Hey everyone!

We’re happy to report that Pre-Alpha 10 is almost finished, with only further internal testing to be done before we make it available for everyone who pre-ordered.

Since this new build is mostly done, we thought it would be nice to put up a list of the upcoming features (and it’s a lot of stuff). So, here it is!

As for when Pre-Alpha 10 will be available, that will depend on how many bugs and other issues may come up. Our tentative ETA is end of January, early February.

NEW

• New and Improved Graphics!
  • Completely new ship 3D models for all races.
  • New effects for each of the beam and kinetic weapons.
  • Completely new graphics for all the races.
• Ground combat system added!
  • New techs and corresponding buildings: Planetary defense shield, Planetary deflector shield, Planetary barrier shield, Marine garrison, Imperial garrison, Planetary garrison, Airspace support facility, Airspace combat telemetry, Airspace defense nexus.
  • New techs that boost ground combat: Personal shield, Power suit, Gauss rifle, Phasor rifle and Plasma rifle.
  • New ship type: Assault Ship (unlocked by Marine garrison).

• Bombardment system added!
  • New tech: Bomb rack (allows bombing).
  • Techs now operational: Antimatter-catalysed bombs, Neutronium bombs.
  • New concept: Bomb fallout pollution.

• Siege and Blockade features added!

• Crew experience feature added! – Your ships’ crew now gains experience for increased combat bonuses.
  • New building (empire improvement): Imperial space academy (boosts ships’ crew XP)

• Orbital stations added! – Star bases, Battle stations and Star fortresses. Use them to defend your most vital colonies and upgrade them with new unlocked modules to boost your economy! An orbital station is required to build ships bigger than destroyers.
  • New techs (orbital station modules): Civilian quarters, Customs dock, Orbital research labs, Freighter port and Alien habitat module.

• Ship refit feature added! – Now possible to refit ships in colonies with an orbital station. Refitting a ship allows it to keep the ship crew XP intact!

• Warp Interdictor added! – slows down incoming ships to a speed of 1 parsec when at 2 parsecs range from the colony.

• Different scanner technology now allows to know more about rival fleets starting by just being able to see the fleets (with Gravitational scanners) but without knowing fleet composition or direction; Neutrino scanners allow to see fleet composition (ship types); Quantum scanners reveal the fleets destinations while Ultrawave scanners allow to see ship equipment.

• New building (empire improvement): Cultural capital (doubles culture where it’s built)

• New beam weapons (and techs): Fusion beam, Neutron beam, Phasor, Disruptor beam, Chaos chain (derelict unique super tech) and Ion discharger (another derelict unique super tech).

• New kinetic weapons (and techs): Particle accelerator, Railgun, Flak cannon, Doom cannon, Matter streamer (derelict unique super tech).

• New missiles and torpedos (and techs): Polaris missile, Nightmare missile, Plasma torpedo, Positron torpedo (derelict unique super tech).
• New special system (and techs): Bomb rack. List of special systems available: Fighter bays, Bomber bays and Bomb rack. The other special systems are currently under development.

BALANCE

• Moltar race now has a +10% morale bonus (was +0% before).
• Robotic factory bonus from asteroid belts increased from +5/+10/+15 to +10/+20/+30 per active production exploitation.
• Fusion power plants bonus halved – now give +0.5 prod per POP instead of +1.
• Antimatter power plants bonus halved – now give +1 prod per POP instead of +2.
• Neutronium rejuvenation bonus halved – from +5% morale in colony per source to +1% per source.
• Frontier Spirit space culture perk bonus changed from +3% per parsec distance to capital to +1%.
• Rich and Ultra Rich bonuses to production reduced from +8 and +16 to +6 and +8, respectively.
• Frequency of planet specials slightly reduced.
• All planetary engineering infrastructure perks now boost support ship’s planetary engineering bonuses.
• Unlocking third-level planetary engineering infra perk grants +25% PE production on every colony.
• Picking all civil infra perks on colony now grants +100 building construction in empire instead of previous +20.
• Picking all aerospace infra perks now grants +100 ship construction in empire instead of previous +20.
• Volatiles exploitations bonuses changed from +25/50/75% to +50/100/150%.

GAMEPLAY

• Infrastructure no longer tied to biome type and habitability towards the owner race. The concept was simplified. Infra now capped by planet size. Therefore, infra levels don’t change upon invading a hostile enemy colony.
• Now there is a pop cap in non-Ideal worlds (i.e. Tolerable or Hostile worlds)
• Assigning a leader now has a 5-turn cooldown unless the leader is already present at the location, which if so is assigned immediately.
• Friendly natives planet special now also provides a flat +25 production to the colony.
• Tech trading offers by the AI are now less frequent.
• At least one star in range is now guaranteed at game start for all players.
• Wan Ironshard leader now has the Commando skill.
• Morale now also affects space culture generation in colonies, like it already did for research and money generation.
• Infrastructure bonus from construction tech level now implemented.

UI

• New togglable starmap layers: “Strategic resources” and “Systems with colonizable planets”.
• Now possible to set production allocation to 100% directly from the colony overview panel without needing to go to the colony.
• New notifications for when war declarations and peace treaties are signed, and by whom.
• Fleet icon now glows when clicked and fleet panel is open.
• No construction is lost. Colonies automatically switch to trade goods if nothing is being produced when production is being allocated to construction.
• Now it’s possible to add multiple constructions to the queue for buildings that allow multiple instances in the same colony (e.g. micro grav generator and domes)
• Sorts by “ship class size” and “ships with leaders” added to the ships overview panel.
• Star systems descriptions revised for all types of systems (text seen in window when star system is unexplored).
• New notification for when a survey ship arrives to a system with ruins that can be explored.
• Population amount in each planet added to system view.
• Ruins and planet special presence info also added to system view.
• Last sector to be explored remotely and remote exploration finished icons now have a different color to help make that more clear.
• When colonizing a planet, we now go directly to the colony.
• Hotkeys A, D, left arrow, right arrow can now be used to navigate between colonies when inside the colony screen.
• Now possible to sort planets in overview panel by the amount of times their ancient ruins were explored.
• Richness, new pop ETA, ruins and planet special presence info added to colony info in the overview panel.
• Confirmation screens added to vital functions during phase execution, like planetary invasion decisions and space combat opportunities.
• Tooltips could sometimes jump from a previous position to the new position (the jumping/ghost tooltip issue). This is now fixed.
• Infra cap info added to colony screen.
• Leader ship assignment list now bigger and ships sorted by class.
• Description of civilian ships added to ship tooltip in the fleet panel.
• Ships now ordered by hull size in colony screen.
• Hiring a leader removes any present notification about the leader leaving.
• Buildings tooltips now show “-1 building slot in colony” to make clear buildings consume building slots.
• Planet special now shown in the colony screen.
• Idle construction notifications now disappear after adding something to the queue.
• The ship’s tooltip in the colony screen now shows the ship design details/component info.
• Added little “crown” icon to the homeworld/capital system in the starmap
• Colony notifications now highlights corresponding colony in the overview panel.
• Unknown richness and ecology tooltips now inform that more scanning is required to reveal the information.
• Leader uncreative trait description improved.
• Centering production now refreshes empire info, and tooltip added to “center icon”.

AUDIO

• New window opening sound.
• Window closing sound removed.
• New tech tree tech click sound added.
• New main menu music.

BUGS

• Fixed a bug that was allowing an enemy fleet to be seen without sensor range just because we did remote scanning there.
• Fixed an issue where two opening sounds were being heard when clicking on “New Game”.
• Fixed a bug in the ruins search where when two ruins locations where found, only one location was being presented.
• Fixed an issue where the morale values were not rounded in the colony overview panel.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes the last laser shot before ship destruction was badly directioned.
• Fixed an issue where the available constructions filter was reseting when navigating to other colonies.
• Fixed a bug where it was not possible to enter the research screen because there were too many techs in the weapons third field.

To discuss this dev diary, please join us on the forum thread for this post.

Thanks a lot!

Interstellar Space: Genesis (formerly Project Space Sector) is a new turn-based space 4X strategy game where you are the emperor of a space faring civilization. You will explore the wonders of space, colonize other worlds and expand your empire across the stars where mysteries await you! The game is heavily inspired by Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares, the awesome reference in the genre from the 90's. The game is being developed following a “classic meets the new” approach where the best parts of MoO2 are kept and we’ll be improving the experience to today’s standards while also offering something new.

In that regard, ISG is a spiritual successor to Master of Orion 2, imagining where the series could have gone from there, now offering a new twist and experience to a successful formula! So, come aboard and join us on the forums to ask us questions or share your thoughts where you will find a passionate community that also loves the Master of Orion series and wants to see where the classic formula will go next! Pre-Orders with instant access are available here. Thanks for your support!

The game is being created by the team behind the former sci-fi strategy games news website SpaceSector.com, headed by the two developers of Praxis Games, Adam Solo and MalRey, a young development studio devoted to making great strategy games with deep and complex gameplay for a diverse set of settings and themes. As for our vision and values, we strongly believe in good and solid gameplay first, community-driven development, product quality, transparency and extensive client support to keep our clients as satisfied as possible, so that we can keep making great games for you for a long time to come!

Regarding SpaceSector.com, we're currently not providing coverage to other space and sci-fi strategy games since we're currently developing our own game at the moment. In the meantime, we suggest that you look for other sites that have been doing, and are doing a great job covering space & sci-fi strategy games, and 4X games, like eXplorminate.net, SpaceGameJunkie.com and SpaceSimCentral.com for your news and reviews fix. You’ll be in good hands with these folks.

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Related Articles:

• Interstellar Space: Genesis – Pre-Alpha 10 Released!
• Interstellar Space: Genesis – Alpha Released!
• Interstellar Space: Genesis – Dev Diary #6: Ground Combat and Bombardment
• Endless Space Screens [Updated]
• Project Space Sector Dev Diary #5: Leaders

Post category: Games Under Development, News & Announcements