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Entrenchment Beta 2 Change Log

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Entrenchment Beta 2 Change Log

from Sins Forums

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! :P).
    • 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.
283,339 views 100 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah, to actually use the "fleet" mechanisms you want to select a bunch of ships and go into the orders, and hit "create fleet". You can actually do it with a single ship and set your production rally point to that ship, and most new ships you make will auto join the fleet.

 

Fleets can also be pinned to the empire tree (I think it's off by default, but its in the settings menu).

Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top

Wow, just wow.  I think that change log is contending with the v1.1 change log.  I have a hankering for reloading entrenchment now.

WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top

All sounds awesome! :)

Saying that, I am still not convinced with the mines changes... cant say for sure without trying it first hand but numbers of it still read way too high for me liking...

Anyway, lets test it out when beta rolls out :)

Bring it!

Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top

This looks goody goody, having the mines in grouped spaces hopefully will reduce the mine spam and be less of a burden on the CPU - and wow that modification to the starbases should be good.  Starbases should be able to get a lot more kills now.

Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Tridus, reply 1
Fleets can also be pinned to the empire tree (I think it's off by default, but its in the settings menu).

I was pinning my pseudofleets manually anyway, so no change there, and I don't usually WANT new ships to autojoin fleets (as I tend to have 4-5 "battle" fleets plus several specialized squadrons, like a team of 4-5 minelayers that fortifies my systems for me, all created in the same place).  Part of this, I guess, is that I always play Vasari and make heavy use of phase tunneling; I'm constantly reinforcing my fleets in waves (i.e., build 20 cruisers, and allocate 5 to each of my four offensive fleets), and I only build cruisers/frigates in a single system (the desert system next to my home, where I'll build 5 frigate factories).  If I was playing a less mobile race, I'm sure I'd be tempted to put a frigate factory near each fleet and have it set to deploy to that particular fleet.

 

So, from the sound of it, I now have a lot of good reasons to mix the various utility frigates into each battle fleet, and to actually use this dedicated Fleet logic.  This is great; the game's tactics just got a lot more complex.

Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top

You'd be surprised just how complex.  With that said, I play Vas to and sometimes utilize the same strat that you mentioned above.  You can still have multiple smaller fleets of 15-20 ships like you mentioned.  If you have each mapped to a different key lock (ie Fleet 1 to key 1, Fleet 2 to key 2, etc...) you can still create fleets with each specific group by using the manage fleet tactic.  Each fleet created can then be set with varying modes (fleet cohesion (loose, standard, or tight) and battle tactics(Hold position, Gravity Well, or Local Area)).

This allows you to have 2 or more different "created" fleets (using the fleet management tactics button) in the same well participating in a battle at the same time.  Each of these fleets might have different tactics being employed.  Fleet 1 (mapped to key 1) is set to Hold Position and tight formation while staying within the range of you Regen Bays and Defensive Turrets (for extra help while defending).  As the attacking fleet is attacking that Fleet 1, you decided to bring in a fast attacking Fleet 2 (mapped to key 2) for some hit and run tactics to harry the attacking fleets flanks.  These fleets should not auto-join each other and you still have your quick key mappings to quickly control the whole fleet from each fleet.

This, of course, requires some level of micro-managing; but is a lot of fun to pick apart an attacking fleet in this manner.  And it definitely brings in a new level of playing and strategizing in the game.

Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top

Wow... Sounds pretty cool. I am curious about the way the mines will work, now. Sins is getting better and better...

Congrats, guys

Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top

To answer some of the questions that have come up about the new patch:

1) Destabilizing Phase Lanes
- All starbases have it by default, no upgrade is required.
- The damage dealt is proportional to remaining hull points
- Antimatter lost is a percentage of remaining antimatter (though that percentage is currently 100%)

2) New multiple targets per bank system
- Annatar and Tridus have the right idea on how its going to work: each target up to the bank's target limit will receive 100% of damage from that bank's weapons.
- If fewer targets are present than the bank's limit, they still only each receive 100% of the bank's damage (i.e. unused targetting capacity is not divided and applied to targets that are there).
- If more targets are present than the bank's limit, the bank deals 100% damage to the number of targets its limit allows and the leftover targets are unharmed.
- Presently flak frigates still only engage 1 target in each of their 4 banks; we are evaluating the increased effectiveness caused by the fix to the secondary bank firing frequency bug before further tuning their damage output.

 

Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Steve, reply 9
To answer some of the questions that have come up about the new patch:

1) Destabilizing Phase Lanes
- All starbases have it by default, no upgrade is required.

NICE!!!

Quoting Steve, reply 9
- The damage dealt is proportional to remaining hull points

NICE!!!

Quoting Steve, reply 9
- Antimatter lost is a percentage of remaining antimatter (though that percentage is currently 100%)

NICE!!!

Quoting Steve, reply 9

2) New multiple targets per bank system
- Annatar and Tridus have the right idea on how its going to work: each target up to the bank's target limit will receive 100% of damage from that bank's weapons.
- If fewer targets are present than the bank's limit, they still only each receive 100% of the bank's damage (i.e. unused targetting capacity is not divided and applied to targets that are there).
- If more targets are present than the bank's limit, the bank deals 100% damage to the number of targets its limit allows and the leftover targets are unharmed.
- Presently flak frigates still only engage 1 target in each of their 4 banks; we are evaluating the increased effectiveness caused by the fix to the secondary bank firing frequency bug before further tuning their damage output.

Just as most of us thought...and very NICE!!!

thx for the update and answering the questions so quickly.

Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks for the answers :) I'm a bit worried about the phase lane distabilization being defaulted. It seems fairly substantial in its effectiveness, so it may warrant using an upgrade slot for it.

But, we'd have to play around with the new prices and re-balanced upgrades before complaining about it, I think. :)

Thanks again!

Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top

so ... does this change mean that starbases are weaker now? because I have no clue how they worked before, in particular how many, if any, targets a bank can attack and whether the unused dmg could add to more than 100%. I mean I doubt that the proverbial 100 dmg were only applied to one single target before and can now apply to several units. that would be too huge an increase. anyone patient enough to enlighten a littly dummy?

also, independen on what changed, is there any tooltip to tell us how many are the max. targets for a bank? sounds tedious to search that out from game files.

Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top

I hope it comes out soon or there will not be much of a point of it comeing out at all if  the full thing is comeing out Feb 11

Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top

stil no caps on mines, i really like big maps, around 20 stars with 10-20 planets around each but i played it the other day an had two hard fortifiers an they built a silly amounts of mines around every planet, realy think they should be limited to an overall amount that wont slow down larger maps an promote their use for chocke points rather than every planet u go too, but dunno if they could make the AI use them that way.

Reply #40 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Shadowhal, reply 12
so ... does this change mean that starbases are weaker now? because I have no clue how they worked before, in particular how many, if any, targets a bank can attack and whether the unused dmg could add to more than 100%.

It's going to depend on whether they adjusted the damage ratings of affected weapon banks to compensate, and we just don't know yet if they did.  I'm betting they did; I wouldn't be suprised if they reduced the "base" (per-target) damage for any bank capable of targeting multiple foes.  For instance, take three possible weapon banks that we want to be hypothetically balanced:

Bank A does 100 damage, but only to a single target. Bank B does 75 damage, max of 2 targets.  Bank C does 50 damage, max of 4 targets.

Under the old system, there would have been no way to do this.  Bank C would have always been stronger than A, because if there was only a single target it'd take 4x50=200.  Under the new system, though, each has its own advantages; you'd want a bank like A if you're a capship focusing fire on a single target (other capships, starbases, etc.), while you'd want C if you were a starbase or wanted to wipe groups of frigates quickly.  While they didn't say that they changed weapon damages, it could easily be viewed as an obvious consequence of the announced change; so, if a starbase's weapon banks did 200 before this patch, they could be dropped to 100 in this patch and STILL come out ahead in terms of effective firepower.

 

Also, realize that this change affects other ships as well; even if they don't adjust the damage ratings, then while starbases WOULD get stronger, so would the capships trying to kill them; they wouldn't kill the starbase itself any faster, but they'd be able to destroy any other defenders that came to the starbase's assistance.  The losers in this scenario would be the frigates and cruisers that don't have multi-target weapon banks, which might not be a bad thing.

Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting KristusVoso, reply 14
stil no caps on mines, i really like big maps, around 20 stars with 10-20 planets around each but i played it the other day an had two hard fortifiers an they built a silly amounts of mines around every planet, realy think they should be limited to an overall amount that wont slow down larger maps an promote their use for chocke points rather than every planet u go too, but dunno if they could make the AI use them that way.

From the patch notes above:

"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."

150 mines per gravity well, AND the mines will cost actual resources, will prevent the sort of mine spam you're looking at.

Reply #43 from Sins Forums Top

This is my first post on the forums.

 

I've been playing Sins for months and have been in Beta since January 16th (my bday). I love these changes, before i was clearing mine fields by scout rushing them and these changes are awesome. I also like the new phase lane destabilization alot because it will add new tactics to an already complex game.

I hope this patch makes massive fleets (200) easier to fight with just a large defending fleet (100-150) and starbase.

I'm also excited to see flak frigates getting some love, strike craft spam is lame-ish.

Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Barda278, reply 13
I hope it comes out soon or there will not be much of a point of it comeing out at all if  the full thing is comeing out Feb 11

Blair already stated not to believe these dates that you are seeing elsewhere.  IC will not do a full release until they have gotten feedback on the beta 2b update and have had time to do some balance work on that as well.  It will still be some time before we see a full release.

Reply #45 from Sins Forums Top

Actually, IC just posted that there is a TENTATIVE release date for Feb. 11.  A strong emphasis on Tentactive.

Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting KristusVoso, reply 14
stil no caps on mines, i really like big maps, around 20 stars with 10-20 planets around each but i played it the other day an had two hard fortifiers an they built a silly amounts of mines around every planet, realy think they should be limited to an overall amount that wont slow down larger maps an promote their use for chocke points rather than every planet u go too, but dunno if they could make the AI use them that way.

As Spatz said, there is a limit of 150 per well.  This should (finger crossed) slow down some of the mine spamming.

Reply #47 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Spatzimaus, reply 11
The 150 mine limit seems nice, although there's still a density issue: I'd assume you can still put all 150 in one small area (say, the end of a phase line), and no amount of minesweeping ability would save the incoming ships from being blown up....  This is especially nasty with the homing mines; lay a cloud of them in one spot, and any enemy capship coming near gets wiped.

I don't really see the problem with the way it works now.  If you choose to cluster mines densely in one spot, you choose to cluster mines densely in one spot.  If you luck up and kill a capship, you luck up and kill a cap ship.  If it doesn't work this way, I really don't see much of a use for mines except as a minor irritation, which means I won't even bother with them.

However, I do like the new limit on mines, at least conceptually.  Not because I hated the mine-spamming that many hated, but because it seems to make sense.  If all you own is a little asteroid, why should you be able to mine the entire galaxy?  Also, the limits add some strategic depth - you must choose where you will deploy your mines.  Sounds good on paper, anyway.

Reply #48 from Sins Forums Top

I really think the Phase destabilization should require some research (with PJI as a prereq of course) that globally affects all starbases, rather than them automatically getting the ability.

Reply #49 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Agent, reply 22

I don't really see the problem with the way it works now.  If you choose to cluster mines densely in one spot, you choose to cluster mines densely in one spot.  If you luck up and kill a capship, you luck up and kill a cap ship.  If it doesn't work this way, I really don't see much of a use for mines except as a minor irritation, which means I won't even bother with them.

However, I do like the new limit on mines, at least conceptually.  Not because I hated the mine-spamming that many hated, but because it seems to make sense.  If all you own is a little asteroid, why should you be able to mine the entire galaxy?  Also, the limits add some strategic depth - you must choose where you will deploy your mines.  Sounds good on paper, anyway.

It also eliminates the fact that 10,000 mines being placed in 2-3 grav wells could effectively slow the game down so much that you might as well be playing the game on a Commodore 64.

God, did I just show my age or what???

And this does happen as the beta is right now.  That many mines eats up a huge chunk memory.  Doesn't matter how much of super-machine you're running on.

Reply #50 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Alluceanot, reply 23
I really think the Phase destabilization should require some research (with PJI as a prereq of course) that globally affects all starbases, rather than them automatically getting the ability.

I'm thinking that I agree on this...but let's see what it plays like with the new changes first before pass a final judgement on it.