Here's the current change log for the upcoming Beta 2 of Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment. Beta 2 is now available via Impulse for pre-order customers.

Gameplay / Balance:

• Weapon Banks -
  • Banks can now engage a variable number of targets where the max number of targets per bank is controlled from data. Each target will receive 100% of the bank's DPS at max, even if there is unused targeting capacity. The design goal is to provide improved combat utility against groups of targets and not against single targets. This is particularly important for starbases.
  • Fixed bug in secondary banks not firing as often as they should. This should really improve capital ships, starbases and flak frigates.
  • Improved secondary bank target acquisition. This should also really improve capital ships, starbases and flak frigates.
• Starbases -
  • Most weapon ranges increased slightly.
  • Starbases can now engage multiple targets per bank, effectively scaling their damage by the number of targets in range up to the maximum number of targets per bank (see above).
  • Most upgrade types rebalanced to provide more utility at final level of upgrades.
  • Hangar upgrade types rebalanced to be more cost competitive vs hangar structures and weapon upgrades.
  • Trade part upgrades rebalanced to be more cost competitive with trade port structures.
  • Colony pods upgrade tuned to remain benefit competitive with trade port upgrades.
  • Advent Meteor Storm range increased from 12,000 to 15,000.
  • Starbases can now destabilize phase lanes heading out from their gravity well. This causes considerable damage and full antimatter loss to outgoing enemy units.
  • Starbase deployment costs increased by 1,000 credits, 100 metal and 125 crystal.
  • Starbases now take longer to construct and upgrade in neutral gravity wells compared to friendly ones, and longer still in enemy-owned gravity wells.
  • Starbase unmodified build time increased from 75 to 120 secs.
  • Fixed TEC Argonev's supply ability from being a channelling ability (which consistently interrupted the weapons fire).
  • Fixed Advent Transcencia's Final Judgement so that it applies all its damage correctly.
  • Fixed the TEC Argonev not auto-attacking past the first target unless the player's ships are in-system with it.
• Anti-Structure -
  • Anti-structure cruisers (i.e., Ogrov) now use regular weapons logic which fixes a myriad of user interface and behavioral problems.
  • Anti-structure cruisers now prioritize structures (threats or otherwise).
  • TEC Ogrov range increased from 9,000 to 12,000.
  • Advent Adjudicator range increased from 9,000 to 12,000.
  • New "AntiModule" AttackType and new "Module" ArmorType and relevant side-effects added.
  • Converted all structures to have armor type "Module".
  • Bomber strike craft's AntiVeryHeavy damage modifier vs structures reduced from 100% to 75%.
• Mines -
  • Planets now have Mine slots in addition to Tactical slots and Civilian Slots. However, each player has access to their Mine slots in every gravity well, even if they don't own the local orbit body. In effect, Mines are limited per player, per gravity well. Currently, the maximum number of mines per player in a single gravity well is 150, which means a total of 1500 (150 * 10) mines if all potential players deploy their maximum number of mines in that gravity well. There is no global maximum of mines.
  • Deploying Advent and Vasari mines now costs resources instead of anti-matter.
  • The user interface for building starbases, Advent minefields, and Vasari Minefields now behaves similarly to how modules are placed and how movement is queued. This really reduces micromanagement, particularly for Vasari mine-laying as you can queue up the entire minefield layout and leave the mine-layer alone to complete the work.
  • Autocast on Advent and Vasari minefield deployment is tempoarily disabled until we are convined the new mine- laying method is satisfactory.
  • Vasari mines are now deployed 6 at a time in a random cluster around the ship (more symmetric to the other mines and requires much less micromanagement).
  • Mine activation delay increased from 10 to 30 secs.
  • Mine hull points reduced to 40.
  • Homing Mines maximum speed increased from 500 to 1,200.
• Mine Clearing -
  • Changed how Detect Space Mines achieves its functionality so the AI can be used to automate mine clearing.
  • All the scout's behavior was completely rewritten to help remove the micromanagement involved in clearing minefields. To turn a scout into its optimum mine clearing mode, turn off all the autocasting of abilities so it will prioritize the use of the Detect Minefield ability and turn on Auto-Attack so it will kill the mines as it detects them.
  • Flak frigates are now very well suited to helping scouts clear minefields. Besides having weapons in all four banks and having secondary bank firing behavior fixed (see above), they also prioritize mines after fighters and bombers before any other target.
  • Every ship's secondary banks will prioritize mines if they are nearby and considered a threat to the ship. This will also help in minimizing the micromanagement in clearing minefields.
• Misc. Gameplay -
  • TEC Hangar Defense flak turrets upgrade now allows firing at 2 targets per bank.
  • Improved target filter for Targeting Uplink to prevent it from being put on unnecessary entities.
  • Fixed credits and resource values being able to go negative (i.e., resource overdraft bug).
  • Fixed queued orders potentially getting ignored after an auto-attack (finally found it Annatar! ).
  • Fixed right-clicking planets from outside the gravity well to execute their planet-centric abilities (should be interpreted as a move).
  • Fixed colonizing capital ships have colonized or tried to colonize planets despite the fact that their auto-cast on the Colonize ability was disabled.
  • Fixed bad group jump behavior.
  • Fixed Deliverance Engine not spreading culture.
  • Added extra condition checking to avoid giving out Star Explorer achievement when it shouldn't be.
  • Post colonization bonuses are now applied essentially at the same time as gaining of ownership of the planet.
  • Fixed missing research prerequisite for Colony Pods starbase upgrade.
  • Fixed ships that were just built by a starbase from being unable to move.

Graphics:

• Improved TEC Argonev starbase textures.
• Gauss Blast no longer uses asteroid for its travel effect.
• New starbase explosions for Advent and Vasari.
• Fixed a weapon point on the Kol capital ship.
• Dropped four unnecessary weapon points from the TEC Argonev starbase.
• 2 new beam icon upgrades for the TEC Argonev.

Sound / Music:

• Fixed sound bug allowing sounds to play before their minimum replay time had elapsed.
• First pass on the majority of Entrenchment sound effects (no vocals yet).

Networking / Multiplayer:

• Fixed two ICO crash bugs.
• Fixed bug in transmitting unicode characters through the command system (fixes bad characters with chat and renaming entities in foreign languages).
• Fixed one known sync bug.
• Fixed a false positive sync bug.
• Fixed starbases not upgrading when using Alloy.

User Interface / HUD:

• Fixed swapped UI event messages for 'Frigate/Capital ship factory required'.
• Open Starbase Upgrades button now shows upgrade capacity and stage state of all upgrades.
• Weapon damage for a given weapon is only shown if that weapon is not constrained from firing (by research of starbase upgrade requirements).
• Starbase upgrades that have unsatisfied research prerequisites now show the small research icon needed icon in the upgrade action grid.
• Starbases now show population, tax income and trade income on their main Infocard, if appropriate.
• Starbase constructors put at same level as colony frigates for band-boxing priority (i.e., doesn't get bandbox selected with your attack fleet units).
• Fixed scroll bar (was missing alpha).
• Fixed disabled state of jump drive artifact.
• Starbases are now pinned in the Empire Tree by default.
• Fixed TEC Ogrov torpedo cruisers now showing up as part of fleets.
• Fixed a couple strings that referred to the Ogrov as the Ogrev.

Modding:

• Capital ships now support the ability to change meshes as they upgrade.
• Max weapon points increased from 10 to 20.
• New "AntiModule" AttackType and new "Module" ArmorType are relevant side-effects added.
• Banks can now engage a variable number of targets where the max number of targets per bank is controlled from data. See above for more details.

Misc.:

• Fixed crash bug on exit and saving/loading game under certain circumstances.
• Fixed replays from not working.
• Fixed crash caused by rallying or following a mine.
• Lots of memory optimizations.
• Fixed crash in texture memory allocation.
• Improved background texture loading algorithm.
• Improved texture defragmentation.
• Removed redundant non-pirate maps (you can select to not have pirates on any map).
• Fixed game crashing when using a scout to attack Vasari mines.