Sins of a Solar Empire

Plymouth, MI – MARCH 16, 2011 – Stardock Entertainment ( www.stardock.com) and Ironclad Games ( www.ironcladgames.com) have unleashed a massive changelog for the upcoming Sins of a Solar Empire - Trinity version 1.2 and the update is now available.  Trinity bundles the original award-winning real-time strategy PC title from Ironclad Games with the two game-changing micro-expansions, Entrenchment and Diplomacy. Sins of a Solar Empire - Trinity is available via the digital download platform, Impulse ( www.impulsedriven.com) for $39.95.

The updates consist of a new and improved Pirate system, updated gameplay balance for the TEC, Advent and Vasari (based on player feedback), engine improvements to handle memory better and provides increased performance, AI tweaks to enhance computer player behavior and more. The entire change log is below.

In the year of its release, Sins of a Solar Empire was awarded dozens of Real-Time Strategy Game of the Year accolades as well as the overall PC Game of the Year award from IGN.com. Sins of a Solar Empire provides a seamless transition between epic strategy and tactical combat modes, a galaxy of intriguing aliens, powerful starships, and colossal planets that come to life with stunning 3D graphics, unparalleled sense of scale, and a cinematic musical score. Explore and conquer nearby planets as one of three factions: the Vasari, the TEC or the Advent and play for domination of the galaxy. Players will explore distant solar systems by applying brute force, cunning strategy, elegant diplomacy, economic mastery, and researched technology.

Sins of a Solar Empire - Trinity can play on most recent PCs and requires Impulse for downloads and updates. With Impulse, users purchase their game and can then immediately download and install the game through the Impulse client which seamlessly manages updates, community features and more. Games become part of that user’s account such that when a user purchase a new machine, a user can simply re-download the Impulse client, logon to their account and re-download all their purchases, even years into the future. Download Impulse at www.impulsedriven.com.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity/Diplomacy v1.2 Change Log

[ Engine ]

·     The game engine has been updated in order to free up more texture memory. Players should generally use no more than 1.3 GB of RAM on Huge maps with all races represented now. 

[ Gameplay ]

·     Pirates

o  The Pirates system has been completely overhauled with this update. Rather than relying on random upgrades which could result in a huge power curve, the Pirates will now scale gradually in abilities, fleet size and power as a game progresses.

o  The size of the Pirate fleet is now based off of the current raid level (Low, Guarded, Elevated, High, Highest) and there are now preset fleet compositions for each.

o  Pirates now take into consideration the total amount of bounty on offer before sending out their fleets (at High and Highest raid levels). If there isn't enough booty on the table, the Pirates will send out a smaller fleet. This is to prevent 250 credit cheese scenarios that could spawn a massive Pirate incursion.

o  Pirates have the opportunity to purchase upgrades after every launched raid. There are 20 levels of upgrades available to them which include bonuses to Armor, HP, Weapon Strength, Weapon Range; plus special abilities including Intercept, Quick Jump Calculation, Timed Explosives, Heavy Fallout, Embargo Planet and Sabotage Reactor. Basically if you let the Pirates live in a really long game, they will become very nasty indeed!

o  The Pirate mission system via diplomacy has been updated. Players must now pay a pre-set credit amount to generate a raid (same fleet composition as for bounty-spawned raids). This eliminates the guesswork of paying too much/little and not quite knowing what you'll get (and makes issuing raids generally quicker).

o  The Pirate base's population upgrade will now properly increase population growth rate.

o  Fixed mission timer bug where the timer wasn't properly syncing up to reality (i.e., the timer said a player couldn't place another mission when they could.)

o  Pirates will now notify the player if they successfully complete a mission.

o  Fixed a problem with pirate raid defs that could cause odd behavior for high level raids.

o  Pirate planet's base population has been boosted slightly (for increased income).

o  Fixed a memory access error in the Pirate mission system.

o  Pirate raid level escalation has been slowed down slightly for better overall progression.

·     TEC Balance

o  Kol:

§  Gauss Blast: Reduced AM cost from 75 to 50/55/60; increased damage from 325/650/975 to 400/725/1050.

§  Flak Burst: Range changed from 2400/3000/3600 to 3000/3300/3600.

§  Finest Hour: AM regen reduced from 5 to 3; HP regen increased from 10 to 15.

o  Dunov:

§  EMP: Range increased from 4500 to 4500/5000/5500; AM cost changed from 100/90/80 to 90/90/90; cooldown reduced from 50/45/40 to 40/35/30.

§  Magnetize: Max affected strikecraft increased from 8/12/16 to 12/20/28.

§  Strikecraft destroyed by the Dunov's Magnetize ability now give XP as intended.

o  Marza:

§  Incendiary Shells: Stacking limit increased from 1 to 3.

§  Missile Barrage: Range reduced from 10,000 to 8,000.

o  Hoshiko:

§  Demolition Bots: Changed needsToFaceTarget TRUE to FALSE.

o  Novalith Cannon:

§  Cannon shots now cause a planet to suffer 100% reduced trade income. This effect will no longer stack.

·     Advent Balance

o  Radiance:

§  Animosity: Increased max targets from 8/16/32 to 12/24/36; effect now channels every second over 20 seconds instead of being an instant action so new targets entering the AoE are hit; auto-cast will only activate if 3 or more enemy ships are in range.

§  Absorptive Armor: Increased armor bonus from 1/2/3 to 2/4/6.

o  Rapture:

§  Vertigo: Increased range from 4500 to 4500/5000/5500.

o  Revelation:

§  Guidance: Now a triggered, caster-based area of effect that affects friendly capital ships, frigates and structures. AM cost is now 90/100/110; range is 8000/8000/8000, cooldown is 50/50/50; buff applied grants 25%/25%/25% boost to ability cooldown rate, duration 20/30/40.

§  Clairvoyance: Duration increased from 90/120/150 to 90/150/210.

o  Communal Labor will now passively decrease module build time with a buff that stacks on the orbit body with every constructor ship. (Buff will disappear if the constructor ship(s) are destroyed.)

·     Vasari Balance

o  Jarrasul:

§  Colonize: Now grants additional constructor frigates instead of a structure build rate bonus. Gives 1/2/3 constructor frigates for 360/480/600 seconds.

§  Jarrasul capital ship's colonize ability adjusted to avoid crash issue. Thanks to ZombieRus5 on this.

o  Skirantra:

§  Scramble Bombers: Reduced expiry time from 120 to 75; reduced cooldown time from 35 to 30.

o  Antorak:

§  Distort Gravity: Reduced cooldown from 45 to 40.

o  Vulkoras:

§  Phase Missile Swarm: Increased range from 5000 to 6500; increased max targets from 3/5/7 to 4/8/12.

§  Assault Specialization: Increased bonus damage from 60/120/180 to 90/180/270.

o  Stilakus Subverter:

§  Shield Disruption: Reduced Phase Missile Block reduction from 25% to 20%; reduced Shield Mitigation Reduction from 10% to 8%.

§  Distortion Field: Reduced radius from 2000 to 1600.

o  Kostura Cannon:

§  Will no longer damage and stun enemy ships.

o  Missile Platform:

§  Disruptor Nanites ability now stacks correctly off missile defense platforms.

o  Orkulus:

§  Debris Vortex will now only activate when debris is in range of the effect.

§  Debris Vortex's second level will now unlock correctly.

§  Orkulus Phase Gate upgrade will now work at stars.

§  The construction boost passive of the Jarrasul colony capital ship now spawns extra construction ships over time, as opposed to all at once, to try and avoid crashes in the physics system.

o  Raider Xenophobia: Tech moved to level 5; reduced from 2 upgrade levels to 1; will now reduce the Pirate fleet size sent against the player by 1 level (i.e., an Elevated level fleet size becomes a Guarded level fleet).

o  Pinpoint Bombardment: Increased range bonus from 0.1333 per level to 0.6667 per level.

·     Diplomacy System

o  The Aggressiveness Rating for all players has been changed to be a random value between -1.5 to +2 (from -2 to +2).

o  The calculation for Military Presence has been updated to look at the ratio of the players' used fleet points instead of just overall fleet points. This should make the overall diplomatic rating more balanced overall, especially at higher difficulty levels.

o  Added a new Trade Bonus modifier for diplomatic relations. Players who have a Trade Alliance will slowly gain a positive diplomatic relations bonus with one another as trade ships reach foreign ports up to a maximum of +2. If the Trade Alliance is ended, this bonus will decrease gradually back to 0.

o  AI players will now place bounty on one another based on many factors including diplomatic relationship level, overall threat level and simply avoiding the raid in general (like most human players). This makes Diplomacy much more dynamic in general as you can really play factions off one another.

o  Missions that target or are issued by players who are defeated during the mission timer are now automatically cleared with no penalty for non-completion to the other player.

  [ AI ]

·     The AI will no longer max out all of its gravity wells with mines. Mine building is now based on AI type. This should help reduce memory use and improve performance.

·     Fixed bug where the AI would form a Pact, break it, and then immediately reform it if the players' relationship value dropped to a certain level repeatedly.

·     The AI will no longer send Envoys to non-aligned gravity wells where the player controls a resource (i.e., if you controlled a neutral extractor at an asteroid belt).

·     AI players will no longer "spam" the player with mission requests after a mission has been rejected. Each rejection will cause the AI to wait four minutes before offering another mission (culmulative up to 10 times for each consecutive rejection).

[ Interface ]

·     The far planet icons that show up when far stars are visible are now turned off by default. Hovering your mouse over the far star icon will now show the far planet icons (if visible). Alternatively, holding down ALT will now show all visible far planet icons.

[ Misc. ]

·     Fixed a couple errors in the entity files that would cause the game to crash.

·     Ability PhaseOutHull will now play the proper sound effect.

·     Adjusted max dot for graphics to 0.95 from 1. This should largely eliminate the strange white lines that would appear for some players on the edges of ships/structures. Special thanks to Aractain and Kitkun for this info!

·     Missions can now be rejected so long as there's at least half the original mission time remaining.

·     Fixed some misspellings in various data files.

·     Starbases with trade upgrades will now work properly at stars.

·     Resolved a case where ships set to auto-explore would attempt to travel to other stars without phase jumping. We'll need more info on this one if there are other instances where players see this happen.

·     Tips that weren't being properly loaded should now appear.

·     Various fixes for old crash bugs (thanks to the community on these).

·     Various fixes to mesh files (thanks to the community on these).

·     Detect Mines range for all scouts has been increased to 6,000 from 5,000. This should make it easier to clear out mine fields, assuming your ship doesn't jump in right on top of one.

·     Added a new AIUseTargetCondition for AntimatterExceedsAmount. This is being used on ships that steal antimatter to prevent them from autocasting on targets that are out of antimatter. If there are other abilities that could use better or new AIUseTargetConditions, let us know.

·     Some fixes to make AIUseTargetConditions more effective based on feedback.

·     Various other minor tweaks.

·     Research screens should now properly show fleet supply numbers based on game options.

About Ironclad 

Ironclad Games is the creator, owner and developer behind the top selling and critically acclaimed  Sins of a Solar Empire series. Learn more by visiting www.ironcladgames.com and  www.sinsofasolarempire.com.

About Stardock

Stardock is one of the world’s leading developers and publishers of PC games and desktop software.  Its PC games include Sins of a Solar Empire as well as the critically acclaimed Galactic Civilizations series. Its desktop software includes Object Desktop, WindowBlinds, and a host of other programs for customizing the Windows experience. Learn more about Stardock by visiting www.stardock.com.

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Stephanie Tinsley Schopp

Tinsley-PR | 323 469 4349

AIM/Skype: StephanieSchopp