Update 1.3.1 Released

Hello everyone!

It's been a week since we released the free 1.3 update. We hope you are enjoying this new major update with all its new features and improvements.

In the meantime, we've been listening to your feedback, so here's a patch that fixes some issues and adds a few important improvements.

Compatibility note: Saves from version 1.3.0 should be 100% compatible with this new version.

Thanks a lot to everyone who has bought the game and has been providing feedback! If you haven't bought the Natural Law expansion yet, please consider buying as it adds 2 very nice playable races to the game, among other features and music tracks. 

Have fun!
Praxis Games

UPDATE (June 18th 2021): Hotfix released for 1.3.1. Changes of this hotfix are marked with [Hotfix] below.

VERSION 1.3.1 (change log)

AI IMPROVEMENTS

• The AI now handles its civilian ships much more carefully and will avoid leaving them unprotected or in danger at all costs. This includes Assault ships.
• The AI now refrains from entering into too many wars, especially in the early game and when they already have one war going.
• The outposts and colonies lost by an AI to a conqueror will count a bit less for the AI's surrender purposes if those settlements did not belong to that AI originally (i.e. they were created and belonged to someone else and the AI had conquered them as part of its expansion).
• The AI now tends to use a bit more ships when defending against invaders [Hotfix]

GAMEPLAY

• The Auto-Fire weapon modification can no longer be equipped with the Point Defense modification. It was not functional in space combat already and its support was now also removed from the ship design screen. As a consequence, the Flak Cannon kinetic weapon doesn't allow auto-fire anymore, since it's a Point Defense weapon, and it was non-functional anyway.

PERFORMANCE

• Turn-processing now much faster in the very late game, especially for very long and extreme sessions with the biggest maps and the highest amount of planets. [Hotfix]

UI / GRAPHICS

• The 'UI Scale' option's tooltip was revised to clarify what exactly gets increased, namely the icons and labels text of the galaxy map and system view.
• The number of players displayed from which custom races are required to play 10 player sessions was updated to show 8 and not 6 if the player owns the Natural Law expansion, which brings 2 new playable races to the game.
• Neutronium Shells' tooltip reworded to clarify that they boost kinetic damage but do not kill marines in the process (perhaps something to add in a next opportunity).

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug that was causing the ruins search process to hang when a ship was found in the ruins and the fleet had a leader without the explorer skill.
• Fixed a performance issue when visiting many colonies in a row from inside the colony view, by making use of the 'Next Colony' option. This would result in a big frame rate drop when getting back to the galaxy map, which could last for several seconds, the more time the more colonies were visited. Also slightly faster leaving from the colony screen to the galaxy map now.
• Fixed a glitch that sometimes could cause missiles to be left hanging in the battlefield that were not destroyed but also didn't move in very special circumstances involving PD weapons.
• Fixed a bug that was causing a colony to suddenly vanish after eliminating a player from the game if that player had once established an outpost on the planet before that colony was established in it.
• Fixed a glitch that was causing an incomplete display of a colony in the special and rare case where a colony had a lot of buildings built, and where several of those had been upgraded or scrapped and replaced by others.
• Fixed a glitch that could cause rulers to be displayed with missing pieces in the 'New Game' screen when going to the main menu from a galaxy map fully zoomed out. [HotFix]
• Fixed an issue that was causing some fleet icons to be displayed behind system labels in the galaxy map. [Hotfix]
• Fixed a glitch that was causing the fleet icons of traveling ships to disappear when the game was fully zoomed out. [Hotfix]