1.1.3 Update Released

Hello everyone!

Version 1.1.3 of Interstellar Space: Genesis is a free update available for everyone and is now out!

This is a huge update that takes the game's challenge to a whole new level in the higher difficulties. There's also new customization options available that allow you to choose a specific ship set, race affinity, a particular appearance and specific Titan special ability when creating a custom race!

There's a ton of AI enhancements, QoL improvements, UI tweaks, balance changes and bug fixes which should offer the smoothest and more engaging ISG experience to date. We hope you enjoy the result!

Compatibility note: Saves from the previous version are not compatible with this new version. Also, custom races designed with previous versions will not work with this version and may cause game corruption. Please delete all your current custom races (via 'New Game' screen or by deleting them in the folder C:Users<your_username>AppDataLocalLowPraxis GamesISGRaces). Alternatively, you can 'Edit' and 'Modify/Save' your current custom races and they should be ready to go.

If you want to finish your current game with the previous version (1.1.2) please go to the download page of Itch.io and you'll be able to download the package "interstellar-space-genesis-windows-previous.zip".

Thanks

Special thanks to everyone who has helped test this update and provided feedback.

Big thanks to everyone who has bought the game so far. We hope you are enjoying the ride. And be prepared, as there's much more to come!

Soundtrack new available!

The complete soundtrack to Interstellar Space: Genesis composed by Grant Kirkhope and Ryan McQuinn is now available for purchase on Steam! The soundtrack includes 26 tracks. Each track is available in high-quality MP3 format. Part of the proceeds go directly to the composers.

Have fun!
The Development Team
Praxis Games


VERSION 1.1.3

NEW

• Now possible to choose a different ship set, race affinity, appearance and titan ability when creating a custom race!
• The research screen now shows icons next to every tech representing the tech's type (achievement, ship component, ship special system, planetary improvement, empire project, wonder or planetary engineering project).
• New 'Continue' button added to the main menu to allow resuming the last saved game. You begin at the point when the game was last saved or autosaved.
• Two new defense technologies added: 'Advanced Evasion Algorithms' and 'Ultimate Evasion Algorithms' provide +50% Ship Defense and +100% SD, respectively. With these achievements, ships will be harder to hit.
• One new Targeting Algorithms tech added: 'Ultimate Targeting Algorithms', provides +175% Ship Attack, making it easier to hit ships in combat.
• New icon presented when a fleet is stationed on a system with only civilian ships in it: a 'cog' icon is presented; when there are military ships present it shows a 'shield'.
• 'Affinity' tooltip added when creating custom races and choosing a specific affinity explaining what personality traits a specific affinity has and what it provides; tooltip also added to the AI empire status panel (when inspecting the AI empire information in the diplomatic status screen).
• The colony leader's 'Warfare' primary skill now also provides +0.5 Crew experience per skill point per turn to all military ships currently in orbit, along with the existing +10% Ground combat strength per skill point in the colony.
• The ship leader's 'Command' primary skill now also provides 25% bonus experience to the leader from combat for each additional point when it reaches Command level 10 or more.
• The ship leader's 'Initiative' primary skill now also provides +1 combat speed for each additional initiative point to the leader's ship in the first combat turn.
• New 'Freighter fleet' scrap function added.
• New 'All PD Targets' game settings option added (tells if a ship equipping point defense weapons shall target all missiles passing by or only the ones targeting that ship). The default option is ON.
• Mining Treaties now offer +200 production distributed between all colonies per active mining treaty.
• The 'Improved Logistics' technology now offers a free outpost ship.
• New huge negative diplomatic modifier added when a player backstabbes another player (when a player declares war on an ally). Also new severe negative diplomatic modifier added when a player backstabbes an ally. This modifier is added to all players who are in contact with both and witness the backstabbing.

AI IMPROVEMENTS

• The AI now favors equipping different special systems in ships depending on the race's affinity/personality.
• The AI now equips special systems in ships more sensibly.
• The AI now researches better shields, armor, targeting algorithms and weapon technology even more aggressively, especially in the higher difficulty levels.
• The AI now tends to play more aggressively in tactical combat.
• The AI now researches technologies more efficiently. Sometimes the AI had unfinished technologies in the tech queue for too long.
• The AI now builds ships more sensibly trying to not go overboard with respect to the ship support available.
• The Draguul AI personality/affinity will now tend to play more offensively in combat.
• The Draguul AI affinity now likes their demands being accepted more; it also gets more offended when others break treaties than before.
• The Human AI affinity likes gifts a bit more now; also likes more when others accept their alliance requests and disapproves more when others refuse their diplomatic demands. Also a bit more keen in proposing treaties to others now; will also make more requests of allies than before, and certainly more than other affinities.
• The Kaek AI affinity likes when their demands and alliance requests are accepted a bit more now. They get more angry when someone razes their settlements and colonies now.
• The Moltar AI affinity likes warmongers even less now and likes gifts a bit more. Gets more upset when others make demands of them and when they break treaties or raze their settlements.
• The Nova AI affinity favors treaties even more now. They like when their diplomatic requests are accepted more; like warmongers even less and get more upset when others declare war on their friends even more. Also a bit more upset when others break an alliance and when someone razes their settlements.
• The Sulak AI affinity likes being given gits a bit more now; get much more upset when others make demands of them, but they forget that more easily than others.
• AI now equips Point Defense weapons (against missiles, fighters and bombers) more sensibly.
• AI now equips weapon modifications more sensibly, in general, giving priority to certain weapon modification combos that prove to be very effective in specific circumstances.
• The AI is now a more aggressive in the strategy layer, especially in the higher difficulty levels.
• The AI now gets a negative diplomatic modifier when the player makes demands of it when these are rejected. This is actually a fix since the AIs received this negative modifier from demands from other AIs, but not from the human player.

BALANCE

• The Mothership, the Starhammer and the Punisher ships discovered in ruins are now found a bit later (were being discovered a bit too soon).
• The miniaturization production cost reduction was revised to 90/80/70/60/50% for level 1 up to miniaturization level 5 (was 75/55/40/30/25% before). This means that ship components don't become as cheap now as they would before this change. Some equipment could become way too cheap with miniaturization.
• The 'Heavy Mount' weapon modification now costs 4 times more production than normal mounts. Previously, it was 2 times more. The 'Heavy Mount' was too cheap for the big tactical advantages it provides, especially the double range bonus and the decrease of the damage and accuracy penalties with range.
• The 'Auto-Fire' weapon modification now costs 3 times more production than normal mounts. Previously, it was 1.5 times more. Auto-Fire is a very powerful modification that was a bit too cheap.
• Auto-Fire weapon modification now requires +75% weapon space to install, was +50% before.
• Auto-Fire weapon modification now has an aggravated accuracy penalty for each subsequent shot. The first shot has a -20% Ship Attack penalty, the second shot has -40% while the third now has -60% Ship Attack.
• Beam Accelerators now a weapons level 4 tech, was level 3.
• Polaris Missile now a level 3 tech, was 4.
• Antimatter-Catalyzed Bombs tech moved from level 5 to level 6.
• Quantum Missile now at weapons tech level 5, was 6 before.
• Nightmare Missile now a level 7 tech, was level 8 before.
• All missiles now require 30 space where before nuclear missiles required 30, polaris 40, quantum 50 and nightmare 60.
• 'No Range Dissipation' now costs double the amount of production of a standard weapon. Previously, it only cost +25% more.
• The 'Continuous' weapon modification space requirement was reduced from +50% space than standard weapons to +25%.
• Phasors now cost 130 production per weapon installed. Previously, it was 120. Phasors are a very versatile weapon so the added cost is justified.
• The 'Armor Piercing' weapon modification production cost increased from +75% the standard weapon cost to +100%. Armor Piercing was also a bit on the cheap side.
• 'Shield Piercing' production cost increased from +75% to 3 times more (+200%). This is a very special and powerful weapon modification, that was too cheap before.
• Fusion Beams now allow the 'Armor Piercing' modification.
• The 'Doom Cannon' weapon now does 250 damage (was 80). The cooldown penalty was also removed (can now fire every turn).
• Spinal Mount weapon modification "No damage lost to range dissipation" effect removed. Was unbalancing the spinal mount modification in favor of beams over kinetics since the latter already enjoy from that effect.
• Quantum missiles now have 14 base hull points instead of 12. Nightmare missiles now have 20 HP instead of 16.
• Neutronium Armor Coating now provides a +7.5% bonus to armor per source of Neutronium in the empire. Was +5% per source before.
• Enhanced Shields now provides a +7.5% bonus to shields per source of Helium-3. Previously, it offered +10% per source.
• Propulsion -25% research penalty removed from Feudal government.
• The Serenity unique ability now provides +3 diplomatic modifier, was +4 before.
• The Emphatic Diplomats culture perk now provides +1 diplomatic modifier, was +2 before.
• Armor costs now scale the better the armor is. Titanium and Tungsten are a bit cheaper than before while the superior armors now cost more. This doesn't change the armor cost much when going with 'light' hull reinforcement but has a significant impact when going with 'medium' and 'heavy' hull reinforcement since those costs 3 and 6 times more than 'light' hull.
• The Interstellar Geology culture perk now provides +50% to the strategic resources amount instead of providing +1 source for all non-empty sources.
• Research treaty maximum potential now capped at 15% the partner with the lowest research output, was 25% before.
• The ship support' high level penalty threshold (slower to build ships and accuracy and defense penalties) now starts with -25 SSP (was -20 before).
• The ship support 'Ship Attack' and 'Ship Defense' penalties are now -10% and -20% respectively (were -15% and -25% before).

GAMEPLAY

• Support ships now have to be explicitly selected in order to be moved to a different system where before clicking on a fleet and sending it elsewhere would bring the support ships with it automatically.
• All espionage actions now take a minimum amount of 5 turns to set up. Certain spy assignments could take only a couple of turns to set up which would lead to excessive micromanagement.
• Auto-fire weapon modification moved from Phasor to Plasma Cannon.
• Spinal Mount weapon modification added to Plasma Cannon.
• Stun effect moved from Phasors to Neutron Beam, and the stun effect only works with the shields down now. The stun chance increased from 5% for each shot that hits to 7.5%.
• The 'No Range Dissipation' weapon modification was removed from Phasors; was added to Neutron Beam.
• Tractor Beam range increased from 25 grid spaces to 30.
• Ion Cannon now doesn't allow the Heavy Mount weapon modification (Ion Cannon was a bit overpowered with the HV mount).
• Leaders with the Xenophobic trait now only work for certain empires of specific race affinities. Before they only worked for a certain race type/appearance.
• Diplomacy music also linked to the race affinity now.

PERFORMANCE

• The overview panel rendering was optimized making the late game handling of the overview panel, and other panels significantly faster.
• Now faster to open and close the colony view screen.
• Late combat performance increased. Firing at the bigger ships could lag a bit in the late game.

UI / GRAPHICS

• Research screen revamped to show more space between the tech fields. Tech names are now displayed in lower case; tech icon types were added and a filter to highlight techs of one type.
• Base space and base cost weapon requirements information added to the tech tooltips as for an explanation on how component miniaturization works.
• The ship tooltip information is now presented in the ships' overview panel also when hovering on the ship name now (previously, only showed the tooltip when hovering on the ship's picture).
• The attitude tooltip information is now also presented in the Galactic Council when hovering on the two empire leaders running for Galactic Emperor.
• The race's ideal world background is now presented in the empire status screen.
• The miniaturization tooltip now describes the levels and the benefits in the ship design screen (on weapons, shields, and special systems).
• The ship design weapon modification and several other ship design tooltips are now displayed in lower case.
• The Auto-Fire weapon modification animation now plays a bit faster. Could take a while to fire all those 3 shots in a row.
• Race affinity/personality information added to the AI empire status screen, since it's now possible to select a different affinity for the custom races, different from the race appearance, the ship set and even the titan ability.
• Planetary improvements now shown from the cheapest to the more expensive to build in the colony view.
• The leader level up and crew level up icons now show the up arrows in green, since it's a good thing (was red before).
• Asteroid exploitations that require freighters now tell when freighters are available and when the freighter fleet requirements are met. Before, an exploitation requiring freighters could still say that freighters were needed for that particular exploitation even if it was already active and enough freighters were available.
• New sort/filters added to the asteroid belts' overview panel for production, trade, research and volatiles exploitations; allows seeing all exploitations of each type at a glance.
• New "vacant only" filer added to the strategic resources' overview panel, shows only sites that are not yet settled to help identify potential sites available for exploitation.
• A new tooltip in the fleets overview panel now shows the fleet composition when hovering the "?" in each fleet entry.
• Wormhole tooltip now provides full information on how wormholes are revealed including information on their stability, and not only when the system scanning level is basic or advanced.
• Note added to the difficulty tooltip clarifying that the AI will be more aggressive in the higher difficulty levels, starting on 'Hard'.
• The information on the ship's equipment load out in the ship selection screen (when hovering a ship design in the ship design screen) could sometimes be presented with some misalignment. The information is now better aligned.
• The 'Medium' and 'Large' galaxy icons displayed in the New Game screen are no consistent in both shape and sizes; previously, the large galaxy icon arms were too thin and with a small core.
• Explanation added to the 'Fighter Bays' and 'Bomber Bays' special systems in the ship design special system selection panel and to the technology tooltip on how many hit points fighters and bombers have.
• Sentence added to the 'Trade Treaty' and 'Research Treaty' tooltips to clarify the initial expenses: "The fees are reduced gradually during the first 10 turns of the deal, after which income (or RP in the case of the research treaty) starts to be generated.".
• The parenthesis included in the type of star text in the system view were removed.
• A few tweaks were done to the empire information displayed at the top. The text has a bit more contrast now and the panel with the buttons on the top right was cleaned a bit to make it look more crisp.
• The colonies' overview panel now shows more colonies at once in the Ultra-Wide resolutions.
• Small tweak done to the freighters number in the empire info panel, the value could be displayed slightly on top of the freighters' icon.
• Small tweak done to the population amount value presented in the colonies overview panel, the information could not fit in the designated area sometimes.
• Sometimes the remote exploration notification could lead one to believe new information was obtained when in fact nothing new was revealed. The sentence of the notification was reworded to clarify this.
• Note added to the 'Asteroid Mining' technology to clarify that an available freighter fleet is required in order to establish 'Production' or 'Volatiles' exploitations.
• More context was added to the 'An Offer You Can Refuse' event notification explaining why we got a technology for free from a choice made by an AI player on that event.
• More space added to the area where the playable races are displayed allowing for one more race to be displayed without needing to use the scroll bar.
• Space combat "Zoom & Shoot" animation now brings back the combat HUD a bit later, only after the "kill cam" finishes and the view is restored to normal, allowing to see the explosion without it being mostly obscured by the HUD popping up.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug when using the 'Tractor Beam' special system, it was being allowed on ships that were out of range.
• Fixed another bug involving the 'Tractor Beam' where it could not be used on other targets in the next turn after the first target was destroyed.
• Fixed yet another bug involving the 'Tractor Beam' (and 'Nano Swarm' special system) when the ship being targeted was destroyed, the tractor beam and nano swarm specials would remain active but with no rival in range.
• Fixed a bug when presenting the damage applied by a weapon with the Auto-Fire modification. More damage was being shown as being inflicted than the damage done. The actual damage was ok but the displayed damage was bugged.
• Fixed a bug when using the 'Clairvoyance' unique ability, the last two sectors to reveal could sometimes lead to a locked state where it would not be possible to proceed to the next turn.
• Fixed a bug that was allowing AI ships to be controlled by the player after they jumped near the player' ships using the 'Combat Jump Displacement' special system.
• Fixed a bug that was causing space monsters to freeze and not attack the player until the end of the combat in the rare case the player passed the ship from the front of the monster to its back.
• Fixed a bug that was causing the 'Ancient Artifacts' planet special to give 'Ultra' techs and not allowing them to be researched again.
• Fixed a rare bug when the AI attacked a planet defended by an orbital station, the combat would not take place and the AI could assault the planet bypassing the orbital station when fleets from other empires were also present in that system.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the AI to constantly send scout ships to try and explore ruins in a system that was guarded by a space monster.
• Fixed a rare bug where a negative production percentage could be presented in the colony view when the production was maxed out on one aspect.
• Fixed a bug in the 'Graft and Corruption' event where its negative effects could not be cancelled after the colony changed hands.
• Fixed an issue in the remote exploration screen where the automatic remote exploration toggle and text would overlap the zoom controls in the 21:9 ultra-wide aspect ratio resolutions.
• Fixed an issue that was allowing the "Number of Missiles" weapon modification to be shown in the tech tooltip for Torpedoes, when Torpedoes have unlimited ammo. Ammo information was also being incorrectly presented for torpedoes in the ship design screen.
• Fixed an issue in the Ship design left panel showing the ship composition at a glance where the Ship Attack and Ship Defense stats were not aligned. And, the Missile Evasion value is now displayed when the ship has the ECM Jammer installed and shows the correct value now.
• Fixed a bug where the minimum damage could sometimes be superior to the max damage of a weapon in ship design when the Beam Accelerators bonus was being applied.
• Fixed an issue where the 'Ship Attack' value could show too many decimal cases in the ship design UI and combat UI for some values.
• Typo fix: Weapons tooltip (all weapons types), last paragraph "superseeds" now "supersede".
• Typo fix: Leader notification when returning to duty from leave -- "prolongued" was misspelled (no "u").
• Typo fix: Under Planetary Deflector Shield last sentence: Meteor shower, shower was spelled with two W's.
• Typo fix: In the overview panel's strategic resources filters the tooltips titles displayed "Ammount", corrected to "Amount".
• Fixed an issue where the ship leader Chomm Slues'es nickname was too long to display, renamed to just "Lieutenant."
• Fixed an issue where the tourism bonus tooltip in accretion disks would mention "resort outpost" in a few passages which could lead to confusion if different outposts were available to build. It says only "outpost" now.
• Fixed an issue that was allowing a system to be clicked before the turn ended processing completely, which could lead to game corruption.
• Fixed an issue that was causing a few plants to appear as they were floating in the Terran biome.
• Fixed a bug that was causing the empire ranking graphs to appear as they were going off-screen. This was happening when loading a save from another game and then displaying the graphs. It only showed once in that turn and then cleared up. It is fixed now.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the empire ranking graphs to not show for all empires when loading another game.
• Fixed a glitch that was causing the max damage to only display up to the first 3 digits in the ship design screen.
• Fixed a bug when generating an automatic design for a ship, choosing a different class from the original one would still generate a design for the previous class.
• Fixed another bug when generating a design for a ship and leaving the ship design screen without saving would still save the design.
• Fixed a graphical glitch when displaying the Nova character 'Friendly' animation in diplomacy.
• Fixed an issue where the ETA for a tech in the research screen would show "1 turns" instead of "1 turn" when only a turn was left for the breakthrough.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the supply range to not update immediately in the galaxy map after researching a logistics tech using the 'Collective Transcendence' unique ability. Was only updating the supply range in the next turn.
• Fixed a glitch in the Galactic Council, at around 300 population the numbers would start to break a line.
• Fixed an issue in the remote exploration screen that was causing the remote exploration panel to be hardly visible on huge maps as the 'scan' icons would be rendered on top of the panel.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the "Periodic Auto-Gen" state to not persist. The checkbox would revert to OFF when exiting and loading a game.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the empire effects from 'Neutronic Rejuvenation' to not show the correct effect. Was only reporting the effect for 1 source of the Neutronium strategic resource even when more were available. The morale modifier effects from the Neutronic Rejuvenation were also not being shown correctly.
• Fixed an issue in space combat when marking a ship as 'Done' it would still display the movement grid as if movement was still allowed.
• Fixed a bug that was causing damage to be considered at the front of a ship when the shot was made at the back in the rare case a rival ship would move past a player's ship.
• Fixed an issue where the Warp Interdictor icon was still being displayed beneath the system label for 1 turn after the present colony holding the Warp Interdictor was conquered or razed.
• Fixed a damage rounding issue in the ship design screen and in the combat tooltips when the 'Beam Accelerators' bonus from Helium-3 was being used.
• Fixed an issue that was preventing the overall weapons space and cost from displaying in the Ship Design screen with the 2560x1440 resolution.
• Fixed a rounding error in the ship design screen for the total available space. Was rounding the value up which didn't allow a 30 space component to fit when 30 available space was displayed as required.
• Fixed an issue in the diplomacy dialog for the Nova empire, where the empire names were switched in a particular dialog instance.
• Fixed an issue in the 'Heavy Mount' weapon modification tooltip. It said "Large platform mounted versions of a weapon that inflicts three times the normal amount of damage". The correct value is "one and a half times".
• Fixed an issue where production overflow was being taken into account when producing 'Trade Goods' when displaying the total production going towards trade goods even though the calculations were correct.
• Fixed an issue in the colonies' overview panel, the eco level could be cut and not be displayed in the 16:10 aspect ratio monitors and other resolutions.
• Fixed an issue with the events' description scroll bar; it was not resetting its position from one event to the next causing the text to not always show from the top.
• Fixed an issue when hiring leaders, the opinion bubble wasn't centered exactly as it should be all the time. It fell below the line.
• Fixed an issue in the Space Amoeba Progenitor and Offspring. An attack from those space monsters could cause a "phasor" stun effect but the weapon was not a phasor. The stun effect was renamed to the weapon name in question. The weapon tooltip describes the stun effect.
• Fixed a bug where some weapons could still show as operational even with zero internal system points in the ship in specific situations.
• Fixed an issue when attacking an empire you had not officially met yet, the game would warn war would be declared, which is not the case for empires where contact has not be made yet. Warning reworded appropriately.
• Fixed a bug in the combat AI that was causing ships attacking a battle station to stop attacking all of a sudden to only resume combat a few turns later. The AI fleet was preparing to board the battle station but did not approach it enough to be able to do so.
• Fixed a bug in the kinetics overload action where only the first kinetic weapon slot would get an extra shot; fixed also the Auto-Fire kinetics, which were not benefiting from the kinetics overload action. Now, AF kinetics fire 4 shots in a row at a single target, instead of the nominal 3 shots without the overload.
• Fixed a glitch on the combat ship selection sound, where the music could sometimes cut out when selecting ships consecutively.