1.0 Overview - Focus on the Factions news - Star Wars: Thrawn's Revenge II: Ascendancy mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

As 2015 moves to a close, so too does the development on 1.0. Not quite at the same time, but it's pretty close. Since we're well on the way to release, we wanted to take some time to explain what exactly you can expect going into 1.0

The primary goal of version 1.0 is to set up within Ascendancy the four core factions which existed in Imperial Civil War. These are, of course, the Imperial Remnant, New Republic, Empire of the Hand, and Pentastar Alignment. While the New Republic and Imperial Remnant will be familiar to players of Ascendancy, they both have a ton of adjustments going into 1.0, including new units, tech, and mechanics. This post will provide an overview of the larger changes for 1.0, but keep in mind it's not exhaustive- the changes mentioned are simply a taste of what's coming.

The New Republic has had the fewest overall changes to how they're played in 1.0. Most of the effort for them has been on fleshing out some of their tech and their cruiser roster. For cruisers, this has meant the inclusion of the Dauntless and Proficient. The Dauntless is a 'tank' meant to sustain lots of damage and protect the more vulnerable elements of your fleet. In order to help this goal, it has a new ability, Resilient - upon sustaining a certain amount of damage, the Dauntless' crew quickly repairs a significant percentage of its hull, with a fairly large cooldown. The Proficient is the opposite end of the spectrum, oriented more towards speed and firepower. It lacks a canon design, so we took the Corellian origin of some of its parts and extrapolated a new design from there.

Chief amongst their new tech is the Smuggler's Den, a new type of trading port which sends out smugglers instead of regular trade ports, and which saps income from adjacent enemy planets, making them ideal to build on border worlds. We're still playing with how these will ultimately function, but that's how it is right now.

The Imperial Remnant has had a few more changes than the New Republic, as several of its old units and tech have split off into the Pentastar Alignment, and gained a bigger focus on its superweapons and the more Dark Empire comics ships. It has lost the Acclamator, Praetor and Vindicator to the Alignment, but has gained the Escort Carrier, Modular Taskforce Cruiser, and Allegiance. the Escort Carrier is a weaker carrier combat wise, but still fills the carrier role adequately. The Modular Taskforce Cruiser offers a smaller option than the Altor for restocking your ships as well as a few upgrades (which we will expand going forwards). The Allegiance is a smaller and more damage focused 2200 meter capital, taking the palce of the ~3600 meter tank-oriented Altor. It comes with a few new abilities, chief among them is the Imperial Furor ability - as the Allegiance fires, it increases its firing speed by up to 15 percent. This bonus falls off after 5 seconds of not firing. Both Imperial factions, the Remnant and the Alignment, have also gained a new tech, Inexorable, which adds a chance for your destroyed frigates to be immediately replaced at your capital planet.

Another change is the means by which you acquire the World Devastators. Rather than build them like any other capital ship, after you research them you can scuttle your planets to gain a massive amount of resources and World Devastators. This limited availability has also meant we could up their power in a few ways - their scaling will increase from levels and their stacks from Assimilate. We're also playing with the ability to strip enemy planets, but that could get a little crazy if not done properly (and Ironclad just made the functionality possible), so it may not exist in 1.0. I've also been playing with the option of having Sovereigns be unique and built in a separate way from Executors, meaning you could have both at the same time, emphasizing the Remnant's superweapons even further.

The Pentastar Alignment finds it's niche as a sort of mix between Imperial and New Republic philosophies- culturally it's very much Imperial, however it shares some of the economic traits of the New Republic, such as focus on trade. The Alignment not only benefits economically from trade stations, it also has a tech called Protectionism (haha I'm funny) which increases the Pentastar's fighting prowess when they're defending their own trade ports. Militarily, the fleet is a mix between Clone Wars holdovers from the Outer Rim (Munificents, Venators, Acclamators) and top of the line Imperial hardware from Oversector Outer (Bellator, Secutor). Like the New Republic they have a heavy emphasis on carriers and fighters, having a carrier at every ship tier, however where the Republic focuses on quality and the Remnant is about supporting your superweapons, the Alignment draws on the overwhelming numbers aspects of the Empire. Their technology tree is populated with corporate deals to improve their ship subsystems and economic output through compaies like PowerOn Corporation and Dynamic Automata.

As a faction which exists with limited resources to fight off countless threats in the vast Unknown Regions, the Empire of the Hand is all about speed. They are less about outright overpowering the enemy (though they're still no joke), and more about getting in to the right engagements and away from the wrong ones. Techs like Afterburn, which provides a speed boost after exiting hyperspace, and abilities like Microjump which allow certain ships to instantaneously move across and gravity well help accomplish this goal. Their combat abilities exemplify this as well, as with the Phalanx's Close Quarters ability, which microjumps the Phalanx towards a target enemy ship and increases the Phalanx's firepower for a short time. This also means their defensive tech and structures have to be up to the challenge of helping them hold off and push back large-scale attacks, which is an aspect we'll be expanding on going into 1.1.

Culturally, they are far more open than the other Imperial factions (though less so than the New Republic) and their vast information archives allows them almost constant vision and information on certain enemy movements. Economically, they gain less from trade than anyone else, being a rather isolated faction. However, through their Primary Industry tech they are able to gain credits directly from resource extractors.

Obviously, this version will also focus on fixing bugs from 0.95 and other general gameplay improvements. For example, we've rejiggered some stuff to make the AI want to build capital ships more often. We've also made the ISD prefer to fire forward instead of broadside. There are some other changes, but these are most of the big ones.

We've also given the tech trees a facelift, which you can see in the below screenshots. The Naval Academy section has absorbed the (now combined) fleet cap techs, and the former Fleet Logistics tree has become a quick reference guide (called Civilopedia right now ingame because we like referencing things), where you can quickly find some information on new systems without bugging us about them, or even leaving the game!

We've hinted at (and semi-included) some of what we plan to do going into later versions in the development of 1.0, so I'll give a quick rundown of the major goals with the following and aptly named version 1.1. It will be used to finish fleshing out any gaps in the Core Four tech trees/unit lists, as well as continue replacing some of their worse models, but if 1.0 is about what you're using to play, then 1.1 is about expanding where you're playing. Namely, the Star Wars Galaxy. This is the version where we'll focus on a lot of the stuff to really bring you into the universe and lore. This includes little stuff like making text tooltips more lore-centric and starting to really go in on voiceovers, as well as more hefty stuff. The hefty stuff includes things like maps (obviously), lore based random events, unique structures (Centerpoint being one we showed already) and populating the map with 'indigenous' groups, units and heroes, ala this screenshot we've already shown with Zsinj. That will also be the release we use to expand the diplomatic options available to factions.

Also, this month Mod of the Year is taking place, so we'd appreciate any support. Just click on the button below to go to our page, and click the vote button there. Again, we would really appreciate it.