm not suddenly finding entire fleets being held off by a station and a skeleton force. I threw out this idea a while ago, but I still like the idea that the Air Force Nexus and Star Base might give initiative bonuses. I still really hate the fact that in the late game initiative is too good to pass up, so I always attack when I can, and I don't get to use my defensive structures nearly as much as you might think on paper. 3) The Auto Resolve feature still needs work. I am routinely finding that when I use the auto-resolver, even on fights that I have a 98% chance of winning on, I am losing several ships. When I reload and just run them with the auto-runner....my ships are barely scratched. This has happened several times over multiple games....to the point now where unless its literally like an armada vs a single destroyer....I will not use the auto-runner....I'm too scared to lose ships I should not be losing. 4) The new animation speed ups are great. In combination with the feature to remove the "zoom in and fire", my late combats are going much faster. One thing I really appreciate is the ability to manually focus the fight on taking out the capital ships, and then allowing the auto-runner to handle the small fry. and its really really really REALLY useful when you get into those stalemate scenarios where due to neutronium armor or very high defenses you manage like a few points of armor damage every few rounds, its nice to have the auto-runner just blitz through that. 5) I do use the tech reorder buttons on occasion. Its not a "wow" feature for me, but its nice and does the job. 6) Really liking the group notification function, I use it a lot. My one suggestion here, I would not group the "planet has nothing in its queue and needs your selection" notification (aka the building with a ? on it). I always need to ungroup those and go through them, so I would rather they were not grouped to begin with. 7) The feature "New option to go from the colony screen to the system view screen". I have no idea where this is at or how to use it. 8) The Rotate Left and Right buttons are AWESOME! My one feedback, sometimes we stupid humans might forget which is our left and right in 360 degree combat....would love if there was a clockwise or counterclockwise arrow that appear when I hovered over them to show me which way the ship will turn. I will eat my embarrassment and say I have rotated my ships the wrong direction more times than I would like to admit. 9) On the Bomber/Fighter bays for Stations....I'm going to try and look at this more closely but I do feel there have been times when my stations did not get bombers they were supposed to have, but I won't say that with confidence until I look closer. 10) My biggest general note on the 1.13 changes is that mid and late game missiles are a lot more respectable now. I have used battleships packed with missiles that just annihilate fleets not properly PD prepared, and missiles are now the definite "high damage with high risk" option. I don't think the armor costs changes have had much impact...I would be nice to see a discount on the x2 structure (medium).... as neither the AI or I ever use it. I either go cheap, or I go all the way on structure. I think the balance on phasors has shifted to neutron beams, I am struggling to find a use for phasors unless I'm going SP (which maybe reason enough). Neutron Beam stun is still very good as its easy to package a ship with lots of them late game. I am not yet saying its broken, its just on my watch list. The removal of HV on Ion Cannons was a good change. I still use ion cannons with my frigates/destroyers on occasion....as it lets them be useful without having to worry about chewing through a ton of structure and armor. But its definitely reduced the overall power of the weapon late game, which was a good change. I haven't done the math yet, but it seems to me that the Flak Cannon is the best PD you will ever get. I don't think the later options ever get to the same Dmg / Size ratio (especially when you factor in the extra +50% accuracy). I note that because late AIs are moving past Flak Cannons as their PD source in the late game...and I think that is actually to their detriment.
The matter streamer is a terrible weapon. It has an abysmal Damage / Size ratio, and that's even before you count in the 2 turn cooldown. The positron torpedo is better but still not great. 1:1 D/S isn't great, and its Damage / Cost is the same as a 1 miniaturization nightmare torpedo. Now the fact that it can't be shot down is nice, but that 2 turn cooldown is a heavy price. I would at least consider using this weapon once in a blue moon...especially if I got it early enough that my missile tech hadn't matured yet. The matter streamer can die in a fire and no one would care.
I tried a run through where I played very aggressive on Neutron Beams and I do think they are OP at the moment. When you stack on a fair amount of neutron beams the stun chance becomes pretty high. The "doesn't stun until the shields drop" is not a massive detriment, neutron beams have a good enough D / S ratio that I can pull down shields and still get the stun. One change you could add that would provide a little more "combined arms". Make it where you cannot stun if the shields are up when the attack is made. The issue right now is that in the same attack, I can drain the shields, and still apply the stun chance. If there was a 0% stun chance when the attack started and shields are up...that would be something. Or simply lower the stun chance back down. Neutron beams are simply more spammable than phasors were, so lowering the stun chance back down would seem prudent.
We will reduce the stun chance, as I agree it could be too much now. That was already a change in the pipeline for the next update.
Playing on Unstable v2....I've had about 10 failed starts so far on impossible. While I am getting more prod, it also seems that the AI is as well, so the difficulty in that very initial stage is just brutal. I can hold off 1 AI, but inevitably I got declared on by at least 2, and I just don't have any ships to hold territory. That said, it is called impossible for a reason Maybe it just means an adjustment on difficulty is needed, which if it stays competitive is not a bad thing.
Sounds about right for Impossible to me As you said, the AI starts with more prod but so do you. Looking at the changes, the AI should not be getting a significant additional boost now because their bonuses on Impossible simply dwarf what was added with 1.2 unstable 2. The AI already gets an Economic Capital in Impossible at the start, so the reduced cost is not applicable in that scenario. Also, the +20 extra flat production in the homeworld may be significant for the player in the very early game, but it's nothing compared to the production efficiency they enjoy at that difficulty level. What I think you may be experiencing is the AIs knocking at your door a bit earlier than before, this because of the increased range of the logistics techs now, which is quite a significant change, with many ramifications including making it easier to discover the other races sooner. And, with more logistical range, the more aggressive races will not hesitate at giving you a visit, this in Impossible, of course. So, 10 failed attempts at Impossible seem about right to me, even for an experienced player such as yourself. This is the ultimate challenge after all. If you think you're getting overwhelmed too often, then perhaps you should consider lowering the number of opponents in your games, increase the distance between stars (more breathing room for your empire before being visited), or consider going with a lower difficulty level. You can even consider reducing the AI's intrinsic bonus of Impossible a little for a custom experience that still provides the AI aggressiveness of the Impossible difficulty but with a bit less production for them. I mean, for the sake of example, I never beat Deity in Civ4, but I could beat Emperor and enjoy it a lot. I was not really interested in Deity because it required a specific type of play. However, I know several people could beat deity then, so it depends on your tastes and in finding what difficulty setting is right for you. That said, let's keep assessing to see what the full impact of the changes was. Thanks!
One QoL that would be nice to add. You have a nice feature that when I finish a terraform, you provide a notification informing the player that their pressure domes may not be needed anymore. It would be nice to have the same notification for cloning vats when you hit max population.
An odd behavior I've noticed with the AI. Somtimes it will demand tribute when we are already at war. "Why no AI, I will not give you more money when you are attacking me"
The third update to 1.2 unstable is now available! This is version 1.2 unstable 3 and it adds the following. Note: By the way, the previous version (1.2 unstable 2) was a major update to 1.2 unstable and added the following. Version 1.2 unstable 3 New asteroid exploitations icons added. New research field icons in the research screen replace the old versions. Look much better now! The hull reinforcement icons in the ship design screen were replaced with more polished versions. The culture 'Interstellar Geology' bonus now displays "+50% to strategic resources extracted", to make it more clear the bonus is applied to the mined sources only. Further optimizations done to all the terrains resulting in a smoother experience in the colony screen, which is now less demanding on graphical cards. The pop up warning raised when cancelling a ship refit project with progress is now displayed in yellow. Fixed a bug in the 'Atlas Choked' event, the -50 cost in one of the options was not made unavailable when there were not enough funds. Fixed a bug in the combat ship rotation function. It was only rotating 10º per maneuverability level. installed in the ship. This was corrected to 15º per level, as described in the tooltip. This results in more turning angle when rotating ships. As a result, rotating ships feels much better now. Compatibility note: Save games appear to be compatible with the previous version (1.2 unstable 2), but it's recommended to play new games with this new version to benefit from all the changes of this new update and to avoid any save compatibility issues. I remind that the 1.2 update is not yet available for everyone. To play the '1.2 unstable 3' 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 1.2 unstable 3. Please keep sending us your feedback to 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\ Thanks a lot for the feedback everyone! Please keep it coming.
A small new update to 1.2 unstable is now up. These are the changes: Version 1.2 unstable 4 Fixed a freeze when viewing a Swamp colony using the 'Maximum' graphics quality setting with very high resolutions (e.g. 4K 3840 × 2160, 3440 x 1440 and others). Notification icons now a bit smaller. Allows for more notifications to be displayed at once. Typo fixed in hint text. "avoid scraping your starting frigates" now reads "avoid scrapping your starting frigates" Fixed an issue in the Atmospheric and Terrestrial Terraforming tech tooltips, where the note on tech cost was not formatted correctly. Fixed an issue in the 'Empire Overview' Terraforming and Eco-Engineering bonuses, which could display numbers with many decimals. The values are now rounded. Fixed an issue in the system view when using the new grey color for the empire color, it could be confused with vacant planets and other objects. Game version text at the bottom right of the main menu now directs to the latest updates. Compatibility note: Save games are compatible with the previous version (1.2 unstable 3). I remind that the 1.2 update is not yet available for everyone. To play the '1.2 unstable 4' 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 1.2 unstable 4. Please keep sending us your feedback to our official forums[interstellarspacegame.com], on the Steam forums, on our Discord server[discordapp.com] or if you prefer just email 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\ Thanks a lot for your feedback everyone! Please keep it coming.
