It's full steam ahead with Dawn of Andromeda! Having released into Early Access toward the end of 2016, the 4X strategy game has just received its second major update paving the way for a bigger January blow-out.
With the game still in the early stages - as dictated by being a part of Steam's Early Access program - we'll be keeping tabs on each update to tunnel its way through your internet tubes. Strategy games usually see many months of balance changes both and after a full release, so expect lots of tweaks, changes and content additions for this one further down the line.
Dawn of Andromeda - Officer Update: 05/04/2017
Iceberg Interactive have just released the Dawn of Andromeda Officer Update, which adds several improvements in several different areas of the game, and comes with some major new features and content.
The Officer Update makes changes to the Unit ranking and experience system, changes to the victory conditions and how these work, there's new RTS controls, significant improvements to Artifacts, AI, Minor Races, UI and the resources and trading system has been made more user friendly too. Check out the full patch notes below, but remember, as the same with previous updates, saves will be reset!
Changelog:
- Implemented Unit ranks, experience and respective bonuses
- Streamlined the resources/trade system: Now strategic resources aren't cumulative/generate surplus,having one source of each is enough for all uses. Previously, having +2,+3, etc of a specific strategic resource and the concept of surplus only made the system more confusing, as well as more frustrating as it was very rare for a player to be able to buy a strategic resource as they were very frequently out of stock
- Added two new victory conditions: Economic Victory and Rebuild the Sceptre of Kri
- Victory conditions can now be accumulated and game is won when all are met (subject to change)
- Added aggressive and passive unit stances options
- Added go to fleet when double tapping fleet hotkeys
- Victory conditions are now displayed differently in the Emperor Log
- Abilities like Trade, Mining, etc are now shown in the abilities bar and can be activated that way
- Improved AI: They now better take into consideration when the military and technology strength of the player when considering war
Minor Races now have a name, and when and if they become a major faction they retain it
Minor Races menu and planets&colonies menu now shows the name of minor races
It's now possible to interact with minor races from the planets&colonies menu - When creating a new game user can customize AI style for AI controlled factions
- Changed how abilities are displayed in the main unit panel
- Added description of each ability in abilities tooltips in the main panel
- Added Order to Stop command
- Abilities&Buffs section now only shows Buffs
- Added new random events
- Added several new artifact types, which retrieve new bonuses and even new ship parts
- AI now builds and uses survey and mining ships
- AI is now more likely to declare friendship
- AI now dislikes factions who get along well with factions they are at war with more than before. Previously being at war or just having bad relations would give the same penalties.
- When creating or editing a Custom Race, there's now Trait points the player must use to attribute his faction's traits. This prevents unbalanced races from being created as well as making these choices much more strategic.
- It's now possible to enable/disable Story Events before starting a new game.
- Color picker in Custom Race choice now automatically desaturates chosen colors to fit game style
- Changed how governors are displayed, and now traits and experience are displayed
- Harium strategic resource now provides +5 extra max research instead of +3
- Attacking in neutral systems now provides a bigger penalty to relations
I - mproved colonization speed of starting colony ship if starting with expedition ship
- Resources prices are now generated randomly at startup
- Planet menu now indicates when a certain resource is being exported
- Added tooltips for different planet types
- Trade&Resources planet tab has been renamed to just Trade
- Survival victory condition is now set to 10 years
- Fixed Survival Log item not showing right time
- Fixed camera shaking when following/looking at a Mining Station
- Fixed Scout ships on auto explore stopping and not exploring anymore in some instances. Also affected AI, which hindered it's empire development.
- Fixed information on AI building order to being applied correctly after loading a game
- Fixed misaligned Funds tooltip
- Fixed crash in Planet Menu
- Fixed Character names showing up as lowercase in place where they should show up as uppercase
- Fixed explosion effects while invading being rendered despite systems not being visible
- Fixed monster being generated in a system the player owns at startup
- Fixed late game events not being triggered
- Fixed council, governors and characters not having proper races when creating a custom race (if applicable)
- Fixed buttons in Trade route creation screen being stuck
- Fixed some resources icons not being centered correctly
- Fixed certain lists not showing correctly when in resolution in format 21:9
- Fixed Harium strategic resource not providing bonus
- Fixed Artifacts instant researching not working when studying an artifact and freezing research window
- Fixed mismatch in several places in the game between merchants items, and those the player actually received or were offered
- Fixed Council members complaining about wars against a certain character
- General
- New Titan ship class
- 2 new backgrounds
- Dead Star system type
- 2 new space monster types
- 5 new random events
- New Harium Resource
- 24 new technologies total
- 16 new character traits
- Added Late game Events
- Added Exclusive Technologies for each race
- Colonization and Colony Management changes
- you can now always find colonizable planets near your starting colony every game
- Now every planet has a planet trait
- Starting colonies of each race now can't start within a certain distance of each other
- Colony population now affects Productivity
- The size of planets now affect the maximum population the colony starts with and how much it increases per Housing Infrastructure level
- Each race now has a preferred planet type (gas, oceanic, etc)
- Ship Design and Combat changes
- It's now possible to edit designs and refit ships
- Got rid of Mark as Obsolete options and Obsolete designs view as it's now redundant
- Capital ships now have a -7 speed penalty instead of -8
Evasion and Accuracy are now taken into account and shots can miss
- UI Improvements
- New Invasion effects
- Various Bug Fixes
- Changed/Added
- AI units won't switch targets to the nearest unit, they now go after their previous target until it's too far.
- It's now much harder to convince the AI to promise to declare war on someone, and relations and casus belli are taken into account
- Population grows 60% slower in general and approval affects growth affects growth more by 75%
- Added 2 more starting characters
- Infrastructure development is 20% slower
- Ship building is now 15% slower
- When choosing your starting council, counter now starts as 0/5 instead of 1/5
- Added alert when the player successfully invades a colony that doesn't have good enough living conditions to settle
- New games on Common(default) and Very Common settings now generate 15% less colonizable planets
- Wheel scroll on research screen is now much faster
- Traits that meant bonuses and penalties to overall ship HP having uneven numbers like 1159 now have the correct number, ie 1200 in this case.
- Optimized unit pathfinding
- Fixed
- Looping error caused by the strategic map that caused heavy slowdown, RAM usage and eventual crash
- Game stuck after going for "denouncing him" option in a foreign hacker event
- Ynan decreasing happiness by 7% each time the player reloaded
- Looping error caused by research queue issue causing slowdown and heavy RAM usage
- Ships not being listed in the Shipyard Menu
- Crash in ship design creation menu
- Last tier weapons not being saved correctly after being researched
- AI spamming players with proposals that included promises
- Ultimatums emperor log still being active after declaring war or imposing embargo
- AI not taking into account whether or not player has already promised not to colonize or not when sending a proposal
- Free Education policy reducing prosperity instead of adding to it
- Players getting infinite investment points when they got one extra point through policies or technologies
- AI not following through colonizing promise and nothing happening if he doesn't follow through
- Strategic map issue in which a territory cell inside a bigger territory belonging to another faction wouldn't be rendered correctly or at all
- In the Unrest event, updated the text to mention Productivity instead of ship production and
- infrastructure development speeds
- Wrong diplomatic messages and other bugs caused when invading a colony belonging to a minor race
- Planets not being listed in Planets&Colonies Menu
- Game being stuck after accepting a proposal from a character
- Level 5 infrastructure of certain types not showing
- Trade routes submenu being stuck after loading a game
- Game not starting after creating a custom game in very specific instances
- Notifications causing errors due to a wrong player ID when received a proposal or diplomatic message
- Instances where AI ships would move inside a star and in some cases get stuck
Alerts array going out of bounds and causing errors
- Promises being kept in the Emperor Log despite being fulfilled
- Human controlled units moving back to their previous position after going after an enemy unit
- Great Doom Missiles technology being researched and activating Doom Missiles as well
- Specific instances in which units would go through stars and planets
- Factions not being listed in Diplomacy Menu
Added/Changed
Fixed
Dawn of Andromeda - Titan Update
What's the best way to make your patch sound like the big deal that it is? Swap out the numbers for a strong word like Titan and you've likely cracked it. And that's what's happened here!
Changing more or less everything with their biggest update yet, it's time to say goodbye to your save games and it wouldn't make sense if they still worked. If you want the bigger picture, head over here.
Changelog:
Dawn of Andromeda - Version 8.11
Thanking players on their efforts to supply problematic save-game files and notes, the Dawn of Andromeda team have issued a smaller patch in anticipation of the month's bigger content release. Prepare yourself for a tower of bug fixes and smaller additions for now, with the big guns coming out a little later;
Changelog:
