Sins of a Solar Empire - Diplomacy v1.01 Change Log

from Sins Forums

After days of struggle and careful "diplomacy," we have managed to get the Pirates to agree to a number of concessions. So, Ironclad and Stardock are pleased to announce that as of v1.01, the Pirates in Diplomacy/Trinity will no longer be as big a threat as they once were. :)

NOTE: THIS UPDATE WILL INVALIDATE YOUR EXISTING SAVE GAMES AND REPLAYS.

Gameplay -

  • Pirates will now prefer planets with two or more structures (rather than Dead Asteroids and the like).
  • Pirates will always try their best to nuke a planet before leaving. It's the only way to be sure (we had to give them something).
  • Initial Pirate raids are now less powerful.
  • Pirate Gauss Guns are now less powerful.
  • Experience for killing Pirate ships has gone down.
  • The Pirates now have a unique armor type that will allow them to take less damage from all weapon types.
  • Pirates will now upgrade themselves more evenly instead of spending all of their credits on just one area.
  • When on a player mission, the Pirates will no longer stop at the first target owned planet they come across. When on a raid, the Pirates will try to stop at a sufficiently occupied planet (i.e., tastier targets are higher priority).
  • AI players will offer Pacts regardless of their feelings towards the player, as long as the other relationship requirements are met.
  • Relationship penalties have been changed to make them more stable.
  • Lowered the rate at which AI players gain diplomatic points.
  • Lowered the rate at which the AI relationship bonus increases.
  • The various AI difficulties will now gainthe AI relationship bonus at different rates.
  • Lowered the cooldown on Diplomatic Immunity by 30 seconds.
  • You should now be able to target any ally in a free-for-all match for Pirate/regular missions and for Pirate bounty (allows for colorful backstabbing).
  • Locked team games will no longer have a Diplomatic Victory option.
  • AI players are now more likely to send Pirate missions.
  • Military Actions now have a negative cap of -20.

Interface -

  • The quick bounty button will now let you increase the bounty on allies, but will prefer non-allies if any exist.
  • Fixed a text placement issue on the Game Over screen.
  • Relationship displays can now be negative.

Misc. -

  • Added a data value to game constants to set the number of modules Pirates look for when stopping to attack.
  • Fixed an old bug that resulted in AI players offering alliances more often than they should.
  • Fixed an issue with some autocast use times.
  • Fixed an issue where certain Pacts were not functioning properly (most notably the Supply Pact).
  • Fixed a possible crash within the mission system.
  • Fixed a bug that might cause the AI to not offer Pirate Missions.
26,944 views 33 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

:drool:  

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Pirates attacking planets of some value and their change to a more adaptive armor type both sound great.  Can't wait to see them in practice.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

After days of struggle and careful "diplomacy," we have managed to get the Pirates to agree to a number of concessions.
End of quote
And the loss of Yarlen's entire fleet. :-"

 

:fox:

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Tiny question if you don't mind: when should it hit the servers?

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Should hit sometime today. Not sure if this will fix "the" desync issue. We believe we fixed one of them, but there's one that's part of the Entrenchment code that continues to elude us.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

K, looks like this update has been pushed to Thursday gang.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Thursday, Thursday, Thursday... has anyone else noticed that SINS patches are almost always on Thursday? If they're not on Thursday, they are on a Tuesday.

It's creepy.

Edit: What bug was there with the TEC Supply Pact? Was it giving way too much supply?

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, no more deadly pirate nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I love the insane pirates

but other than that great update can't wait

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

I was just about to say that it was a brave move to say "today" instead of "soon". The problem is that today has a definite end. Thursday is good. There are a lot of thursdays :)

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

No fix to the replays??

All diplomacy Replays minidump 10-20 minutes into the replay

[_]-Uber

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

It would seem they are now more powerful than ever and even a combined effort of 3 empires won't do much to fight them. What's the point of a max out starbase with 7 hangers, 100 mines and as many guns as possible and a fleet of pirates goes through like a laser through foil?

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

Am I just tired and missed something? Those changes doesn't sound like they'll do anything much to make the pirates weaker. Not as good in the beginning yea, but in late game when I feel I wanna take them down and send in my whole maxed out fleet I don't wanna get run over like a baby in the olympic marathon like last time. And a special armor to make them take even less damage? In my last mid-late game 10-15 pirate siege ships raped my Vasari starbase upgraded with full firepower and armor.

I hope I missed something or am wrong...

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

I think pirate siege ships have a buff against structures... which includes Star Bases.

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

They might have a damage bonus to structures, but 10-15 siege ships against a fully armed stabase? Common, that's just plain stupid. I could take 100 of my own and not bring down a starbase. But that tends to happen when they don't have thousands of hitpoints.

 

I do hope there is more to this patch than seen from a glance here, otherwise they've ruined the pirates, at least the way I play it. Guess I'll have to run over to the player community for a mod otherwise.

Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top

Have you fixed that Pirates will linger in a Gravity Well if there are mines because they think there is still stuff left to kill but don't know how to?

Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top

They still didn't fix the one were they don't use the same picture for both loss for military and Diplomatic losses.

Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Haree78, reply 17
Have you fixed that Pirates will linger in a Gravity Well if there are mines because they think there is still stuff left to kill but don't know how to?
End of Haree78's quote

This is serious one.  I can live with strong pirates late game, but this issue causes them to pretty much take over the galaxy late game.  I also think the timer on player issued pirate missions needs to be longer.  Late game I don't need to make ships anymore, as the pirates I can throw at people are many times stronger than anything I can make myself.  Allowing it once every 15 minutes or so would be more reasonable IMO.

 

Quoting Sarlocal, reply 14
Am I just tired and missed something? Those changes doesn't sound like they'll do anything much to make the pirates weaker. Not as good in the beginning yea, but in late game when I feel I wanna take them down and send in my whole maxed out fleet I don't wanna get run over like a baby in the olympic marathon like last time.
End of Sarlocal's quote

They nerfed pirate weapons a bit too.  If the above issues are fixed, I don't have any problem with it IMO.  Pirates are now great at breaking late game stalemates, and forcing an end to the game.  After all, Sins is a RTS not a turn based strategy game.  If you don't like them being strong, you can just turn them off or use Entrenchment.  I for one would like to continue to see them be a factor late game.

Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top

I love hard pirates. :blush:  

First 2-3 raids aren't so strong after that we should already have fleets to defend aganist them.

The only thing i would change is that when u send raid when they come back to pirate base half of the fleet disapers.

In one game i saw 5 pirate raids 40k credits and after those ships returned to pirate base u had like 300+ ships with 3000+ Hp and 40+ damage.

It would be nice if some of the pirate raid fleet stays on raided planet to defend.

 

PS I love high value planets :D  

Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top

They nerfed pirate weapons a bit too. If the above issues are fixed, I don't have any problem with it IMO. Pirates are now great at breaking late game stalemates, and forcing an end to the game. After all, Sins is a RTS not a turn based strategy game. If you don't like them being strong, you can just turn them off or use Entrenchment. I for one would like to continue to see them be a factor late game.
End of quote

 

i think the idea was to break late game stalemates but they dont have to powerful enough to defeat a whole fleet plus fully defend gravity well to do that... they just need to be strong enough so late game players have to honor it which will still break the stalemate.   just send pirates on mission against opponents planet that is far from where you want to attack ..stalemate ended without super pirates.(they still have to be strong enough to get a respnse though)

Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top

How does this fix the neverending upgrade to pirates hull, damage and armor?  That right there is the game breaking element.  I didn't see anything talking about that.  How can you miss something that huge?

Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top

NOTE: THIS UPDATE WILL INVALIDATE YOUR EXISTING SAVE GAMES AND REPLAYS.
End of quote

Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top

 

On the Diplomacy screen, for the next patch, could you guys please include player names so that there is more to identify the different factions with than just their empire icons?