1.0.8 Patch Released

Important for Itch players: There is a new zip file, the interstellar-space-genesis-windows-app.zip that is compatible with the Itch app. Just install and play directly from the app.

Hello everyone!

We've just released the 1.0.8 update. This update addresses early game pacing, which was a common complaint of some of our customers. We think it's much better now. Remember that if you want to play a faster or slower game you can always tweak the production and research speeds for yourself and your opponents in the New Game screen.
The update also adds new balance changes, UI text and tooltip revisions, AI improvements, bug fixes and more.

Compatibility note: The saves from 1.0.7 may be compatible with this new version to some degree, but we strongly recommend that you start new games to benefit from the update improvements and fixes fully. If you find any issues please let us know. You can check the bug reporting guidelines here.

If you want to finish your current game with the previous version (1.0.7) you can opt for the Beta branch on Steam and unlock the "unstable" version with password "interstellarsg".

What's Next After 1.0.8?

As we have previously announced, we've been working on new content for the game and also doing a major overhaul of the graphics. If nothing major comes up, the big free graphics update will be next! For more details on what's in store for the graphics update check this update from early December.

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

Thanks!
The Dev Team
Praxis Games


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----- VERSION 1.0.8 --------
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# AI
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• AI now equips better point defense weapons. Previously, the AI was too keen on using only lasers, now it uses the most efficient weapon available for point defense.
• AI now equips the ECM Jammer special system more, especially if it knows their rivals have missiles, especially with the MIRV modification.
• AI now gives more priority to researching the point defense Flak Cannon weapon when it can and perceives it's needed.

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# BALANCE
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• Battleships obtained from searching ancient ruins now appear a bit later in the game (e.g. The Punisher battleship).
• The Punisher battleship obtained from ruins now has Class VI Shields instead of class VIII.
• Combat auto-resolve now produces less salvage. Was producing a bit too much.
• Missiles cost to produce increased by 25% (missiles are more powerful now after the missiles fix - see in the bug fixes section below), so this serves to re-balance missiles.
• Missiles' MIRV modification now adds +200% cost instead of previous +100%. This also reflects the missiles re-balancing after the fix.
• Flak Cannon buffed. It now provides +75% accuracy against missiles (was +50% before). It's a level 5 weapons tech by default now (was level 6 before) and does 12 damage (was 10 previously).
• Missiles damage reduced a little for all types of missiles to accommodate with the missiles bug fix where only 1 instance of a missile was being accounted for. Nuclear Missiles now do 6 damage, was 8. Polaris now 12 was 14; Quantum was 20 now it's 18 and Nightmare Missiles damage didn't change. Stayed at 30 damage.
• Planetary Defense Shields and Planetary Deflector Shields bomb deflection chance increased from 20 to 30% and 35 to 40%, respectively.
• Colony Command Center now provides +30 flat production instead of previous 20 (to make the very early game a bit faster).
• Added +10 flat production on the Capital World (also to make the very early game a bit faster).
• Infrastructure costs for level 2 to 4 infrastructure increased slightly to accommodate for the Command Center production increase and new flat production bonus on the Capital World.
• Positive POP pressure (when there's fewer POPs than half the planet's population capacity) values changed when there's 1 POP, 2 or 3 in a colony. In result, population growth is now faster in colonies with 1, 2 or 3 POPs.

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# GAMEPLAY
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• Space Amoeba and Crystal Entity space monsters now have 'Slime Blocker' and 'Ice Shards' point defense (PD) weapons against missiles.
• Space Dragon monster now has a 'Fire Bolt' point defense type weapon.
• Point Defense weapons and ECM Jammer special system added to some of the ships found in ruins.
• Missile defense against point defense weapons changed to reflect the missile engine speed. Before both the engine speed and the missile's mothership defense were being used for the missile defense calculations. This will make missiles slightly easier to target with PD weapons (this was also done to accommodate the missiles damage fix).
• Missile overload in combat now doubles the damage that reaches the ship's structure. Before, it doubled the damage in a general sense. Now only the structure damage is doubled.
• Bombers now move a bit faster.

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# PERFORMANCE
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• AI performance increased in the late game. The ship refit AI processing was taking too long. That is now optimized.

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# UI / GRAPHICS
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• Added references to the new automated options to the tutorial (colony automation, automated remote exploration and automatic ship design features).
• Added references to the production and research speed configuration to the New Game screen tutorial message.
• The Alliance tooltip in the diplomacy and empire overview screens now informs that allies can colonize worlds inside each other's territory.
• Production and research speed tooltips now say "Adjust production speed of this empire" and "Adjust research speed of this empire", so it's clear that only that player's research and production speeds are altered.
• When hiring leaders, the "Reject" button was renamed to "Maybe later..." and it now shows a tooltip explaining the leader will be available for hiring in the leaders panel for the next 20 turns.
• Changed rotate message colors in space combat. 'Can't rotate' is displayed in red; 1 action rotation is displayed in green and 2 actions rotation in yellow.
• Added tooltip to the declaration of war option in the diplomacy dialog explaining why declaring war is not possible at the moment (due to a Peace Treaty currently ongoing, or because the state of war already exists for the empires in question).
• Ion Cannon beam weapon description revised to explain that it can damage shields while they're up, and that when shields are down it can damage and even turn shields, engines, weapons and special systems inoperable.
• Automated Repair Bots special system also got its description revised to detail how much structure points, armor and internal systems points are actually restored per turn.
• EMP Defenses special system tooltip revised from "+50% Defense against ion weapon attacks" to "+50% Ship Defense against ion weapon attacks". This clarifies that the 50 value is added to the current Ship Defense value of the ship for accuracy calculation purposes.

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# BUGS
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• Fixed a major bug that was causing missiles in a slot to only inflict damage as if only 1 missile was available, irrespective of how many would actually be installed in a weapon slot.
• Fixed a glitch in the space combat screen where sometimes the "Ship Attack" value was not being displayed in the enemy panel.
• Fixed an issue in space combat where the missiles HP and Chance to Hit information was missing in the multiple objects sub-panel when choosing which missile to target.
• Fixed an issue in the ship design where the cost values of components were being rounded down, when in fact they needed to be rounded up.
• Fixed a bug in the total space and cost calculations in the ship design screen. Now the totals for all weapons are displayed where before only 1 weapon for each slot was being considered for the calculations.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes was allowing a ship design to be generated for the player (using automatic designs generation) with slightly negative space value left.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes duplicated special systems could be installed in battle stations and star fortresses.
• Fixed a bug that was causing ships with no shields to lose crew experience every time they fought a battle and didn't flee.
• Fixed an issue where the Tractor beam would only appear in the round you used it (the graphical effect would disappear in the next turn).
• Fixed a bug where the Nano Swarm activation could sometimes lose the connection with the origin ship and the combat could become locked because the player wasn't allowed to cancel the activation (this was also fixed for the Kaek Titan's Mind Control ability and the Tractor Beam).
• Fixed a bug in the Tractor Beam when a target under tractor beam fled, the next tractor beam effect applied on a different target would appear in a different place than expected (not in the new target).
• Fixed an issue that was not allowing the Tractor Beam effect on combat speed to update the target speed immediately on the enemy panel.
• Fixed an issue where a Tractor Beam was not being switched off when a target was captured.
• Fixed a bug in the Tractor Beam speed reduction applied to the target ship. Combat speed was actually increasing in the target ship instead of decreasing, as expected.
• Fixed an issue that was allowing ruins to be searched during the combat encounter dialog leading the game corruption state afterwards.
• Fixed a bug that was allowing all planets to be colonized just by clicking on them after building a colony base.
• Fixed a bug in the colony automation that was causing turn-processing corruption when putting colonies to 'Balanced' focus and there were terraforming projects that could be made but no terraforming technologies were available.
• Fixed a glitch that was causing a thick blue line to appear in the galaxy map when going with a 2x distance factor in a large map.
• Fixed an issue with the Runaway Greenhouse planet special test. An "ends" word was missing.
• Fixed an issue with bad text wrapping in the weapons tooltips in space combat.
• Fixed an issue in the number of missiles tooltip in the ship design. The tooltip now stays open when changing the number of missiles.
• Fixed a typo in the galactic council when we get the diplomatic victory. "responsability" is now "responsibility".
• Fixed an issue that was causing multiple sound effects to be heard when selecting or deselecting all weapons in the weapons console in space combat.
• Fixed a typo in the Legion of Shadows event. 'Emire' now reads 'Empire'.
• Fixed an issue that was causing an empty tooltip to display for 'Normal range' in the area where the 'Long Range' or 'PD range" are displayed.
• Fixed an issue in the race appearance/affinity tooltip. It now informs that the Titan unique ability is also inherited from the selected race affinity when creating a new custom race.