Hello everyone! We may have been a bit silent for the past few months, but rest assured, it was for good reason This dev diary's topic is about the new and free! 1.5 major update; the improvements and what it brings new to the table. Let's explore some of the major changes of 1.5 Beta, and later on you can check out the details of the update and try it for yourself and offer your feedback to the Devs! New Galaxy Shapes This was a highly popular feature request by the community, and it finally makes it in for 1.5. On top of the squarish shape the game offered, we now also have Elliptical, Ring and Spiral-shaped galaxies! It's nice and pleasing to the eye to see different galaxy shapes, but even more interesting are the new gameplay dynamics that should emerge from the different galaxy map configurations. More interesting terrain with clusters and whole sectors will now be formed, much further apart from each other. This is usually the case with Ring galaxies (big hole in the middle) or Spiral galaxies (loose arms and further distances between stars). Steam Cloud Saves Yep, it's now possible to save your game on one of your devices and continue on a different one. Long overdue feature, that was also a popular request. Well, it's in now. Enjoy switching from PCs and continue your epic adventure through the stars! Automated (Auto-assigned) Infrastructure This one comes to the rescue of some of that heavy micro that could happen on late-game, especially on very large game sessions, where it was not uncommon to have to choose from half a dozen or more colony infrastructure specializations on a given turn. With this new feature, you'll be able to auto-assign infrastructure specializations for your colonies in one go and forget about it. This will be particularly useful in late-game for newly founded colonies, or ones acquired through invasion, especially in the larger galaxies. The way it works is that you'll be able to set an automatic upgrade profile for each colony (e.g. develop planetary engineering first and then ship building, etc). This way, every time the colony upgrades its infrastructure it will level it up according to the profile you've set. Ship Idle Alerts We have received many requests for implementing some sort of "ship idle" notification system that could warn the player of ships sitting around without orders, which could be left hanging somewhere and remain "idle" for many turns, especially civilian ships. An example, a survey ship arrives on a system and is not immediately sent on a new mission; it could be forgotten in that system for some turns. An outpost ship or a colony ship arrive at their destination and no settlements could be established at that time. The same for support ships and even assault ships. To help keep track of this, a new "ship idle" notification will now be presented every time a civilian ship arrives at a system and there is no obvious action possible or set for it. The idle alerts will only be displayed once per ship and per turn they arrive at a system and become idle. Improved AI Last of the major new improvements, but not the least, it's always a good thing to have to increase engagement and excitement: improved AI, particularly on the way the AI designs their ships and uses them in combat. And, more efficient leader management by the AI. The AI now designs their ships with three distinct roles in mind: close-range attacker, long-range attacker, and a general defender or multi-purpose warship. Each role will tend to equip different and specialized equipment, from weapons, and respective weapon modifications, special systems which will lead to new tactics. These new roles result in (we hope) much improved performance in combat. Examples: Ships with missiles or strike craft may stay behind for a while, while close-attacker heavy armor ships may go for the kill with their armor and shield piercing weapons. Certain AI race affinities will prefer some roles to others. The AI will also make smarter choices with respect to improved maneuverability opportunities (resulting in more speed, accuracy and evasion capabilities), and will be more sensible regarding the miniaturization level of the weapons it equips (e.g. a state-of-the-art weapon may not be the best choice, a highly miniaturized weapon may be better). Also, the AI does a better handling of their leaders now. It will bring them more for key battles (especially invasions in the higher difficulties), while trying to improve their survival rate. All of this should help make for more immersive and exciting combat. It does seem to be the case, but let us know what you think. I Want To Try It and Provide Feedback! Excellent! We're looking forward to it! As of posting of this dev diary, the 1.5 Beta update should be live on Steam. Please note that the 1.5 Beta is an optional beta update. 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. The game will update and you'll be able to start playing with the new additions and improvements. For GOG, in GOG Galaxy choose the ISG game card, then Options -> Manage Installation -> Configure -> Beta channels -> Select 'Add private channel' -> Insert password: betatesting and then select the "unstable" beta channel, which will be available from the channel's dropdown. The game will update and you'll be able to start playing with the new additions and improvements. To return to the version of the game currently in production you just need to revert to 'Disabled' beta channel on GOG or 'None' in the betas tab on Steam. Version 1.5 Beta - Full Release Note Spoiler: Show Details NEW New Galaxy Shapes to be configured at game start: Elliptical, Ring and Spiral-shaped galaxies! Steam Cloud Saves: Save your game on one PC and continue on a different one later. Automated Infrastructure: Auto-assign infrastructure specializations for your colonies in one go and forget about it. Particularly useful with micromanagement in late-game for very big maps. New ship idle alerts: A new "ship idle" notification will be presented every time a civilian ship arrives at a system, and there's no obvious action set for it yet; the ship is "idle" (e.g. a survey ship arrived on a system and awaits new orders, or a colony ship arrived, a colony can't be built and the ship is now idle. The same ideia for the other civilian ships). AI IMPROVEMENTS The AI now designs their ships with three distinct roles in mind: close-range attacker, long-range attacker, and a general defender or multi-purpose warship, all of which will behave differently in combat. Each role will tend to equip different and specialized equipment, from weapons, weapon modifications, hull reinforcement, maneuverability and special systems which will lead to new tactics. The AI will also make smarter choices with respect to improved maneuverability opportunities, and will be more sensible regarding the miniaturization level of the weapons it equips (e.g. A state-of-the-art weapon may not be the best choice). The AI does a better job at handling their leaders now. It will bring them more for key battles (especially invasions in the higher difficulties), while trying to improve their survival rate. BALANCE The accuracy "to-hit" formula for ships was revised to set a limit of 5% to hit minimum, irrespective of the range and the accuracy and evasion values. This was done to avoid having 0% or very low chance hit shots. Free espionage level ups for leaders are now assigned more sensibly, to avoid wasting skill slots with spy skills on leaders who would probably not be a good candidate to be a spy in the first place. Colony leaders may see their existing spy skills improve but do not usually gain new ones on these free level-ups. There's also a bias to favor adding spy skills to ship leaders, but it will depend on what skills leaders already possess. Credits obtained from scrapping a ship have changed from a factor of 8 production cost to a return of 1 BC to 12 production cost to 1 BC. Scrapping was too good, and on par with Trade Goods. Now, it should be more balanced. Battle odds of 0% chance of winning are not presented now. It is rounded to a minimum of 1%. Battle odds are presented when the player has the Ultrawave Scanner. UI / GRAPHICS Holding the 'CTRL' key while left-clicking with the mouse on most notifications will center the map on the object in question (e.g. ship, system). The manual will be updated accordingly with this new hotkey in the official version of the update. The AI will now build ships with alternative designs. Before, they always built their ships with the default model for a given ship class type. The game now shows at a glance where a leader's ship is stationed, if it is travelling, or under refit, in the leaders' management panel, and also when levelling up leaders for better grasping of where leaders are currently stationed. The background starfield (the small "dot" stars in the background) are now slightly colored. The missile number icon in the ship design screen now has better contrast. It was a bit hard to grasp the ammo number before. The Wormhole tooltip now clarifies that both ends of a wormhole are considered inside supply range, so long one of them is. When this is the case, a fleet can travel to any end of the wormhole. The warning message that you're about to declare war on an empire is now displayed in yellow, for more impact and alertness on this important action. When a tech is researched, or obtained through other means, the 'Research' screen now displays the research field as "...in the field of Propulsion", for example, and not "in the Propulsion field!". The 'Direct Hit' achievement description was revised to clarify that a one-shot kill is not a requirement for unlocking the achievement, and that you need to get through shields, armor, or both. BUG FIXES Base-Game Fixed a bug when an ongoing sector remote exploration got revealed by ruins search, the current remote exploration would get corrupted in that sector. This is now fixed. Fixed a rare bug where the UI would bring up the player's own ships and buildings for sabotage, and not the AI's. You don't want to sabotage your own ships and buildings! This occurred when both the AI and the player had colonies in the same system and the AI had a saboteur assigned to the player's colony in that same system. The player's saboteur would then pick up the wrong colony to sabotage. Fixed a bug that could cause the 'Galaxy Map' screen (the one showing the map upon a battle encounter) to malfunction and not allow that screen to be closed if the player clicked on a fleet by accident while that window was open. This is now resolved. Fixed a bug in space combat when fighting against large numbers of AI ships (more than 50), could cause some enemy ships to not be targetable and lead to further glitches where sometimes shots could be seen originating from enemy ships not participating in the combat. This is now fixed. Fixed a bug that would cause the "You've won" message to be displayed over and over every turn after the player achieved a Conquest Victory and decided to hit "Just one more turn..." and continue playing. Fixed a rare bug that could lead to less building slots to be available than should be allowed by the colony's infrastructure. This happened when an AI had a finished building or ship just before it was invaded. This is now resolved. Fixed a rounding glitch in the empire early-breakthrough value on the Empire Overview screen. It could show a negative 0.00001 when it should just list 0%. Fixed a glitch that would cause the Wormhole tooltip to not work / be presented on systems with Basic scan level. Fixed a bug that could award the 'Direct Hit' achievement when a player's own ship or battle station would blow up from critical hit while it had full shields or armor. Fixed a glitch in the exhausts of all but the two largest engines on the alternate Nova cruiser, which were detached from the engines and offset to one side. Fixed a rare bug where a saboteur could be wrongly recalled from a sabotage job at a colony before it had a chance to complete the sabotage assignment. Fixed a glitch that could sometimes allow a ship to keep rotating freely in combat after the rotation command had been given using the 'arrow icons' on the 'rotate' button, which could be confusing for the player. Now, the rotation operation should be much clearer and easier to use. Evolving Empires Fixed a bug that was allowing Android Leaders to be bribed/stolen when androids are not supposed to be influenceable by Psy-Ops missions. Fixed a bug in the 'Capital Defense Force' (CDF) of the Kaek evolution affinity Hub and Spoke, which could cause strange behavior when one of the CDF ships was captured, which would cause other ships of the same ship class type to become untargetable when captured or simply vanish after the battle. Compatibility note: Saves from previous versions are not compatible with 1.5 Beta. UPDATES - Version 1.5 Beta 2 added the following. We will be monitoring your reports for bugs in the next few weeks and fixing them. Please report them in our Steam forums, official forums, on our Discord server, or if you prefer just send an email to contact@praxis-games.com (or contact form here) 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 for reading, and I hope you enjoy the new 1.5 Beta update! Let us know if you find any issues. The Dev Team Praxis Games
Version 1.5 Beta 2 went up today on Steam and GOG's unstable branches. The changes were the following. Thanks to all who have been playing and providing feedback. Please, keep it coming!
1.5 Beta 3 is now on Steam and GOG's unstable branches. Saves from previous 1.5 Beta versions are fully compatible. These were the changes. Thanks!
