Opt-in BETA patch now on Steam
Published on December 16, 2013 By Yarlen In Change Logs

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.

Comments (Page 4)
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on Dec 23, 2013

Just want to get my opinion on here..

I thought Hard was too hard, until just recently. I don't think I had the beta yet and I whipped the Hard AI. Granted I had about 15 more planets than he had, I just sniped their capital planets and all the planets it took to get straight there. It was by no means a "send my ships here and let them do their thing" game, but it did not require me to retreat my fleets and rebuild. I just kept building smaller fleets and sending them in groups to reinforce my large fleet. I was completely maxed out in fleet points (I was actually at -31) and that might have helped.

I'm going to have to replay a game against hard players now that I know I have the beta and see what shakes. I will say I thought the Hard AI was too hard before. But maybe I understand the game better now!

on Dec 25, 2013

The VL jump stabilization is still buggy. When you research it, jump stabilization is applied to all enemy ships in a gravity well containing one of your starbases (so jump cost is -15% hull and -50% AM), but not to your ships when they leave a well containing an enemy starbase. Oddly, the stabilization is applied correctly at a neutron star or black hole.

Also, the ship graveyard should become an asteroid belt when you use SttC on it. At present, it becomes a dead asteroid, which is arguably a better planet than the graveyard as you can upgrade its health to 2500 (the graveyard cannot be upgraded) and you can still rebuild the extractors (which retain their elevated extraction income over normal asteroids).

on Dec 26, 2013

Regarding the ship graveyard, it should have fixed bonuses just like the pirate base, after all, it IS a base. In a ship graveyard, realistically, I would expect to have lower building costs because of the existing scrap metal. Also, because of the fact that it is an organized disposal facility, scuttling should be particularly more advantageous inside that specific gravity well. All of these would require a few logistical slots.

One last thing, any planet not being able to support population (ex. dead asteroid, graveyard etc) should not be affected by culture, either friendly or enemy. This would effectively make them military bases just like they already tend to be.

 

 

on Dec 29, 2013

X-tr3m3r

Regarding the ship graveyard, it should have fixed bonuses just like the pirate base, after all, it IS a base. In a ship graveyard, realistically, I would expect to have lower building costs because of the existing scrap metal. Also, because of the fact that it is an organized disposal facility, scuttling should be particularly more advantageous inside that specific gravity well. All of these would require a few logistical slots.

One last thing, any planet not being able to support population (ex. dead asteroid, graveyard etc) should not be affected by culture, either friendly or enemy. This would effectively make them military bases just like they already tend to be.

 

 

 

It is strange that 'planets' without population are affected by culture...

on Dec 29, 2013

Wintercross

It is strange that 'planets' without population are affected by culture...

 

I've always accepted that while there is no civilian population present, there are support industries and structures which DO crew people. Those people have culture ... thus ...

If that doesn't work, space transmissions of media go a long long way on the extra-net

 

 

So far, I really like the changes. Nice stuff! I've found Normal too easy but Hard previously was a problem for casual games. Contrary to belief however, at least on 'Slow' settings, map size & number of opponents DOES have an impact on how effective either individually or collective the AI apparently reacts. On 'Slow' settings they seem to react smarter, and while DPS is the same, ship movement and whole fleet re-deployments over a vast empire have much more catastrophic consequences when out of position. Picket forces begin to be required on various fronts as well as a central 'Home' fleet. Bump things up to faster speeds, or make the map more compact (i.e. phase lanes shorter etc), then your game play strategy completely changes and the AI tends to stumble a lot more.

on Dec 30, 2013

Ok, buncha different quotes....

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

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

PKingZombieSpy
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).

XATHOS
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.

Yarlen
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?

on Jan 06, 2014

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

on Jan 07, 2014

Seleuceia
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.

on Jan 10, 2014

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.

 

on Jan 10, 2014

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.   

on Jan 28, 2014

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

on Jan 28, 2014

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

on Jan 28, 2014

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....

on Jan 28, 2014

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

on Jan 29, 2014

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. 

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