Interstellar Space: Genesis free 1.3 update released!

Hello everyone!

We are thrilled to announce that the new major and free! 1.3 update for Interstellar Space: Genesis is now available to all players!

This update has been on the unstable branch for beta testing to make sure there were no major unforeseen issues for the smoothest official release possible. We're happy to report that testing went very well, so we believe we're in very good shape. Thanks to everyone who played the unstable build and provided feedback!

FREE 1.3 UPDATE - KEY FEATURES AND IMPROVEMENTS

Surrender Pact

The 1.3 highlights include the brand new Surrender Pact feature! With this new diplomacy treaty, you can now subjugate a rival into a surrender pact, and obtain benefits from it, instead of having to completely wipe it out of the game. Subjects vote for their overlord and contribute to all victory types. 56 new lines of dialog were added to accommodate the surrender pact diplomacy interactions. Check the release note below for all the details!

Alliance Victory

Also in 1.3 we now have the new Alliance Victory condition, where allies win together. When an empire wins, all its allies share victory. It can be enabled or disabled in the new game set up screen.

Achievements

Achievements were also added to the game! There are 57 achievements, which include 3 hidden ones and 7 for the first expansion pack, Natural Law. The achievements are also displayed in-game in a dedicated 'Achievements' screen.

AI Aggressiveness Level

The new 'AI Aggressiveness' option in the 'New Game' screen allows tweaking the desired aggression level for the AI. With higher aggressiveness, the AI will tend to be more hostile, attack more and declare war more often. It will also be more reluctant to sign diplomatic deals. The opposite effect for lower aggression than normal.

New Diplomacy Screen

The diplomacy UI was revamped! The diplomacy dialog screen is now displayed in full screen and the ambassador character is presented much larger, allowing for much more of the character to be seen and the different animations depending on their mood.

And, much more!

There's also a ton of major AI improvements, performance improvements, a new UI-scale slider option, QoL improvements and bug fixes, many of which in response to player feedback, and much more!

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

Compatibility and finishing an ongoing game

Saves from previous versions are not compatible with version 1.3. If you want to finish your current game with the previous version (1.2.4), please opt or download the "windows-previous 1.2.4hf" build. 

Important note: Custom races designed with previous versions will not work with the old version if you run the game once with the new version (after running 1.3 once, the custom races are updated to work with the new version). So, if you wish to finish a game with the previous version, please delete all your current custom races first, by deleting them in the folder C:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\LocalLow\Praxis Games\ISG\Races, otherwise the game will not launch properly. This is only required if you wish to finish a game with the previous version.

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 artist Camilo Abelayras for creating such beautiful icons for the Achievements. Thank you.

We hope you like the free 1.3 update! 

Have fun!
Praxis Games

VERSION 1.3.0 (free update change list)

NEW

• New 'Surrender Pact' diplomacy option! Empires facing inevitable defeat can now offer or agree to sign a surrender pact thus removing the need to completely eliminate them from the game. As subject empires, they provide their overlord a hefty percentage of their surplus credits, research points, culture, ship support and strategic resources each turn. Subjects vote for their overlord and contribute to all victory types. An overlord and their subject can make diplomatic coordination requests as if they were allied, but a subject's options are limited. 56 new lines of dialog were added to accommodate the surrender pact diplomacy interactions.
  
• New 'Alliance Victory' condition - When an empire wins, all its allies share victory. It can be enabled or disabled in the new game set up screen.
  
• Achievements feature added! 57 achievements, which include 3 hidden ones and 7 for the first expansion pack, Natural Law. The achievements are also displayed in-game in a dedicated 'Achievements' screen.
  
• New 'AI Aggressiveness Modifier' option in the 'New Game' screen allows tweaking the desired aggression level by the AI. With higher aggressiveness, the AI will tend to be more hostile, attack more and declare war more often. It will also be more reluctant to sign deals. The opposite effect for lower aggression than normal.
  
• Maximum number of players is now 10 (was 8 before).
  
• One more zoom-out level available in the bigger map games.
  
• Now possible to set production and research speeds for each player as low as 1% and high as 300%, with a granularity of 1% steps (the 25% steps option is kept along this new high granularity option).
  
• New Government biases provide for additional flavor and early tensions between empires with different and opposing government types. The effect wears off with time, faster in the easier difficulty levels.
  
• Diplomacy UI revamped! The diplomacy dialog screen is now displayed in full screen and the ambassador character is presented much larger, allowing for much more of the character to be seen and the different animations depending on their mood.
  
• New 'Balanced (no ships)' colony AI governor filter allows for balanced colony automation but without ships being constructed by the AI.
  
• New UI-scale slider option in the 'Game Settings' allows enlarging the galaxy map icons and labels, and also the information presented in the system view, which may be especially useful when playing the game in very big monitors and TVs.
  

AI IMPROVEMENTS

• Significant improvements made to the AI in how it invades outposts. It now takes outposts more diligently and at all times it finds it's opportune, especially in the higher difficulty levels.
  
• The AI now plans better on what ships are best suited to be used as escorts given the current circumstances (e.g. to escort civilian ships on their colonization, exploitation or exploration missions). Before, the AI could use ships as escorts that were best suited for other roles (e.g. invasions, defense) leaving systems unprotected or taking too long to launch an invasion.
  
• The AI now goes after Space Monsters more, especially when they guard particularly important systems, not only for their colonization rating but also for their exploitation potential.
  
• The AI now considers building more capital ships and bringing more ships to battle and is also a bit more aggressive in the late game in the higher difficulty levels.
  
• The AI will not send suicidal runs against orbital stations addressed (e.g. 1 frigate against a starbase).
  
• The AI will not be as reluctant to go to war as before (more likely to go to wars in the higher difficulty levels than before, especially early for the warmonger race affinities).
  
• The AI now handles gifts more sensibly. Previously, it could be too easy to spam the AI with small gifts for big diplomatic benefit.
  
• The AI will now make it less obvious where it is amassing its ships when preparing for an invasion.
  
• The AI now considers razing enemy colonies and outposts (it didn't before for design reasons).
  
• The AI now considers asking for a peace treaty more if they happen to be in a very bad situation even if they are furious towards their rival.
  
• The AI algorithm to consider establishing outposts was improved which resulted in a more diligent and aggressive approach to establish (and re-capture) mining and tourism sites on accretion disks, especially when these have strategic resources.
  
• The AI now prioritizes scanners and drive technology a bit more, which boosts their operational effectiveness further.
  
• The AI now fires all its weapons in combat when it cans where before it could miss the opportunity to fire some weapons due to not having enough angle aperture to fire at their primary target. Now, AI ships consider other targets if they cannot fire at their primary one.
  
• The AI ships now focus and spread their fire in combat more sensibly, resulting in more aggressive, concentrated and effective attacks.
  
• The AI now also more effective at finishing off their targets more when they are in bad condition where before the AI ships could change their targets in the middle of the fight and not finish off AI ships when it would be better if they did.
  
• AI combat enhancements made to make sure ships spend all their actions in the best way possible, prioritizing firing actions and making sure ships can and will fire all of their weapons as much as possible.
  
• The AI ship design algorithm now considers equipping weapons with different fire arcs more when they think it can result in more effective designs.
  
• The AI now refrains from using tractor beams on its own mind controlled ships.
  
• AI now considers using tractor ships before other AI ships fire at targets.
  
• AI combat improvements on which ships the AI chooses to use first in battle and in which order.
  
• Mind control Titan ability now being considered by the auto-resolve algorithm.
  

BALANCE

• Ship construction cost reduced from +50% to +25% in the 'Low' Ship Support penalty level (less than 10 negative SSP).
  
• Ship Attack and Ship Defense penalties reduced from -20% to -15% in the 'High' Ship Support penalty level (less than 25 negative SSP).
  
• New 'Very High' Ship Support penalty level causes -20% Ship Attack / Ship Defense, +100% ship construction costs and 50BC maintenance per point below the -150 SSP mark.
  
• New 'Extreme' Ship Support penalty level causes a 25% reduction to all ships' Ship Attack (accuracy) and Ship Defense (evasion rating), +300% ship construction costs and 250BC maintenance per negative SSP point when SSP goes below the -350 mark.
  
• Auto-resolve improvements: Point Defense weapons were too much of a factor in countering missiles; also, fleet size had too much weight in the combat auto-resolve algorithm.
  
• Interstellar Geology culture perk now provides a flat +2 strategic resources' bonus instead of a +50% bonus, as that was causing too much production and other excessive effects.
  
• The Neutronium armor coating tech now provides immunity to beam damage when 8 sources of neutronium are available, where before 5 sources were enough to confer immunity making the effect a too powerful one. Each source now provides +12.5% beam damage reduction per available source, where before it offered +20% per source.
  
• Gifts not as powerful of an effect on the Sulak, Cerixx and Human race affinities in diplomacy deals.
  
• Gifts' positive effect wears off faster on the Draguul, Sulak, Human, Palacean, Kaek and Nova race affinities.
  
• Space mirror array now costs 15 BC to maintain, was 10 BC before.
  
• Utopia government now has a -25% research penalty on defense technologies.
  

GAMEPLAY

• Warrior Code unique ability now grants +15% morale per ongoing war (Draguul affinity, also available to custom races).
  
• Tribute deals are now automatically cancelled when war is declared.
  
• Bomber bays and fighter bays now factored in the auto-resolve calculations.
  
• When the odds are overwhelming in favor of the invader, during a planetary assault, the collateral damage applied when it loses were halved.
  
• Tamara Adams had incorrect leader skills that resulted from a development testing mistake. She now has the scientist, astronautics and activist skills, as designed for this leader. She had espionage skills before.
  
• An Alliance pact now provides information on all colonies and fleets the allies have to their allies, like the espionage intel-gathering expert skills does. This was designed but not working as intended. Now it is in the game.
  

PERFORMANCE

• Turn-time performance improvements, especially noticeable in the late game.
  
• Loading games much faster now.
  
• Significant combat performance improvements. Combat could start to lag after several combat sessions. This was fixed.
  
• Major performance improvements for 4K resolutions. The game could be a bit laggy in some places in 4K monitors. That is now fixed.
  

SOUND & MUSIC

• Diplomacy "angry" tunes now play when an opponent's ambassador leaves when treaties are broken and demands are made that are accepted by the ambassador.
  

UI / GRAPHICS

• The unique technologies found in ancient ruins are now displayed in the tech tree in a specific panel dedicated to these.
  
• All the game and galaxy map options information is now presented in the in-game menu screen (e.g. number of space monsters, number of planets, resources, which victory conditions are enabled, etc).
  
• The empire widgets displayed in the diplomacy status screen now show the biome art behind the ambassador's portrait. Biome art now also displayed behind the rulers running in the galactic council's election.
  
• War declaration notifications on the human player are now clickable, showing a much larger rival ambassador's character in the new diplomacy screen, including the war declaration statement, for increased immersion.
  
• The successful and failed invasion notifications for the Human player are now shown in purple.
  
• The diplomacy screen is now automatically displayed when an AI player declares war and attacks the Human player for a more dramatic notice.
  
• Clicking on ships or fleets in the overview panel on the left now centers the map on that fleet or ship.
  
• Notice added to the tech tree's galactic wonders tooltips indicating if a wonder was already built, and if so by who and where it is located.
  
• Several icons received some touch ups to make them more crisp and clean (e.g. capital icon, ruins icon and several notification icons).
  
• The leader, orbital station, and colony automation icons in the colony overview panel entries were also retouched for better contrast.
  
• The ships' crew experience is now displayed in the ships' overview panel on the left for each ship.
  
• Auto-fire weapon modification animation speed increased a little.
  
• The 'Weapon range' and 'enemy ship targetable area' overlays in space combat are now also displayed selectively by hovering over each weapon.
  
• Combat HUD now hidden during Auto-Combat for a more cinematic experience.
  
• Floating damage notices now a bit faster in super-fast autocombat. It could lag quite a bit when there were many floating notices.
  
• The fleets' ETA is now displayed in the fleets' overview panel on the left.
  
• The leader icon in the ships' overview panel now has a more comprehensive tooltip. And clicking on the leader icon takes you to the leaders screen.
  
• New keyboard shortcut 'SHIFT + O' can be used to show/hide the Overview panel.
  
• The 'Larger Text in Tooltips' option in the Game Settings now provides for even bigger text in tooltips (font size was increased).
  
• Galactic council tooltip text revised to clarify that the terms of refusing the new galactic ruler is bound to human player decision only.
  
• The 'Offer Ships' diplomacy option now has a tooltip to clarify that ships can be gifted only if they can reach the capital system of the player receiving the ship gifts.
  
• The 'Ice Age' term used in the corresponding planet special where a planet is cooling down rapidly at a global scale was replaced with the more appropriate "Global Cooling' term.
  
• New game loading hint provided for the different ways on how leaders can gain experience.
  
• Applied a bit of transparency to the 'Constructions built' panel in the colony view.
  
• Tooltips added to treaties in the diplomacy screen treaties list.
  
• Tribute requests now have a tooltip in the diplomacy screen with information on how much credits are expected to be obtained from the deal.
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug that was causing too few Space Monster offspring to be spawned.
  
• Fixed a glitch in the gravity tooltip in the colony view (the one at the top of the colony screen). The color presented was correct but the information presented in the tooltip was not.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented a game to end, and show the corresponding celebrations cinematic, when that game was started right after ending a previous one without quitting to desktop first after ending the first game while choosing the "Just one more turn" option.
  
• Fixed a rare bug that would cause the game to hang when a gifted ship could not travel to the giftee's territory or to anywhere else and would remain in the origin system without exploring it. If a combat encounter would happen there the game would hang.
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause bigger save files than usual when starting a new game right after exiting a previous one without quitting to desktop first.
  
• Fixed a bug that was causing the wrong empires to be considered and sometimes notified when making an alliance coordination request when only AI empires were involved.
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing the human player to control their AI allies' production allocation, construction options and even scrapping buildings in their colonies.
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing ships with stunned crews caused by neutron beams to flee from combat.
  
• Fixed an issue that could be causing a bit too many treaties to be broken by the AI at times.
  
• Fixed an issue in the spy detection chance tooltip. The value was being applied correctly but it could show an incorrect value in the "Pick an espionage mission" tooltip screen when hovering over the Detection Chance for the race that has this bonus.
  
• Fixed an issue that was not allowing the star distance measuring tool to be activated with 'shift' key.
  
• Fixed a glitch that was causing the 'Remote exploration' tooltip/panel to sometimes open up on top of 'Overview' text when the overview panel was closed.
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing panning the map to be too slow with the arrow and WASD keys (mouse dragging was fine though).
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing fleeing fleets to sometimes go back to the system they once were and fled from.
  
• Fixed a glitch that could sometimes present the minimum damage to be slightly superior to the maximum damage in the ship design screen in some particular circumstances.
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing the tourism strategic value to show only 1 decimal place in the corresponding accretion disk tooltip.
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing a 'Psy-Ops' leader influence action to be requested from the player when none could be performed in some scenarios where no rival leader could be influenced or the rival simply run out of leaders to be influenced.
  
• Fixed a bug that was not allowing a colony leader with the 'colonize a planet' desire to fulfill their desire after the planet where the colonization request was made had suffered a planet construction action (e.g. a Barren planet). Now, the barren world can be (re-)constructed and after colonization the leader will see their leader fulfilled.
  
• Fixed a glitch that was causing the race modifiers' text to not be displayed in the 'Race customization' screen in a few specific monitor resolutions when using the window mode.
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing the construction ETA to be incorrect in very specific cases where production overflow was involved. The ETA calculations were correct but the displayed value was not.
  
• Fixed a bug that was allowing some AI ships to flee under a containment field (Cerixx unique ability) in rare occasions.
  
• Fixed an issue where sometimes the AI would refuse large gifts but would then gladly accept small ones in the same discussion.
  
• Fixed the 'Maneuverability Bonus' Titan ship special ability to clarify the Titan ship does not gain its own bonus but only the surrounding ships. Also, the Ship Attack (accuracy) bonus was missing and the Ship Defense (evasion rating) bonus was not being displayed correctly in the tooltip, although the value was being correctly applied in the calculations.
  
• Fixed tractor beams sometimes left on the battlefield or left hanging with no identified source or target during auto-combat.
  
• Fixed an issue that was not allowing access to strategic resources tech options when conquering a colony that had the Galactic Space Port. The tech options were unlocked when building the Galactic Space Port but not when acquiring it.
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing hangs when searching ruins in very specific cirscunstances.
  
• Fixed a glitch that was causing the fleet set for Humans to reset in the New Game screen to one belonging to a previously selected player. This issue was only visual and would clear up after using the humans alternative fleet set switch for the first time.
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing the wrong difficulty symbols to be presented for the 'Hard', 'Severe' and 'Impossible' difficulties. It now shows the rook for the 'Hard' difficulty, queen for 'Severe' and the king piece for 'Impossible'.
  
• Fixed an issue in the 'Galactic Council' with the ultrawide resolutions where you could see bars for the two candidates extend beyond the bounds of the election window. Also, the empire info panel above was shown and could be interacted with.
  
• Fixed a bug that was causing an incorrect notification to be displayed when constructing a colony base