Hello everyone! I hope you are all excited to get your hands on our next expansion Evolving Empires tomorrow! Today, we are releasing the full patch notes for the free 1.4 update, which will be releasing alongside Evolving Empires on May 25th. Wishlist Evolving Empires today! 1.4 highlights include 3 new leader skills (Surveillance, Metalworker and Curator), revamped strike craft 3D models (fighters and bombers), leader level information, AI improvements, many QoL improvements and tweaks, bug fixes, and much more. Thanks a lot to everyone who helped us beta test this update through the last few weeks! Compatibility and finishing an ongoing game Saves from previous versions are not compatible with 1.4. If you want to finish your current game with the previous version (1.3.4) please go to the Steam client -> Games -> View Games Library -> Right-Click on Interstellar Space: Genesis -> Choose Betas tab -> Select the "old_version" branch. For GOG, choose the previous 1.3.4 by choosing Options -> Manage Installation -> Set "Automatically update to newest version" to off and choose the 1.3.4 version. On Humble and Itchio download the "Previous version" build. Here's the full patch notes: Version 1.4 NEW Added new strike craft 3D models for fighters and bombers. Added new Surveillance, Metalworker and Curator leader skills. Added new option to the New Game setup screen to allow randomizing the AI players' colors at game start. The Deep Cover espionage leader skill now reveals rival's space culture choices. Added leader level information and tooltip to the various leader screens. Shows the leader level, current experience and required experience to reach the next level (leader opinion information now presented below the desires icon). Added two new ship explosion effects for a total of three for added variety. There was only one explosion effect before. AI IMPROVEMENTS The AI now doesn't order exploration fleets, sometimes with lone frigates and survey ships, to attack rival systems in suicidal runs. The AI ships now fire their weapons in combat before they flee. The AI now tends to equip more Spinal Mount on the Draguul and Moltar titans of their prefered weapon type (kinetic weapons for the Draguul, beams for the Moltar). Fixed a bug that could sometimes allow an AI ship with broken engines to move after the AI overloaded its broken engines. GAMEPLAY The 'Galaxy View' is now available to be displayed on every battle encounter and not only when the AI attacks the player. Revised Space Dragon, Space Amoeba and Crystal Entity's adults and offspring designs. Manual updated with more details on how formal contact is established. The leader secondary skill level up will now always try to upgrade an existing skill (the left one) when the leader has 3 or more skills. Alliance victory now triggered when one empire is allied with all other empires. Before everyone needed to be allied with everyone else. Slight bias now for the first couple leader proposals to be Human-like leaders when playing with a Human appearance race. Added 30 new star system names Player fleets now travel a bit faster in the early game (with nuclear engines). Fleets traveled a bit too slowly in the beginning. BALANCE Gigantic maps now have a little bit more Helium-3 resources with the 'average' strategic resources option. There were too few before. PERFORMANCE Optimizations made to the amount of space required for installing the game. The game now requires around 1GB less available storage space (many old and obsolete assets were deleted). Significantly faster turn execution speeds now, especially noticeable at the start and the early game. UI / GRAPHICS Data core artifacts the empire possesses now displayed in the research screen. When saving a game, after writing the save file name it's now possible to save when hitting the 'Enter' key without having to hit the 'Save' button. Tooltip of Wars in Diplomatic Summary in the Empire Overview screen now lists the number of turns the empires are at war. The Neutron Beam stun ability feedback text reworded to be more concise. Scrolling with the mouse wheel now works when dragging projects in the colony development queue. This allows moving an item in the queue at the very bottom to the top in one go. Detailed production tooltip now also shown in colonies overview panel. Flat production title in the production tooltip now displayed in orange to highlight flat production better. Overcrowding penalty in colonies reworded to "High bureaucracy" to clarify the penalty's context. The tooltip of orbital station module techs now clarifies modules are automatically added upon tech research. Uplift concept clarified in the ecological technologies' tooltip and the manual. The fleet icon tooltip in the galaxy map now shows the ETA of the fleet to its destination The strike craft animations now a bit slower in combat. The damage number animations displayed near ships when they take damage now move a bit slower. Added percentage to the Tech field Tool-tip for Government Modifiers. The Garrison buildings' techs now highlight they unlock Assault Ship construction more evidently. Also, the manual was updated to reinforce that Garrison facilities are unlocked by Garrison techs in the 'Defenses' research field. The Outpost Ship tooltip was revised to reinforce that Outpost Ships can be used to generate tourism. An entry on 'Tourism' was also added to the manual, and a text hint now also appears in the loading game screen to help clarify the game's 'Tourism' concept. Adding a refit project to the colony queue now dismisses the 'Idle construction icon' notification. Previously, only normal building and ships projects would clear the notification. The birds in the Human colony view are now a bit smaller, the ones on the top left that sometimes appear behind the UI. 'Request Defense Fleet' leader desire's description revised to make it clearer the turns required to achieve the desire includes the time a fleet is stationed on the system to be defended. BUG FIXES Fixed a glitch that would change the empire research percentage values when the 'Enter' key was pressed to proceed to the next turn. This happened when adjusting the research percentage and then hitting the 'Enter' key immediately after. Fixed an issue with could sometimes cause the wrong zoom level to be applied after a war declaration pop up was displayed from a system view random encounter. Fixed a bug where sometimes the AI would send multiple fleets to a system and take multiple system objects on the same turn. Fixed a bug where sometimes captured ships would appear as killed in the battle report. Fixed a bug that was not allowing leaders to level up their spy skills from buildings (e.g. Intelligence Headquarters) when all leaders in the empire already had the maximum number of 5 skills. Fixed a rare hang in the colony view with the Swamp Biome with the 'High' graphics settings in 4K resolutions. Fixed a glitch in space combat where sometimes trator beam effects could be left hanging in the battlefield when the target was destroyed or fled. Fixed a bug where Ion Cannons could sometimes re-activate the shields on a target with broken shields. Fixed a bug that could cause strike craft to sometimes keep resupplying and working, or just be left hanging in the battlefield, after their mothership fled. Fixed a glitch that caused ships in colony view to not show the correct lighting (were too dark) at game start. The issues would correct itself when desiging a ship or loading a game. Fixed an issue in the 'Divide by Zero' event that could cause the RP penalty number to change on each time the event was closed without making a decision and re-openning it again. Fixed an overflow glitch when showing culture values with 4 digits in the colony view. Fixed a rare bug that would cause the same spy leader skill to be offered as both options when the Intelligence Headquarters facility was built. Fixed a bug that was causing the wrong amount of neutronium to be used for the 'Neutronium Shells' bonus calculations. It was using the rival's supply of neutronium instead of the player's own supply. Fixed a bug that was causing shield piercing weapons to not bypass shields when those were overloaded. Fixed a bug that was causing the damage bonuses from 'Neutronium Shells', 'Beam Accelerators' and 'Antimatter Warheads' to not being taken into account for the purposes of Crew XP level damage bonus calculations. Fixed a rare bug that could cause a battle to hang and leave the UI unresponsive when all the player's ships would flee except a single one, which was disabled and with its engines broken. Fixed a glitch when showing the 'Galaxy View' (to show where the battle took place) upon a battle encounter occurs when the 'Very Sparse' nebula density option was set. Fixed a bug that could prevent a monster from attacking the player when multiple fleets arrive at same time. Now always attacks. Fixed an issue in the Ship Attack from Crew XP Bonus that could show many decimal places. Now shows at most 1 decimal place. Fixed a bug that was causing an increased chance to kill a leader in combat and adding more crew XP than it should when the killer blow was using a weapon with the autofire modification. Fixed a rare bug that could create a hang and not allow the game to proceed when a colony was razed exactly before that colony got an infrastructure upgrade. This was caused by razing the colony when invasion fleets had already been sent to take that colony. Fixed a bug that was allowing boarding to be enabled for any ship in the battleship with no distance limit when at least one ship was in boarding range (no cursor feedback was shown but all ships were boardable). Fixed a typo in the More than a Diplomat Event. "Your people is" now "Your people are". Fixed a typo in the Milia system name, it had an extra space in the system object. Fixed a typo on the More than a Diplomat event, "cohesistance" is now "coexistence". Fixed a bug that could cause a Titan with slow combat speed to remain immobile in the battlefield, or move in an odd pattern, in auto-combat or when played by the AI. Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause an orbital station to keep issuing shields overload even when the station's shields were in perfect health, causing the station to explode from heat. Fixed a typo in the ship refit notifications that could sometimes cause the text to wrap and present a poorly formatted tooltip. Fixed an issue where multiple "Ruins can be explored" notifications would be displayed when multiple fleets arrived at the system with ruins at the same time. Fixed an issue in the Temple of the Peacemaker event. The ruins were removed from the system and colony views but would remain on galaxy map until next turn. Fixed a glitch that could sometimes show ships in the colony screen with a more bright or different color. Fixed a bug that could cause a subject of a new subject to establish a surrender pact with its new overlord but without formal contact being established between the two. Fixed a rare hang when an AI had an orbital station but no orbital station techs. This happened when a colony with an orbital station rebelled. Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause AI ships to increase the heat level on their ships more than they should. Fixed a bug that could sometimes frame an empire for a job on another empire who they didn't know yet. Fixed a typo in the Trusting trait where it read "leader threatens to leave" now reads "leader threaten to leave". Fixed a bug where in rare occasions ships could be left hanging in the battlefield and could be selected/rolled-over although they had effectively been destroyed already. Fixed a bug that was causing salvage obtained from battle not being retrieved when auto-resolve was used without entering manual combat. Fixed a bug that could cause salvaged techs to not be correctly added to the player list of techs researched when those were already in the tech queue. Fixed an issue that was preventing players from having full visibility on all of their allies' systems and colonies. Fixed a glitch that could cause systems to become misaligned on galaxy map after system gift given. Fixed an issue that could cause a line break before the ":" mark in the Tolerable Gravity type in the Empire Status Screen in ultra-wide resolutions. Fixed an issue in the Impossible difficulty tooltip which wrongly stated the human player could have unfavorable starts In Impossible, when it's the AIs that tend to have favorable starts instead. Fixed a bug that was allowing torpedoes installed in bombers to not obey their cooldowns. Fixed an issue that was causing the wrong infrastructure level to be displayed in planets with the 'Ancient Shipyard' planet special. Fixed a glitch in a diplomacy text entry for the Nova when text was displayed for exchanging technologies. Fixed a typo "accept the rulling" is now "accept the ruling". Fixed a typo in the rebellion notification, where it said "Our people has fought fiercely now reads "Our people have fought fiercely". Fixed a typo in one event where one read "and hero’s welcome" now "and a hero’s welcome". Fixed a typo in Cyrus Olken biography, said "for the a museum" now is "for a museum”. Fixed a typo in the Imperial Archive empire project, the effects description had text repetition. Fixed a typo in the Cloning Facility, where was "remarkable fast rate" now "remarkably fast rate. Fixed a typo where "Election vitory" is now "Election victory". Fixed a bug that was allowing spy actions to be conducted in the turn the targetted empire was vanquished. Fixed a bug that caused the galaxy map to be displayed incorrectly after establishing a diplomatic deal. Fixed a glitch that would allow the effects of some Kinetic weapons to disappear too soon when hitting their target. Fixed a bug that was causing the Raid log to show the wrong boarding bonuses. Fixed an issue with the 'Planetary Prospectors' culture perk that would cause borders to not expand and richness values to not update in the colony overview panel immediately, but only in the next turn. Fixed a glitch that could sometimes cause fighters and bombers to not face their targets correctly after destroying them and/or when returning to the mothership for re-arm and refueling. Fixed a rounding issue in the espionage detection chances presented in the available espionage assignments.
