1.0.7 Patch Released

Hello everyone!

The 1.0.7 major update is here! And with it comes a host of new features, improvements, balance changes and several bug fixes.

This is a huge one. The highlights are the new automation options: - automated remote exploration, colony automation and automatic ship designs features. There's also new galaxy configuration settings (including a star distance option), improved empire borders, AI improvements, the much requested Colony Base feature!, new leader skills, balance changes and much, much more.

The update is now available on Steam, Humble Bundle and Itch.io.

Compatibility note: The saves from 1.0.6 are not compatible with this new version, so you must start new games to experience the new update. As usual, if you find any issues please let us know. Check here for the bug reporting guidelines.

If you want to finish your current game with the previous version (1.0.6) you can opt for the Beta branch on Steam and unlock the "unstable" version with password "interstellarsg".

Thank you for buying the game, for playing, and for continuing to provide us with your feedback! We truly appreciate our fans.

Have fun!
The Dev Team
Praxis Games


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---- VERSION 1.0.7 ----
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# NEW
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• Added automated remote exploration feature (including an exploration pattern: balanced sector exploration, shallow or deep)!
• New automated ship designs feature! Allows generating new ship designs for all the design slots on the fly. Can also generate designs for selected design slots and set the designs to automatically regenerate on a periodic basis.
• New galaxy configuration settings including system distance, system spread (even or varied distribution), number of planets, resource abundance, planet specials amount and number of space monsters.
• Added AI colony governors (automated colony management with many different types of focus options available).
• Added Colony Bases! You can now colonize worlds in the same systems you have colonies. Just build a Colony Base in one of those colonies and it will be much cheaper than building a Colony Ship.
• Added new colony leader skill: Trailblazer. Gives a morale boost to colonies with less than 4 POPs in the system the leader is assigned to. Also provides a big boost to the construction of colony bases in the system the leader is assigned. Sierra Thol’os gained the Trailblazer skill. Kxuta Edirir and Sarla-Skak as well.
• Empire borders improved to be more clearly defined.
• Added "end-level" techs in each research branch (techs that can be researched again and again for further benefits in that field).
• 5 new ship leader secondary skills that offer bonuses to the ship the leader is assigned to: - Helmsman (more Ship Defense); Sharpshooter (more Ship Attack - accuracy); Tactician (more combat speed); Weaponry (more weapon damage); Ordnance (more missile weapon ammo).
• 3 new Planet specials: - Ancient Shipyard (provides extra SSP and colony built in that planet starts with expert Ship Craftsmen and Enhanced Ship Support infrastructure); Time Dilation (increases production efficiency and the generation of credits, culture and research in a colony build in a planet with that anomaly); and Ancient Artifacts (gives 2 free techs to first who colonizes the planet and research bonuses at both colony and empire levels.
• Instructor leader skill upgraded to also give extra XP to the ship's crew where the leader is assigned.
• Engineer skill upgraded to also reduce the amount of Ship Support Points required to maintain the ship where the leader is assigned (-3/6/9 SSP from assigned ship).

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# AI
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• The AI is now slightly more aggressive in the Hard difficulty setting (AIs set at "Powerful").
• AI now gives a bit more priority to engines research (too little priority was being given before). This should help make the AI a bit more engaging and challenging in both defensive and offensive operations.
• AI now flees more sensibly when it has very few numbers in the battlefield (previously, the AI could keep fighting against too strong opposition when only 1 AI ship was left).
• AI was too keen in killing Ozkar, the pirate leader in the Scourge of the Stars event. Now they consider hiring him a bit more.

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# BALANCE
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• Tech trading deals now more balanced. Previously, we could see the AI offer a 4000RP worth tech for a 250RP one. Now the deals are more reasonable.
• Special systems rebalanced with new miniaturization and space requirement values. Previously, most of the special systems took too few space, especially in the bigger ship classes.
• Colony events triggering now a bit less frequent the more colonies the player establishes (was creating too many colony events late game when many colonies were founded).
• Interstellar Geology space culture perk now only increases the strategic resources sources on sites which already had a source to begin with (no more free source on sites which had no sources before).
• Credits (BC) per POP race modifier values in race customization revised. -0.5 BC per POP from Tax now takes -2 picks instead of previous -3. +0.5 BC per POP modifier is now +1 BC per POP and previous +1 BC per POP from Tax now provides +2 BC for the same 6 picks.
• Late game techs now cost slightly less than before (level 7 techs and above). Still, they cost more than in version 1.0.5 but a bit less than in 1.0.6. With the introduction of the end-level techs, we could now relax the late game tech costs.
• Strategic resources sources abundance was tweaked. Game was generating too many dark matter sources, a bit too much Helium-3 as well. Note: The strategic resource abundance can now be configured at game setup time.
• Leader desire to build a specific building now grants a bonus of +2 production per pop in that colony as long as the leader is assigned to it (the bonus was +1 before). This was updated to reflect the leader production bonus nerfing that was done in the past.
• Planet specials were too few, and too many Powerful Creatures specials were being generated. There's a bit more planet specials now and more diversified.
• Sometimes there could be too many space monsters nearby homeworlds. That was tweaked to not allow too many.
• The Imperial Space Academy now grants +4 XP per turn to all ships instead of previous +2.
• The chance of obtaining loot from killing Space Monsters was reduced. Also, the chance of obtaining a tech from space monsters that is too powerful for the given game phase was also reduced.
• The Militia event SSP bonus increased a bit from +3 SSP to 4.

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# GAMEPLAY
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• Some leaders gained new skills: - Lord Matjosh gained Helmsman skill; Gaelan Ruiz now has the Tactician skill; Seth has Sharpshooter; Archibald Pike gained the Ordnance skill; Simone Blackwood gained Sharpshooter; Veruca Shrike now has Weaponry, Tactician and Helsman (lost Weapons Specialist); Ozkarr Threlbad gained Ordnance and Weaponry; and Rak-kax now has the Weaponry and Tactician skills.
• Shields Class I was recharging too much each turn. The shields recharge rate is now rounded down, so Class I shields now recharges 1 shield point per turn instead of previous 2 (was making it hard to hit early frigates with class I shields).
• Special systems Bomb Rack, Fighter Bays and Bomber Bays don't see their space reduced with more advanced weapons research (don't miniaturize).
• Nano Swarm special system effects now scale with the ship class (e.g. a Titan now leeches 10 times more structure points, armor and shield points from targets than a Frigate with a Nano Swarm).
• The Instructor leader secondary skill now applies only to Ship Leaders (applied to both Ship and Colony leaders before). The effects didn't make much sense for colony leaders.
• Borders were too small. Spheres of influence reach increased a bit as it was a bit too hard to make contact and borders were also less meaningful now.

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# PERFORMANCE
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• Max frames-per-second (Max FPS in Game Settings) new default is 60 FPS, was 120 before (can be increased in Game Settings).

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# UI / GRAPHICS
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• Remote exploration sector grid now keeps memory of the last position and zoom levels where the remote exploration was left the last time it was used.
• Changed the "not-colonizable" icon to not be so easily confused with the "colonizable" icon for color blinded (green/red) reasons.
• The entire weapon selection area is now clickable in the ship design weapon selection screen (only the name of the weapon was selectable before)
• New Colony sorting by colony automation status in colony overview panel, allows listing colonies with active automation first in the overview panel.
• Tweaked the diplomacy message when exchanging technologies so the text could fit better in the designated area.
• Added scroll bars to the "Steal Tech" screen tech lists.
• Changed the ship names in the fleet panel to not be all caps (now preserves the design name case) and this helps fit the name better in the fleet panel.

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# BUGS
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• Fixed a bug where an enemy attack on a system only defended by a Star Fortress would not trigger a combat alert dialog when the AI that attacked was not at war with the player.
• Fixed an issue where the Energy Overload tooltip was not formatted correctly.
• Fixed an issue where the accuracy tooltip for missiles in the Ship Design screen still listed a +100% Ship Attack bonus when the current value is +75%.
• Fixed a bug with the ECM Jammer where the missile countering was not being applied correctly.. Also, the countering of torpedoes was too high.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing the Electronic Counter-Counter Measure missile weapon modification from working as intended. It is now working as specified.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the full descriptions of some special systems to not be seen entirely (e.g. Nano Swarm).
• Fixed an issue where the Nano Swarm special system was requiring the ship to be damaged before it could be used on that ship. Now the Nano Swarm can be used on a target at any time.
• Fixed an issue that was showing the wrong miniaturization level. Max level of 4 was being displayed, but the true maximum miniaturization level is 5.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes leader desires ended with a sentence from the leader saying "Do you accept?" when no immediate effect desires were being proposed. Now the leader says something in the lines of "I trust you will help me in achieving this goal.". This is applicable to the "Build Construction", "Colonize Planet", "Command Ship" and "Request Defense Fleet" desires.
• Fixed a bug when rushing a construction when the Obsessed Builders unique ability was active. The tooltip was showing switched values for production and cost to rush. This was corrected.
• Fixed a rare bug in the game generation process that could lead to an error when processing the first couple of turns.
• Fixed a rare bug where an error would be obtained in turn processing after razing an outpost from a rival when this was to become active in the next turn.
• Fixed a bug that was allowing construction rush to be performed even when that should not be possible (cooldown was not being respected although the icon was not "active").
• Fixed a bug that was not allowing the Demolisher unique ship found in ruins to launch its Bombers.
• Fixed an issue that was allowing the Golden Riddle event to fire more than once in each game session.
• Fixed a bug that was assigning incorrect production values to a colony when the maximum infrastructure capacity had been reached.
• Fixed a bug that was allowing the difficulty dropdown value to change for the selected player race when one clicked again in that race in the new game screen (the player race was selected, then if we clicked it again, the difficulty settings would reset).
• Fixed a bug that could cause Fighters, Bombers and the Combat Jump Displacement special system usage to become stuck and combat could not proceed in certain situations. Example: When selecting the Fighter Bays special for usage but then clicking somewhere else could reset the special's state and then the Fighters would not launch and the combat could become stuck.
• Fixed a bug that was not allowing acquired ships from rivals (from gift, capture) to update their drives to the best in their new empire, causing all the other ships in the same fleet to downgrade their drives in particular cases.
• Fixed an issue that was allowing the last tech to be discovered/acquired to remain purple in the tech tree in the next turn.
• Fixed a bug in the "An offer you can refuse" galactic event that was allowing the event to fire when it shouldn't do so.
• Fixed an issue in the tech exchange algorithm that was causing incorrect tech costs to be shown in the tech exchange dialog in the Diplomacy screen.
• Fixed an issue that was preventing new drives obtained from getting new engine tech with the Collective Transcendence to be installed immediately in all stationed fleets.