Release Status: *** RELEASED ***

Our November update brings a range of exciting additions and enhancements for Sins of a Solar Empire II. New formation and unit controls give you engagement range options, allowing units in fleets to inherit these ranges automatically. Additionally, you can move units into narrow or wide formations for strategic positioning, while ship wreckage from defeated capital ships and titans can be collected for valuable resources.

Furthermore, the introduction of structure repositioning lets you adapt to changing phase lanes by orbiting structures around planets, albeit at the cost of temporarily disabling construction. The update also includes the addition of game replays, enabling you to review and analyze your matches, and a player customization screen for race-specific color choices.

We’ve also included several gameplay improvements, such as enhanced target prioritization, refined unit positioning in formations, and better behavior for units in combat. This update also addresses balance concerns, including adjustments to the phase resonance points and other in-game elements.

Change Log Version 1.17.11.0

• Fixed crash caused by moving extremely large fleets.

Change Log Version 1.17.10.0

New Features

• Added New Formation and Unit Controls:

  • Added engagement ranges to hold current position, attack in a nearby area, or attack anywhere in the gravity well. Cycle through the options using the engagement range button on the bottom bar.

  • Units added to a fleet will automatically inherit their fleet's engagement range.

  • Added move controls to align into a narrow formation or a wide formation (e.g., to expand picket line or reduce AoE vulnerability). Press ALT to activate wide movement. CTRL remains for fast movement.

• Added Ship Wreckage:

  • Dead capital ships and titans now leave behind wreckage that can be collected for resources.

  • Wreckage models forthcoming.

• Added Orbital Structure Repositioning:

  • Players can now 'orbit' their structures around the planet to reposition them. This is useful to adapt to changing phase lanes.

  • Repositioning structures is a slow process and disables all construction during the rotation.

  • Press the rotate button in the Advanced Planet Actions window to activate.

• Added Game Replays:

  • Games can now be loaded and replayed from the "Watch" window on the home screen.

  • Players can view the game from one player's perspective or activate full visibility.

• Added Player Customization Screen:

  • View how your race's units will look with your primary and secondary color choices.

Gameplay:

• Improved unit->unit target prioritization.

• Improved weapon->unit target prioritization (especially point defense).

• Improved how units choose their formation position so units get into formation faster.

• Allowed items to be built if the unit is in combat.

• Added TEC fulfillment warehouse planet item. A new planet item for the TEC that gives a single blue box and can be built on most planets.

• Added Vasari phase shield and engine boost capital ship items and unlocks.

• Split garrison functionality of Defensive Uplink item into its own item: Defensor Garrison.

• Changed phase resonance points to be 1-1 like trade ports.

• Improved auto-structure placement. Will now try to keep together instead of being placed randomly around the gravity well.

• Improved rejoin fleet movement. Now spreads out behind the fleet leader and will auto-attack if in the same gravity well.

• Improved retrofit bay repair auto-cast. Will no longer auto-cast on targets that are already being repaired.

• Prevented bounty from being put on minor faction players (most importantly the pirates themselves).

• Stopped culture spreading when the player has lost the game.

• Improved the behavior of units chasing enemy targets.

• Improved strafe and pull away attack pattern.

• Improved units clustering when attacking targets in some situations.

• Added gameplay option to allow dead players to have full detection of the game after they die.

• Restricted alliance lock durations to 30 min.

• Fixed the problem where construction frigates were instantly rebuilt upon death.

• Added rotate_only_on_plane to attack_pattern_immobile for Vasari static defense.

• Resolved issues with static defense attack patterns and removed non-planar rotation from Vasari static defense.

Balance:

• Adjusted market prices.

• Vasari tier unlock reward tweaked.

• Terran planet metal income increased.

• Fixed Center for Human Doctrine - can now be built on most planet types.

• Fixed Vasari beam tracking and firing tolerance.

• Fixed Vasari pulse defense turn rate, missile defense missile assignment, and Kortul heavy wave burst count.

• Rebalanced a number of TEC research positions.

• Rebalanced AoE damage abilities:

  • AoE damage ability AP reduced to 0 to ensure they are primarily effective against low armor units.

  • Radius reduced on ultimate AoE abilities to keep mass fleet casualties to a reasonable level.

• Rebalanced autocannon platform damage.

• Rebalanced capital ship components.

• Rebalanced initial stats pass on fighters, bombers, and corvettes.

• Rebalanced light frigates:

  • Light frigate range increased from 3500 to 4800, rate of fire increased, and rotation adjusted to allow for better time on target and more effective damage output without overwhelming shield mitigation too excessively.

• Minor faction income scalar nerfed.

• Rebalanced Neruda, Kanrak, and Lasurak unlocks.

• Rebalanced planet civilian slots and Vasari build costs.

• Rebalanced point defense and missiles.

• Made stop-gap fix for markets becoming money printers.

• Reduced strikecraft durability and fighter DPS increased.

• Rebalanced TEC and Vasari income curves and slot usage.

• Rebalanced TEC starbase unlock tech positions:

  • TEC Starbase, Starbase Beams, and Starbase Planetary Shield moved earlier in the tech tree to ensure they are able to defend from bombing at a reasonable stage of the game.

• Rebalanced Ogrov and Vulrak:

  • They have been given greatly increased AP and DPS to ensure they can seriously damage starbases in a timely manner, in addition to survivability improvements to increase their staying power.

• Rebalanced unlock positions for various ships and Gauss Defense.

• Rebalanced Vasari initial float and carrier cruiser cost.

• Rebalanced Vasari Rebel’s unique armor tech. A temporary nerf until we address tech balance more thoroughly.

• Rebalanced Vasari starbase shield unlock position. The Vasari planetary shield is now available earlier, but not as early as the TEC. They do not require it to force engagements, as the Orkulus can simply move to engage on its own.

• Updated Vasari starbase weapon positions, angles, and arcs.

• Rebalanced Vasari starbase weapon damage as a temporary fix.

• Rebalanced Vasari surface mining item:

  • Nanite Mining Bases have been redesigned to grant Vasari a greater degree of flexibility and agency in resourcing.

• Rebalanced static defense. With bonus Starbase Docking Boom art hooked up again and Vasari Phase Jump Inhibitor now using the new model.

• Rebalanced TEC surface item distribution.

• Rebalanced Vasari surface item distribution.

• Repositioned derelict specialist tech.

• Introduced new Vasari red pip techs for terran and desert planets.

• Rebalanced pirate mercenary base and weapon stats for better gameplay balance.

• Adjusted Quarnium costs, salvage kit, nano repair swarm, shield mitigation, and ship component build times.

• Rebalanced Dunov energy transfer autocast refined.

• Rebalanced Hoshiko abilities and repair platform abilities.

• Rebalance research cost curve for TEC and Vasari.

• Rebalance Vasari and TEC defensive techs.

• Rebalance Vasari resonance bonuses.

Bug Fixes

• Added check for minor faction player is_dead before using minor faction abilities.

• Fixed built ships not inheriting fleet leader auto-order behavior.

• Fixed excavation track upgrades not getting price modifiers applied.

• Fixed flashing minor faction auction button showing up when the auction is not visible due to minor faction not being discovered.

• Fixed fleet units flying backward when they are already at the destination gravity well of the leader.

• Fixed fully unbuilt units showing up in the selection window. They should only show up once the unit starts building and exists for other units to interact with.

• Fixed instant build strikecraft action only building interceptors, not bombers.

• Fixed insurgent units spawning still spawning for dead players.

• Fixed issues with dead minor factions:

  • Stopped updating the internal state of minor factions so they won't attempt to auto-cast player abilities, won't update reputation, will cancel all events (pirate raid), and won't update the market.

• Fixed item owner constraints inverted logic. Was causing bomber armor for Vasari cap ships to not show up in the menu.

• Fixed rare condition attack_command attempted to be sent with 0 targets causing assert.

• Fixed split fleet due to stop/hold commands. Remote ships in fleets will now attempt to reform with fleets if they have no more user orders in the gravity well they are in. This way, if the fleet is selected and hold/stop is pressed, the remote ships will not be stranded.

• Fixed trade port culture spread research doing nothing.

• Fixed Vasari phase jumping multiple starbases to one gravity well.

• Fixed missiles being controllable.

• Made concussion_charge and orbital_cannon_shell not controllable.

• Fixed ships trying to get to the center of the fleet leader.

• Fixed the attack order not respecting auto-order behavior.

• Fixed auto orders moving ships that are capturing loot.

• Fixed units moving ahead of fleets.

• Fixed strikecraft not always returning to the carrier after finishing auto-order.

• Fixed units above the planet trying to return to positions inside the planet when too far above it.

• Improved scuttle of fully unbuilt structures. No longer plays the death sequence and spawns debris.

• Fixed allied players dying providing full detection to allies with share vision alliances.

• Fixed attack pattern crashes when this_unit cannot move.

• Fixed pirate base defenses not being scattered properly.

• Fixed ship item build window closing when unwanted.

• Fixed colonize ability no longer autocasting if in engage close auto-order behavior.

• Fixed colonized planet window add structure button not always enabled.

• Added lobby state to recorded games, which allows saving games properly for multiplayer.

• Fixed issues with bomb planet and ability auto-cast not functioning with hold position.

• Resolved crashes caused by poor inputs, bad gravity_well_vertical_plane_return_distance values, and other technical issues.

• Fixed fleet tooltip inaccuracies and front-end window visibility at the game's start.

• Addressed the unit constraint bug making it unusable and adjusted phase resonance upgrade costs.

• Rectified fleet units' stuck movement issues due to the fleet leader's death during ship building.

• Fixed crash on player ownership changes.

• Fixed usable factories not being refreshed after structure spinning finished. This was causing ships not being buildable at a planet (until a different structure was built).

User Interface:

• Added key bindings to the settings screen.

• Added a planet to the bookmark bar with right-click (instead of having to drag and drop).

• Added quick buy and sell market actions to the top bar. Hold ALT and left or right-click the metal or crystal values to buy or sell the resource.

• Added bindable activate_focus_targeting input action. Previously focus targeting (override targeting mode to focus on the target unit) was hardcoded to ALT in code. It is now moved off ALT and is bindable because holding ALT is used other places that need the cursor state to not change.

  • For example, holding ALT to build a structure auto-using the market for resources should change the cursor to build structure when the button is pressed but looked buggy because holding ALT forced the focus cursor to show up. As a bonus, can re-enable the custom focus cursor by default as it was only disabled because ALT was messing up XBoxGameBar screenshots.

• Fixed issues with auto-using the market (ALT) when building structures.

• Fixed being able to zoom the camera past the unit's min distance.

• Added UI setting to toggle clustering of auto-placed structures.

• Disabled escape key from closing post-game stats dialog.

• Added 150 and 200 dpi textures for player theme picker window.

• Added front-end top bar mouse hovered color to text. So buttons look pressable.

• Added front-end top bar multiplayer status icons. Also removed tooltips for top bar as they were cluttered and had no content.

• Added right-click to remove key bindings.

• Changed phase gate indicator icon to be purple.

• Fixed gaps between background brushes at non-standard DPIs.

• Fixed a variety of strings missing quotes.

• Rendered target line from best leader instead of sub-selected unit. Better shows what the formation is actually going to do.

• Switched planet modifiers to new style.

• Switched unit_factory modifiers to new style.

• Switched weapon modifiers to new style.

• Synchronized spelling of stabilize (vs. stabilize).

• Added the recorded game front-end interface and UI.

• Made changes to the front end to begin with no tab selected.

• Disabled advanced balance options for evaluating balance in public games.

• Fixed research tooltip showing all cruisers able to build ship components.

• Reorganized lobby options into properly grouped segments and split fleet pip groups for clearer comprehension of fleet composition.

• Improved rotate buttons:

  • Disabled ship rotate button if selection can't move.

  • Added tooltip to say that planet has to be used to rotate orbital structures.

HUD:

• Added 150 and 200 dpi textures for the player theme picker window.

• Added front-end top bar mouse hovered color to text so buttons look pressable.

• Added front-end top bar multiplayer status icons. Also removed tooltips for the top bar as they were clutter/had no content.

• Added main view UI circles to show close engagement range.

• Added names to colonized planets window view buttons.

• Added minor faction dead notification. Changed player lost notification to be consistent with player discovered notifications where the player icon is dominant (instead of alliance offer notifications where the player icon is non-dominant).

• Added wide move UI to the move button.

• Changed phase gate indicator icon to be purple.

• Fixed gaps between background brushes at non-standard DPIs.

• Fixed planet track tooltip showing unmodified build times. It should be showing modified build times to be consistent with price (which is displayed as the final modified value).

• Fixed tooltip_background brush margins.

• Fixed trade ship escorts causing enemy invasion notifications.

• Improved alliance offer notifications: Open players window button will now flash indefinitely until the offer is looked at so they are not so easily missed.

• Improved auction notification UI: Open minor faction window button will now flash until you have viewed an auction instead of only flashing once when a new auction is created; open minor faction window button tooltip will now show auction running details.

• Improved market post-game stats: Credits, metal, crystal received no longer hidden in credits_given catch all stat.

• Improved UI around structure slots. Show used/max in the build window and reduce the complexity of the tooltip for building structure.

• Moved game summary chart tooltip to the right so it doesn't cover up categories.

• Removed pips from structures that have no fixed limit around the planet. It was a bit too confusing between infinitely buildable structures and finite structures (ex. factories vs. trade ports).

• Split hotseat setting to distinguish between other human players and AI players. Desirable to be able to change settings for these two different types of players on their own.

• Split total structures statistic into civilian and military slots used.

• Swapped escape order between HUD and targeting. Will now escape current targeting mode before advanced popup windows are closed. Felt weird to start placing a structure and escape would close the structures window, not abort placement.

• Updated move/engagement ship icons.

• Added can_show_max_weapon_range to more unit types.

• Fixed a variety of strings missing quotes.

• Rendered weapon ranges on mouse over even if the unit doesn't have can_show_max_weapon_range.

• Fixed missing research filtering on planet asset income tooltip.

• Added ability ranges to the mainview build structure UI.

• Fixed spelling of propagation.

Tooltips:

• Added the best factory to build from to the unit tooltip when a fleet is selected.

• Added hold ALT for advanced details to tooltip.

• Fixed old phase jump inhibitor descriptions.

• Fixed planet buffs showing up on undetected planets. It was showing the shield array buff when the planet was not visible.

• Improved armor and shield mitigation on tooltips when modified. Now shows negative values down to 0 instead of hiding the line. Also shows improved values as green.

• Improved move button tooltip.

• Renamed "move without formation" to "move fast". It was too hard to parse the difference between "with formation" and "without formation".

• Suppressed fleet name from enemy players. It was showing up on enemy unit tooltips.

• Fixed purchase tooltip to handle items with only exotic prices, no assets.

• Improved Vasari Regeneration Bay buff tooltip.

• Renamed "Mobile Phase Resonator" research to "Resonance Mastery".

• Added "Hold ALT for advanced details" to tooltip.

• Fixed old phase jump inhibitor descriptions.

• Added missing modifier tooltip lines.

• Improved last detected tooltip:

  • Changed seconds ago to minutes ago when large enough.

  • Added description block to make it more obvious the intel is stale

Models:

• Added Vasari factory.

• Added Vasari phase gate.

• Fixed Vasari battleship mesh.

• Fixed Vasari carrier cruiser.

• Fixed Vasari phase missile small.

• Fixed Vasari raider corvette.

• Fixed Vasari siege capital.

• Updated TEC rebel titan hardpoints.

• Updated TEC support capital hardpoints.

• Updated Vasari rebel titan hardpoints.

Visual Effects:

• Changed weapon hit effect orientation to match the projectile travel vector.

• Added Nanite Armor.

• Added Volatile Nanites.

• Added Power Surge and portal adjustments.

• Added Vasari ambient lights.

• Added Vasari capital death explosions v1.

• Added Vasari death explosions.

• Added Explosive Shot and titan ambient lights.

• Added Derelict Recovery Effect.

• Added Portal start travel finalization.

• Added ambient lights, Piercing Shot and more.

• Added Disintegration.

• Added Jam Weapons.

• Added Phase Restoration and Vulrak muzzle.

• Added Salvage Kit.

• Added Antimatter Engine.

• Added Furious Defense.

• Added Phase Gate core.

• Added muzzle effects to Phase Missile Swarm ability.

• Added loot capture constraint to flair effects. Allows effects to only show up on loot while it is being collected.

• Added Derelict Recovery Effect.

• Added Furious Defense, Phase Gate core effects.

• Revised Phase Missile Swarm to improve visual presentation.

  • Missile count increased to 20.

  • Torpedo switched to vasari_phase_missile_large.

  • Updated ability_positions to match current phase missile weapon positions.

• Added Factory Construction Effects.

• Added pirate effect and refraction effects.

• Added explosive shot and other effects.

• Added Intimidating Presence and effect edits.

• Added pirate fog.

• Added TEC titan rail gun effects.

Misc:

• Added collision to ship_loot and specific debris.

• Added formation rotate.

• Added physics to ship_loot so it doesn't stop dead when the moving ship is destroyed.

• Improved placement of debris after units die.

• Ship loot and big debris pieces can now be displaced by collision.

• Spawned debris now matches parent velocity. Improved look over moving ship dying, and then debris stops dead in its tracks.

• Stabilized linear velocity of debris. To keep it in clusters after exploding (even when the destroyed ship wasn't moving).

• Tuned debris physics values.

• Fixed issues with client targeting and untargeted autocast while holding position.

• Removed angular physics from static starbases.

• Fixed starting with research that changes alliances with npcs from crashing game.

• Updated Welcome Message for November.

Modding:

• Added unit_attack_target_type_groups. This allows weapons to set up various levels of priorities and quickly find them. Setup as uniforms to make it easier to author much more complicated priority groupings.

• Changed phase jumping garrison updating so that going from zero to non-zero supply will cause the garrison to be spawned immediately.

• Added is_dead_soon unit constraint. Useful for autocast behavior of flak burst to avoid overkill of torpedoes.

• Added a new minor faction reward type to spawn ships at any target.

• Fixed restoring the last picked player race with mods. Will now properly filter up non-pickable players.

• Added alert to detect bad brush margins.

• Added has_planet_type unit_constraint.

• Added is_asteroid unit_constraint. Allows constraining actions to the asteroid of a specific asset_type (metal vs. crystal).

• Added custom destroyed planet skins per planet type.

• Added more flair effect constraints: is_exotic_factory_busy, is_unit_factory_busy, is_damaged.

• Allowed abilities to be created on units with no owner player. This allows modders to put abilities on resource asteroids.

• Made item consumable stack count upgradable with research.

• Improved serialization of flair effects. Hide the existence of nested objects to data.