April showers bring a new Sins II update! This month we’re adding 3 new planet types that act as high population density worlds for each race. Additional balance changes, bug fixes, and art polish are also part of our April update for all users. For those who’ve purchased the Paths to Power DLC, we’ve added the ‘mad’ Vasari titan to the Seek & Destroy scenarios. If the Vasari manage to summon it, you’ll need to defeat it to win!

This update should be save compatible, but if you have issues you can revert to 1.40 on Steam to finish your games:

1. Select ‘Sins of a Solar Empire II’ in your Steam Library.

2. Click the gear icon in the upper right.

3. Select Properties → Betas

4. Select 'previous_edition' from the Beta Participation dropdown.

5. Steam will update you to the latest files.

6. To switch to latest repeat step 4 and select ‘None’

v1.41 Changes

Additions

• Added Vasari Hive asteroid gravity well type.

• Added TEC City planet gravity well type.

• Added Advent Geomagnetic planet gravity well type.

  • New research subjects added to support colonization for all races.

  • New planet items added.

• Paths to Power: The Vasari Mad Titan returns in the Seek & Destroy scenarios!

Gameplay

• Paths to Power: Updated Seek and Destroy - Exodus scenario so that the Vasari player will summon the Mad Titan unique unit once they control the required Phase Resonators. To achieve final victory, the player must utilize the Mad Titan and their other forces to destroy all the other players.

• Rebalanced Advent Credit and Resource cost weightings in line with community feedback.

• Rebalanced Vasari Warden and Oppressor in line with feedback.

• Rebalance Insurgency based on community feedback.

• Fixed Silent Monastery being buildable on planets that it has no effect on.

• Insurgency arrival frequency changed from 120s to 200s.

  • Primacy Insurgency rush strategies force an outsized degree of effort and coordination to counter. Although this tech should have considerable impact as a difficult to set up T5 faction identity tech, reducing the pace at which it snowballs should grant opposing players more time to respond before it reaches an unmanageable level.

• Vasari Alliance Nanomedicine tech corrected to properly provide its bonus.

• Vasari Deconstruction Nanites - metal income rate increased from 1.8 to 3.6.

• Advent Silent Monastery availability adjusted to ensure it cannot be constructed on worlds where it would have no effect.

• Advent resource costs for most ships and some structures have been adjusted to better reflect the realities of the resources the Advent can produce. This means a reduction in credit costs on all changed units, with the resultant cost transferred to metal in most cases. This should make the Advent economy flow a bit more naturally, with less severe credit deficits and less surplus metal.

• Updated planet culture stats so that max. allied population, neutral population conversion and enemy population conversion stats are based on the dominant culture player, not the planet’s owner.

• Increased Advent PD Laser damage from 3 to 5 on all Advent PD Lasers.
  Exoria Illuminator:

  • Increased Heavy Beam damage from 60 to 90, and reload time from 6s to 9s. Damage per second is retained, but a slower firing cycle will result in less flexibility against numerous small targets.

  • Heavy Beam now has a lock on time of 0.5s.

  • Increased Medium Beam damage from 15 to 30, and reload time from 3s to 6s. Damage per second is retained, but a slower firing cycle will result in less flexibility against numerous small targets.

Art & VFX

• Fixed ‘floating’ guns on the TEC Marza.

• Fixed mesh holes on the TEC Akkan.

• Paths to Power: Added ambient ‘eye’ vfx to ancient starbase.

• Updated TEC Ragnarov’s Concussion Shot charge vfx.

• Updated Ship Graveyard vfx.

• Updated Vasari Regeneration Bay vfx and icon.

• Updated Advent Deliverance Engine icons and vfx.

• Paths to Power: Added Vasari ‘mad’ titan.

Misc. & Bug Fixes

• Changed the "Stop and Fire" attack pattern from a behavior that chased discrete samples of enemy positions, which would lag behind the target and caused an awkward "stepping" effect, to a behavior that continuously tracks the target's position accurately in realtime to provide smooth and realistic yawing motions as ships maintain fire on their enemies.

• Updated tooltip display to show “per pop” instead of “/ 100”.

• Fixed missing Chinese font glyphs.

• Added ability to add inline icons to most tooltip sections.

• Fixed various tutorial bugs that blocked progression.

• Fixed bug where any population not allied to the planet’s owner would cause an allied population penalty. Now cease-fire treaties will cause no penalty and synergy pacts will result in an allied bonus.

• Fixed Advent Deliverance Engine culture autocast (which now allows the AI to use it).

• Paths to Power: Fixed scenarios from spamming ‘Defeat' screen.

• Paths to Power: Disabled Scenarios from triggering certain achievement unlocks immediately.

• Paths to Power: Updated ancient starbases so that items/upgrades are cleared out when another player captures the base.

• Added support for tooltips on disabled main menu buttons.

• Updated planet culture stats so that max. allied population, neutral population conversion and enemy population conversion stats are based on the dominant culture player, not the planet’s owner.