Interstellar Space: Genesis free update 1.2 and Natural Law expansion released!

Hello everyone,

we have two big news today!

Free update to version 1.2

Interstellar Space: Genesis's free 1.2 update is now live for everyone! The update has been on the unstable branch for a while to make sure it would be ready for prime-time in the best shape possible. Testing went very well and we're confident we're in a very good shape. Thanks to everyone who played the unstable build and provided feedback!

Version 1.2 adds lot of new features, important QoL improvements, balance changes and bug fixes, many of which in response to player feedback. The highlights include a free new alternative fleet set for the Humans, new tactical auto-combat feature, faster tactical combat animation options, improved auto-resolve calculations, the option to hide future technologies when going with random tech trees, rally points, and much more!

You can find the full change log for this update at the end of this post.

Natural Law expansion released

Interstellar Space: Genesis' new expansion Natural Law is now available!

See the full description on the Natural Law Itchio store page. And, here's the trailer:

Check the Interstellar Space: Genesis - Natural Law Itchio store page for all the details.

The expansion includes 2 new races, each fully equipped with new fleet sets and unique new capabilities, which are also usable by custom races. It also includes 9 new fully animated ruler options, 4 new music tracks (added for free to the Soundtrack DLC), and 4 new leaders!

Compatibility and finishing an ongoing game

Saves from previous versions are not compatible with 1.2.

If you want to finish your current game with the previous version (1.1.4) go to the Steam client -> Games -> View Games Library -> Right-Click on Interstellar Space: Genesis -> Choose Betas tab -> Select the "old_version" branch.

Thanks

We want to thank everyone who has helped test this update. Big thanks to everyone who has bought the game so far. A big thank you also to our artists Darío Martín Dominguez (3D), Camilo Abelayras (2D), Igor Puškarić (3D) and Ryan McQuinn (Music) for producing the beautiful new art and music for the Natural Law expansion. Thank you.

We hope you like this first expansion and the free 1.2 update. We'd love to have your feedback on the game and see it shared with others. Please let us and others know how you feel by leaving a review if you get a chance.

Have fun!
The Development Team
Praxis Games

VERSION 1.2 (free update change list)

NEW

• New Human alternative fleet set! Based on the original Human fleet, which was replaced on the 1.1 update. Now, this fleet comes back, much improved by our artists and at same level of polish of the other fleets and is another option to use in custom races.
  
• New Auto-Combat feature! This new combat mode allows the AI the fight with both the player's and the enemy's fleets. An optional 'super fast' mode allows the auto-combat battle to unfold very fast.
  
• New 'Fast Combat Animations' speed allows for faster combat sessions. You can toggle between standard and fast speed for animations, and the game keeps that setting until changed again.
  
• New 'Hide Future Tech' game option! When going with random tech trees, the player can opt to show all the technologies as of now or to hide all future technologies, which are revealed as the player researches a tech in the previous field.
  
• Added a 'Reset queue' option to the Research screen. Allows clearing all techs from the queue.
  
• Added a 'Tech re-order' function to the Research screen. Allows re-prioritizing techs in the queue.
  
• New Rally Points feature! Allows setting up automated routes for new ships to congregate at a designated star system.
  
• Added new AI dialog for all races when accepting and rejecting peace treaties.
  
• New game option to group some of the most frequent and less critical game notifications. Options are: 'Show All', 'Group' or 'Don't Show'. Grouped notifications will present a single notification which can be expanded into its individual notifications, if wished.
  
• Now possible to load and save game via mouse double-click.
  
• New option to go from the colony screen to the system view screen.
  
• Combat bonuses for attacking and defending marines now displayed in space combat boarding operations.
  
• New 'Rotate Right / Left' arrow buttons added as an alternative way to using the mouse to rotate a ship in battle.

AI IMPROVEMENTS

• More AI personality added to all races. Each race will now make even more of their choices based on their affinities, namely when choosing culture perks, infrastructure level ups, technology research, leader level up choices and others.
• The AI now equips more 'Fighter Bays' and 'Bomber Bays' in their more advanced Orbital Stations (e.g. Battle stations and Star fortresses). Actually, 'Fighter Bays' were not being installed by the AI in Star fortresses due to a bug.
• The AI players now ask for more or fewer credits from their strategic resources deals depending on their attitude towards the other players and also depending on the game stage (deals more expensive in the late-game).
• The AI now considers designing and building ships using the alternative model for each ship class. Previously, the AI always produced ships with the same model (i.e. always using the same graphical variant).
• Fixed a bug when the AI attacked lonely orbital stations (no guarding fleets) it would always attack the orbital station even if their objective was to take another settlement in that system, leading to small raids against formidable orbital stations.

BALANCE

• Homeworlds now enjoy from an intrinsic +30 production bonus instead of previous +10. This should help speed up the very early game a little.
• Logistics technologies range extended by +1 parsec each. Standard, Improved and Enhanced Logistics now provide 6/8/10 parsecs range where before it was 5/7/9. This should provide more to explore at the beginning.
• Hurrying construction is now much cheaper than before. It was too costly before which caused little use for this important feature.
• Hurrying construction cooldown reduced from 5 turns to 3, which is the amount of the turns where hurrying is not possible in that colony after the previous hurry was made.
• Hurrying construction morale penalty reduced from -10% to -5% during the cooldown period.
• Overcrowding now causes +15POPs to have -50% morale and +25POPs to have -75%. This penalty is applied to the individual POPs above the threshold and not to all the POPs of the colony as before.
• Technological Capital building cost reduced by around 30%.
• Economical Capital building cost reduced by around 35%.
• Cultural Capital building cost reduced by 25%.
• Supercomputer a bit cheaper to build now.
• Orbital stations now also a bit cheaper to build.
• Technological Capital is now a level 1 tech by default, was level 2 before.
• Imperial Space Academy now a level 2 tech by default, was level 1 before.
• Neutron Beams's stun effect chance lowered a bit. The stun effect happened too often before, especially with many neutron beam weapons installed.
• Matter Streamer super kinetic weapon now does 150 damage, was 100 before. The cost per weapon installed was increased from 750 to 1000 and the space required per weapon is now 125 (was 250).
• Defending marines now benefit from a defensive bonus, making a bit harder to board and capture ships now. Defending marines know the ship and can defend it better!
• Unique powerful technology obtained from the 'Battle Graveyard' event is now obtained a bit later. This super tech could be offered a bit too soon in the game.
• Space miniaturization effect slightly reduced in the higher levels. The equipment size reduction is now 100-80-65-50-40-33% for no miniaturization to the maximum miniaturization level 5, where before it was 100-80-65-50-35-25%. This will allow installing slightly less low-tech weapons as before, making high-tech weapons even more meaningful.
• Ion Cannon max damaged now 10, was 12.
• 'Habitat Control' formula changed to apply diminishing returns for the amount of planetary engineering production available, causing less of an effect on population growth, especially on colonies with more population, with a slight increase in young colonies.
• Fighters now have a 3 hit points base instead of 2HP, times the armor level. So, it's effectively a +50% HP for fighters.

GAMEPLAY

• Fleet combat auto-resolve improvements: - now factors several key special systems, weapons immunity, much improved missiles and PD weapons calculations and others.
• Orbital stations now rotate 90 degrees each turn. This will make them a bit tougher.
• Space monsters not boardable now. It was an unofficial feature till now and not envisaged in the design, and while it could be fun to capture those buggers it was causing many issues as it was not intended to be supported. That said, we have big plans for space monsters going forward.
• The game now asks if the player wants to use the 'Resilient Settlers' unique ability and colonize planets for which the colonization tech is already available. Before, the ability was automatically used in all planets, since it offered a morale boost, irrespective if the colonization tech was allowed or not.
• When the player defies the election ruling, all the other AIs now make peace with each other. Before, they only declared war on the defying player, but their current wars were kept going on.
• Captured orbital stations are now destroyed at the end of the combat. Before, after orbital stations were captured they would still be there in the next turn and had to be fought again.
• Deep Cover spy leaders now gain more XP when they are assigned and working under cover.

PERFORMANCE

• Significant performance boost done to the late game, especially noticeable when playing bigger maps with lots of colonies. Opening and closing the overview panel is much faster, colonizing new worlds and many other functions like closing and opening windows resulting in a much smoother late game experience.
• The second game played in the same game session now plays much faster. These are games played after finishing a previous game or quitting an ongoing game and starting a new one without quitting the game to desktop first. This was actually a bug.
• Optimizations done to all terrains resulted in significant performance improvements when showing colonies.

UI / GRAPHICS

• The galaxy map background was brought in closer to the star field and is a bit denser now, allowing for a smoother visualization of the stars that appear to blend better with the background now.
• Galaxy map planetary and supernova remnant nebulae are a bit dimmer now, allowing them to blend better with the background.
• The galaxy map star field "corners" were smoothed out a bit to attenuate the "square" feeling, giving it more of a rounder shape.
• Graphical improvements to all ship models, orbital stations and space monsters especially when viewed at an angle.
• We now show the remote exploration sector grid coordinates also on the top and right side of the grid.
• WASD and arrow keys to pan around the map were quite slow when compared to mouse pan. Panning with keys is much faster now.
• Replaced the Draguul soldier with the proper character and animation (it was displaying an older character from a previous iteration).
• 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.
• Second tech in the research queue now displayed in the current research panel tooltip.
• Tribute deals information is now broken down per empire in the empire treasury tooltip. Displays how much money is paid or obtained, the empires involved and the tribute percentage in question.
• Added the recommended number of players per map size, viewable in the 'Galaxy Size' tooltip.
• New 'Number of Players' tooltip in the 'New Game Setup' screen mentions custom races can be created to play games with more than six players.
• Scrollbars added to the 'Diplomatic Summary' section of the 'Empire Overview' screen to allow listing all treaties with players in the designated area.
• The colony overview panel now shows a new icon for colonies that happen to have a built orbital station.
• The Human emperor character is now displayed with better quality, especially in the 'Empire Overview' panel. Also, slight graphical improvements were done to all the characters across the board.
• All bullet point dashes " - " in tooltips were replaced with bullet points " • ".
• The Planet construction notification now shows a selection object around the system where the project was finished, highlighting where the planet construction project can take place.
• Players are now informed when an ongoing 'Planet Construction' project is no longer possible in that system.
• Combat 'actions' (examples: scan, rotate) were sometimes called 'operations' in the combat UI. This was harmonized and now they are called 'actions' everywhere.
• Combat 'actions' tooltips were revised to explain the mechanisms better (example: the 'rotate' function usage is now explained better, among others).
• Combat round number added to the space combat UI next to the "End turn" button.
• Free ships obtained from events and ruins searching now explain that the SSP (Ship Support Points maintenance) still applies.
• Ground combat strength value in system view is now rounded. Was showing long decimal value.
• Outpost labels in the galaxy map are shown a bit brighter to make them easier to see, especially for the darker colors.
• Technology icons for tech type and associated strategic resources are now also displayed in technologies in the 'Steal Tech' screen when conducting an espionage action. Also, some minor fixes and tweaks to the 'Steal Tech' UI.
• The 'Economic Capital' production tax bonus is now displayed in the production tooltip as extra money "from Economic Capital" instead of "from Buildings", to make it clear the bonus comes from that empire improvement.
• 'Available Constructions' renamed to "Construction Projects" in the colony view screen.
• The color of the colony 'Command Center' building is now associated with the empire color and not the race's default color, as before.
• Automatic ship design generation now generates ships in the ship design 'garage' (where all the ship models are listed) considering both models available and not only the 'A' model variant, as before. Alternate models are generated on slots 6 to 9.
• A new confirmation dialog pop up was added to the New Game screen when the player starts a game with the production and/or research speed sliders set to a value below 100%, which is the default value. Less than 100% production or research speeds are only advisable to experienced players who wish to have a slower experience.
• The pop up warning raised when cancelling a ship refit project with progress is now displayed in yellow.
• Notification icons now a bit smaller. Allows for more notifications to be displayed at once.
• Game version text at the bottom right of the main menu now directs to the latest updates.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug in the galaxy map generation algorithm that was causing the balanced properties of a generated map to be overridden with the wrong number of ideal and tolerable worlds expected for the difficulty setting of choice. This was sometimes causing too few ideal planets to be generated leading to very bad starts near the player, and some AI players, especially in maps with shorter distances between systems and with more players. Now, the correct and expected number of ideal and tolerable worlds is being generated.
• Fixed a bug in the galaxy map generation algorithm that was causing the players' homeworlds to sometimes be generated too close of each other even if there was a lot of "empty" space left in the map. This was more of an issue in the larger maps, starting at 'Large' size.
• Fixed a bug on how population growth was being calculated from the 'Habitat Control' eco-engineering project. Total production towards planetary engineering was still being taken into account and used to full effect towards 'Habitat Control' in the same turn a terraforming or another eco-engineering project was finished, leading to more population growth being generated in that turn than it should.
• Fixed another issue that was causing 'Habitat Control' to not take into account any spilled (overflow) planetary engineering production that could be available from a previously finished eco-engineering or terraforming project.
• Fixed a bug in the necessary production to develop a planet to infrastructure level 13. The value was set to 11.5 million production required but the correct value is 1.5 million.
• Fixed a bug in the leader desires to build a wonder, these were not being unfulfilled when the wonder was built by another empire.
• Fixed a bug that was not allowing the AI to install 'Fighter Bays' on Star fortresses.
• Fixed a bug in the 'Ship Design' screen that was allowing the 'Fire Arc' weapon modification to be manipulated when the 'Spinal Mount' weapon modification was installed in that weapon slot. With spinal mount, a weapon has a fixed 90 degrees front firing arc.
• Fixed another bug involving the 'Spinal Mount' modification where the accuracy value in combat could show less than 100% sometimes even though a weapon with the spinal mount modification will always hit.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the shields animation to always play despite the fact shields were down or the ship was disabled. Now, the shield effect only plays when shields take damage.
• Fixed a bug that was disabling the weapons overload action after clicking on an enemy ship even if no weapons could reach or were selected to fire against the target.
• Fixed a glitch in the 'Research screen' where sometimes the strategic resource icons could show a bit outside the tech buttons' designated areas for them.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the Kaek ships to display a faulty engine trail in combat. The effect was ok in the ship design screen, but not in combat.
• Fixed a bug when starting a game in 'Gigantic', going to the main menu and starting a game in a 'Small' map would not display the map (map was not centered).
• Fixed a few dialog text errors and typos.
• Fixed an issue that was causing an AI request for another AI to make peace with the human player to cause instant peace without informing the player about it. A notification is now sent to the Human player explaining why the peace treaty happened when it is requested by another AI player.
• Fixed a bug that was allowing the 'Continue' button in the 'Main Menu' screen to become active and pressable after removing the last save from the saves folder, causing the game to freeze when launching.
• Fixed an issue in the 'Boarding panel' in the combat UI where the number of killed marines could show the previous boarding numbers at the beginning of the next boarding round.
• Fixed a bug that was causing ships to gain more crew experience than they should in battle encounters involving the Human player and an AI fleet. Fights between AI fleets were not generating this bogus extra XP to be gained.
• Fixed a UI display bug in the colonies' overview panel where in rare cases a colony could display the gravity value in yellow even when the gravity was ideal to the race in that colony.
• Fixed an issue that was not allowing the 'R' key to be used to activate / deactivate the 'Rotate' ship action in battle.
• Fixed a bug when offspring space monsters attacked a system only defended by orbital stations, the creatures would not prompt a fight and just disappeared. Now they attack an orbital station in that system.
• Fixed an issue in the space combat boarding screen where the combat bonuses for the attacker and defender marines were showing the incorrect number and were not updating properly.
• Fixed a bug in the boarding capturing calculation which was producing an incorrect value for the chance of an attacking marine killing a defending marine.
• Fixed an issue in the boarding screen which was showing the incorrect message upon a failed raid. Now shows "Raid attempt failed" where before it would display "Capture attempt failed".
• Fixed yet another bug on the boarding mechanic that was not allowing combat to proceed when a monster offspring was captured and there were still other monster offspring monsters of that type left in the battlefield.
• Fixed a bug where grey images could be seen in the soldier panel after a battle report was presented. This happened when a second combat happened involving only civilian ships in the losing side.
• Fixed an issue in the Ambassador leaving diplomatic message. The incorrect generic sentences were being used in some occasions, where now the correct new messages are being displayed depending on the race in question.
• Fixed a glitch with how some galactic wonder buildings were displayed in the Terran terrain, which could show the wonders as if they were slightly "on air".
• Fixed a glitch involving the 'Space Elevator' planetary improvement, which could appear in front of the Colony screen 'Close Button' in some terrains and monitor resolutions, not allowing the colony screen to be closed via that button.
• Fixed a bug in the New Game screen that was reverting the player's production and research speed sliders both to 50% without the player noticing when a custom race was deleted or modified. This would case extremely slow sessions, which would be a huge issue for new players.
• Fixed a bug in the battle report that would display ships that were stunned right before being destroyed as captured.
• Fixed a bug in the ship design screen when playing with the Nova Vida. Pressing the arrow to the left in the ship hangar would show an orbital station model instead of the alternative Nova ship model.
• Fixed a type on the 'Graft and Corruption' event where it said "Please condecorate the garrison commander..." is now "Please decorate the garrison commander...".
• Fixed an issue when using the Illusion Materializer special system, the AI ships would identify their illusion ships in the ship's name, which defeated the purpose of the player not knowing which were illusions and which were not.
• Fixed a bug that could lead to a freeze when starting a game when coming from an ongoing game when there were rally points established in that previous game.
• Fixed a glitch where sometimes it was not possible to click on the "No Shields" button when going with no shields in a ship design.
• Fixed an issue with the overview panel where sometimes you'd have to click twice on the 'Overview' text to toggle the view.
• Fixed another issue with the overview panel that would revert showing it after getting back from the system view or other window even when the overview panel was set to not be displayed by the player.
• Fixed an issue with the 'wormhole discovered' notification grouping, it was showing a corrupt tooltip due to erroneous color tags.
• Fixed another issue with the notification grouping mechanism where sometimes tech discovered notifications were grouped even when only one tech was obtained in that turn. This happened with tech stealing from espionage and obtained from raids on planets, although there could be other instances involving other sources of obtained techs.
• Fixed a bug in the leaders panel after a spy job was undertaken from there. The leaders panel would become non-responsive and needed to be closed with 2 right mouse clicks (because the tech breakthrough window was not being displayed, was not visible).
• Fixed an issue in the 'Mass destruction' bombing tooltip in the planetary assault screen that was omitting that eco 3 worlds were immune to bombing fallout from mass destruction. Eco 3 worlds are immune to both ecological class reduction and bombing fallout.
• Fixed a bug that was allowing 'strategic resources' associated technologies to be stolen by espionage even if the player had not unlocked that strategic resources' path by research decision.
• 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.
• 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).
• 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 a bug in the 'Labor Strike' and "Atlas Choked' events where it was possible to choose some of the options asking for money even when not enough credits were available in the treasury.
• 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.