Since the Steam release of Sins of a Solar Empire II, we’ve been closely monitoring community feedback to guide our updates. This latest patch reflects our commitment to enhancing the player experience based on your input.

• Improved Game Window Layouts: Enhanced layouts for the lobby window and escape menu as part of our long-term UI update plans.
  
• Expanded Key Binding Options: Increased possibilities for key bindings, including support for extra mouse buttons, responding directly to player requests.
  
• Resolved Repetitive VO Lines: Restored player sanity by fixing the annoying repeated voice lines from phase jump inhibitors.
  
• Initial Settings Overhaul: Introduced new settings for camera pan speed, zoom, shadow quality, and more, paving the way for future enhancements.
  
• Visual Optimizations: A slew of visual tweaks aimed at improving general performance across a variety of hardware configurations.
  
• Community-Driven Adjustments: A host of new bug fixes and balance changes addressing early community reports to ensure a smoother gameplay experience.

This update is just the beginning, and we look forward to continuing to refine Sins of a Solar Empire II with your feedback in mind.

Note: You will need to re-subscribe to all mods for this update. We apologize for the hassle; this will be a one-time thing.

This update will break save games and replays! You can still play them by using the previous version (see below).

If you wish to finish up your game on the previous version, do the following:

1. Select ‘Sins of a Solar Empire II’ in your Steam Library.
   
2. Click the gear icon in the upper right.
   
3. Select Properties → Betas
   
4. Select 'previous_edition' from the Beta Participation dropdown.
   
5. Steam will update you to the latest files.
   
6. To switch to latest repeat step 4 and select ‘None’

View the full changelog here

A minor update to fix performance options not working.

Greetings Terrarians!

Back to school already? That may have set the record for the fastest-feeling Summer of all time. We hope everyone at least got a chance to grab some fun times with friends and family over the past few months - before we all plunge headlong into what Fall has in store. On the Terraria front, we are full speed ahead in the second half of the year, with development of 1.4.5 still going quite well (we are nearing the 50th beta of this dev cycle!). Each month sees the addition of even more cool stuff - we are particularly excited for what was added this month, though we are only going to spoil one of the more "shocking" tidbits for now. We know everyone wants that juicy release date still, but we are patiently working through our list of "to do's", and we do not want to ever cut any corners... so it will still be a bit longer, I'm afraid.

With that out of the way... let's take a look at a particularly intriguing State of the Game!






While Terraria has had various weather effects for quite some time, they have mostly been cosmetic. Outside of wind - which can impact movement and projectiles - and possibly the visibility-limiting blizzard/sandstorms, weather has never really played a huge role in the Terraria adventure. Terraria 1.4.5 aims to change that up a bit by not only adding some new natural/weather phenomenons, but also making some weather elements more... interactive.

Remember, if you feel your hair standing on end, it may be time to seek shelter indoors! How shocking!

What other goodies have the team added this month? Well, be sure to check out the Console/Mobile section for at least one more spoiler... but as always, some things will remain a secret. Until next time folks!

STEAM WORKSHOP NEWS

Click the banner above to check out the Terraria Workshop!

Countless Terraria texture packs and worlds await you in the Terraria Steam Workshop! You are missing out if you haven't taken the time to check out these amazing creations from the community.




Whittling down the list of remaining items, discussing what - if anything - should be added to said list.






Hello everyone!

The tModLoader team and our amazing community of contributors continues to improve tModLoader. On September 1st the monthly update release of tModLoader will go live. This month's release contains many improvements to the user experience, some gameplay bug fixes, as well as new features with examples and documentation for mod makers.

One new feature we want to showcase in particular is in-game workshop tag filtering. This has been a highly requested feature and we hope this new filter will help users find the mods they want more easily in-game. We expect this feature to especially help users find mods that support their native language.



Modders and users should also keep an eye out for our monthly Steam announcement on the 1st where a complete listing of bug fixes and API changes for this month's release will be listed. The in-game news button on the main menu will direct you directly to the announcement once it is live.

As always, if you are having issues of any sort, definitely don't hesitate to check out our FAQ on github or reach out to us at our Discord.




The TML Steam Workshop has over 6000 mods for you to enjoy! Coupled with the in-game mod browser, the TML Steam Workshop is a great way to explore what modded Terraria has to offer - check it out today by clicking the banner above!




More features, continuing to evolve and grow what TML can do... and getting ready for 1.4.5.

As always, you can keep track the current progress and much more in real time at tModLoader/tModLoader (But note that the completion percentage doesn't mean anything, because issues and PRs don't have weights.)

Developers who are willing to contribute may do so by doing PRs to the tModLoader/tModLoader branch. (See tModLoader/tModLoader)




This month, the DR team spent a good amount of time on some polish and QOL projects specific to Console and Mobile that we have had on the list for a good while. While we are keeping pace well with the development pipeline for Terraria 1.4.5 on PC, we were pleased that we had some available time to go ahead and tackle these rather than having to wait for a future update. More on that at a later time. That said, let's check out a quick Terraria spoiler, shall we?


Think outside the cage - free your captured critters from confinement while keeping them close by!

Terraria 1.4.5 will allow players to place captured critters out in the open via "leashing" them to a specific location. We hope this will help make your favorite Terraria world feel more lively than ever!

---

Until next time, Console & Mobile friends - thanks for all of your love and support!



​
Greetings Terrarians!

Here's the latest and greatest happenings on the Community side of things. Thanks as always for being the most engaged and awesome gaming Community ever!





The 10 year anniversary of the Terraria Community Forums is coming up at the end of September, and we're getting the celebration started early with a contest! Get your imagination cap on and your confetti gun ready to spark up all your creativity. Let's get this party going!

Check out all of the details - and the submissions thread - via the links below. Good luck!

TCF TENTH ANNIVERSARY CONTEST DETAILS

TCF TENTH ANNIVERSAY CONTEST SUBMISSIONS THREAD

The Terraria merchandise hub is where you can find all of the latest and greatest Terraria merchandise all year round - with new stuff arriving all of the time! Check out the latest merch drops as well as some classics and pick up that epic Terraria gift for a friend (or yourself!).


Click the banner above to head to http://terraria.org/store now!​





Hello Terrarians! Chris here, lead developer at Paper Fort Games. This month, we’ve got development news, art to share, and an update on our adopted hive.

If you missed the campaign but would like to get your hands on the game, don’t worry! Late pledges are now available by clicking the link below...

TERRARIA: THE BOARD GAME CAMPAIGN LATE PLEDGES

---

Game Development
Over the past month, we’ve been fine-tuning some of the game’s mechanisms and rules based on feedback received from backers and playtesters. Here are some of the features we’ve been focusing on:

• Movement, digging and line-of-sight rules (these have been simplified and made more consistent)
  
• Weapon range adjustments to better reflect the digital game
  
• Hook-based movement; equip a hook to get around more easily!
  
• Difficulty scaling for 1/2 player vs 3/4 player games, including changes to objectives, bosses and available inventory slots based on player count.
  
• Small changes to resource/ equipment sharing rules to disincentivise inventory offloading pre-death
  
• Addition of pylons allowing long-distance mid to end-game travel.

We’ve also been working on physical aspects of the game, making some quality-of-life improvements to the player boards and enemy wound tracking.

---

Biome Tiles: Now with Fan-Chosen Critters!
A few months ago, and during the campaign, we asked for fans’ favourite critters, and we’ve been adding as many of them as we can to the game’s biome tiles (alongside ambient objects!). Below are just a few examples (there are many, many more!); which critters can you spot?

Adding these new features has really brought the tiles to life and made each feel even more unique. Though these are just aesthetic additions, we hope you’ll have fun discovering your favourite critters amongst the tiles!



---

Modular Miniatures
We’ve been working closely with our manufacturing partners on the boss miniatures to make sure that they’re easy to put together and take apart; below are examples of the ‘key’ system we’re working on. We’ve requested a couple of changes (for example, now that King Slime is transparent, we need to change the direction of the keys so that the sticky-out bit of the crown isn’t visible inside the miniature) but even so, we are hoping to receive physical samples for all of the miniatures in the next couple of weeks so we can test them out. We’ll share a video of the miniatures in action when they arrive!



---

Playmat Sketches
One of the add-ons available with Terraria: The Board Game is the giant world playmat. One side features the game’s UI and provides a surface on which to build your world. The other will feature a full-art Terrarian vs. Wall of Flesh scene; below are George’s black + white work-in progress sketches of the showdown art. We can’t wait to share the full-colour art piece; the mat will be perfect as a desk mat or for playing other card games.



---

The Underground Hive is Live!
The beehive that we adopted as part of the campaign’s social goals has now been chosen; the team down at Much Birch went above and beyond, taking the time to choose a hive worthy of the ‘Underground Jungle’ name! The sign reads 'The 'Underground Jungle' Hive; adopted by Paper Fort Games on behalf of the Terraria community'.

UNDERGROUND JUNGLE HIVE

---

We're looking forward to sharing even more next month. Remember; if you missed the campaign but would still like to get your hands on the game, late pledges are now available via the link below:

TERRARIA: THE BOARD GAME CAMPAIGN LATE PLEDGES​

Until next time!




You are going to need a much, much bigger boat to have any hope of catching this month's Terraria shirt! Keep your eyes on the murky depths, for you never know when the Duke may emerge...



Pick yours up today by clicking the image above - and be sure to check out the entire collection of amazing merch over at https://terraria.shop/!

We will be back again next month with yet another fantastic Terraria T-Shirt design!




Over the years, we have certainly seen the collection of Terraria clothing expand - both in terms of designs and types of clothes. One thing that has always been missing, however, is some legit official Terraria headwear. That drought ended this week when Eighty Sixed launched the brand new Terraria Journey's End Hat!


Pick yours up today by clicking the image above!

Of course, the entire Terraria Collection over at Eighty Sixed is worth a look - they have some of the most unique and awesome Terraria merch designs around. You owe it to yourself to check it out!




The latest installment in the Terraria Graphic Novel journey is nearly upon us! When we last left our heroes, they were deep underground, and in quite a predicament! How will they get out of this one... and what else lies in store for Vale and crew? Fans won't have to wait much longer to find out, as Issue 7 will be available soon. Here's a sneak peek at the cover as well as some of the goodies that will be available alongside the Issue 7 release:



Issue 7 will be available just as soon as we have all of the various materials in-house and ready to ship! We will let everyone know once that moment arrives.

---

Of course, Issues 1-6 of the Graphic Novel Series are available for purchase - and preorders for the retail version of Book One (Issues 1-4, plus some fun bonus content) are still ongoing. We think you are really going to enjoy some of the "side stories" that we have planned... we just finished a fun one for Book One.

TERRARIA GRAPHIC NOVEL: ISSUES 1-6 ON THE 50 AMP STORE

TERRARIA GRAPHIC NOVEL: BOOK ONE PREORDER LINKS
Amazon listing
Barnes and Noble listing
Target listing

Thank you again for all your support. We are working on some really exciting developments and cannot wait for you to see what we have in store for you.




The Terraria community is filled with incredible fan media. We love to browse Terraria associated social pages and check out the creative minds sharing wonderful creations. We wanted to spotlight some of the trending media that caught our attention this month. Please let us know if any of the shared media has a different original creator.

(CLICK A GIVEN IMAGE TO HEAD OVER TO THE THREAD WHERE WE SAW IT)


by Drawnbykrishna


by @StarsAndStuff


by benii21


by @Russ Guss Doodles


by @JzBoyOfficial🌳


by miserablegrip

by @AzrramMythical

by @StarsAndStuff


by @Blacksun 2.0


by @Żuczku


by @PCKarpa


by @Shilaila


by @Mazeriette


by @Wardo


by @Astronomic727

by @Resur




For our next Terraria Discord event, we have partnered with Penguin Games to create a parkour speedrun event! This speedrun event will have two separate brackets to ensure everyone has a chance at getting a place no matter their skill level.

The beginners bracket will play the course: Empyrean. The experienced bracket will play the course: Sans.

Because the experienced bracket will be running on a more advanced course, the prizes for placing high on the leaderboard will be more grand. While you can only submit active times for ONE BRACKET, you are free to switch for any reason. When switching brackets, the event team will remove any times you had from the leaderboard from the bracket you're switching from. Because of this though, we will not be doing a public leaderboard until the event is over.

Join the official Terraria Discord and visit our #server-announcement channel for all parkour event details.




Until next time, Terrarians - we hope you have an amazing month, and we look forward to bringing you the latest and greatest next time!

We've shot for the moon, and we're almost there. Brigador Killers is an order of magnitude more complex than our first game: BK has cars that can handbrake around corners. You can travel freely between levels, you can talk to NPCs, and you can get in and out of vehicles. We've listened to the features you wanted and now we're close to the game of our dreams. We're just making sure that we unveil it when it's ready.

Thank you to all our fans and everyone that has shown interest in Brigador Killers. It will be worth the wait. If you’d like more details for any of these sections, check out our monthly posts (like this one) or watch our YouTube uploads (like this one).

To catch you up, at the start of February 2024 we made the https://stellar-jockeys.itch.io/brigadorkillers/devlog/671691/brigador-killers-secret-alpha-1. We updated that build a couple of times over that month to fix some issues: Windows Defender didn’t recognize the game and flagged it in a false positive, we had a few crash bugs that our dedicated players helped us discover, and our freshly-made playlist system sometimes failed to play music across level transitions. After solving those bugs and releasing fixes in March 2024, there have been no public updates, but in response to the feedback from SECRET ALPHA 1, we’ve been hard at work behind the scenes:

• March also saw the addition of brutalist-themed cinema building props, the configuration of the pierce resistance values for smaller props (referred to internally as “minis”) and their hitboxes, as well as making the storylets system friendlier to modders and designers. After SECRET ALPHA 1, player questions revolved around progression and a sense of purpose, and we’ve spent the rest of 2024 addressing this feedback. More on that later.
  
• In April, more props were added, we streamlined our story and world progress tracking systems, and made it much less likely for the player character to unintentionally run themselves over with their own vehicle after exiting it.
  
• During May, many art assets were rendered out, such as scrap gibs and other debris, various street minis and the first variant of the Lobo, an early-game enemy type (pictured below).
  
• In June, the second variant of the Lobo was added, along with the “TV trees” and other lights you may have noticed from last month’s dioramas video.
  
• July was very big on the audio front. We’ve been working closely with our audio people to better take advantage of FMOD’s features. Where Brigador was straightforward in its soundscape, mostly focusing on gunfire, bullet impacts, and stompy mechs, we’re adding a lot of detail to the world of Mar Nosso. As a result, the sound bank has grown and several sound events have been added, while more are coming. New lighting (or “weather”) files for levels were also authored.
  
• The sound bank changes continued into August, with the addition of locational sound emitters - think a buzzing neon sign, or a leaking water pipe burbling into a storm drain. Now, designers have the ability to enrich their levels with these ambient spots. Also, we added the ability to display text comments in the game that have been placed via the map editor. Brigador Killers’ systems are much denser than the first game, which can be hard to keep track of as a map designer. We needed a clear way to signal how the levels work in-engine, both for our own use and for future modders. Finally, we’ve enabled the player to pick up and drop weapons while in infantry loadouts, which is easy to say, but required fundamental changes to the engine.

A peek at the Lobos in-engine, an industrialized enemy type that you face early in the game

This is not the full list of things we’ve been working on, but we do want to go into detail on a few other things that are currently cooking.


As we mentioned above, players enjoyed SECRET ALPHA 1 but wanted to know more about their progression: how they could develop their characters’ abilities, and what challenges they would be working to overcome. We wanted to answer these desires while keeping in mind Brigador’s strong cast of vehicles, which many players have come to love. Only a subset of vehicles will return – Mar Nosso is on a different planet than the first game, after all – but we wanted to make sure to keep vehicles at the core of Brigador Killers.

One of the ways we’re doing that is to present vehicles as resources – not just a means to get around, or to shoot things with, but something you’ll want to hunt down so you can work towards a goal.

Now, what does that mean? The image above is an example – it’s a development tree that describes what you can do with a motorbike. Once you find and unlock it, you’ll be able to use blueprints and parts to turn it into more specialized variants.

Many players wanted more customization from Brigador, and ever since 2017, we’ve been keeping that in mind as we work on Brigador Killers. It would have been simple to add a looter-style progression to vehicles (“swap engines for +5% movespeed” - that kind of thing), but we wanted to really dig into what players wanted and come up with a satisfying system.

Along these lines, we’ve been working on identifying player types and giving each type options that are interesting and rewarding. In real life, someone who restores vintage cars doesn’t have the same priorities as a performance-focused hobbyist racer, even though they both work on cars in their garage. So, going back to the image above, a mobility-focused player can turn their motorbike into a Corvid Skate, and then a Rope Kid. A more combat-focused player can turn it into a Troubadour, and then a Pantry Boy, and even a Doorman.

In order to create these variants, the player needs to venture out into Mar Nosso and discover their blueprints, and then track down the parts needed to complete them. For example, a wandering SNC Ad Buddy™ might drop an agrav impeller, which is the drive unit you need to begin Corvidizing your motorbike into a Skate.

Anyone familiar with modding vehicles from our first game, kitbashing model parts, or, say an episode of The A-Team…
…will have a good notion of what we’re after.

We aren’t yet able to visualize this in-engine because what sounds like a “simple” idea (smoosh parts of vehicles onto another vehicle) is a lot of work. Brigador is a data-driven engine, which means that at its heart, mechs were described whole cloth in a JSON file. We don’t have to get into the details, but suffice to say that it was not designed to combine and change mechs like this. In 2018, when we started BK, we couldn’t even dynamically spawn units in a level. Everything that would be in the level had to already exist at level load time. Much of the code work since then has focused on making the engine more flexible and modern.

Even easy-seeming tasks like adding returning vehicles involve a ton of work: we have to import and re-render the required models at BK’s higher sprite resolution, as well as redoing their animations thanks to all the additional features we now have. These are problems we know how to solve, but they do take time.

Another major change to the in-dev build of Brigador Killers is to the audio. Previously in Brigador, when you’d load up a level, the map would have a pair of music tracks associated with it. Once they finished playing, it wouldn’t start up again, so players were in for a quiet experience if they were on a particularly long or difficult run. Sound effects like gunfire and engine noise still played, but our implementation didn’t really allow for anything “dynamic” to happen during a level, like changing music tracks. We’ve focused on addressing these gaps from the first game in Brigador Killers. For instance, it’s much easier for us to specify the material of a ground tile. This means units can make different footstep noises when they traverse those tiles. This system existed in Brigador, but was only really used for grass tiles and railways. Now that we have infantry gameplay, footsteps are much more central to the world feeling alive, so we’ve expanded the surface audio system. Here’s a demonstration of what we mean: listen carefully to Dave’s steps as he traverses over each labeled strip.

Audio emitters can also be placed to play whatever sounds we want within a certain radius to the player. Later in the same video at the 1:59 timestamp you will see Dave teleport closer and closer to one of these emitters. It’s subtle, but notice how the volume of it increases as Dave gets closer, and the direction it plays in your headphones.

There is still plenty of work to do on the audio front, but we’re excited at the possibilities of what we can do with these fancy tools, especially in terms of making maps feel less static. Speaking of…

The areas you can access in the current Itch build are, even with a vehicle, kinda time-consuming to get across. For the next public build, we expect to change the scale of the playspace, dividing these areas into smaller chunks. We also plan to add level transitions which can be unlocked or opened up via the world state, along the same lines as Dark Souls’ droppable ladders and unlockable shortcuts. The way you move around Mar Nosso will evolve and grow as you do.

The images and content on the Steam page are not what BK looks like at all. Those images and GIFs are from the long-since retired build that was available to play if you saw us at PAX in 2019 or 2020. We’ll be updating the Steam page to better reflect what BK actually looks like. This might mean that certain units, like the Vocc Doll or Gravesend Pinball, are no longer showcased in the art on the store page, but don’t worry. They’ll still be in BK – they just need to go through the sprite updating and re-export process to be featured once again.

Why the delay?

In 2003 video games were somewhat niche, making roughly 7 billion USD in total across both console and PC according to the ESA. Jump forward two decades and in 2023 alone it’s been calculated the industry has made well over 180 billion USD. That’s way, way more than what Hollywood made in 2023. In terms of the number of games available to players, last year just on Steam over 14,000 titles were released.

At the same time, in just the past couple of years major corporations have consolidated a huge amount of talent under fewer and fewer roofs. Entire media outlets with years of experience covering the games industry have winked out of existence, to say nothing of all the recent closures of studios that put out critically-acclaimed and successful games.

What’s become apparent in the past decade is that successful indie titles tend to fall into one of the following camps:

• Highly polished with a narrow scope (e.g. Hollow Knight or Celeste)
  
• Roguelikes blended with other genres (Hades, Noita, Slay The Spire)
  
• “Crunchy” world simulators and builders (Rimworld, Project Zomboid)
  
• Cozy (Unpacking, Stardew Valley)

More importantly, the indie titles mentioned have also spent years in development, often providing post-release support long after the game’s release. While Brigador Killers is taking a while to come together, it is no longer unusual for indie games to have project timelines that rival the AAA of yesteryear.

As established indie developers, we also find ourselves in the unusual position of being assigned the standard bearers for innovation. This is something you would hope to see out of the bigger companies that have the resources to do so (and in some cases used to do) but R&D into all-new IPs or hardware is not common. We want to do it, but that comes with the caveat of adding more devtime, especially since we’re one of the few developers making an isometric, sprite-based game in the 2020s.

Why not just do more Brigador?

The sentiment of “Why not just make more content for the first game?” has been expressed in various ways and the short answer is we consider Brigador: Up-Armored Edition to be feature complete. We may revisit it to make sure it is still functional on future versions of Windows and Mac, or make the default controls play better on the Steam Deck, but for the time being our focus is on developing this game. Brigador is kind of in a state where adding anything new would be like trying to add a pair of socks to a suitcase that you already had to sit on to close. The things we are doing with BK that we have outlined in this post are not possible with the engine that runs Brigador. We do not yet know what the minimum spec is for Brigador Killers but if you can run the current Itch build on your computer without issue you’ll probably be okay.

I have the Itch build - when can I get my hands on SJTiled?

The version of SJTiled for Brigador Killers will eventually become available - we don’t want to run into the problem we had with Brigador where when we updated that game with new assets, we bricked everyone’s maps they’d been working on. We are adding new features to SJTiled as well that haven’t been revealed in this post.

Where can I get the Makeup And Vanity Set soundtrack?

The tracks are infrequently released to our YouTube channel. The main soundtrack is about 40 tracks long, which is roughly the same as Brigador Volumes I and II. This doesn’t include the new ambient tracks that MAVS has also composed, or other music we have requested from them. As for the run of vinyl LPs of these albums, we intend to have a few of them available on our merchandise storefront, and MAVS themselves will also be selling them on their end. Judging by how well MAVS’ vinyls tend to do, we recommend that you either sign up to our newsletter over on our site or subscribe to MAVS to hear about the vinyl release first.

Are you going to make more minis for the merch store?

Yes. A new line of scale miniature models is coming later this year.

Hey! You didn’t answer my question!

Please leave your question in the comments, or in the #brigador_killers_chat Discord channel, or even email us at team@stellarjockeys.com.

Actually, we have a question - what recent release have you been playing that truly grabbed your attention?

The wait is over! The next update is coming tomorrow!



This time it's version 0.9. In fact, there's more new content than the version number might suggest.
Over 1000 new renders have been added to the game, but unfortunately, there are only about 7 animations. Yes, this part of the game is more about developing relationships between the characters than about sex, so it might seem a bit boring to some. But this is the only possible way to develop the story that I see right now, and it will help the finale to happen in the form and with the level of tension that I have planned.

But don't be disappointed! The next update, on the contrary, will be almost entirely dedicated to sex — there will be a lot of it, and it will be awesome and as depraved as possible.
I hope the next update will come out faster than this one, so you won't have to wait too long.

Share your impressions of the update in this thread or in the feedback thread in the game community! Feedback is very important to me!

• reduced the volume of the shockwave sound for legendary chain shock
  
• added a new setting to disable shockwave animations
  
• corrected painfull earnings description, to specify it also affects shield

After millennia of enduring sands and winds, the ancient and enigmatic realm of Egypt is poised to reveal its long-hidden mysteries. Acquire the Millennia of Enduring Sands: The Legacy of Ancient Egypt pack, and establish your own kingdom, breathing life into the myths of old. Join your friends on an unforgettable journey to explore the echoes of a bygone civilization.






All content within this DLC can be crafted in the Egypt Style Goblin Shop, which can be learned with lv9 primitive skill after purchasing the DLC.





https://store.steampowered.com/app/3154410/PixARK_Millennia_of_Enduring_Sands_The_Legacy_of_Ancient_Egypt/

Bug Fixes
1. Critical bug fix with the notes and some other minor ones regarding settings reset.
Minor Changes

1. More functionality to the dark teleport orb
2. More functionality to some characters.
3. New location.
4. Lore sneak peak in one of the rooms.
5. Movement Change
6. Flashlight Update

Join us as we celebrate Gamer’s Day with a limited-time Special Event themed around some of the most nostalgic video games. Collect Game Cartridges to exchange with the traveling merchant Sardinex for materials, boosts, and cosmetic gear inspired by classic games. Enjoy a daily 50% bonus to your item find rate and more as well!

A huge amount of gratitude to all of the Sinners who’ve joined our community! To say that we’ve been blown away by the amount of support is an understatement.

We’ve prepared a modest update from feedback we’ve gotten from the community, bug reports and more. Look for a larger update in the coming month or so.

Note: You will need to re-subscribe to all mods for this update. We apologize for the hassle; this will be a one-time thing.

This update will break save games and replays! You can still play them by using the previous version (see below).

If you wish to finish up your game on the previous version, do the following:

1. Select ‘Sins of a Solar Empire II’ in your Steam Library.
   
2. Click the gear icon in the upper right.
   
3. Select Properties → Betas
   
4. Select 'previous_edition' from the Beta Participation dropdown.
   
5. Steam will update you to the latest files.
   
6. To switch to latest repeat step 4 and select ‘None’

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Sanity

• Our fleet has arrived at a phase jump inhibitor and is now trapped!
  
• Our fleet has arrived at a phase jump inhibitor and is now trapped!
  
• Our fleet has arrived at a phase jump inhibitor and is now trapped!
  
• Our fleet has arrived at a phase jump inhibitor and is now trapped!
  
• Our fleet has arrived at a phase jump inhibitor and is now trapped!
  
• FIXED!

Settings

• Added camera rotate and pan speed settings.
  
• Added camera zoom speed settings.
  
• Added shadow quality setting.
  Reduce this if you are having memory problems.
  
• Added clip cursor to window setting.
  
• Added setting to disable zooming to cursor attaching to strike craft or missiles. This is now default behavior.
  
• Moved DPI setting to User Interface.
  
• Updated Settings screen design.
  
• More to come!

Gameplay

• Fixed and improved auto-cast for single target burst damage abilities. They should now activate properly and favor targeting capital ships, starbases and titans (e.g., Ragnarov’s Piercing Shot).
  
• Fixed non-unit-targeted abilities not auto-casting correctly (e.g., Sova’s Deploy Missile Battery).
  
• Fixed point defense weapons to prevent overkill.
  
• Fixed being able to change home planet if the planet’s home planet bonus civilian or military slots are in use.
  
• Changed establishing a new home planet to transition after a delay, rather than instantly.
  
• Improved Novalith Cannon auto-cast target selection.
  
• Improved fleet factory distribution logic.
  
• Updated Unity Recall target filter to ignore construction vessels.
  
• Fixed units and wreckage getting instead of stars (and thus unable to claim wreckage).
  
• Fixed estimated incoming damage with Armor points.
  
• Fixed max linear speed possibly growing to infinity and beyond if using faster ship move speed option.
  
• Fixed pathfinding not calculating travel time between stars properly.
  
• Fixed starting home planet buff not always getting applied to gravity wells 2 jumps away.
  
• Fixed Vasari carrier moving to attack logic.
  
• Fixed units being able to ignore movement speed debuffs by being in a formation.
  
• Unity abilities now properly handle changes to the Advent player’s home planet.
  
• Fixed refund exotic exploit (you know who you were…).

Balance

• Advent Deliverance Engine:
  
  • Moved to Tier 4 Harmony research.
    
  • Four new techs (2 per faction) added to unlock faction specific Deliverance abilities and upgrades.
    
  • Deliverance Engine cooldown increased from 180 to 300 seconds.
• Rebalanced excessive Psi Boost ratios: decreased Psi Power ratio for Guidance, Vertigo and Malice.
  
• Rebalanced Minor Faction raids:
  
  • Range increased from 25 AU to 30 AU.
    
  • Raids no longer require line-of-sight to use.
• Rebalanced Pirate Boarding Crew:
  
  • Influence cost increased from 1 to 2.
    
  • Charges increased from 2 to 3.
    
  • Purchase cooldown increased from 180 to 240 seconds.
• Rebalanced Point Defense:
  
  • Point defense has been rebalanced to account for the overkill bug fix mentioned above. Point defense units will now scale far more effectively with the number of units.
• Rebalanced Proselytize:
  
  • Now required dominant culture in a gravity well to be used. This will prevent the ability from being used to trivially place Advent culture anywhere on the map if uncontested; instead temporarily augment an existing culture push. This should also remove early game Proselytize/Conversion rush strategies that were proving dominant and difficult to counter. We will continue to monitor Unity abilities for use case and power level.
• Rebalanced Sanctify cooldown from 300/180/90 to 300/210/120 seconds.
  
• Rebalanced Tempest Vessel:
  
  • Light Swarm missile rate of fire increased from 6.5 to 8.5 seconds.
    
  • Decreased missile salvo density from 0.3 seconds to launch all missiles to 0.75 seconds.
    
  • Decreased range from 8000 to 7500km to make kiting slightly riskier and to ensure it never outranges defense platforms.
    
  • Build time increased from 22 to 25 seconds to make it harder to mass-up early on and to ensure the Disciple keeps its build time advantage.
• Rebalanced Temple of Pilgrimage - can now be built on all planet types as intended.
  
• Rebalanced Vasari Mobile Rulership - this Item has been temporarily restricted to the Vorastra titan.
  
• Fixed Vasari factions from losing planet item slots at max logistics level on Ferrous, Ice and Volcanic planets.
  
• Rebalanced all missiles speed, grouping and lifetimes.

AI

• Numerous AI improvements.
  
• Decreased the jump in difficulty from Hard to Unfair AI.

User Interface

• Added key bindings to hold zoom in and out (simulating mouse wheel with keyboard).
  
• Added ability to bind extra mouse buttons (but not left or right).
  
• Fixed selection group hotkey press from focusing on hotkey group when not wanted. Now needs to be double pressed within time tolerance.
  
• Added a second keybinding for scrub future orbits. Tilde [`] not standard on some keyboards.
  
• Added fix for mouse movement through Remote Desktop.
  
• Fixed inverted mouse deltas on absolute (Virtual Desktop) code path.

Tooltips

• Fixed Magnetic Singularity buff tooltip rendering the incorrect slow modifier value.
  
• Fixed buff tooltip lines in Essence Reservoir, Nanite Armor and Strength of the Fallen that did not render stack scaling correctly.
  
• Fixed Novalith ability description.

Optimizations

• Numerous optimizations for mesh, shadow, and particle rendering, etc. Some of these will be significant on certain hardware combinations.

Modding

• Added scenario drop in folder. Makes authoring and playing custom scenarios much easier. No more having to create mods for them.
  
• Fixed Mod.io list box corruption on scrolling.
  
• Fixed Apply Mod changes not refreshing window areas.
  
• Fixed asserts if no skybox setup in scenario.
  
• Fixed modding Apply button always enabled on game startup. Should only be enabled when any changes have been made to be applied.
  
• Fixed mixed mod uniform merging creating duplicates of values. For example, if a mod had a scenario of the same name, the scenario would be duplicated in the front-end scenario list.
  
• Fixed lobby not handling scenarios from mods that only the host has.

Misc.

• Added new planet name, Solon.
  
• Updated red beacon color on the upper-right of planet icons (enemy phase jump inhibitor).
  
• Updated numerous strings.
  
• Updated game credits.
  
• Updated player guide link.
  
• Updated Vasari Subspace Rupture vfx.
  
• Fixed larger units not being able to travel through wormholes.
  
• Fixed duplicate phase lane crash.
  
• Fixed Mod.io login bug.

Misc. Bug Fixes

• Fixed multiplayer sync error.
  
• Fixed multiplayer last used game settings not being saved.
  
• Fixed polling input actions getting stuck as ‘down’ if mapped to duplicate keys.
  
• Fixed quotes in Steam player names breaking multiplayer logins.
  
• Fixed Trader planet item naming issue.
  
• Fixed some Tutorial bugs.
  
• Fixed error in Exotics tutorial - Exotic Refinery is Tier 2, not Tier 3.
  
• Fixed Advent Culture Suppression research icon.
  
• Fixed lobby options not being applied properly.
  
• Fixed play point effect not showing up on newly created buff agents.

Game Windows

• Added new brush for list box item hover.
  
• Fixed popup purchase item background window not being wide enough.
  
• Improved Escape menu layout.
  
• Improved lobby window layout.
  
• Improved new/load front-end screen layout.
  
• Removed random player icons from lobby.
  
• Added new front-end watermarks.
  
• Fixed margins on planet window.

Misc. Crashes and Asserts

• Fixed assert if Minor Faction player colonizes planet without simple planet level.
  
• Fixed crashing issues with save games.
  
• Removed alert on load save games with divergent frameworks.
  
• Suppressed setting JSON read errors.