Yarlen Yarlen

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion v1.82 BETA Change Log

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Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion v1.82 BETA Change Log

Opt-in BETA patch now on Steam

from Sins Forums

Ironclad Games and Stardock Entertainment are pleased to announce the release of the v1.82 BETA version for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. This update is largely designed to address balance issues with the Stellar Phenomena DLC, but also contains several other fixes.

The v1.82 BETA will run through April 2014 as we look at player feedback and make more fixes. Please note that code fixes are not included in this first release - we'll be looking at those in January; so more is on the way!

To update to the v1.82 BETA:

  1. Select Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion from your Steam Library list
  2. Right-click on it and select Properties
  3. Click on the BETAS tab
  4. From the drop-down, select v1.82 Opt-In BETA
  5. Click the Close button

Steam will automatically update you to the current release.  If you want to switch back to the regular version, just repeat the above but select the 'NONE' option instead.

Playing the BETA on ICO:

  • Open an Explorer window to: Documents\My Games\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion\Setting
  • Open rebellion.user.setting using Notepad or some other basic text editor (do NOT use MS Word)
  • Change IcoServerPort (on line 39) to 8000
  • Save the file

 Version 1.82 Changes (12/16/13)

[ Stellar Phenomena DLC ]

  • Halved asteroidCounts on Graveyard and DenseDebris templates in AsteroidDef to improve performance.
  • Updated GalaxyScenarioDef uncolonizable gravity wells w/resources to be guarded by Pirates, not neutral factions.
  • Removed defenders from Antimatter Fountain.
  • Changed ShatteredMoon defender template from LocalMilitiaWeak to LocalMilitiaWeakUncolonizable.
  • Updated Allegiance progression in Gameplay.Constants on the later stages to drop by .05 on levels 7-8. This should help prevent very distant planets from instantly going neutral from Open Rebellion.
  • Added potential for 0-2 (from 0) neutral crystal extractors at Comets.
  • Increased minimum neutral crystal extractor count to 2 (from 1) at Ice Fields.
  • Increased minimum neutral metal/crystal extractor count to 1 (from 0) at Radiation Storms.
  • Increased minimum neutral metal extractor count to 1 (from 0) at Shattered Moon.
  • Increased random event allegiance check from 240 to 600 seconds. This should help prevent distant colonies from succumbing to Open Rebellion before the player can do anything about it.
  • Reduced minimum allegiance threshold for random events from 30% to 15%.
  • Increased max respawn count on Magnetic Storm from 4 to 9.
  • Increased max respawn count on Plasma Storm from 4 to 9.
  • Reduced trigger weight on Partisans event from 25% to 10%.
  • Reduced trigger weight on Open Rebellion event from 10% to 5%.
  • Reduced fleet point range on Open Rebellion event from 150/350 to 100/250.
  • Increased volume on random event warning sound by 3db.
  • Dramatically shortened Pulsar particle so that it doesn't touch other gravity wells and made the tails less sharp.
  • Removed Fighters from target list on Gas Giant's pre-explode buff since they can never lose it; will still take damage from nearby explosions.
  • Added new Commodity Boom random event: one random planet (including neutrals) may now undergo a resource boom where extractor and refinery rates are increased by 30% for 5 minutes. Should never appear on: Dead Asteroids, Pirate Bases, Antimatter Fountains, Magnetic Clouds or Wormholes. (Thanks to Goafan for the suggestion!)


[ Forbidden Worlds DLC ]

  • Removed 'Ferrus' from PlanetRandomUncolonizable in GalaxyScenarioDefs.
  • Removed 'FerrusFair' from PlanetRandomUncolonizableFair in GalaxyScenarioDefs.
  • Added new planet bonuses to GalaxyScenarioDefs (thanks Goafan!).
  • Changed Rusted Core planet bonus to no longer require points in exploration.

[ AI ]

  • 4/15 - Revised AI bonus income rates to try and scale less drastically past Normal.

[ Misc. ]

  • Updated SDActivate.exe so folks shouldn't need to open up IE if it fails on new installs.
382,215 views 161 replies
Reply #51 from Sins Forums Top

Ok, buncha different quotes....

Quoting Yarlen, reply 5
Essentially, Normal is baseline, Hard is 50% more than Normal, Unfair is 50% more than Hard, etc. IIRC.

Quoting Timmaigh, reply 9
[...]the Hard used to get 225 percent bonus, the Unfair 350 percemt. Cruel or whatever is next 475 percent, Vicious i assume 600...

Quoting PKingZombieSpy, reply 41
I did opt in and do appear to have the beta (1.82.4976 listed on main screen), but if I look at the multipliers in a replay, a hard appears to be 1.75x, and unfair 3.5x. That's not what I expected from this discussion?  I was expecting 1.5x and 2.25x?

Yarlen, assuming you are recalling correctly... the numbers don't seem to line up.  Normal (as "baseline", assuming 100%) -> Hard is now 1.75x (+75%), Hard -> Unfair is 2x (+100% relation, not literal), and assuming Timmaigh's numbers are correct, Unfair -> Cruel is ~1.35x (+~35% relation, not literal).

I dunno... maybe I'm looking at these numbers wrong, but that doesn't seem "normalized" to me.  As PKingZombieSpy said, based on your statement, I would've expected the numbers to be more 150%, 225%, 337.5%, etc (which would actually make Unfair the new Hard).

Quoting XATHOS, reply 21
How about you add those parameters in the gameplay.constants file?  That'll make many of us happy.

Chimming in on this.  Don't care how long it's been asked for and not given, yet... still adding my voice.

Quoting Yarlen, reply 12
Considering the number of folks who are able to routinely beat the toughest AI in under an hour, it's fine.

Yarlen, do you know where this "data" is coming from?

Reply #52 from Sins Forums Top

Any stability improvements with this next patch?  MDs are rampant on ICO, multiple people crashing a game....

Siege of Centauri
Reply #53 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 52
Any stability improvements with this next patch?  MDs are rampant on ICO, multiple people crashing a game....

Just have everybody use Large Address Aware on the Sins exe; this will increase stability dramatically on ICO. SD/IC really needs to reopen the book on doing this officially.

Reply #54 from Sins Forums Top

Can there be an option to make the pathing AI for all ships choose a "safer" (instead of shortest) path along the phase lines?

 

I hate when my diplomatic envoy or my fleet reinforcements (who are rallied to my conquering fleet) automatically decide to go through the fully armed hostile Pirate Base, which is a guaranteed death...

Same goes for when my rallied (or just long distance traveling) ships decide to take a jump towards a hostile (armed/defended) world because it is the shortest path or because there is a wormhole that will make their travel shorter - but they end up dying in both cases, either due to enemy planets or the pirate base...

Scouts who are on "Exploration" should never try and jump to an already known Pirate Base - it just causes the Scout to get killed, and no one can really be arsed to manually supervise all Exploring scouts to make sure they don't suicide in an already known Pirate Base.

Also it seems kinda useful and logical/realistic for there to be a command to temporarily declare a planet "unsafe - off limits to trade/refinery ships" until canceled - this can be activated during pirate (or player) attacks, so the trade/refinery ships won't commit suicide by jumping into the besieged planet in an attempt to trade/refine.

 

An option to choose between a "safer" path and a "shortest" path for your ships to follow would be great, while the "planet off limits to civilian ships" would also be a nice addition.

 

Reply #55 from Sins Forums Top

It's much worst when your fleet split into two fleets and decide to go on two different paths, and you see it in the last moment, because you never think it can happen. Then the smarter guys come first, and the others a little bit later.   :D

Reply #56 from Sins Forums Top

can we hope for more performance improvements and/or more patches?

Reply #57 from Sins Forums Top

1.82 is still in beta and with Stardock/Ironclad's record if there is a need it will be done.

Reply #58 from Sins Forums Top

I don't see the performance really getting improved unless the game was made to be multi-core (not happening) or the # of SC per squadron was shrunk to about 2 (not happening)...the engine is what it is, and I think they've done the best they can with it...you could delete a few unused assets from manifests to reduce the memory used but that really doesn't affect performance, just reduces the likelihood of hitting the 2 GB wall (which shouldn't be happening in vanilla anyway)...

UNLESS you are talking about performance on ICO.....but it's already been said that won't be addressed....

Reply #59 from Sins Forums Top

yep, that's why I asked. I like the continued support and I'm starting to really appreaciate the engine!

Reply #60 from Sins Forums Top

We'll be staying in beta for at least another month or so. Sometime in February I plan to do an update on the difficulty levels again based on feedback. 

Reply #61 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Yarlen, reply 60

We'll be staying in beta for at least another month or so. Sometime in February I plan to do an update on the difficulty levels again based on feedback. 

 

Great thanks for the update.

 

 

Anything else going on for us to know about?  Direction of the game, planned expansions or sequels.  :)

Reply #62 from Sins Forums Top

more dlc rather than a sequel please, I want to enjoy rebellion more :D can you raise the number of hardpoints on meshes?

and if you're planning for a SOASE sequel, please, an engine which is as powerful, scalable and easy to mod as this one, which I liked a lot.

Reply #63 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Dark_Ansem, reply 62

more dlc rather than a sequel please, I want to enjoy rebellion more can you raise the number of hardpoints on meshes?

and if you're planning for a SOASE sequel, please, an engine which is as powerful, scalable and easy to mod as this one, which I liked a lot.

 

Yep, moar DLCs please. Unless you want to announce Sins 2 OFC.

Reply #64 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Timmaigh, reply 63


Quoting Dark_Ansem, reply 62
more dlc rather than a sequel please, I want to enjoy rebellion more can you raise the number of hardpoints on meshes?

and if you're planning for a SOASE sequel, please, an engine which is as powerful, scalable and easy to mod as this one, which I liked a lot.

 

Yep, moar DLCs please. Unless you want to announce Sins 2 OFC.

 

Yes that works also announce sins 2 with pre alpha alpha, Ill pay 150 for the collectors edition!  ;p

Reply #65 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Dark_Ansem, reply 62
easy to mod as this one

I actually hope they change the way modding works in it (for any sequels) a bit so that you can actually have more than one mod changing the same entity, albeit different stats.

Reply #66 from Sins Forums Top

well, but the Iron engine is a breath of very fresh air :) I like how much can be done with a simple text editor :)

I only wish it was multi-threaded, then it would be perfect.

Reply #67 from Sins Forums Top

Oh, certainly, but what I'm thinking of is like the way Supreme Commander does its modding.  Similar in that it can all be done via simple text editor, but different in that you can actually have two mods changing the same unit (provided it's different stats*).  You don't need to copy/paste the whole original unit file... just the lines you're changing.

 

*There's actually a way for you to have multiple mods change even the same stat, but that involves going into actual codding files, which SoaSE doesn't appear to let you.

Reply #68 from Sins Forums Top

on that you're right. supreme commander had a lot of support.

Reply #69 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting furyofthestars, reply 67

Oh, certainly, but what I'm thinking of is like the way Supreme Commander does its modding.  Similar in that it can all be done via simple text editor, but different in that you can actually have two mods changing the same unit (provided it's different stats*).  You don't need to copy/paste the whole original unit file... just the lines you're changing.

 

*There's actually a way for you to have multiple mods change even the same stat, but that involves going into actual codding files, which SoaSE doesn't appear to let you.

I suspect once the game eventually stops being supported, you will see some more tools designed to get around this problem. Well designed mods will do everything possible to avoid having the same file names for things like entities, which prevents conflicts.The biggest problem in merging big mods are in files that cannot be renamed, like the string file or the GalaxyScenarioDef, or if they extensively change vanilla game elements.

I might think about making a script that could automate some or all of these file merges, in fact I already have a utility for my personal use that merges two string files. There maybe a few errors that would have to be debugged by hand but they should be things the dev.exe would catch quickly. But there is no point in making such a script if the file structure continue to changes in game updates.

Reply #70 from Sins Forums Top

You know what would make a great DLC? tools for making campaigns and/or senarios.
Script triggers, player set up and so on for custom maps.

Reply #71 from Sins Forums Top

Goa, for sure there will be, but it's always better if not needed (out-of-box).  But, as I noted in my other post, I was more so commenting in regards to sequels.

Reply #72 from Sins Forums Top

I don't understand what happened to the AI. On Normal now it is totally lobotomized!

I reported this as a bug with v1.5x and many people confirmed it. Am I to understand that this is intended behavior?

I mean the AI was obviously never 'good' before but at least it DID something. I just played a 're-learning' game on Normal with a friend (his first time, my first time in quite a while) and the two AIs we played against did literally almost nothing. I think they built a total of 10-12 ships between the two of them the WHOLE GAME (almost 90 minutes...). It built no defenses. It expanded to a few neighboring systems but with no military to speak of it was absolutely no threat, not even defending.

How can this 'change' still be here? It seems like a very obvious 'bug'/side-effect/unintended consequence.

No wonder the gap between 'Normal' and 'Hard' seemed big....Normal doesn't even play. So now the solution is to make 'Hard' easier? I don't get it...

Anyone? Am I missing something?

Reply #73 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Uncle_Joe, reply 72

I don't understand what happened to the AI. On Normal now it is totally lobotomized!

I reported this as a bug with v1.5x and many people confirmed it. Am I to understand that this is intended behavior?

I mean the AI was obviously never 'good' before but at least it DID something. I just played a 're-learning' game on Normal with a friend (his first time, my first time in quite a while) and the two AIs we played against did literally almost nothing. I think they built a total of 10-12 ships between the two of them the WHOLE GAME (almost 90 minutes...). It built no defenses. It expanded to a few neighboring systems but with no military to speak of it was absolutely no threat, not even defending.

How can this 'change' still be here? It seems like a very obvious 'bug'/side-effect/unintended consequence.

No wonder the gap between 'Normal' and 'Hard' seemed big....Normal doesn't even play. So now the solution is to make 'Hard' easier? I don't get it...

Anyone? Am I missing something?

There were people who though normal was too hard, so the devs decided to remove all cheats the normal AI got, so Sins would have an actual "Baseline" AI. In of itself I don't think it is a terrible idea, but yes this had the side effect of making the gap between normal and hard to big.

Since very few people play on the hardest difficulties, I think it would be a good idea to nerf them all the AIs harder than normal a tiny bit to bring the difficulty jump more in line while giving newer players more options. Other than easy, which is of course even more brain dead.

Reply #74 from Sins Forums Top

Short/Blunt :X

Playing around with the difficulty this late into a games life cycle is stupid. IMHO

 

Reply #75 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 73
Since very few people play on the hardest difficulties,

I don't know man....last I heard, the official word was that lots of people regularly won on vicious...

Do you see the problem here?