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Sins of a Solar Empire v1.03 full change log

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Sins of a Solar Empire v1.03 full change log

Smarter AI, better multiplayer, new game setup options and lots more...

from Sins Forums

Greetings! Ironclad has been hard at work on an update to Sins based on player feedback. We've got lots of new features in this build that we hope you find compelling.

Version 1.03 will be released later this week. We can assure you that we are intensively play testing this new update over. And over. And over. Because we love you guys, we are going that extra mile in making sure the update is just right by playing it all day and all night sometimes. That's the kind of sacrifice we are willing to make just for you! :)

Here is the full list of changes:

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Sins of a Solar Empire v1.03 Changelist
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Gameplay / Balance:
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-New Game Options Screen:
-Locked/Unlocked Teams
-Fleet Size
-Pirates or No Pirates (arrrr!)
-Income Rate Speed
-Build Speed
-Ship Speed
-Research Speed
-Culture Speed

***REMINDER***
-In singleplayer you can accelerate / deccelerate time by pressing the +/- buttons respectively. I'm mentionning it again because this request is coming up a lot even though it was implemented in the v1.02 patch.

-New Market System:
Highlights:
-Random fluctuations in addition to user influence on price.
-Can cause crash or boom by selling/buying too much.
-Known exploits removed.
-Can now buy and sell resources on the market in large increments again.

-Improved Group Phase Jumping for large groups of ships. The group will only wait for 90% of the value of the ships to be ready. The stragglers will follow shortly after. Typically, its only a couple ships that cause the whole operation to stall so this should eliminate the majority of problems.

-Research subjects queued in different fields can now upgrade in parallel.
-Overseer's Nanite Reactive Armor ability can now properly stack heals (but not the armor and max HP bonus).
-Kostura Cannon now only disables enemy units and structures at the target planet as originally intended.
-Autocast for many disabling abilities improved.
-Disciple's Transfer Antimatter no longer targets other Disciples when autocasting.
-Transfer Antimatter can no longer target entities with full antimatter.
-Can't attack unbuilt structures anymore.
-You can now change game options when loading save games.
-Defeated players can no longer give or be given resources in unlocked teams games.
-Defeated players can no longer place bounties in unlocked teams games.
-Fixed unintended halving of galaxy culture coverage in the game statistics. Pop Idol achievement is now actually achievable.
-No pirate maps removed due to new game option to remove pirates.
-Large and Huge random maps split into single and multi star system variants.

-Mission durations increased by 10 mins.
-Mission failure penalties to happiness reduced.
-Rebalanced happiness losses for killing various items (Killing enemy scouts no longer causes a loss of happiness).
-Phase Jump Inhibitors:
-cost reduced slightly.
-slot cost reduced from 3 to 2.
-jump charge rate penalty increase from -250% to -700%.
-Passive allegiance shift rates increased by 100%.
-Allegiance shift rates from culture increased 25%.
-Illuminator, Javelis, Assailant:
-Increased credit cost by approx 10%.
-Increased resource cost by approx 20%.
-Increased range by approx 30%.
-Illuminator and Assailant survivability tuned to be proportional to Javelis's on a per supply basis.
-Siege Frigates:
-Survivability reduced by ~20%.
-Build cost increased by ~25%.
-Supply cost increased from 12 to 15.
-Development Mandate research subject's max level reduced from 2 to 1.
-Tier 1 research times increased approx 40%
-Tier 2 research times increased approx 20%
-All other tiers research times increased 5%


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Graphics:
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-Fixed sometimes drastic frame rate drop when chat messages are displayed.


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Sound / Music:
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-Sins handles no soundcard now.
-Added sound option for varying music vol in battle.

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AI:
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-AI now knows how to surrender (based on time elapsed, relative economy, relative fleet value, resource reserves, and allied strength). Also, an AI player will not surrender if he has a human ally.
-AI is now smarter about retreating and is willing to commit local suicide or accept local Phyrric victories if the global gain is higher and will also factor in local allied forces.
-Fixed various AI researching and building stall outs for the various trees (military in particular).
-Rewrote AI siege building and attack logic.
-Improved AI use of Black Market.
-Autocast for many disabling abilities improved.
-New AI Difficulty "Unfair" that gives the AI a tax income bonus and resource income bonus from resource asteroids (there is no other AI cheating in the game even at the Unfair difficulty level).
-Wide variety of AI upgrades.
-Improve AI taunting.

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Networking / Multiplayer:
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-AI will now take over for dropped players.
-You no longer have to kill all a dropped player's planets to win even when the AI takes over for him.

-Unified the in-game and ico chat system. They now share the same irc/wow like commands. Full autocomplete with tab/shift-tab. Autocomplete will attempt to either complete the name field or cycle through the available names.

/r - doesn't take in a name for the second parameter, will send automatically to the last player who send a whisper
in-game same as ico

/wr - allows you to autocomplete with

-You can now send whispers to players with spaces in their names by using quotes. Autocomplete properly handles these names.

-Rewrite of ico friend status. all clients are now kept up to date on the current status of every friend at all times. This allows for a more friendly ui, the friend list is colored to show who is logged in/playing games. There are globbal events to notify the user of what friends are doing. This can be disabled like the channel notifications.

-Channel name list now saves the visual and selected state on any change, so it is now possible to select players on busy channels.
-There is now a setting for if the user wants to see "


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UserInterface / HUD:
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-Added culture flipping planet event.
-Made the use of 'strike craft' when refering to both fighters and bombers more consistent (often just fighters before).
-Various text color updates.
-Improved description of Development Mandate research.


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Modding:
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-Can now mod in different textures without copying the entire texture directory.
-Fixed corrupt particle effects when loading mods up in-game.


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Misc:
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-Various crash fixes.
-Game stats infocards now sort by value.
-Game stats now track the number of active units instead of built so that the graphs are more interesting.
-Game stats no longer tracks the number of units lost in combat as this was confusing with number of units killed and the information is now apparent from the number of active units stats.
-Scenario names are now localized, no longer use the filename, but instead use a string inside the file.
-Removed no pirate maps (not needed as its a game option now).
-Other very minor additions and changes.

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End
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The next stop is the demo version and then it's on to v1.04.





[ 1.02 changelog ]
163,098 views 137 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top
Siege being an issue at all in the single player is apparently being addressed by the AI fixes. To the point of having it's own special blurb in the AI section. Handily nerfing them on all counts when the actual problem seems to have already been dealt with just strikes me as odd is all.

Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top
I'm not saying that the siege balances are necessarily good, just that everyone needs to remember that there are two "different" games going on here, and Ironclad shouldn't just focus on the multiplayer one. They don't seem to be, which is good.
End of quote


They said time and time again that they will look at how multiplayer players play, and try to emulate that behavior in the AI. So why wouldn't MP game matter more in their strategy?
Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top
I hope you are right, but because of the armor difference you might not be.But if they did increase survivability, then that would be a FLAK nerf! And worst probably for Advent defense vessel!
End of quote


fine I will do a proper comparison:

javelins currently have 525 ehp and 280 shields = 131.5 ehp and 70 shields per supply.

illums currently have 550 ehp and 500 shields = 91.66 ehp and 83.33 shields per supply.
*modifying illums to be identical per supply would mean removing a total of 80 shields and adding 239 ehp (~215 hp) = new stats ~715 hull ~420 shields and 2 armour.

assailants currently have 660 ehp and 340 shields = 110 ehp and 56.33 shields per supply.
*modifying assailants to be identical per supply would mean adding 129 ehp(116 hp)
and 82 shields = ~716 hp, ~422 shields and 2 armour.

now this isnt exactly what they would do, since they might make sure illums have a 1:1 hull/shield ratio and in that case it would be ~570/~570 or so.

minor buff, but it isnt a nerf.
Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top
Yikes, 30% range increase?

Is it possible for a minimum range be added to LRMs in a future patch? The things are already kind of crazy good for early game weapons and can be effectively spammed throughout a game with surprisingly good effect. Would be nice if something like Heavy Cruisers could more hard counter the things once you out-tech a spammer.
Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top
Awww, it seems this patch won't fix the disappearing Vasari-based Weapon effects..

Looks like it's going to be a long time until I get to properly play as the Vasari..

But nice overall changes, which are welcomed.
Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top
Changes regarding seige strengths can be easily modded to your taste.

In most cases mods become far more common for multiplayer than vanilla....


Javaslinger
Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top
They need a seperate version for singleplayer and multiplayer then if balancing singleplayer means making advent unplayable in competitive play.Oh but don't worry, now advent can make improved culture broadcasts while their homeworld is getting destroyed while there is nothing at all they can do about it. Maybe they'll drop a roids allegance by half before they die!
End of quote


This isn't unusual these days, but I'm not sure how popular it is with players. WiC has very different unit balance between SP and MP, and that's good for the tournament-style MP it has, but I'm sure there are people who complain about it. Frankly, listening to whining on forums is just asking for trouble unless they do the balancing act between the 99% noise and the actual issues.
Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top
I'm not saying that the siege balances are necessarily good, just that everyone needs to remember that there are two "different" games going on here, and Ironclad shouldn't just focus on the multiplayer one. They don't seem to be, which is good.
End of quote

Omg calculators add up numbers faster than me. Nerf math!
Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top
The data (ICO stats and singleplayer commentary) says siege is being used as a massed strike force (and in many cases, multiple strike forces). Its obvious why too: the cost and supply usage is low and you can't kill them quick enough to stop them (nor can you strike at them elsewhere in time). Thus they cost more and are more easily killed - we really want players to have to choose whether they go heavy siege and when and where they should strike with them. But if there is serious problems 1.04 is just around the corner (aka all the stuff that didn't quite make 1.03) so based on this we may end up meeting in the middle between 1.02 and 1.03. It's an iterative process. Regardless, we here at Ironclad are having more fun with it than with 1.02.
Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top
The siege frigate nerf doesn't really bother me, since no decent player uses them in multiplayer. However, by the sounds of the commentary it sounds like you're giving LRM type frigates a major buff. This will make the game alot more 1 dimensional and will basically kill off advent as a viable race. LRM spam needs a nerf if anything, not to be turned into the only viable strategy (and in the process making vasari and TEC the only viable races).
Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah.. Advent relies on the defense vessal early in the game to stop enemy LRMs, as illums SUCK early game. They suck against light frigs, they suck against lrms, they suck against flak, they suck (early on) against caps. Later on they're good against caps, good against HC's, support cruisers.

It seemed to me the devs were geniuses and intentially gave advent the good flaks for beating back LRM rushes so they could survive late game. I guess it was just coincidense.

GG advent no longer making it past the 15 minute mark from now on.

Innociv, I'm not following- there are more defences than just defense vessels, what about the other structures, etc...? I'm not disagreeing, I'm just trying to see your point more clearly?
Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top
@Scorpion, with this buff to LRMs all LRM type units will outrange turrets. As for hangars, a few flak can deal with them. Even if static D was much better than it is, are you really going to manage to static D every single one of your colonies without screwing up your econ?
Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top
@Scorpion, with this buff to LRMs all LRM type units will outrange turrets. As for hangars, a few flak can deal with them. Even if static D was much better than it is, are you really going to manage to static D every single one of your colonies without screwing up your econ?
End of quote


That is a good question. I do like and play Advent, but I'm still trying to get a grip with countering the LRM rush without doing the same. Is there any other way with these changes in your opinion?
Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top
The data (ICO stats and singleplayer commentary) says siege is being used as a massed strike force (and in many cases, multiple strike forces). Its obvious why too: the cost and supply usage is low and you can't kill them quick enough to stop them (nor can you strike at them elsewhere in time). Thus they cost more and are more easily killed - we really want players to have to choose whether they go heavy siege and when and where they should strike with them. But if there is serious problems 1.04 is just around the corner (aka all the stuff that didn't quite make 1.03) so based on this we may end up meeting in the middle between 1.02 and 1.03. It's an iterative process. Regardless, we here at Ironclad are having more fun with it than with 1.02.
End of quote


Sounds like something I brought up and posted about a month ago...

Regardless, no hard feeling. Great first major patch, many improvements imho. Keep it up SD and IC.
Reply #40 from Sins Forums Top
can you switch between having them run away on or off cause the last thing i want is "OH LOL YOU HAVE 5 MORE SHIPS THAN ME AND ITS BEEN LIKE 20 MIN RUN AWAY!"
.....i just realized that sounds like multyplayer:P
Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top
@Scorpion, actually I think with these changes, it will be pretty much impossible for advent to counter LRM rush since Illuminators are crappy vs other LRMs (capship type damage) and they are tech 3.
Reply #42 from Sins Forums Top
The data (ICO stats and singleplayer commentary) says siege is being used as a massed strike force (and in many cases, multiple strike forces). Its obvious why too: the cost and supply usage is low and you can't kill them quick enough to stop them (nor can you strike at them elsewhere in time). Thus they cost more and are more easily killed - we really want players to have to choose whether they go heavy siege and when and where they should strike with them. But if there is serious problems 1.04 is just around the corner (aka all the stuff that didn't quite make 1.03) so based on this we may end up meeting in the middle between 1.02 and 1.03. It's an iterative process. Regardless, we here at Ironclad are having more fun with it than with 1.02

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


Uuhhhhhhhhhh. Okay. This might be a stupid question, but does the data take into account -when- these massed siege frigates are used in MP? Because here's the hard facts; the quit mechanism causes the game to be 'over' in a sense, but you still have to kill everyone's planets to win, even if they aren't playing anymore or disconnected. Hence late in the game you'll have roving bands of siege fleets to clean up after players who have already left the game.

Could -this- be the reason why your data says such things? Quite frankly, no one has asked for a siege frigate nerf since 1.02; the big issue is rebalancing LRMs,
Reply #43 from Sins Forums Top
The data (ICO stats and singleplayer commentary) says siege is being used as a massed strike force (and in many cases, multiple strike forces). Its obvious why too: the cost and supply usage is low and you can't kill them quick enough to stop them (nor can you strike at them elsewhere in time). Thus they cost more and are more easily killed - we really want players to have to choose whether they go heavy siege and when and where they should strike with them. But if there is serious problems 1.04 is just around the corner (aka all the stuff that didn't quite make 1.03) so based on this we may end up meeting in the middle between 1.02 and 1.03. It's an iterative process. Regardless, we here at Ironclad are having more fun with it than with 1.02.
End of quote


So.. you count noob vs ai games in these recordings? What you're talking about simply doesn't work against competitive players, or anyone who's played 10 games.
Your reasoning makes no sense either.
Sieges take as much supply as KODIAKS. They cost 530$ 80m 60c! Almost as much as them!
So for everyone siege your enemy builds, you can almost make a heavy cruiser. :|
Like I Said(though credit cost slightly off) you're now making it so sieges are useless, pretty much, and it's best to simply make more caps. Not only will caps damage planets, but they're good in combat too.

The logic behind this makes no sense.. sorry.
Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top
Hopefully the increase in LRM costs will make it more reasonable to build capital ships; less LRMs means less focus fire on Capital ships. I imagine that LRMs becoming highly effective capital ship counters (As opposed to bombers and HC) was an unintended side effect.
Reply #45 from Sins Forums Top
@Scorpion, actually I think with these changes, it will be pretty much impossible for advent to counter LRM rush since Illuminators are crappy vs other LRMs (capship type damage) and they are tech 3.
End of quote


Awe darn, well, maybe 1.04?
wonderful, I have so much to look foward to :( I guess I will go back to playing the AI and using different strats.
Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top
Innociv, I'm not following- there are more defences than just defense vessels, what about the other structures, etc...? I'm not disagreeing, I'm just trying to see your point more clearly?
End of quote


Since when do gun turrets stop LRMS?
1: LRMS kill them quickly.
2: They now ALL outrange them. (before only javs did with their 7000 range. Turrets have 6000. Assailants had 6000. illums had like 5 or so i think? Now all of them will have more than 6000, so turrets won't be able to shoot any of them back.
But even before, LRM's owned turrets. So.. I don't get your point. No, the only way to stop lrm rush was with defense vessals, preferably with repairs.


Vasari and TEC can fight each others lrms with lrms, they're pretty equal. Illums, however, are very bad against other lrm's. They lose to javelin lrms which cost almost HALF as much. But advent defense vessal is the best flak, and flak WERE a good counter to lrms, but probly won't be nice that lrms have more survability. This is the point the experienced players are trying to make, and that advent will be unplayable unless we're misinterpretting something.

Advent won't be able to survive a rush, won't live past the first 15 minutes.
Reply #47 from Sins Forums Top
disregarding the siege nerf which was completely unnecessary, this is a terrible change:

-Research subjects queued in different fields can now upgrade in parallel.

All but guarantees everyone will have everything researched by the end of a game, removing any difficult decisions as far as research is concerned.

Also, I'm mot thrilled with the pji buffs. Have it cost more, have it be less effective, just have it cover the whole well.
Reply #48 from Sins Forums Top
Oh and like the above person mentioend, after people quits yeah people stop building ships and jsut mass siege frigs to clean up to get the win. I hope those stats are correctly decyphered. :/
Reply #49 from Sins Forums Top
Autocast for many disabling abilities improved.


Hmmm, I was reading the patch again, I wonder if the range on these has increased? Can one of the devs further explain these "improvements", actually I'm thinking of a different devious spam-not LRMs.
Reply #50 from Sins Forums Top
wow great changes imo! Cant wait for it, thanks for the hard work guys.