Interstellar Space: Genesis - Free 1.5 Update Released!

Hello everyone!

We are excited to announce that the new major and free! 1.5 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!

1.5 Update - Features and Improvements

New Galaxy Shapes

This was a highly popular request by the community and is one of the major new features of the 1.5 update. On top of the squarish shape the game offered, we now also have Elliptical, Ring and Spiral-shaped galaxies!

The maps certainly look much better with the new galaxy shapes! However, no less important are the new gameplay dynamics that should emerge from the much more interesting terrain from these new galaxy shapes, which can now form clusters of stars and whole sectors that will be much further apart from each other. This is usually the case with Ring galaxies (big hole in the middle) or Spiral galaxies (loose arms and further distances between stars).



Steam Cloud Saves

Another popular request, Steam Cloud Saves is now in the game and it allows you to save your game on one of your devices and continue on a different one later. Enjoy switching from PCs and continue your epic adventure through the stars!

Automated (Auto-assigned) Infrastructure

This one comes to the rescue of some of that heavy micro that could happen on late-game, especially on very large game sessions, where it was not uncommon to have to choose from half a dozen or more colony infrastructure specializations on a given turn.

With this new feature, you'll be able to auto-assign infrastructure specializations for your colonies in one go and forget about it. This will be particularly useful in late-game for newly founded colonies, or ones acquired through invasion, especially in the larger galaxies.

The way it works is that you'll be able to set an automatic upgrade profile for each colony (e.g. develop planetary engineering first and then ship building, etc). This way, every time the colony upgrades its infrastructure it will level it up according to the profile you've set.



Ship Idle Alerts

We have received many requests for implementing some sort of "ship idle" notification system that could warn the player of ships sitting around without orders, which could be left hanging somewhere and remain "idle" for many turns, especially civilian ships.

An example, a survey ship arrives on a system and is not immediately sent on a new mission; it could be forgotten in that system for some turns. An outpost ship or a colony ship arrive at their destination and no settlements could be established at that time. The same for support ships and even assault ships.

To help keep track of this, a new "ship idle" notification will now be presented every time a civilian ship arrives at a system and there is no obvious action possible or set for it. The idle alerts will only be displayed once per ship and per turn they arrive at a system and become idle.



Improved AI

Last of the major new improvements, but not the least, it's always a good thing to have to increase engagement and excitement: improved AI, particularly on the way the AI designs their ships and uses them in combat. And, more efficient leader management by the AI.

The AI now designs their ships with three distinct roles in mind: close-range attacker, long-range attacker, and a general defender or multi-purpose warship. Each role will tend to equip different and specialized equipment, from weapons, and respective weapon modifications, special systems which will lead to new tactics.

These new roles result in (we hope) much improved performance in combat. Examples: Ships with missiles or strike craft may stay behind for a while, while close-attacker heavy armor ships may go for the kill with their armor and shield piercing weapons. Certain AI race affinities will prefer some roles to others.

The AI will also make smarter choices with respect to improved maneuverability opportunities (resulting in more speed, accuracy and evasion capabilities), and will be more sensible regarding the miniaturization level of the weapons it equips (e.g. a state-of-the-art weapon may not be the best choice, a highly miniaturized weapon may be better).

Also, the AI does a better handling of their leaders now. It will bring them more for key battles (especially invasions in the higher difficulties), while trying to improve their survival rate.

All of this should help make for more immersive and exciting combat. It does seem to be the case, but let us know what you think.

And, more!

There's also balance changes, many UI and assorted QoL improvements, many of which are in response to player feedback. There's also bug fixes, and more!

You can find the full change log for this update below.

Version 1.5 - Full Release Note

Spoiler: SHOW DETAILS

NEW

• New Galaxy Shapes to be configured at game start: Elliptical, Ring and Spiral-shaped galaxies!
  
• Steam Cloud Saves: Save your game on one PC and continue on a different one later.
  
• Automated Infrastructure: Auto-assign infrastructure specializations for your colonies in one go and forget about it. Particularly useful with micromanagement in late-game for very big maps.
  
• New ship idle alerts: A new "ship idle" notification will be presented every time a civilian ship arrives at a system, and there's no obvious action set for it yet; the ship is "idle" (e.g. a survey ship arrived on a system and awaits new orders, or a colony ship arrived, a colony can't be built and the ship is now idle. The same ideia for the other civilian ships).

AI IMPROVEMENTS

• The AI now designs their ships with three distinct roles in mind: close-range attacker, long-range attacker, and a general defender or multi-purpose warship, all of which will behave differently in combat. Each role will tend to equip different and specialized equipment, from weapons, weapon modifications, hull reinforcement, maneuverability and special systems which will lead to new tactics.
  
• The AI will also make smarter choices with respect to improved maneuverability opportunities, and will be more sensible regarding the miniaturization level of the weapons it equips (e.g. A state-of-the-art weapon may not be the best choice).
  
• The AI does a better job at handling their leaders now. It will bring them more for key battles (especially invasions in the higher difficulties), while trying to improve their survival rate.

BALANCE

• The accuracy "to-hit" formula for ships was revised to set a limit of 5% to hit minimum, irrespective of the range and the accuracy and evasion values. This was done to avoid having 0% or very low chance hit shots.
  
• Free espionage level ups for leaders are now assigned more sensibly, to avoid wasting skill slots with spy skills on leaders who would probably not be a good candidate to be a spy in the first place. Colony leaders may see their existing spy skills improve but do not usually gain new ones on these free level-ups. There's also a bias to favor adding spy skills to ship leaders, but it will depend on what skills leaders already possess.
  
• Credits obtained from scrapping a ship have changed from a factor of 8 production cost to a return of 1 BC to 12 production cost to 1 BC. Scrapping was too good, and on par with Trade Goods. Now, it should be more balanced.
  
• Battle odds of 0% chance of winning are not presented now. It is rounded to a minimum of 1%. Battle odds are presented when the player has the Ultrawave Scanner.
  
• The initial frigate and destroyer ship designs were unoptimized at game start. The frigate design now has two lasers instead of one and more maneuverability; the initial destroyer design now starts with maneuverability level 1. It had no maneuverability before. This also affects the 2 initial frigates that are available at game start.

UI / GRAPHICS

• Holding the 'CTRL' key while left-clicking with the mouse on most notifications will center the map on the object in question (e.g. ship, system). The manual will be updated accordingly with this new hotkey in the official version of the update.
  
• The AI will now build ships with alternative designs. Before, they always built their ships with the default model for a given ship class type.
  
• The game now shows at a glance where a leader's ship is stationed, if it is travelling, or under refit, in the leaders' management panel, and also when levelling up leaders for better grasping of where leaders are currently stationed.
  
• The background starfield (the small "dot" stars in the background) are now slightly colored.
  
• The missile number icon in the ship design screen now has better contrast. It was a bit hard to grasp the ammo number before.
  
• The Wormhole tooltip now clarifies that both ends of a wormhole are considered inside supply range, so long one of them is. When this is the case, a fleet can travel to any end of the wormhole.
  
• The warning message that you're about to declare war on an empire is now displayed in yellow, for more impact and alertness on this important action.
  
• When a tech is researched, or obtained through other means, the 'Research' screen now displays the research field as "...in the field of Propulsion", for example, and not "in the Propulsion field!".
  
• The 'Direct Hit' achievement description was revised to clarify that a one-shot kill is not a requirement for unlocking the achievement, and that you need to get through shields, armor, or both.
  
• The ship construction notification now displays a small icon representing the type of ship that has been constructed. This makes it easier to grasp what type of ships have been built on a given turn, especially when there's a lot of ships built.
  
• The population assimilation ratios per turn are now displayed in the POP tooltip in the colony view (when inspecting the little POPs) when POPs are yet to be assimilated (either 'Pacified' or 'Revolting'). Also, a note was added to that tooltip to describe what actions may be necessary when the POPs are revolting.
  
• Added social links to the main menu: official website icon links to the game's official website; the newsletter icon allows you to register the game's newsletter; and a survey icon allows you to answer the survey 'Interstellar Space: Genesis - What's Next'.
  
• The supply range borders now expand immediately after a 'Logistics' technology is obtained from a tech exchange deal.

SOUND & MUSIC

• The opponent's neutral/affinity diplomacy tunes are now played right after a peace treaty is established. Before, the 'angry' tunes could keep playing if the opponent was very upset. This was done to reflect this important change in the diplomatic state.

BUG FIXES
Base-Game

• Fixed a bug when an ongoing sector remote exploration got revealed by ruins search, the current remote exploration would get corrupted in that sector. This is now fixed.
  
• Fixed a rare bug where the UI would bring up the player's own ships and buildings for sabotage, and not the AI's. You don't want to sabotage your own ships and buildings! This occurred when both the AI and the player had colonies in the same system and the AI had a saboteur assigned to the player's colony in that same system. The player's saboteur would then pick up the wrong colony to sabotage.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause the 'Galaxy Map' screen (the one showing the map upon a battle encounter) to malfunction and not allow that screen to be closed if the player clicked on a fleet by accident while that window was open. This is now resolved.
  
• Fixed a bug in space combat when fighting against large numbers of AI ships (more than 50), could cause some enemy ships to not be targetable and lead to further glitches where sometimes shots could be seen originating from enemy ships not participating in the combat. This is now fixed.
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause the "You've won" message to be displayed over and over every turn after the player achieved a Conquest Victory and decided to hit "Just one more turn..." and continue playing.
  
• Fixed a rare bug that could lead to less building slots to be available than should be allowed by the colony's infrastructure. This happened when an AI had a finished building or ship just before it was invaded. This is now resolved.
  
• Fixed a rounding glitch in the empire early-breakthrough value on the Empire Overview screen. It could show a negative 0.00001 when it should just list 0%.
  
• Fixed a glitch that would cause the Wormhole tooltip to not work / be presented on systems with Basic scan level.
  
• Fixed a bug that could award the 'Direct Hit' achievement when a player's own ship or battle station would blow up from critical hit while it had full shields or armor.
  
• Fixed a glitch in the exhausts of all but the two largest engines on the alternate Nova cruiser, which were detached from the engines and offset to one side.
  
• Fixed a rare bug where a saboteur could be wrongly recalled from a sabotage job at a colony before it had a chance to complete the sabotage assignment.
  
• Fixed a glitch that could sometimes allow a ship to keep rotating freely in combat after the rotation command had been given using the 'arrow icons' on the 'rotate' button, which could be confusing for the player. Now, the rotation operation should be much clearer and easier to use.
  
• Fixed a glitch in the 'Legion of Shadows' event which could cause the last line of text to be cut off, and you couldn't scroll down far enough to read it.
  
• Fixed a glitch that allowed the supply range borders from the previous logistics' tech to remain visible after researching Expert Logistics, which allows for unlimited supply range. No supply range borders should be visible at that point.
  
• Fixed a glitch that would cause not all ships to be displayed in the fleet panel when very large numbers of ships were involved (>100).
  
• Fixed a sound glitch that could produce two sound clicks in rapid succession when clicking on a system object for planetary assault (either colonies or outposts invasion).
  
• Fixed an issue that would cause the production numbers in the colony overview panel to not update immediately when strategic resources were obtained from diplomatic trade deals.

Evolving Empires

• Fixed a bug that was allowing Android Leaders to be bribed/stolen when androids are not supposed to be influenceable by Psy-Ops missions.
  
• Fixed a bug in the 'Capital Defense Force' (CDF) of the Kaek evolution affinity Hub and Spoke, which could cause strange behavior when one of the CDF ships was captured, which would cause other ships of the same ship class type to become untargetable when captured or simply vanish after the battle.

This update is available in all stores. On Steam it will auto-update. On GOG it will also auto-update on GOG Galaxy. If you don't use GOG Galaxy, you'll need to download the offline installers for the new version in your GOG account. The new DRM-free version is also available on Humble Bundle and Itchi.io (check for the latest version 1.5 on those stores).

Compatibility and finishing an ongoing game

Due to the extension of the changes, saves from previous versions are not compatible with the 1.5 update. You will need to start new games to enjoy the new features and improvements.

To everyone who helped beta test this update, please revert to the main branch by choosing 'None' in Steam's Betas tab. You can then resume playing with the official version now.

If you want to finish your current game with the previous version (1.4.4), please go to the Steam client -> Games -> View Games Library -> Right-Click on Interstellar Space: Genesis -> Choose Betas tab -> Select the "old_version" branch.

On GOG Galaxy choose the previous 1.4.4 version by choosing Options -> Manage Installation -> Set "Automatically update to newest version" to off and choose the 1.4.4 version. On Humble and Itchio download the "Previous version" build.

Thanks

We want to thank everyone who has helped test this update. Big thanks to everyone who has bought the game, and the expansions, so far. Thank you.

If you have some time, we'd love it if you could take our survey "Interstellar Space: Genesis - What's Next!". You can also take it later as a link to the survey is also available from the game's main menu.

We hope you enjoy the new free 1.5 update! If you haven't bought the Natural Law expansion yet, please consider buying as it adds 2 very nice playable races to the game, that will have their own Evolution tree with the Evolving Empires expansion, among other features and music tracks. The Evolving Empires expansion adds two major new features: Evolutions and Minor Civilizations. It also includes 7 new leaders and 2 new music tracks. If you have a few minutes to spare, and have been enjoying what we do, please leave us a review on Steam or GOG! ❤️

Have fun!
Praxis Games