As with Beta 1, I will be posting the change log for Beta 2 in this forum thread. Here you'll be able to see exactly what's been changed to Beta 2 so far, and what future updates will contain (when available). This info is also available in Stardock Central by clicking on Game History in the Sins of a Solar Empire description pane.
IMPORTANT: Unless stated otherwise, patch versions are not save game compatible with one another.
Version 0.78.022 (August 30, 2007):
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NOTE: To prevent possible crashes, please uninstall your existing build of Sins and reinstall the game from scratch. Using the Update method will take a long time and may cause issues with your build.
+ Gameplay:
- New Research System:
- Two types of labs: military and civilian
- Progress in each tree's tier is controlled by the number of corresponding labs.
- Number of military labs provides a scaling bonus to ship production rates.
- Number of civilian labs provides a scaling bonus to module production and planet upgrade rates.
- Capital Ship Changes:
- Max number of capital ships is now controlled by corresponding research topics.
- Players now start with a capital ship factory.
- First capital ship is free and becomes your flagship.
- New Pirate System:
- PirateRaidLaunched event.
- PirateRaidImminent event.
- Only bounty influences choice of target (uses highest bounty at the point the PirateRaidLaunched event is sent).
- Earn bounty reward for killing planets.
- Only one raid launched at a time.
- Pirates return to pirate base after raid.
- Pirate base locations setup (no booty, loot or bonuses yet).
- Changes to Infocards to represent planet bounty.
- Minor changes to bounty throttling.
- Pirate raids now show up in the diplomacy channel.
- Pirate raids will now only occur if the Pirate player owns a planet. New algorithm for determining where the raid starts now uses the closest pirate planet.
- Raids can now occur even if there is no bounty in the universe.
- New Artifact / Planet Exploration System: Spend resources to have analysts and scientists survey a planet's geography, indigenous wildlife, and core industries to determine how best to exploit the natural wealth of the planet. Doing so may yield bonuses that provide a benefit to that planet in particular, or more powerful artifacts that grant global improvements to your empire (doesn't include many types, artwork or sound fx yet).
- New Jump Blocker Behavior: Blockers owned by player A at a planet now only block lanes to planets owned by A connected to the same planet.
- Planets are now observed when they are colonized.
- You can no longer colonize planets that you would lose instantly due to culture takeover.
- Fix for tier 4 research subject costs.
- Culture points now decay if the leader player on that connection doesn't have any rate supporting the connection.
- Rebalanced bounty collection rates.
- Added game event for capital ships shield going down and hull severely damaged.
- Planet Shields now mitigate a fraction of bombing damage rather than having a chance of preventing it (statisically identical over an infinite sample size, but more effective vs. Cannons and other single sources of high bombing damaage).
- Fixed bug where initial placement of Frigate Factory used a random position instead of a smart position.
- Changed Rebel player into its own player type.
- Resource extraction increases from research increased.
- Fix for stalled module construction when the module being built is the one that uses the last available slots.
- Embargo now also slows ship build rates at the target planet (it will get much more loving soon).
- Module Architecture research improved to 40% cost reduction after 2 levels instead of 25% after 3 levels.
- Auto docking squads are no longer controllable.
- Squads aren't told to auto-dock until they have just enough time to reach the capital ship and dock.
- Planet bombing damage and population killed reduced by 33% for capital ships.
- Fixed spawned missile turrets from hyperspacing.
- Galaxy generator guaranteed to no longer make extra connections from home planets to planets owned by other players.
- Minor Tutorial revisions.
- The max value for overall culture percentage is now always 100.
- Adjusted bomber weapon cooldowns to be slightly under their "attack run" time in order to have the AI better estimate bomber DPS.
- Reduced bomber DPS.
AI:
- Fixed AI bounty spending insanity.
- AI will no longer retreat from defending his homeworld if the situation looks dire.
- Fixed constrained supply usage of frigates bug (which left no room for capital ships).
- Increased priority of capital ship related research subjects.
- Increased capital ship desired build queue count logic.
- Fixed overproduction of Hoshiko Robotics Cruisers and Cielo Command Cruisers.
- Fixed fleets composed solely of Hoshiko Robotics Cruisers and Cielo Command Cruisers.
- Fixed bug causing construction to halt if you queued up lots of modules, then cancelled your planet upgrade that made the queueing possible. Now modules will be built up until the current slot count, and queued ones will sit there waiting until you get more slots again.
- Pathfinding now calculates the best path based on travel time instead of distance, so it will now factor in the travel time across a gravity well in relationship to the travel time in phase space, creating smarter routes.
- AI will only place bounty if there is marauding pirates or there are more than 2 teams.
- Fixed bombers deciding to attack fighters if there are better targets around.
- AI is now smarter in placing factories.
- Fixed various bugs in AI building capital ships.
- Fixed ships in AI attack mission not attacking.
- Improved research AI when deciding to build culture.
- Fix for AI constantly telling ships to stop under certain conditions.
- Fixed orders not having correct direction for the ship.
- Fixed having formations cleared when done an action (should only be cleared when given a new order).
- Work-in-progress improvements to AI strategic level combat decisions.
- AI player paths will now attempt to avoid enemy planets on their routes.
- Fixed bug where AI thought there were enemies around a planet when the entities were actually dead but not cleaned up yet.
- Changed colonize mission to allow capital colonies to get out of the mission so they can help clear the colonize target.
- Fixed bug in AI not being able to build structures.
- Work-in-progress AI uses focus firing when it deems it advantageous when weighed against a number of other factors.
- Fixed AI not checking if capital ship had ability to colonize with a valid level, thus tying up a capital ship infinitely and a planet never getting colonized.
- Improved AI use of the black market.
- Increased AI research priority.
- Allow multiple planet exploration if no place else to auto-explore.
- Fix for pathfinding timing estimations.
User Interface / HUD:
- Minor Event System behavior tweaks.
- Can now remove selection from hotkey group with ctrl-shift.
- Non-ranged abilities now show move-to info property.
- Correct rendering of movement lines for non-ranged abilities.
- Added a checkbox to the interface option for toggling zoom-to-cursor.
- Added +/- symbols to allegiance modifiers.
- PlayerSetupWindow now uses smaller theme icons so they fit in the buttons.
- New brush animation for the research subject currently at the top of the queue.
- Resource Extractor build button (when you have an asteroid selected) is now properly disabled if not buildable.
- Display of used and max supply is now properly floored instead of rounded.
- Fixed tracking of ctrl, alt and shift states (which fixes the bug reported with not being able to create control groups).
- Improved the culture rate UI display.
- Occupied resource asteroids no longer show up in the Empire window when in context sensitive mode.
- Extractor modules are now next to one another in the Empire window.
- Transparent scroll bar.
- "Can't buy" hint reason overlays.
- RalliedTo underlay for ships and hotkey groups.
- New camera collision code to zoom close on larger ships and structures.
- Shaking camera can't put you inside entity now.
- FriendlyAllies now use the correct color. Infocards will also respect this setting as well. For example, the breakdown on groups of ships won't be in the player's actual color anymore but instead use the alliance color.
- Fix for end game graphs now having enough data points so it looked bad and lerp crazy.
- Insufficient slot warnings now supercede insufficient resource constraints when upgrading.
- Missing strings for uimapping added.
- Made z-axis control remappable.
- Autostrafe now stops at the edge of the galaxy extents.
- UI now blocks use of abilities that are cooling down, disabled by buffs, etc.
- Fix for random "fighters cannot move through hyperspace" message.
- AlwaysAutoPlaceExtractors is now true by default.
- Changed up the entity sorting order. Frigates that can't move (ex. TechCarrier Turrets) are now placed after all moveable frigates. This is so a mixed group of turrets and colony frigates will still allow the colony frigate to move.
- Show Names setting changed to Show Planet Names.
- Can now right-click set rally point in arbitrary space.
- Fixed bug in empire tree preventing artifact overlay from showing up.
- Replaced all instances of 'squad' with 'squadron.'
- Color change for jump blocked indicator.
- Empire window height shortened.
- More advanced game event throttling.
- Remove duplicate events and only throw frigate complete events when all frigates complete at that planet.
- Only keep 3 last research subjects and new planet discovered events.
- Planet modules now stack properly if they have different player owners.
- Ping behaves better with unknown entities now.
- More detail on info card for planet and capship count.
- Star empirewindow icon no longer additive so it doesn't go invisible against bright backdrops.
- No longer render asteroid mainview icons if rendering extractor icon so they double up.
- Fixed bug with userinterface for closest orbit body.
Graphics:
- New model for Military Research Lab.
- No longer render planet atmosphere and extras when inside it.
- Weapon cooldown slightly randomized for aesthetic purposes.
- New model for Pirate Base.
- New artwork for various new UI/HUD elements listed above.
Sound:
- Added launch sound for robotics bots.
- Fixed repair droids sound insanity.
- Music System Changes:
- Music system now uses action/emotion level and matches it with track data.
- Music change timer removed.
- Old track now fades slightly before track is over.
- No fade-in on new track.
- Removed leading and trailing sound from music tracks.
- Tweaked various music meta data values.
- Switched placeholder sound for 'about to lose planet via culture.'
- Demolition bot sounds added.
- New sound option/setting to not pause when window loses focus. Still stops when minimized though.
Modding:
- Planets and Stars now have FlairEffect support.
- Fighters now support a max speed from data.
- Added minimum distances per planet entity.
Misc.:
- Fixed gradual slowdown caused by effects that were set to infinite playback.
- Starting a game now enables damage in case it has been turned off by tutorial.
- Fixed bug that would cause the in-game save game dialog to populate the text entry with the first recorded game file name even when just saving a game.
- Autosave Improvements:
- No longer autosaves on the first frame of new games and loaded autosave games.
- Filename is now appended with seconds instead of ticks.
- Recorded Games:
- You can now save replays on-demand while still playing the game.
- Recorded game window moved down so the "switch players" button is visible.
- Switch players button no longer cycles through special players (pirates, etc.).
- Normal pausing works in recorded games. Removed the old pause button from the playback window.
- Removed error reporting a damagee shouldn't be hurting a damager as this is possible with damage sharing buffs.
- Fix for crash caused by bombing code attempting to access ships that can't bomb.
- There is now a setting to output detailed Player Economy statistics to the C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Stats directory for balance analysis or for personal interest.
- Fixed lockup due to infinite loop.
- Much improved stats window.
- First pass reduction on save game sizes.
- Optimized EmpireWindow rendering by minimizing texture changes.
Version 0.76.018 - July 12, 2007 (Hotfix):
-------------------------------------------
+ Completed fix for ships not attacking.
+ Fix for ship movement overruns.
+ Research now makes upgrade progress on the first subject in the queue that is not stalled by lack of artifact ownership, lab tier requirements or any other reason.
+ When players are eliminated, so is their culture.
Version 0.76.017 - July 11, 2007 (Hotfix):
-------------------------------------------
+ Fix for ships not attacking at random times.
+ Fixed autocast overriding user commands.
+ Fixed channelling abilities not actually stopping the ship. (Created the bad Cielo behavior.)
+ Fix for autocast not selecting other targets when current target already has buff. (Created bad Hoshiko repair behavior.)
+ Fixed bug where entire teams lose if one of their teammates dies.
+ Fixed bug where name changes were not being transferred to the player setup screen.
+ Fix for replays crashing.
+ Fixed a number of misc. crashes.
+ Improvements to messages that are displayed to explain why an ability isn't casting. Hover over the button with the cursor to see these.
Special thanks to all those who sent minidump and save games, and to all those who found all these bugs so fast! 
Note: If you attempt to colonize a planet that is high in enemy culture, it will revolt. You need to reduce the culture there before you will be able to hold it. This is not a bug and is the desired behavior for the time being. We will be reviewing this area carefully over the next few weeks so it isn't fixed in stone and no doubt some values (like the culture decay) will need to have their balance improved.
Version 0.75.016 - July 10, 2007:
----------------------------------------
Gameplay:
+ New Trade Ship system. Made much less opaque and longer trips are worth substantially more.
+ New Culture System. Planets can revolt and join the enemy!
+ Pirate Raids:
- Rebalanced all Pirate data.
- Varied the likelihood of types of Pirates over the course of the game (e.g., don't see many heavies until late game now).
- Insurgency spawn frequency and spawn size reduced.
- Added Pirate Cutthroat frigate. Watch out!
- Verified that bounty is earned by Pirates when they kill targets.
+ Added the Explore ability to Scouts.
+ Asteroids lose one metal resource node, volcanic planets gain one crystal node.
+ Tuned Refinery ships to carry more metal and crystal/trip. Low on crystal? Time for a refinery!
+ Added basic sensor range research topics. No longer able to see incoming phase jumping ships by default.
+ Tuned research costs:
- Generally lower credit and metal costs, especially at higher levels.
- Slightly higher crystal costs throughout.
- Rebalanced research tier laboratory requirements.
+ Logistics balancing (intermediate fix, still under investigation):
- Increased number of slots per upgrade by 300%.
- Rebalanced refinery, trade port, and culture center efficacy.
- Rebalanced all logistic slot costs.
+ Changed home planet system so all players can only ever have one, instead of one per star.
+ Galaxy Generator:
- Improved planet generation for multiple systems.
- Distributes planetoids and players more equally. Note: If you only choose 3 or fewer players, they will all be in the same system as there are a variety of rules on how players are distributed.
- Reduced number of planets in medium and large galaxy settings and increased the number of star systems. These should be more feasible to complete. Epic sizes can still be created with custom galaxy generator.
- New option to select up to 10 solar systems in custom galaxy generation without modding.
- Note: We strongly recommend you to use the recommended number of players for the larger galaxy sizes to avoid boring or unbalanced gameplay due to lack of encounters. Don't worry, not all those AI players are going to gang up on you, they will fight amongst themselves too unless you place them all on the same team or you become the galactic powerhouse.
- Note: If you increase the number of solar systems in the custom generator, be aware that the number of planets may also need to be increased to create an entertaining galaxy.
- Improved planet distribution around stars when there are few planets.
- Removed bug where high numbers of connections were added to homeworlds.
- Fixed bug where homeworlds are created too far from the star.
- Smarter phase lane connections to minimize co-linear lanes (though there are some cases where there is no choice based on desired galaxy creation parameters).
- Homeworlds should no longer have a chance to connect directly to another homeworld.
- Improved secondary homeworld connection lanes.
- Smarter star placement and connections so larger galaxies are more entertaining.
- Fix for homeworlds connecting planetoids on the opposite side of the star.
- Fixed bug where too many planets could be created.
+ Tweaked the tutorial to prevent the situation where players were unable to advance because they prematurely killed the Pirates/Rebels.
+ Planet module slot counts now use all modules around the planet instead of the planet owner's modules. This way you can't double stack defenses with an ally.
+ HasHullDamaged tweaked for things being constructed. No longer repairs undamaged modules.
+ Adjusted DPS and weapon problems with TEC Siege Capitalship.
+ Numerous misc. balance tweaks.
+ Magnetize now affects the proper number of fighters based on level.
+ Fixed a variety of Artifacts not working.
+ Make sure homeworlds have at least 2 phase lanes even in sparse galaxies.
+ Fix ships with user given targets not using secondary banks.
+ Fix bombers and fighter targeting problems.
+ Fixed random loss of homeworld status.
AI:
+ Fixed Flak Frigates not prioritizing fighters and bombers.
+ Fixed Robotics Frigate following stuff around through phase space to heal it (more generally, fixed autocasting trying to move outside the gravity well).
+ Fix for squads stuck in launching state.
+ Players will now also receive the benefits of an anti-siege AI unless their units have other orders (i.e., local defenses will try their best to prevent the planet from getting bombarded unelss you tell them otherwise).
+ AI players may now give feedback that they appreciate the gifts you've given them.
+ New fleet vs. fleet combat analysis.
+ Fixed suicidal AI colony ships.
+ Fixed AI players not selecting a capital ship teching path under conditions in which he should have (i.e., fix AI not building capital ships).
+ Improved player AI ability to balance ships required for multiple objectives.
+ Fixed fighter's target being out of sync for a frame from target squad.
+ Fix allowing negative hate.
+ Reduced AI buying unnecessary ship slot upgrades early in the game.
+ Fixed bug in player AI ships flipping in and out of attack fleets.
+ Fixed stalled attack missions that were waiting on siege capabilities.
+ Planet shield now considered higher priority threat.
+ Allow Siege ships to be transferred from a mission that doesn't need them to one that does.
+ Increased resistance to retreat based on numerous factors.
+ Fixed AI fixating on colonizing planets in bad locations (i.e., behind enemy lines).
+ Allow dangerous colonize mission to give up Colony Ship to less dangerous missions.
+ Slightly reduced AI exploration priority.
+ Fixed combat ship production budget from being overly starved by other demands of lesser priority.
+ Fixed fighters not attacking when given orders and attackrange:none.
+ AI now defends against aggressive culture.
+ Numerous misc. incremental improvements.
+ AI is now much less likely to colonize planets that an ally has cleared, however, if you colony-steal from him, he will be quite annoyed with you!
+ Refinery ships will no longer go to extractors that aren't operational.
+ Fixed AI scouting problems when adjacent to star.
+ Improved AI scouting pattern.
+ Adjusted Pirate retreat logic.
+ Improvements to AI pre-attack scouting.
+ Fixed autocast not choosing attack target as potential candidate for optimum casting.
+ Increased research priority for unlocked ship dependant abilities.
+ Show weapon ranges of enemies now.
+ If the AI loses his homeplanet, re-establishing a new homeplanet is now a very high priority.
User Interface / HUD:
+ New optional context sensitive empire tree mode. This mode now shows what you have selected at all times. Enable this in the User Interface options window.
+ New Empire Tree mode shows ships in phase space in new context sensitive mode (special empty node for them).
+ Event System
- New Game Events
0 Game start event.
0 Capital planet changed.
0 Capital ship level up.
0 Planet discovered (for auto-scout).
0 Artifact discovered.
0 Planet soon to be lost to enemy culture.
0 Planet lost to enemy culture.
0 No longer get capital ship level up events for ships that you don't own or can't see.
0 No more chat message for levelling up, only a game event.
0 Fleet under attack notification now says "scouts" if "fleet" is considered a scouting party.
0 Hovering over game event buttons will now put an overlay on top of the event entity.
0 Changed eventlist rendering to only highlight when the event has been selected. Tweaked the flashing overlay to check the parent planet if it has one.
0 Set up HUD to show name of focused event planet.
- Can now reverse iterate the game events with right-click.
- Highlight top event in game event list when you mouseover.
- Alt now shows entity details while browsing events.
- In new Empire Tree mode, event clicking selects instead of focusing.
- Shift-clicking event adds event entity to selection.
- You can now attack/move to an event.
+ New option to always have gravity well up (on by default).
+ New option to turn autosave on and off from within game in User Interface options (on by default at 10 minute intervals - see below on how to change the time).
+ CTRL/ALT/SHIFT keys mapped the same on both the left and right side of the keyboard.
+ Alt shows planet connections now. Makes "Show planet connections" option usable.
+ If "Show Main View Icons" is disabled no longer shows icons of ships in phase space and allows for meshes to be visible at very large distances.
+ Show planet connections if issuing move order.
+ Fixed bug that outputted -1 distance to home planet on Infocard when you lost your home planet.
+ Changed the strings for tax rate modifiers to not say bonus (as they are usually negative).
+ Tweaked shortcut keys.
+ Infocard display optimizations.
+ Can now cycle your selection in reverse with Shift-Tab.
+ Fix for scroll bars appearing at the top of the screen.
+ Changing autocast state now changes state for all entities selected.
+ Changed Empire Tree filter to Orbited instead of Orbiting.
+ Changes to move rendering to make drawing move lines more efficient.
+ When showing grav well extents, show as long as mesh is visible.
+ Fixed flip-flopping action lines when targets are lost.
+ Fixed connection lines into grav well artifacts.
+ Can now arbitrary move at the sun again!
+ No in-between stage where planet is icon but icon children are visible still.
+ Fog of War works properly with zoom-to-cursor now.
+ Renamed some research subjects to be more consistent w/the pattern for that type.
+ Fixed adding fighter to control group causing crash.
+ Can't multiply press buttons in actiongrid anymore.
+ Removed tier indicators for research (just not rendering for now as they are currently not used).
+ New bounty notification throttling: bounty messages per player only posted if the added bounty since the last message exceeds 2000 credits or 120 seconds have passed since last bounty was added.
+ Infocards for various details left of portrait window.
+ Dead entities no longer show up in pip clouds.
+ Changed the time display of recorded games to show final time instead of total time elapsed.
+ Fix for throttling departure messages...also added condition that entity is selected.
+ Fixed trying to build on something, having it fail, and then having the auto-build kick in.
+ New set of mainview overlay/underlay icons just for the star.
+ Improved error messages for when you don't have enough module slots.
+ New artifact overlay for planet icons.
+ Fixed bug causing mainview icon selection fills not being rendered.
+ Pip cloud max entity counts adjusted.
+ Now an overlay for planet icons when your phase jump is blocked.
+ Added a "labs built" label to the research window now that some research tiers require multiple labs.
+ Added Pirate, diplomacy strings and misc. fixes including minor spelling/grammar issues.
+ You can now change custom galaxy settings in large increments by holding down Shift (this behavior applies to most things that you can increment/decrement/buy/sell in the game).
+ Fixed resolution list length.
+ Fix for recorded games where squad icons were visible for docked squads when full visibility was turned on.
+ "upgrades available" indicator for ships w/unspent squads or ability points is now broken down into two parts w/different characters.
+ Changed behavior of ZoomInstant so that it refocuses the camera on the best entity it can find (closest to the target distance).
+ Diplomacy window now uses the Show Team Colors setting when rendering the player names.
+ TextEntry windows now handle holding down Ctrl and using the arrow keys (jump between alphanumeric words).
+ Fixed fog-of-war to only show when close to planet.
+ Tweaked string for new planet discovered event to make it easier to distinguish from planet colonized string.
+ Minor tweaks to autocast status infocard string. Changed color to grey so more distinct, fixed string.
+ Fixed height of sound button.
+ Fixed Press state of event button.
+ "Can't Colonize" error message now says the research subject needed for colonization.
Graphics:
+ New gravity well texture that shows up on black skybox.
+ Fixed Trade Ship engine trails.
+ Fixed Kodiak shield.
+ Skybox seams fully painted out.
+ Artifact overlay.
+ Fixed planet bombing shells from going invisible.
+ Numerous misc. art for all new user interface elements listed above.
+ Skyboxes are now split into "colored" and "deep space" allowing players to choose whether they want colored, deep space, or no skyboxes included.
+ TEC Kol now has the correct turrets.
+ Phase Jump charging effect now fades out nicely.
Sound:
+ Placeholders for various new events added.
Modding:
+ Galaxy generator is much more likely to produce decent results with crazy modded settings.
Misc.:
+ Death physics improves death sequence for moving ships.
+ Gave debris some of ship's momentum.
+ Oriented shield generator towards planet instead of away.
+ TextEntry windows are now much more strict on what characters they accept to prevent bad save game names.
+ Fix for can't see your own phase jumping ships.
+ Fixed Sync Error in Tutorial.
+ Fixed one potential cause of Alt-Tab crash.
+ Fix for crash when trying to query adjacent planets of neutral planet.
+ Guards to prevent crash on Vista with NULL vertex or index buffers. No fix yet, but it's looking like an NVIDIA driver problem.
+ New MiniDump that asks for dxdiag results as well as the minidump.
+ Last known PlayerSetup is now saved.
+ Fixed Auto Ability upgrade status per ship not being saved.
+ Changed Phase Jump charging physics to prevent ugly change in direction when entering phase space.
Frequently Asked Questions:
+ "~" (tilde) is used to move in 3D (i.e., along the z-axis, hit tilde once you have the standard planar move line on-screen). You must use the Move button on the HUD for this.
+ Autosave is on by default now at 10 minute intervals. It can be turned off in the User Interface options. You can edit the interval by opening C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting\user.setting and changing the AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL value.
+ Screenshots are taken by pressing PrtScrn.
+ Save games, minidumps, screenshots, recorded games, UI mappings are all found in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\
+ Ctrl-Shift-Z turns off the HUD.
+ If you feel like you are clicking too much to do something (buying, selling, incrementing, decrementing anything) try holding down Shift to increment the quantity per click.
+ If your screen is messed up, try dropping the MultiSample values in the Graphic options screens.
+ If you get into a bad visual state (invalid resolution, etc.) you can edit the Graphic settings in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting\user.setting to try different values.
+ Unless you mess around with the team settings, AI players will fight against themselves as well - they aren't all against you like in many RTS's. Naturally, as alliances are formed or there is a powerhouse that needs taking down this may shift over the course of a game. We strongly recommend you use the recommended number of players for your galaxy to avoid boring sessions with few encounters, especially if you use the medium, large, or custom galaxy settings.
