Greetings, Sins II players! We have been receiving valuable feedback from our players, which has enabled us to make numerous improvements to the game. We appreciate the input and will continue to use it to enhance the gaming experience for everyone.

Before we talk about what's in the new update, here's an important note: this update is NOT save game compatible with prior versions! This means you'll need to start fresh games to play with the features in this update. For the highlights in this update, read on - if you'd like more nitty-gritty details, be sure to check out the changelog at the bottom of the post.

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Top Features

TEC Titans - The Ankylon and Ragnarov

The loyalist Ankylon titan can serve as the core of any combat fleet. The Ankylon features several abilities to augment both friendly and enemy forces:  Disruption Matrix is a powerful area ability that will damage enemies over time and prevent them from using abilities; Furious Defense great increases the Ankylon's weapon damage and repair systems; Shield Surge can instantly restore shield points to the Ankylon and to nearby friendly units; and Invulnerability Field super-charges the titan's shield emitters making all friendly ships within range invulnerable for a short time.

The rebel Ragnarov titan is a mobile weapons platform build entirely for offense. It's special abilities enhance it's massive railgun which spans half the ship's length:  Piercing Shot fires a powerful, long-range shell to deal massive damage to a single target; Explosive Shot fires a concussive blast shell at a target to deal AoE damage; Warpath grants the Ragnarov a stacking weapon damage bonus for a short duration; and Novalith Cannon fires a devastating nuclear payload at an adjacent hostile planet.

TEC Novalith Cannon

This deadly superweapon returns exclusive to the TEC Rebel faction, granting them incredible power. The Novalith Cannon is a powerful railgun developed through extensive research, capable of launching devastating Novalith Warheads at incredible speeds. These warheads cause massive damage to a planet's infrastructure, making the weapon a formidable force on the battlefield.

New Fleet System

The new Fleet System in Sins II allows players to create and customize their own war fleets of ships to command, providing a more personalized and strategic gameplay experience. Fleets can be easily managed and reinforced through a special build bar, which enables players to order new ships from nearby factories. This streamlined system ensures that players can efficiently expand and strengthen their fleets, adapting to the ever-changing dynamics of the battlefield.

Planet Updates

The latest update reintroduces constructor ships, planet elevators and orbital traffic. Constructor ships are back for building and expanding your empire, while planet elevators reflect the development of your planet. Plus, ships will now fly out of the factory when construction is completed. Gas giants also received a refresh for this update.

Changelog

Fleet System

• Players can now form fleets of ships via the left-side empire window.

  • Add a new fleet by hovering over the left-side empire window and left-clicking the + button.

    • Selecting unit(s) and right clicking the fleet button will also create the fleet and add the units.

    • Selecting unit(s) and right clicking an existing fleet will add the units to the fleet.

    • Remove a unit from a fleet by clicking the ‘Leave Fleet’ button in the advanced ship actions menu.

  • Units rallied to a fleet will join it.

  • Remove a fleet by dragging it out of the empire window.

• Reinforce

  • Fleets can reinforce their ranks using the fleet’s build interface when the fleet is selected.

    • The fleet will optimize where ships are produced based on the fleet’s location and various other factors.

• Orders

  • In addition to reinforcement, fleet orders include move, attack, hold position and stop. Based on feedback we will add new orders, states and behaviors.

• Fleets that have lost enough ships to empty a row of the formation will automatically compress to tighten the formation as appropriate.

Unit Control

• Added rotate-in-place command to ships. Hold ALT when right clicking in a gravity well to have selected units face the direction you specify.

• Changed left and right click to attack all enemy units in a selection window stack (e.g., to attack all siege frigates just click once on the stack in the selection window; instead of shift queue attack each unit in turn).

• Removed strikecraft from the highest-level bandbox priority so they no longer get included with regular units.

• Fixed order lines conflicting with phase lane rendering. Phase lanes are now suppressed and smoothly fade back in when order lines go away.

• Improved ability button UI for channeling abilities.

• Forced new key bindings to be used.

Gameplay

• Added Trader Rebel and Loyalist Titans.

• Added Novalith Cannon to TEC Rebels.

• Upgraded TEC Rebel Insurgency to 300 supply (up from 50).

• Auction Updates:

  • Added auction losing refund percentage (50%) for all players.

  • Added auction lost refund bonus research to TEC Rebels.

• Minor Faction Updates:

  • Added Metal Monopolization reward: Provides you with a time limited exclusivity contract with the metal market.

  • Added Crystal Monopolization reward: Provides you with a time limited exclusivity contract with the crystal market.

  • Added Black Market Andvar reward: Provides you with a smuggled cache of Andvar.

  • Replaced Elite Mining Crews reward with Advanced Mining Rig: Highly customized mining machinery boosts metal extraction rates.

• Added initial planet elevators and orbital traffic to help signal planet development level.

• Added initial construction ships to build structures.

• Ships in drydock will now fly out of the factory when construction is completed.

• All planet bonuses were given more accurate planet_type constraints.

• Added planet bonus constraint to avoid surface level conflicts.

• Removed various obsolete planet bonuses that will be replaced in a future update.

• Added queuing of ship components without a shop.

• Added queueing of starbase components while under construction.

• Changed home planet starting bonuses to planet components.

• Upgraded Retrofit Bay to recharge its antimatter faster (to keep the heals coming!).

• Fixed research prices.

• TEC Rebel insurgent units that are no longer at enemy planets will auto-scuttle to avoid insurgents sitting around planets they shouldn’t be.

• Starbase Docking Booms changed to do in-combat repair rather than passive regeneration.

• Fixed inappropriate ships from acquiring strikecraft as their primary target (e.g., capital ships).

• Restricted some ships' point-defense to only fire at strikecraft and torpedoes.

• Slowed down orbits of planets closer to the star.

• Fixed default factory rally points.

Garrisons

• Added new garrison states “roam offensive” and “roam defensive.”

• Garrison supply reduced by 25% (except for the home planet garrison).

• Doubled garrison unit build times.

• Moved garrison order management to the garrison planet component. The component itself will now represent the three different behaviors.

• Fixed garrison units being stacked with normal units in selection window.

Galaxy Generation

• Added formation spawning for player starting units.

• Improved how formations spawn in a gravity well.

• Setup formations for minor factions.

• Update map names and descriptions.

Minor Factions

• Added Advent Apostate Merchants as the merchant NPC.

• Added Vasari Outcast Miners as the mining NPC.

Visuals

• Added initial star model.

• Added initial gas giant model.

• Updated Trader normal and adaptive shield effects.

• Updated various weapon and ability particle effects.

• Added initial ship and structure under construction effects.

• Added initial star and star surface texture.

• Updated asteroid props.

• Updated Dunov materials.

• Added visible missiles on a variety of ship meshes.

• Adjusted some mesh icon visible distances.

• Updated beam effect on starbase.

• Updated capital ship light autocannon hit effect.

• Added depth fade to a variety of effects.

• Updated some death sequences for large units/structures.

HUD

• Updated bottom bar.

• Added Exotic Factory building counts blink duration.

• Added flash to Exotic button when any exotics received.

• Added flashes to top bar buttons (e.g., trade import points acquired).

• Added invalid ability target planet alpha. Replaces old unused underlays; now consistent with picking alliance offer planets.

• Added new dialog frame to all HUD dialogs.

• Added saving of notification cards.

• Aligned Exotic Factory owned and building counts with one another.

• Changed alliance offer notifications to be persistent with progress bars.

• Changed top bar assets text to be consistent with other components.

• Fixed delay between consuming last item and it being removed from inventory.

• Fixed notification card layout off by 1 errors.

• Fixed notifications aligning with top bar buttons.

• Fixed players window opening sometimes when closing alliance offer window.

• Fixed selection of single ships not showing up in planet pip group rendering.

• Improved errors around missing research labs. Now explicitly says “labs” instead of just “research” to avoid confusion.

• Removed extra thick phase lanes for PSIDAR.

• Split up count text on all HUD buttons to top and bottom when building, consistent with the Exotic Factory window.

• Stabilized clock text as it increments.

• Updated victory window to use new dialog frame.

• Update orbit direction line colors and length.

• Improved unit selection outline aliasing.

• Reduced size of garrison unit underlay.

• Added a wide variety of icons for build menus, research, abilities, components and auctions.

• Adjusted ui_status_border sizes.

• Fixed research tier upgrades waiting for research labs messaging.

• Added tab to toggle between research windows instantly.

• Exposed camera settings for edge panning, invert horizontal rotation and invert vertical rotation.

• Fixed mesh outlines appearing through meshes as if they were transparent.

Tooltips

• Added unit order tooltips. You can now see that units are attacking a group of units and not just one unit.

• Improved auction tooltips.

• Fixed hit box used for auction tooltips.

• Improved modifier tooltip rendering to show ratio values.

• Added exotic count action tooltip line rendering.

• Added click instructions to garrison tooltip.

Audio

• Updated Dunov Energy Transfer sound fx and duration.

• Added TEC ambient music track.

• Updated phase jump sound fx.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed scouts no longer exploring due to autocast wiping out orders every update.

• Fixed alliance offers expiring not refunding assets and exotics.

• Fixed autocast of untargeted abilities not working when given explicit orders.

• Fixed bug in late game culture rate spread. Resistance and synergy were not properly checking the update tick, so old phantom resistance that doesn’t exist anymore was being factored in.

• Fixed create_unit atomic failing to create units. Caused two abilities on the Marza to no longer work.

• Fixed death sequence effects spawning when zooming in after a unit has died.

• Fixed higher research tiers being acquired before lower tiers are finished.

• Fixed hyperspace exit effects showing when zooming in late to a gravity well.

• Fixed player window auto-opening when game is over.

• Fixed built ships all coming out of the same factory.

• Fixed some buff effects not being released.

• Fixed “Underdevelopment” spelling.

• Fixed confusing culture resistance research subject names.

• Fixed various strings.

• Crashes and Asserts:

  • Fixed hard crashes in d3d11 when meshes are missing.

  • Fixed crash bug when using consumable items.

  • Fixed crash in firing missiles.

  • Fixed crash when moving planet track upgrades.

• Fixed sync errors caused by different processor architectures (e.g., AMD64 vs ARM64). Only users with the same processor architecture can play with each other.

• Fixed empty-id alert.

Misc.

• Added the ability to render WebM format videos.

  • Added teaser trailer to game start.

• Added more optimizations to mesh rendering.

• Fixed various collision issues.