Technical Preview 5 Features Major AI and UI Improvements,
Audio Balancing, Quality-of-Life Updates, and More
Read the full changelog

Greetings, Sins II players! Thanks to everyone who played during our opt-in period and sent us any bug reports or weird issues that you came across. Your diligence helps us deliver the best game possible, and we're happy to let you know that Technical Preview 5 is now officially released.

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 Tech Preview 4. 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.

Research

Research has been split into two separate queues - civilian and military. This means that you can focus on developing your economy or military units separately, allowing for more efficient progress in both areas.

AI Improvements

We've done some work on the AI and improved it in some of the following areas:

• Attacking
• Planet Guarding
• Unit Building
• Colonization
• Researching
• Planet Development
• Retrofitting
• Exotic Management
• Loot Collection

Unit AI collision avoidance, pathfinding, and combat movement have also been improved, leading to increased unit survivability.

Gameplay

We've taken some of the player feedback we've received regarding the early game economy and improved how trade works, which increases your income and allows for smoother gameplay. 

Improved early game economy, increased trade income, adjusted lobby game speed options, and rebalanced pirate ratios have also been updated and improved.

Additionally, galaxy generation has been fixed to prevent resource asteroids from intersecting structures, spawning of structures in structures or asteroids, and units spawning inside a star or planet.

Visuals, Audio, and UI

We've got some shiny new visual effects! The Dunov energy transfer beam got a facelift, and we fixed popping particles and created cleaner and more interesting death sequences.

We also did a ton of work on the User Interface. Auto overlap detection, renamed units, and disabling culture takeover blinks around planet icons are among just a few. 

There are now improved tooltips for the colonized planets summary, Human Doctrine buff values, and much more. 

Lastly, audio has been rebalanced with normalized loudness across sound assets and adjusted attenuations. There is now updated sound FX for Magnetic Singularity, the TEC autocannon, and the gauss defense structure. We also adjusted the volume for explosions.

Haven't pre-ordered Sins of a Solar Empire II yet? No problem! There's still time to join early so that you can experience the game as it develops while sharing your feedback directly with the team behind it. Head over to www.sinsofasolarempire2.com to add the game to your wishlist, follow updates, and learn more about features as they are revealed. 

To read about everything included in this update, please see the changelog listed below. Thanks for playing!

Sins of a Solar Empire II Technical Preview 5 Changelog

AI Improvements

• Improved player AI attacking.
• Improved player AI planet guarding.
• Improved player AI unit building.
• Improved player AI colonization.
• Improved player AI researching.
• Improved player AI planet development.
• Improved player AI retrofitting.
• Improved player AI exotic management.
• Improved player AI loot collection.
• Improved unit AI collision avoidance.
• Improved unit AI pathfinding.
• Improved unit AI combat 'target track' movement.
• Improved garrison AI.
• Fixed AI still updating when player is dead.
• Fixed a variety of AI combat, colonization and production issues.
• Prevented AI from allying with other AI in team games.

Visual Effects

• Added new effect for Dunov energy transfer beam.
• Fixed popping particles that had a fade-in / fade-out combination.
• Updated death sequences. Updated death sequences to be cleaner, more interesting.
• Fixed incorrect particle and sound fx on Javelis and the Sova’s missile battery pod.
• Added new phase lane vfx for charge/travel/exit.

Gameplay

• Added parallel research build queues per domain. Research domains are now completely separated from the top bar onwards.
• Improved early game economy.
• Increased trade income.
• Improved battle length.
• Adjusted lobby game speed options.
• Adjusted spawn loot guardian's range.
• Fixed exotic duplication bug when moving build queue.
• Fixed Human Doctrine being duplicated on home planet.
• Fixed Missile Guidance Computer and Targeting Array items not removing their bonuses to nearby allied units when the item is removed.
• Reduced squadrons of low-level carrier capital ship.
• Updated tier/price/windfall of Focused Exploration research.
• Rebalanced pirate ratios and removed obsolete medium pirate.
• Made first capital ship build instantly.
• Fixed pirate balance issue.

Galaxy Generation

• Fixed resource asteroids intersecting structures.
• Fixed structures spawning in structures or asteroids.
• Fixed structures building outside the build area when possible.
• Fixed units spawning inside a star or planet.
• Fixed loot guardians spawning on top of loot.

User Interface

• Added auto overlap detection to bookmark window and top bar.
• Added tip on how to rename units.
• Disabled culture takeover blinks around planet icons.
• Fixed assert when selecting 200% dpi.
• Fixed autocast animation being scaled by dynamically changing simulation time.
• Fixed crash giving rally orders to stacks of units in production window.
• Fixed crash in passive ability range rendering.
• Fixed game not remaining paused when changing settings or entering save game name (single-player only).
• Fixed minor layout issues at non-standard dpi settings.
• Fixed other dpi's being not pickable if auto_scale_dpi_to_fit_display is set to false.
• Fixed phase lane being deleted blink from speeding up with game speed settings.
• Fixed scout triggering enemy_units_detected_at_unowned_planet at all visited gravity wells.
• Fixed shield bars growing out of bar area.
• Fixed structure building pips blink being modified by game speed.
• Fixed time scale issues with UI and shaders.
• Clouds and other shader-based effects are no longer affected by global game speed options set in lobby.
• UI animations no longer affected by any game speed changes and will always pulse or otherwise animate at a consistent speed (will still pause if game is paused though).
• Fixed volume sliders not initialized when settings file was deleted from filesystem.
• Improved transition between both research window domain windows.
• Linked research window is compressed setting between both domains. Expectation is that changing it in one location will change it in the other as well.
• Linked research window text filter between both domains.
• Improved asset change notifications.
• Suppressed planet track completed and exotic built notifications.
• Fixed selection window capital ship level up fill color flash showing up for other players.
• Fixed bug stuck at 125% dpi in settings window. Users will now be able to pick 100% again from the list.
• Updated top bar visuals and layout.
• Changed default input bindings to match new top bar button order.
• Updated research window.
• Added research text filter count indicators.
• Added flash to top bar research buttons when research completed.
• Added instant transitions between research domain windows.
• Changed research window to only fade in.
• Added link arrows between research tiers.
• Changed research buttons to show current points instead of number of research subjects active. This makes it more consistent with other top bar numbers.
• New watermark images for compressed view
• Redesigned header and footer
• Fixed rename unit issues: Entering an empty name will properly refresh to restore the original name. Name changes will be sync’d between windows (e.g., colonized planets at top and selected planet at bottom).
• Suppressed missiles and torpedoes from being added to selection window.
• Removed running auction from NPC tooltip.
• Updated HUD pictures for TEC units.

Tooltips

• Added colonized planets summary tooltip.
• Added Human Doctrine buff values to research subject tooltips.
• Added unlocked/improved abilities to research subject tooltips.
• Fixed non-homeworld Human Doctrine buff not showing up on unit tooltips.
• Fixed research domain tooltip list of structures/items providing points.
• Improved research text filtering.
• Will now filter on both the unit and ability names for any unlocked abilities (e.g., Retrofit Bay - Repair).
• Will filter on keywords ability, unlock, improve (if level > 0) for any unit abilities improved by research.
• Will filter on unlocked ability properties (modifiers, trade capacity, custom labels).
• Will filter on unlocked item ability (and properties).
• Will filter on unlocked item modifiers (unit, planet, player, etc.).
• Made all hull restore rate values in abilities positive green color.
• Shortened some ship unlock research names to make tooltips more compact.

Research

• Added parallel research build queues per domain. Now research domains are now completely separated on the top bar.

Audio

• Fixed Magnetic Singularity sound not being played when initially created.
• Fixed TEC autocannon selected dialog from using Advent dialog.
• Added Magnetic Singularity sound FX.
• Major audio re-balance: Normalized loudness across sound assets and adjust attenuations accordingly.
• Updated TEC autocannon defense structure to use new autocannon sound FX and updated burst pattern to match Kol.
• Updated gauss defense structure sound FX.
• Updated death sequences and adjust volumes so the final explosions pop more.
• Fixed incorrect particle and sound fx on Javelis and the Sova’s missile battery pod.

Notifications

• Added pirate raid notification.
• Added auction notification sound.
• Added notification for destroying an enemy planet.
• Added notifications for ship and planet components finished building.
• Added per notification type durations. All notifications are not equal; can make some shorter or longer.
• Inverted progress bar for auction notification.
• Moved notifications behind global windows.
• Added support for notification card interaction when the game is paused. You can now right-click and remove notifications while the game is paused.

Event Dialog

• Added event dialog system.
• Added player dialog for enemy units arriving.
• Added player dialog for planet related events.
• Added player dialog for various click errors (e.g., insufficient credits, research needed, etc.).
• Added player specific dialog bindings to notifications.
• Added research completed dialog.
• Added planet development completed player dialog.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed being able to build over trade port limit of a planet by building in groups.
• Fixed trade port overlap.
• Fixed auctions running after the game is over.