0.95 Overview news

Where 0.9 was to test base functionality, the primary goals with 0.95 are to begin balancing and finalizing new systems, as well as polishing existing factions. This post doesn't include every single change, but should give an idea of some of the more impactful ones and general areas we're focusing on. Before we get started, after some significant downtime, our site and forums are back up. So, if you want to post feedback, suggestions or discuss strategy, you can click here

While the AI in Sins is hardcoded and therefore is the same in every mod, there's a few areas where it can be tweaked, and where it didn't interact well with the mod in 0.9. There are two prominent areas where we have made fixes or tweaks: first, we've fixed an issue where Escape Pods made the NR AI stop building dropships and therefore not expand. Also, we've increased the rate at which the AI builds capital ships, although this has involved increasing the rate at which capital ships reach higher levels. We'll also be playing around with some ship roles to influence how the AI builds and uses ships.

As we said in the release post, the ship stats currently in 0.9 are almost direct ports of our ICW values, and costs were essentially determined very roughly while we tested capabilities of things. In 0.95, we're beginning to focus more directly on those values, and beginning to make the ships match the stated playstyle of the factions; namely the Remnant ships being cheaper and more numerous, while weaker individually, and the New Republic ships being more powerful individually. We're also working to finish up the abilities for existing ships, based on what the factions need. Mon Calamari ships in particular have been buffed significantly (along with the Nebula). The Praetor has had its firepower decreased a bit, shifted more towards its tank role, and also had its cost increased to match its capabilities. The Galaxy Gun has also been limited to one instance, as we discussed in the previous post.

The third goal with 0.95 is to more or less finish the units and structures for the New Republic and Imperial Remnant. Unit-wise this mostly just means the Proficient cruiser for the New Republic (the Remnant is getting some changes in 1.0 or 1.1, for a reason we'll explain when it becomes relevant). Structure-wise, this means adding the economic and military starbases for the two factions, as well as the New Republic's XQ Resupply platform, and a new Durasteel refinery to replace the stock one.

We're doing a significant overhaul on the HUD as well. Pictures coming later.

As you can see from the pictures in this post, we've also finished the textures for the new planet types in 0.9. There will be some new planet types in future versions, but we're using 0.95 to just finish up the existing ones.]

We're not going to give a release date, so we'll just say that it'll be out when the above is finished. At this point, that mostly means the UI and the models/textures for the new structures.