Hey everyone!

We're proud to announce that Interstellar Space: Genesis Pre-Alpha 10 is released! Here’s the trailer.

To get the update you can re-download from the same link you got from Humble Bundle when you pre-ordered. Your link is always the same and always gives the latest version. If you're having trouble finding the link you can use the order resender and Humble Bundle will send you a list of your download pages.

This a huge one, and as you can see from the features listed below this is almost like a completely new game. A lot was added, and we feel the game has hit a level where one can start to have a lot of fun and a good level of engagement. At least that's how we felt while playing and testing this new version. Hopefully, you will feel the same. Please let us know what you think, as for any comments and suggestions for improvement you may have.

The Community Feedback List was updated. The Master Plan as well.

Now please enjoy Pre-Alpha 10! There's a lot of new stuff. Please check the features list below for details.

If you haven't pre-ordered yet, you can do so here. Every contribution is much appreciated and will help the project move forward, in our road to make ISG one of the best space 4X games in the market! Thanks a lot!

Compatibility: Saved games from Pre-Alpha 9 will not work on this new version.

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.

• New difficulty levels implementation - The player doesn't get bad starts in Hard and Impossible difficulties now. The AI gets more population and infrastructure in their homeworld, and a few techs in the higher difficulty levels. So, they get a head start representing how old/advanced they are with respect to the player. Also, new Hardcore difficulty level added (the highest). 4 game settings available to tweak AI difficulty level parameters.

BALANCE

• Moltar race now has a +10% morale bonus (was +0% before).
• Tolerable/Hostile worlds pop cap, pop growth and morale penalties changed from -80%/-40% to -50%/-25%.
• 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%.
• Particle Accelerator weapon now earlier in the tech tree. Nuclear Missiles, Tungsten Gun and Fusion Beam also earlier now.
• Missiles now inflict a bit more damage. We had nerfed them in the past, but now feels right for missiles to do a bit more damage.
• Ship design space requirements readjusted for "FireArc" modification (90º/270º/360º). As a result, weapons take a bit more space now as the default weapon space requirement is for 90º and not 270º as before.
• Shields space and cost requirements revised. Shields now always take the same space for all shield classes for the same miniaturization level. Also, going with less shield faces isn't as cheap as before.
• Dome building now a bit more expensive.
• Planet specials a bit more rare now.
• Exceptional Fossils bonuses boosted from +30RP/+20BC to +40RP/+25BC.
• A bit less Unique Biota planet special prevalence in Rogue Planets.
• Planetary engineering (Terraforming and Eco-engineering) projects now slightly less expensive.
• Planet construction project cost adjusted (was too low).

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.
• 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.
• Bombers now stay in the mothership after a bombing run and wait for new orders.

AI

• The AI players now sign treaties between themselves.
• Tech trading offers by the AI are now less frequent.
• The AI now tends to research shield technology a bit more than before.
• The AI now builds Domes and Micro-gravity generators.

UI

• New togglable starmap layers: "Strategic resources" and "Systems with colonizable planets" and "System scan level".
• 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".
• Maneuverability tooltip in ship design now includes the effects on Ship Defense.
• When leader cannot be hired by lack of funds, the button shows a different color and the tooltip says the leader cannot be hired because not enough funds are available.
• Gravity info added to the colonies list in the overview panel.
• The list of weapons (e.g. Kinetics, Beams, Missiles) in the ship design screen are now ordered by weapon tech level in descending order (the best weapon at the top).
• "All" and "None" weapons options added to the weapons console in space combat, to allow selecting all weapons or to deselect all.

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 resetting 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.
• Fixed a bug where a fleet fleeing from battle could sometimes go to an unknown location in the map. Now the fleeing fleet always goes to the nearest settlement it knows about.
• Fixed incorrect Point Defense damage reduction displayed in the ship design from -25% damage to -50%.
• Fixed a bug when firing, if you would rapidly click the mouse on the target the screen would display additional firing animations.
• Fixed an issue where the fleet panel could be rendered on top of the system view sometimes.
• Fixed an issue that was causing some planet terrains to not be rendered.
• Fixed an issue where the wrong infrastructure information was being displayed (wrong planet), when the colony screen was being closed using the button on the top right corner with the infrastructure panel open.
• Changed "Ship speed" reference to "Combat speed" in the space combat UI.
• Fixed an issue in the ship design that was causing the ship model to rotate when the weapons list scroll was being used.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the number 6 and 9 to be very similar to an 8 (font issue).
• Fixed an issue that was causing the Salvage button to become active when there was a salvageable item in the combat. Now only activates when at salvaging distance.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing the correct information on Point Defense weapons to be showed in the ship design UI.
• Fixed an issue where the Auto-Fire weapon modification was taking too much space. Now only takes +50% space where before was +100 (tooltips were also fixed).
• Fixed an issue that was causing the leader secondary skill text to show 4 chars in some resolutions (e.g. "Basi" instead of "Bas").
• Fixed a bug when the Fusion drive was researched, we had the Helium-3 strategic resource but ships would still have nuclear drives when the fleet arrived at the destination (was only updating in the next turn, now it is updating correctly)
• Fixed a bug that was causing Small games to show incorrect supply range after loading a game.
• Fixed a bug on how missiles move. Missiles were moving when the AI moved and then moved again in our turn even if the AI had moved 100%.
• Fixed an issue that was causing space monsters to be much weaker than they actually are when using the autoresolve combat function.
• Fixed a bug where a leader's ship was destroyed in combat but the leader would still be assigned to it in the next turn.
• Fixed an issue that was causing slowdown in the space combat when hovering the mouse on the target ship for too long.
• Fixed a bug that was causing beam weapons to inflict less damage (especially severe in PD versions) than they should because the distance calculations were not being performed correctly.
• Fixed a bug that was causing chance to hit a ship to be much greater than the one it should.
• Fixed an issue in the empire panel UI where the research, space culture and money generation could sometimes wrap the text.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the ship model right/left arrows (that select a different ship model look) to function incorrectly.

Instructions on how to download the latest build can be found here.

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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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Post category: Games Under Development, News & Announcements