The next major update for Sins of a Solar Empire is now available!  Since this update is so huge and contains several brand new technologies, we are going to be offering it as an optional beta before its final release. If you are not comfortable with running potentially very buggy software (though we've tried to minimize it), do not install this beta - wait for the final release.

This beta update is available only through Stardock's new Impulse platform. We will no longer be providing standalone patches for future versions of the game. For more information on obtaining the beta and taking part in the testing, please visit: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/319061

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sins of a Solar Empire v1.09 (aka 1.1 beta) Changelist
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gameplay / Balance:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Kol Battleship:
     -Fix for Finest Hour not applying all of its splash damage correctly.

-Marza Dreadnaught:
     -Fix for Missile Barrage not applying all of its damage correctly. (thx bailknight)
 
-Sova Carrier:
     -Embargo duration reduced from 120 secs at all levels to 60/90/120 secs.
 
-Dunov Battlecruiser:
     -Shield Restore shield points replenished reduced from 350/700/1050 to 250/500/750
     -Shield Restore AM cost reduced from 90 to 65 for all levels
     -Shield Restore cooldown reduced from 16 secs to 11 secs for all levels

-Cielo Command Cruiser:
     -Designate Target damage bonus increased from 25% to 40%.

-Radiance Battleship:
     -Cleansing Brilliance cooldown increased from 75 secs to 120 secs.

-Rapture Battlecruiser:
     -Vengeance antimatter cost decreased from 75 to 70.
     -Vengeance damage retaliated increased from 40%/80%/120% to 65%/130%/200%.
     -Units acquired with Domination will now have their orders reset.

-Domina Subjugator:
     -Suppression antimatter cost decreased from 100 to 75.
     -Suppression cooldown decreased from 40 secs to 30 secs.
     -Suppression duration increased from 40 secs to 90 secs.

-Kortul Devastator:
     -Jam Weapons antimatter cost decreased from 75 to 70.
     -Jam Weapons duration changed from 15/25/35 secs to 30/30/30 secs.
     -Jam Weapons range increased from 3500/4500/5500 to 3500/5000/7000.
     -Disruptive Strikes antimatter depletion increased from 8/10/12 to 10/20/30.
     -Disruptive Strikes ability cooldown rate penalty increased from 10%/20%/30% to 15%/30%/45%.
     -Disruptive Strikes duration increased from 10 secs to 15 secs.
     -Now costs 250 crystal as originally intended. (thx bailknight)

-Skirantra Carrier:
     -Scramble Bombers antimatter cost decreased from 100/75/50 to 80/65/50.
     -Scramble Bombers cooldown decreased from 60/60/60 secs to 60/50/40 secs.

-Antorak Marauder:
     -Subversion antimatter cost increased from 100/90/80 to 100/100/100.
     -Subversion cooldown increased from 50/45/40 secs to 75/75/75 secs.
     -Subversion ship and structure build time penalties increased from 15%/30%/45% to 50%/100%/150%.

-Vulkoras Desolator:
     -Disintegration cooldown decreased from 120 secs to 90 secs.

-Stilakus Subverter:
     -Distortion Field antimatter cost increased from 100 to 200.
     -Distortion Field duration decreased from 30 secs to 20 secs.
 
-Iconus Guardian:
     -Repulsion is now a channeling and interruptable ability.
 
-Serevun Overseer:
     -Reactive Nanite Armor cooldown increased from 2 secs to 4 secs.
 
-Illuminator Vessel
     -Frontal bank damage reduced from 58.5 to 53.5.
     -Side bank damage reduced from 30.3 to 27.25.

-Returning Armada:
     -Now costs 2500 credits, 200 Metal, 500 Crystal to activate.
     -Fleet sizes summoned increased from 25-45 to 45-90 supply.
     -Cooldown increased to 10 minutes at all levels.
     -Phase Stabilizers now have 0 max antimatter.
  
-Scenario and Galaxy Generation:
     -Fixed problem with calculating star extents on smaller maps (because of min size, stars were getting vertically offset by too much). 
     -Fixed bug in galaxy generator so that inter-star connections could end up connected to one star.
     -Fix for some wonkiness with placing artifacts.  They would not show up in your artifact list because the control of the artifact had not been given to you because of ordering of planet acquisition and artifact placement.
     -Added missing starting artifacts for 2 start positions in Ancient Gifts map.
     -Spread out the stars in Ancient Gifts so more of them are in 'distant view' form when looking at a given one (for purely aesthetic reasons).
     -Fix for Implosion having wonky spawn probabilities.
     -Removed non-plural browse picture for Hyperion's Gates.
 
-TEC Research:
     -Maneuvering Thrusters max number of levels reduced from 2 to 1.
     -Rapid Development now additionally reduces costs of Logistics Capacity upgrades by 7.5% per level.
 
-Advent Research:
     -Augmented Defense Grid tactical slot bonus increased from 2 to 5 per level.
 
-Vasari Research:
     -Extreme Heat Metabolism and Sulfurous Respiration population bonuses increased from 7.5% to 15% per level.
     -Trauma Nanomedicine population loss prevented due to planet bombing increased from 10% to 20% per level.
     -Molecular Assembly structure build rate bonus increased from 5% to 40% per level.
     -Wreckage Auto-Salvage salvage percentage reduced from 8.33% to 5% per level.
 
-All frigates and cruisers now spawn with full antimatter.
-AntiLight attack type's damage modifier vs CapitalShip, Medium, Heavy and VeryHeavy armor increased from 25% to 50%.
-Carrier frigates rebalanced to have 2-3 squadrons and be relatively less expensive per squadron.
-All anti-strike craft frigates' base DPS reduced by 43%.
-AntiVeryLight attack type's damage modifier vs CapitalShip, Medium, Heavy and VeryHeavy armor increased from 25% to 50%.
-Composite attack type's damage modifier vs Medium armor increased from 100% to 125%.
-Composite attack type's damage modifier vs Heavy armor decreased from 125% to 100%.
-AntiHeavy attack type's damage modifier vs Heavy armor increased from 125% to 150%.
-Abilities can now require resources to be used instead of antimatter.
-Fix for capital ships not being able to build squads.
-Squad owners now attempt to build strike craft in all non-full squads, rather than just one squad per type it supports. This addresses the situation where squad owners w/ having all squads of the same type were losing 'production efficiency' vs those having both fighter and bomber squads. This should also improve construction for squad owners w/ 2+ squads (ie most high level capital ships).
-Caught more edge cases where buffs should perform their OnBuffFinish actions. (Fixes weirdness with various abilities).
-Duplicate buffs that get replaced by new instances of the same buff now do their OnBuffFinish actions when this happens. This should significantly improve Malice's damage output when multiple Progenitors are chain casting it on the same targets.
-Fixed bug with being to see weapon ranges of non-detected ships.
-Buffs are now removed from targets, where appropriate, if their player ownership changes.
-Fix GetExtractionIncomeBonus mistake with bonus amt.
-Better blocking of defeated players being able to use the market and bounty.
-Player resource buckets now start at 50% market price instead of 100% so there isn't so much red at the start of the game.
-Jump Field Generator artifact now also allows travel through wormholes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graphics:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Major upgrade to the rendering and texture systems that allows the game to look even better on less powerful machines.
-18 completely redone and touched up meshes.
-Dozens completely redone and touched up mesh textures.
-Lots of new explosion effects and textures.
-A variety of minor 2d texture upgrades and/or replacements.
-New ship shader with colorsample.a swapped with datasample.r (Team and specular have reversed position).
-Non-planetary asteroids now have their own shader. (Note: this shader no longer uses the same texture channel format as the ship shader).
-Damage system changed so that dead entities update as fast as possible so the explosion effects occur at the correct time.
-New explosion system.
-The game doesn't crash if the number of persistent damage effects is close to the max.
-Upped the max number of persistent damage effects.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sound / Music:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Fix for rotation sounds disappearing when loading save games.
-Fix for losing sounds after migrating hosts.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AI:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Improved AI ability choice and usage.
-Fix capturable resource mines from being considered damageable and causing all sorts of badness in the AI (and elsewhere).
-Fix for ships not attacking modules all the time.
-Set the correct difficulty of dropped players converted to AI.
-Improved when AI decides to build capitalships.
-AI can now build frigates in priority list if the supply usage is too low (ala patterns noticed in human build strategies).
-Fix support ship ratio to not be affected by non-combat ships (was building way too many if there were things like trade ships)
-AI now consider a repairbay more of a threat so it gets taken out at a higher priority.
-Improved AI building of tradeports and refineries.
-Further improved AI bounty logic so human players can't cheese the AI so easily.
-Auto join fleet members now inherit auto attack range.
-Autojoining a fleet now also inherits the fleet leaders settings (ex. group hyperspace state).
-Fixed bug where ships that autojoined formations would have their preorder move point overwritten by the rally point code. This meant that the last ship joined would always try to go back to factory, instead of in-formation with their fleet.
-Fix path-finding crash.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Networking / Multiplayer:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Introducing the beta of Ironclad's new game networking technology "Alloy":
     -Peer-to-peer technology (very common with real-time strategy games) has been having a rough time lately due to the increasing use of Internet security software and routers.
     -Sins was no exception, with the most visible problem being the amount of technical knowledge many users needed to learn in order host multiplayer games over Ironclad Online.
     -This latest version of Sins introduces a cutting edge network technology called "Alloy" that bypasses all these problems, performs faster, more reliably, and with more stability.
     -Players should never have to worry about being able to host, configuring routers, changing port numbers, or games ending due to failed host migrations. It’s 100% hands-off.
     -Technically proficient users can always choose to disable Alloy and handle the details manually.

-Synchronization:
     -Fixed loading mods potentially causing a sync problem.
     -Robustness added to various network commands so they don't crash when out of sync.
     -Scenario files are now checked to make sure they don't differ in multiplayer games.
     -Meshes are now checksummed in order to detect sync errors faster.
     -FileArchives now keep track of their contents checksum so the game can do more accurate checks on client data to detect if the game might go out of sync while playing multiplayer.

-Ignore system added so specific players can be ignored in ICO and in-game.
-Fixed assert in GalaxyGenerator causing socket error.
-No longer attempt to whisper "in-game" to disconnected players. This way you can talk to friends over ICO who have left the game.
-Fix for losing sounds after migrating hosts.
-Players can now attach their email to their ICO account to improve future support.
-Players can now join ICO chat lobbies that have the maximum number of characters as their name.
-Previewing galaxies in ICO will no longer kick you back to the single player screen.
-No more spamming of "host has changed game settings" in the game lobby.
-Fixed false negatives being reported for ICO-game hosting.
-All clients are notified if the host changes the game settings while in the game lobby screen.
-New ICO screen for managing game hosting.
-Added a no-duplicate name algorithm to player setup due to the new chat system. There would be no way to send whispers to duplicate name players.
-ICO accounts will now be forced to logout if you attempt to login with the same account. This was supposed to be fixed in 1.05 but should now actually work.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
User Interface / HUD:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-New Mini Underground Window
     -This new window gives you immediate access to common Underground actions without having to leave the main view. Actions include:
           -Buying and selling resources.
           -Viewing the current bounty target and the raid time remaining.
           -The ability to increment the bounty on the player with current highest bounty.
     -All these actions are now hooked up to hotkeys.
     -Opening and closing the Mini Underground Window can be done via Ctrl-Shift-X or using the User Interface options screen.

-Hotkeys:
      -New default hot key for Select Colony Ships to not conflict with Toggle Main View Icons. (Alt-G)
      -Hotkey to toggle expand/shrink the best selected Empire Tree node. (L)
      -Hotkeys added for opening up specific tabs in the global windows:
           Examples:  
                 - Research Window: Combat, Non-combat, Artifact, Fleet
                 - NPC Window: Market, Pirates
       -Escape menu screen now more accurately reports when the player is entering text so that you can switch from the network status screen to other screens with hotkeys.
       -Entities autojoining fleets (see AI changes) will now search for and join the hot key group that contains the entire fleet. This way you don't have to rebuild hot key groups as more ships get added to the fleet automatically.
       -Can now toggle between the pirate and market screens without having to close them first with hotkeys.
 
-Empire Tree:
       -Hotkey to toggle expand/shrink the best selected Empire Tree node.
       -Using hotkeys to toggle the expansion of an Empire Tree node now also makes it visible. Note that this isn't done when clicking the arrow to the left to prevent shifting of the Empire Tree while your cursor is interacting with it. 
       -Empire Tree now updates if paused.
       -Fix Empire Tree crash.
       -Fixed a bug in the "show selected node" algorithm.
       -Tolerance for readjusting the Empire Tree changed so that it happens when any of the entire node is outside of the window instead of only the entity selected. This is so that selecting an entity will bring the planet in view even if the planet is outside the window.
        -Changed the behavior when making an entity visible so the entire node shows up on the top of the Empire Tree instead of the bottom.
        -New algorithm for making the selected entity displayed. Now takes into account the context of the entity, for example if a ship is selected the entire planet and all of its contents are attempted to be made visible, instead of just the ship.

-Fix missing planet type descriptions from scenariodef file.
-Fix for crash when selecting player portraits.
-Pasting text into text boxes no longer only cuts of the front if the text won't fit (cuts off the end).
-Both combat and non-combat lab counts are displayed in the open research button infocard.
-Abilities that spawn units now show the duration of their spawned units in the ability infocard.
-Changed button text to show credit cost on press instead of /unit of resource.
-Added colors to text that the big market screen uses.
-Added left handed mouse support. Swapped mouse buttons will be auto-detected from the win32 api and saved as a personal setting.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Modding:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Maximum number of buildable capital ship types per race increased from 5 to 9.
-Abilities can now require resources to be used instead of antimatter.
-Fixed loading mods potentially causing a sync problem.
-Caught more edge cases where buffs should perform their OnBuffFinish actions. (Fixes weirdness with various abilities).
-Fixed game from crashing when a mesh type that the engine expects to have shields is modded to not have shields.
-New convertdata can convert binary to text as well.
-As mentionned in graphics: New ship shader with colorsample.a swapped with datasample.r (Team and spec have reversed position).
-As mentionned in graphics: Non-planetary asteroids now have their own shader. (Note: this shader no longer uses the same texture channel format as the ship shader).
-Various improvements to GalaxyForge.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Misc:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Fix crash bug with array out of bound values with Resource Focus.
-Fixed a crash in rendering certain string types.
-Screenshot Changes
       -Changed code for taking autoscreenshots to get rid of any render time interpolation.
       -Take screenshot on singlestep
       -Screenshot mode is disabled on shutdown so all relating settings aren't saved as off.
-Fixed bug where temp ships where messing up statistics (causing them to go negative).
-Fixed a null pointer crash.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
End
---------------------------------------------------------------------------