Release Status: *** UNAVAILABLE ***
In the March update for Sins of a Solar Empire 2, several significant changes have been made to enhance gameplay, particularly focusing on Minor Factions and Influence, research, and balancing adjustments. Minor Factions and the new Influence mechanic now play an integral role by providing access to new capabilities such as the Pirate's “Looting Crew” and the Viturak's “Construct Phase Gate” and introducing new behaviors such the “Aluxian Resurgence” attempting to reestablish their dynastic rights by conquering neighboring planets.
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Added player rankings. Hover over your portrait in the diplomacy window or over your player icon on the bottom bar.
Added support for multiple exclusive market players.
Fixed ships flying back to fleet leader instead of going to new move destination.
Improved formation speed throttling behavior.
Preserved hull/armor/shield point percentage when max changes.
Removed bounties.
Removed pirate dominant culture reward.
Removed pirate raid event.
Switched The Maw's targeting to be a unit targeted arc rather than a fixed-forward arc.
Added planet development price cost offsets for abilities that give free upgrades, so costs on the first upgrade the player manually does on tracks isn't inflated.
Changed structure health to start uncrippled when building. This was most obvious with starbases.
Added Phase Resonance bonuses to Vasari strikecraft.
Removed research pre-reqs for self-building units.
Added new post-game statistics: max influence points, build counts for ships/starbases.
Enabled game summary stats after watching replay.
Added planet tracks for research points.
Removed research points from orbital stations. They are now used to increase the rate of research progress.
Fixed starbase building before research is complete.
Disabled Shield Burst for units not fully built.
Disabled unit health regen due to self-building if under attack.
Fixed Media Conglomerate putting buff on all orbital structures, not just Culture Center.
Added player AI spreading culture.
AI will now participate in auctions, reveal, increase level and use most rewards.
Added player AI usage of new research planet tracks.
Fixed insurgent unit behavior when phase jump inhibitor exists in gravity well.
Improved units moving around blocking units.
Fixed unit orders flickering when blocked trying to return to gravity well.
Improved auto-cast picking behavior (e.g., distributing repair cruisers healing better).
Removed XP gained from killing special operation units (summons, trade escorts, garrison forces, etc.).
Fixed AI building starbases that can be instantly killed giving extra exotics and XP to attacker for "free."
Disabled Vorastra micro phase jump auto-cast by default.
Changed attack stack behavior to spread out DPS. Will no longer always focus fire a single target causing massive overkill. Right clicking a stack will now spread-out targets amongst the attackers based on distances.
Added research unlock for orbital research stations.
TEC Envoy, Overseer Envoy and culture functionality temporarily removed.
Improved Vasari carrier capital nano repair cloud autocast conditions.
Removed TEC Archaeology Center pending rework.
Changed enemy dominant culture modifiers being applied to players with cease fire.
Balance
Fixed trader loyalist weapon angles.
Rebalanced advanced tracking tech to improve starbase weapon range, tracking and damage.
Rebalanced Civic University; can now be built on ice worlds.
Rebalanced Gauss weapon research to affect all Gauss weapons.
Rebalanced Influence based on test data.
Rebalanced Military Lab; can be built on ferrous worlds and grants small max planet health.
Rebalanced Novalith and Ragnarov Novalith range from 4 to 15 AU.
Rebalanced starbase build time from 120s to 200s.
Rebalanced titan build time from 600s to 300s.
Rebalanced trader Flak Burst duration from 5s to 3s.
Rebalanced trader Gauss defense to remove research requirement.
Rebalanced Vasari Marauder Phase Out Hull antimatter cost and cooldown time.
Rebalanced Vasari planet items.
Rebalanced Vasari Vorastra titan Desperation damage reduction.
Rebalanced asteroid counts: Asteroid, Desert, Ferrous, and Gas Giant planet types will now have more potential extractor slots. Oceanic planets can no longer have asteroids.
Rebalanced cost of numerous Vasari and trader ships and structures.
Rebalanced light frigates: Light Frigate supply costs, resource costs, and build time have all been reduced, while medium autocannon and medium pulse guns have been improved to 150 pierce. This makes light frigates slightly more versatile and considerably more cost-efficient. Light Frigates have had their turn rate nerfed slightly, while their speed and acceleration were buffed, which will allow them to get close to carriers and LRM units faster. The Ravastra Skirmisher has also received a Durability increase to make it less susceptible to early AoE damage and PD weapons.
Rebalanced planets to variation four to incorporate new research planet tracks.
Rebalanced starbase shield armor and hull. Starbase shield points have been increased for both types of starbase, while the hull and armor points gained from components have been doubled.
Rebalanced trader items.
Rebalanced trader torpedo cruiser. The Ogrov has received an increased supply cost and an improvement to all of its survivability and weapon stats.
Rebalanced Vasari bomber phase missile to fire two additional missiles for a total of four.
Rebalanced Vasari Influence items.
Rebalanced Vasari titan speed from 360 to 420.
Changed Vasari Exodus titan's Desperation ability to be a scaling bonus proportional to missing hull rather than a stacking bonus.
Planet Track unlock techs adjusted to increase value and provide more faction uniqueness.
Planet Items locked to one copy per planet.
Planet items adjusted to provide more interesting stacking potential between different item types.
Passive armor restore roughly halved.
Rebalanced metal and crystal markets.
Fixed asteroid counts.
Fixed gauss cooldown research.
Rebalanced minor faction ability progression and scaling.
Rebalanced remote fabrication to require line of sight.
Rebalanced repair ability autocasts.
Rebalanced robotics cruiser autocast fix.
Rebalanced Vasari Exodus research items.
Rebalance minor factoin items.
Rebalance stacking limits for items that should have them.
Maps
Added new 10 player random map.
Added new 8 player map “Ashred.”
Removed pirates from smallest maps.
Updated various Minor Faction counts.
Updated Annulus:
Moved pirate base closer to the star.
Guaranteed pirate base is retrograde.
Added Aluxian Resurgence Minor Faction.
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Added new Trader player portraits.
Added new Vasari player portraits.
Added bindable input for enable mouse rotation and panning.
Added mute button to players.
Added planet component groupings.
Added preview of buildable ships to construction bays starbase item.
Added stateful jump in formation to ships.
Added structure preview mesh to abilities that will build structures.
Added tooltip for reputation reward to use.
Changed auction notification to allow changing bid in place.
Changed targeting lines to red if ability can't be used on target/at position.
Removed status icon on abilities with cooldown.
Simplified auction tooltip.
Added auction time remaining to tooltip.
Added explicit error for abilities not usable while crippled instead of generic "unit is not operational."
Added flashing to notifications so auction is more noticeable.
Added research planet track buttons to colonized planets window.
Fixed planet component label headers overlapping buttons.
Improved Stripped to the Core notifications. Instead of getting both an exotics gained and planet lost notification, will now get a new notification customized to show the planet has been stripped instead of lost with assets/exotics in the notification.
Made alliance offer notifications flash.
Changed scuttle to only scuttle the first unit in selection unless shift is held.
Improved ability binding in units.
Added research tooltip picture hookups for all valid research.
Added research time remaining instead of progress percentage in tooltip.
Moved notification flashing to top card instead of bottom.
Added derelict capture time and experience bonuses to tooltip.
Added pips to planet components that are upgradable by research.
Added starting planet components to research upgrade tooltip.
Improved research tooltip when unlocking/improving unit items.
Improved research text filter.
Added trade capacity to research tooltips that unlock unit items.
Added tooltips for building 5 and 10 ships in batches holding SHIFT/CTRL+SHIFT.
Improved structure plate spin rendering.
Forced add bookmark (fleet) button to be visible until player has at least one fleet.
Updated various UI colors.
Added ability AU range from build button and when cursor is loaded even if owner unit is not being rendered (ex. dark fleet summon from planet, rebel titan orbital cannon.).
Added randomness to minor faction player portrait layout. Pirates will no longer always be at the top left every time.
Updated initial main menu backdrop scene.
Changed starbase list name to be of starbase and editable instead of the planet.
Fixed planet icon not showing up next to starbase in starbase list window.
Improved camera focus behavior when zooming in from far. Will no longer attach to small fast moving targets (missiles/strikecraft) when zooming in from planet icon mode for a short duration. This way the camera isn't always drifting right away when zooming into a large battle.
Fixed tooltip value columns not aligning properly when mixing font sizes.
Improved research tooltips.
Add focus on minor faction home planet button in minor faction screen.
Fix culture resistance showing up as 0.0 in tooltips.
Adjusted spacing between research subjects.
Models
Added Vasari siege platform.
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Fixed assert sending ping to fleet, will now redirect ping to fleet leader as fleets are unknown to other players.
Fixed "can use ability" query always failing for abilities creating structures without gravity well targeting constraints.
Fixed chance of duplicate Minor Faction players on large maps.
Fixed derelict guardians not being leashed to derelict properly.
Fixed exotic factory build time modifiers for nearby planet only working for structures.
Fixed host saved games on server being broken.
Fixed market monopolization auction notification showing up when auction has no winners (no monopolization).
Fixed move commands sometimes being overridden by unit AI auto attacks.
Fixed newly built strikecraft not always launching when arriving at hyperspace destination.
Fixed Novalith cannon not working if fired in the same gravity well as target planet.
Improved behavior of hull points when crippled hull points are modified.
Fixed units following enemy units through hyperspace when attacking.
Fixed ship loot dropping off the gravity well plane and being impossible to capture.
Fixed game server list filtering out servers with older versions of state.
Fixed gravity warhead non-looping impact sound on targets.
Fixed looping flair effect sounds not stopping.
Fixed looping sounds on buffs being restarted after buff is killed.
Fixed ships in transit between phase gates going invisible if phase gate is destroyed.
Fixed sound-only detached effects from immediately expiring.
Fixed units not always attacking.
Fixed bad specular artifacts.
Fixed bug where planet components would not always be upgraded with research.
Fixed ship unable to capture wreckage.
Fixed missiles appearing to travel right through targets.
Fixed dark fleet units being able to move away from leashed planet by following other units out that can hyperspace.
Fixed special operation units still being controllable when over/retreating.
Fixed starbases not being created with names.
Fixed team games with Vasari Alliance not giving initial detection of friendly minor factions.
Fixed selection window assert.
Fixed broken random maps.
Fixed Minor Faction detection being broken.
Fix flickering light on planets.
Fix crash in hud selection window.
Fix incorrect missile hits.
Modding
Added support for sound-only flair effects.
Changed special operation units to be data-driven.
Improved ability binding in units.
Added support to disable player AI from colonizing.
Additional modding capabilities from Minor Faction changes.
Added support for buffs owned by player to be put on NPC raids.
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