It's that time of year again folks! It's Sins patch time, and here's what you need to update your mods to the new version.

This patch is unusual since this is the firs time different players have different versions. Sins just launched on GOG last week, and the new GOG players have been running the new version from the start. For all of us still on steam, the 1.83 update is now available as an "opt in" beta. This means you will need to tell your steam players to either opt in to play the update, or tell them to wait until January when steam will force update everyone to 1.83.

Now, the import things, the file changes.

1. New Line in the Player.entity files.

GameEventSound:RuinPlanetNotRuinable inserted between GameEventSound:ColonizePlanetBlockedByEnemyStarBase and GameEventSound:PirateFleetArrived. Default value of "UI_COMMON_DEFAULTERROR".

GameEventSound:ColonizePlanetBlockedByEnemyStarBase "UI_COMMON_DEFAULTERROR"
GameEventSound:RuinPlanetNotRuinable "UI_COMMON_DEFAULTERROR"
GameEventSound:PirateFleetArrived "EVENTTECH_PIRATEFLEETARRIVED"

2. New lines to Ability entity files that use useCostType "ResourcesAndMustHaveCapitalCrew"

You can now specify the amount of fleet supply and command points required to use this ability, rather than being hard coded at the 1 command point, 50 fleet supply all vanilla Sins capitalship use. The full section is now.

resourceCost
   credits 2010.000000
   metal 270.000000
   crystal 170.000000
requiredShipSlots
   Level:0 50.000000
   Level:1 50.000000
   Level:2 50.000000
   Level:3 50.000000
requiredCapitalShipSlots
   Level:0 1.000000
   Level:1 1.000000
   Level:2 1.000000
   Level:3 1.000000
cooldownTime
   Level:0 300.000000
   Level:1 300.000000
   Level:2 0.000000
   Level:3 0.000000

3. Updates to the GameEventData.gameventdata file.

To be honest I've never touched this file, so I'm not sure exactly what's changed. If its not in your mod, you probably don't need to worry about it, if it is, tell us what changed.

4. New entity file, "AbilityRuinPlanet".

I'm don't believe this file is used by anything at this time, but it does show you how to use the new capability to destroy planets like stripped to the core via abilities. Cool!

There also appears to be a new constraint added to support this, constraint "IsRuinable". I'd guess this would check if the planet is a colonizeable entity.

 5. All maps updated to map version 5.

As far as I can tell, the only difference is that map version 5 removed the following lines from Star and Planet definitions. Probably because they weren't that popular, and their default values in galaxy forge weren't that accurate.

moveAreaRadius 60000.000000
hyperspaceExitRadius 50000.000000

However, the change log says there is backwards compatibility with map version 4. So if you do really use these lines in special maps, you can continue to use them and ignore this difference. If you do update to 5, them the moveAreaRadius and HyperspaceExitRadius will always be pulled from the planet/star entity file.

6. New String File Entries

Some of these are used by info cards and other global processes, so you will want to add these to your mod's string file. Also some minor changes to strings were made to let users know certain features that were only available for Steam player (voice chat).

StringInfo
ID "IDS_INFOCARD_BUFFADJUSTMENT_PLANETBOMBINGDAMAGEABSORPTION"
Value "Planet Bombing Absorption"

StringInfo
ID "IDS_GAMEMESSAGE_RUINPLANETNOTRUINABLE"
Value "%s is already destroyed."

StringInfo
ID "IDS_TARGETCONSTRAINT_ISRUINABLE"
Value "be destroyable"

StringInfo
ID "IDS_ABILITY_RUINPLANET_NAME"
Value "Destroy Planet"

StringInfo
ID "IDS_ABILITY_RUINPLANET_DESCRIPTION"
Value "Destroy a planet."

7. Update to the GalaxyRandomizer.window file.

I doubt many people have changed this either, but if you did, you might want to make sure it still works with the new file.

If there's anything I've missed, please post here and I will update the OP.