Stars Beyond Reach Beta Release Notes

Version 0.801

(This isn't done yet, we're still working on it.)

• Fixed a bug in the prior version where the current overlay was not showing up properly highlighted in its menu.

• The city management window how has a button for each type of building in the city (except the city centers, which cannot be toggled on/off) and double clicking one will try to turn all buildings of that type in that city off (if any are on) or on (if not).
  • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.

• The groundwater studies tech has been removed, and biology now unlocks the water well directly.
  • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.

• Flight Control is now a prerequisite for lander records recovery and aquifer survey and landscape grading, and has been moved around so that there's not that huge horizontal gap in that one part of the early tech tree.

• Toxin Screening deaths were not previously being logged correctly and were throwing an error to let us know about that. Fixed.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Added budget-management city management sliders for crime control and hazmat effectiveness/cost.

• Fixed an issue with natural wonder seeding where a couple of them were not actually seeding in all cases.

• Previously there were 9 natural wonders. Now there are 7 new ones, and there will be quite a few more before too long.
  • The idea here is that, yes, this makes exploration more interesting. But also these have nontrivial strategic value, meaning that they provide good medium-term benefits for both you and the AIs.

• Fixed a bug that has existed since before the start of the beta, where the tops of the natural wonders were getting cut off. Looked mighty strange!

• The data for the resources has been pulled out into a separate excel file instead of being baked into the game, and it's now easier for us to balance and possible for players to tune or mod as well.

• The outer world border has been cleaned up so that it no longer has the jagged edges like before. Nice having an actual artist fix that up rather than Chris just winging it. ;)

• The images for a lot of the tile overlays have been adjusted so that you can tell them apart better. Useful in particular for experienced players so that they don't have to look at the bottom of the screen to see which overlay is active when they are placing a new building.

• Fixed a bug where buildings under construction were still showing up as possible attackers, and thus could prevent already-constructed buildings from actually attacking until these finished.
  • Thanks to ptarth, TheVampire100, and crazyroosterman for reporting.

• Fixed an issue with a white background around the Mind Control tech.

Version 0.800

(Released April 21st, 2015)

• The new HUD is now in place -- hoo boy was that a massive undertaking, taking us a whole lot longer than we expected. Finally done now, though! And we should be able to get releases out daily during the week again, which is good.

• Fixed sea robin definition saying it was gathered on land by fisheries instead of gathered on water by fisheries.
  • Thanks to ptarth for the report and save.

• There are now hotkeys that allow you to toggle between your cities quickly (home and end).

• The remaining Thoraxian, Andor, Acutian, Boarine, and Burlust underground buildings now have actual graphics. Still 20 underground buildings to go.

• Previously, the max number of simultaneous buildings you could ever achieve in a city was capped at 7. This would lead to confusion if you scrapped engineers after getting above that level (more engineers still made your constructions faster, just not more at once in those cases).
  • Now it's capped at 40, instead.
  • Thanks to ptarth for inspiring this change.

• The appearance of the small icons for buildings in the tech tree has been adjusted to be a little clearer, larger, and more attractive. This also is the same thing to be used on the new hud.

• The items in the build menus are now actually sorted in a way that makes sense, heh.

• The Cities Grid screen is now in place.

• On screen resolutions narrower than 1680 pixels, previously the tech tree shortlist would overlap the tech tree scrollbar and the tabs inappropriately. Fixed.

• The overlays now show better proper-english names, and also have tooltips explaining what they are actually doing!

• Fixed that bug where both the reports and overlays windows could be visible at the same time.
  • Thanks to mrhanman and mllange for reporting.

• The requirements for social progress level ups is now vastly higher, bringing better balance to it so that you aren't going through social levels every turn after a little while.
  • Thanks to Misery for reminding us of this.

• Cemetaries now have 5000 graves each, rather than 500. Originally I wanted to keep these small so that you'd really _feel_ your deaths in the city, but this was just too small.

Disease Balance And General Improvements

• Added Quarantine toggle to city management window
  • Quarters birth rate.
  • Reduces infection rate and new-births-with-disease by 10% per turn the quarantine has been running against that disease.
  • Each turn, cures 1 person of each disease per turn the quarantine has been running against that disease.
  • If the quarantine is turned off, the internal counter for each disease's quarantine drops by 2 per turn until back to zero.
  • Thanks to TheVampire100 for inspiring this change.

• Added Genetic Screening toggle to city management window
  • Halves birth rate.
  • No new births will have genetic diseases.
  • Thanks to TheVampire100 for inspiring this change.

• Added Toxin Screening toggle to city management window
  • Each population unit that would be infected with a toxic disease instead costs the city 500 power and the race 200 crowns.
  • If the resources are not available, the population unit is killed.
  • Thanks to TheVampire100 for inspiring this change.

• The infectiousness and mortality rates from diseases are now a lot less extreme, and getting one with high mortality and high infectiousness is now not such a possibility.

• Sloth from diseases no longer causes trash and pollution production to go up. That was what was leading to the immediate death spirals with lots of the diseases.
  • Instead it now is a reducer for crown, science, linguistics, social progress, and resource production.

• The diseases button now actually works, and pops up a description of what the heck each disease actually does, and what its stats mean, etc.
  • Thanks to GarathJJ, mllange, and mrhanman for reminding us about this (it was one of those TBD things I warned the redshirts about, but it's super important).

• Hospitals and similar now work on curing infected citizens as well as healing wounded ones. This helps a bit in the fight against disease, mainly against diseases with low or no mortality. Quarantine and vaccination is still by far the best.

• Once a race has ever started working on a vaccine for a disease, they now continue working on that until they find a cure -- even if there are no current infections.

• You can now actually see your progress on vaccines! It's shown under the new diseases popup.
  • Thanks to TheVampire100 for reporting.

Version 0.772

(Released April 15th, 2015)

• The starting languages that you know are now a lot higher in a variety of areas, making diplomacy actually possible with some races closer from the start (though not always the races you want, of course).
  • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.

• The radius revealed by the lander at the start of the game is now 7 tiles rather than 5, which means that no matter where you place it you should be able to get explorer camps on all sides of it comfortably.
  • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.

• Fixed the bug from version 0.771 where you could not place explorer camps unless the shift key was held down.
  • Thanks to Hyfrydle, mrhanman, ptarth, and crazyroosterman for reporting.

Version 0.771

(Released April 15th, 2015)

• The recent changes button now properly points here.

• The default profile name is now "Benevolent Dictator" instead of Hydral.
  • Thanks to Watashiwa for reporting.

• Savegame size has been reduced to about 2/3 its prior amount (and is now much faster to save and load, too) thanks to some shifts with what is being saved about specific layers on each tile.
  • Thanks to ptarth for inspiring this change.

• Savegames have been shrunk a further 10% or so by adjusting some of what is recalculated upon savegame load with regard to tiles themselves.
  • Thanks to ptarth for inspiring this change.

• Another bit of savings on savegame size in particular in savegames that are very high up in turn counts, by culling the number of event log entries from more than 100 turns ago.
  • Thanks to ptarth for inspiring this change.

• Ground soldiers can now always target underground buildings in range that they have sonar data on.

• Fixed a bug where combat damage wasn't being applied to undergound buildings.

• Boats, Missiles/Lasers, and Torpedoes can now directly target any underground buildings that are not under another building.

• Resource adjacency bonuses (natural wonder and from resource-usage buildings) are now actually shown!

• Previously, resources on the surface would only be revealed if you got your buildings close enough to them -- not just if you scouted their area. That was a super bad idea, as it led to the impression that there were not many resources around. Note that underground resources still require you to sonar survey them.
  • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.

• Placement of explorer camps is only required for the first two turns now. After that it's completely optional.
  • Thanks to mrhanman for inspiring this change.

• Flying buildings now will show up properly under the fog of war, rather than over.
  • Thanks to Misery for reporting.

• The game no longer gives you a localization error the first time you go to start a new campaign.
  • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.

• Fixed a bug that was letting you place explorer camps waaaaay away from your lander, but not showing the little "building valid to be placed here" icons, hence us not noticing it before.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Fixed the visual offset issue on the social progress screen when the resolution was not 720px high.
  • Thanks to mrhanman and tbrass for reporting.

• The trash production values on each building have been majorly revamped, because some of them were accidentally producing waaaay more than intended. This was then causing a crime death spiral.
  • Thanks to ptarth and others for reporting.

• The amount of crime at each building from crimes of opportunity, from inherent in the business, and from pollution (for extra-sensitive buildings, anyway) is now vastly shrunk at the start of the game, and gradually grows to become the full amount at population 10,000 and up.
  • This way you aren't so hosed if you don't know to put police stations near to a stock exchange early on. Instead you'll discover that gradually and have time to react.
  • Thanks to tbrass for reporting.