We are back from beta, and this new version includes a lot of polishing and bugfixing, improvements to the bastille turret, and many various items for our DLC2 testers to bang on. This also has another raft of multiplayer fixes, although thankfully the number of those required is going down quite a lot. We seem to have slain both ghosts as well as the creeping command lag, and the new MP issues reported were actually all related to DLC2! So that's a nice thing to be whittling down so far.
During this beta period, we've increased energy requirements quite a bit for superweapons, and also scaled back the number of ship lines you have access to. Officer fleets no longer come with free ship lines, but also now cost much less AIP to capture. ARSes and similar have slightly fewer choices, but the ODSS in particular now has a better balance of choices rather than giving you too many redundant ones. There's a Goldilocks Zone of "just enough choice but not too much" that we're trying to hit, and we seem to be quite close, if not there.
As part of the beta process, the AI got some new anti-spy buildings for its highest-mark planets, so you can't just spy on them with impunity in those areas. We also took away the mechanic that caused the AI to automatically mark up to mark 3 by the time you attack their homeworld; if you want to run a low-AIP game, you can now do that. The mechanic still remains on difficulty 10, but we decided it was needlessly punitive (not the original intent at all) on lower difficulties than that.
There are a number of new hotkeys that are default-unbound that you can use for things like selecting-only-turrets or for placing half or a third of a cap when you click. Thanks to donblas on those.
AI homeworlds and bastion planets now have special icons and styling that make them easier to spot.
Enjoy!
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