Sins of a Solar Empire II
by Ironclad Games Corporation · 15 Aug, 2024
112 downloads
About the Game
Sins of a Solar Empire II is the sequel to the critically acclaimed space strategy game that seamlessly blends real-time battle tactics with the depth of 4X. As both emperor and battle commander you must lead one of six playable factions to victory against the threat of extinction!
Real-time Tactics meets 4X Depth
There are no turns. There is no battle mode. There is no strategic mode. It's all one mode and it's all in real-time.
Instantly zoom in to control tactical engagements where every missile, turret, and ship is fully simulated and an important part of the battle. Instantly zoom back out to manage your empire where every asteroid, moon, and planet orbits its parent in a slowly evolving strategic landscape.
Unparalleled Gameplay Experiences
Sins of a Solar Empire II delivers sprawling empires, huge fleets, and completely new and exciting gameplay moments that can only be found in Sins II.
The Surprise: Build a secondary fleet on a rogue asteroid and launch a devastating surprise attack when its orbit brings it behind the enemy's back line.
The Body Block: Stall an enemy's home planet bombardment by using your massive titan to body block swarms of missiles attempting to knock out your starbase and its critical planetary shield.
The Screen: Advance a screen of point defense flak frigates to protect your fragile long-range cruisers by intercepting incoming bombers and missiles.
The Swarm: Maneuver your faster moving ships to pick apart unescorted larger ships. Their powerful but slow-moving turrets simply can't track your agile strike force.
The Influencer: Influence a hostile expansionist Minor Faction to secure your border while reserving enough Influence to win an auction for a powerful item to install on your best capital ship.
The Backstab: Protect yourself from a backstab by establishing a time locked alliance. But pay attention to the time - your “ally” may move his fleet to your doorstep just as the lock expires!
Features
A Dynamic Galaxy: Planets orbit their stars in real-time causing the galaxy's structure to slowly change, creating new battle fronts and new opportunities. Players can view the state of the galaxy up to an hour in the future to prepare their strategies.
3 Unique Races: It's War Year 35 and the emergent TEC, alien Vasari, and deviant Advent have been forced to adapt and evolve to survive.
TEC: The inhabitants of this region of the galaxy, the TEC are humans who have joined together as the Trader Emergency Coalition to combat the alien Vasari empire. They rely heavily on trade to support their industrial base and augment resource income.
Vasari: Ten thousand years ago, the Vasari Empire once ruled over hundreds of planets and dozens of sentient species. Now on the run from an unknown enemy they use their mastery of phase space to conquer and acquire resources to continue their exodus.
Advent: A civilization of humans who were forcibly outcast by the Traders over a thousand years ago, the deviant Advent have returned with technologically amplified psionics and the power of the Unity - a devastating expression of their collective will.
Each race features unique starting conditions, gameplay mechanics, units, abilities, items, and technologies. Their game changing new Empire Systems add a whole new level of strategic capabilities:
TEC Trade: The new TEC trade system enables them to dynamically adapt their economy by adjusting the allocation of traded resources on demand.
Vasari Phase Resonance: Strategically placed structures collect Phase Resonance allowing the Vasari to customize their global phase mastery effects.
Advent Unity: Enables the Advent to harness the collective will of their population, unlocking the full potential of the Unity's global abilities.
6 Playable Factions: The parent races are further differentiated by unique sub-factions each with their own unique features and play styles that reflect their motivations and goals. For example, the TEC: Primacy is a xenophobic 'human first' empire focused on aggression and the Vasari: Exodus is willing to destroy planets to fuel their mobile empire.
Combat Simulation: A detailed combat simulation adds incredible depth to tactical gameplay. Turrets with their own pitch and tracking speeds make firing solutions important in battles. Fully simulated missiles can be blocked by ships or destroyed by point defense. New mechanics around shields, armor and hull points give greater depth to units and tactical decisions.
Empire Management: All planets and ships can now be easily analyzed, customized, and upgraded in one place without the tedium of finding and clicking through all units in your empire. The Intelligent Construction system will queue up the entire chain of prerequisites to fulfill any item, research, or unit build request.
Fleet Management: The new fleet system includes the ability to request specific reinforcements on the fly. Requested units are automatically queued from the optimal factory and rallied to the fleet. Combined with Intelligent Construction this allows you to focus on the important tactical decisions and big picture strategy.
Unit Customization: Planet surfaces can now be customized with special items that vary by race and planet type. Capital ships, titans and starbases can also be customized with race specific items to fill gaps in the fleet's composition or target specific strategies.
Minor Factions: Numerous minor factions now inhabit the galaxy offering trade, auctions for rare items, and with enough influence, access to their most powerful abilities. Will you befriend them or annihilate them to keep your enemies from turning them against you?
Diplomacy: New features include a new offer / counteroffer system, the ability to give or demand planets, and the game changing time locked cease-fires that prevent your 'ally' from backstabbing you until it expires - but keep on eye on the time!
Multicore 64-bit Engine: The Sins II engine can utilize all available cores and RAM to maximize performance, now and into the future. Dynamic lighting, physically based rendering, higher resolution textures and more create a beautiful tapestry.
10-Player Multiplayer Support: A cloud based online system supports both 'join codes' and lobbies to make it easier than ever to play with others. Games can now be rejoined in progress if a player drops or has to leave; humans can even take over for AI players if a friend joins late.
In-game Mod Support: Mod support has been integrated into the game, making it easy to discover, install, and share mods. Custom maps are automatically shared for multiplayer games, preventing the hassle of everyone downloading ahead of time.
Easy to Learn; Hard to Master: With an elegant and intuitive user interface Sins II is easy to pick up and play. However, mastering your chosen faction will take true skill.
Screenshots
12 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
v2.01.1 Change List
Gameplay
[p align="start"]Eidolon planet development[p align="start"]The Eidolon get more out of the worlds they take, and colonizing one no longer runs into conflict with shroud limitations.Colonizing with the Izharien Demiurge now grants its free Logistics, Defense and Population track levels in full. The grants were being clipped by the shroud development cap on the planet the Eidolon had just shrouded.
City worlds: population growth at the top population track from 0.025 to 0.03.
Ferrous worlds: population growth from 0.01 to 0.015 at the third population level and from 0.01 to 0.02 at the fourth.
Volcanic, volcanic moon and ice worlds: population growth from 0.01 to 0.015 at the third population level.
Ice and oceanic worlds: planet health at the fourth influence level from 500 to 750.
Ship graveyards: metal income per population from 0.0038 to 0.0048 at the second and third population levels.
Clairvoyance grants detection quality at the target planet as well as vision, rising from +2 to +4 with ability level. Psionic divination sees through a cloak.
Cleanse now purges corruption for all nearby units based on the amount of corruption the initial target had when it was cleansed.
The bonus now grants +5 civilian and +10 military structure slots on top of its existing gravity well radius effect.
Fixes
Last Stand multiplayer lobbies can be created again.
Ships no longer drift away from a fleet whose leader is pathing to it.
Auto-cast abilities whose turn alignment covers a full circle fire again. Splice Amalgams never triggered while its carrier held an attack order, a move order to another gravity well, or Hold Position; Advent Guidance and eight other abilities were authored the same way.
Faction missions are no longer disabled for everyone when an Eidolon player is in the game. Mission UI, updates, events and rewards are now switched off per faction rather than globally.
Saves written while the Herald civilian research lab and culture center briefly carried a traffic port no longer crash on the first traffic tick. Stale traffic port components are removed on load and their traffic ships detached.
Replays recorded on the DLC release build no longer misread command serialization.
Structures built on asteroids appear as their own icons in the selection window instead of being filtered out as clutter.
Cloak controls stay hidden until the simulation is running, so a quick-load no longer reads a simulation that is still loading.
Berserk weapons pick their target correctly and can no longer return a target alongside a rejection.
Applying mods should no longer hang.
Mod Playlists can no longer be given a duplicate name; collisions get a numbering suffix and existing duplicates are migrated.
Mod Playlist names match case-insensitively, so Load and Delete work when the typed casing differs from the saved casing.
Refreshing your mod subscriptions no longer clears enabled playlists.
Mod disk space warnings no longer fire falsely when the mod install directory does not exist yet, and stale warnings are cleared when space cannot be measured.
UI
A loading spinner now appears during blocking operations such as applying mods.
Corrupted planets and fixtures show a radial progress ring around their main view icon while shrouding.
Permanent allies no longer offer an intelligence purchase, and the button explains why.
Your faction plate and primary color choices are remembered along with the faction, color, icon and portrait settings you already had saved.
The Unfollow button on a collection's playlist explains that the playlist is managed by the collection and cannot be deleted on its own.
Fixed a typo in the Vasari Alliance Gravity Pulse upgrade description.
Graphics and Performance
Particle billboards render at half resolution by default and are composited back with a depth-aware upsample. This cuts billboard pixel shader work roughly fourfold and blend traffic by around eight times, which is what keeps large battles from dropping frames on lower-end hardware. A new Full Resolution Particles setting opts back in to the old path. Beams, exhaust trails and coronas are unaffected.
Billboard buckets that never write refraction offsets now skip the refraction render target entirely and use pixel shader variants with refraction compiled out, saving up to a third of the pass's blend bandwidth with no visual change.
Shadows are filtered with nine hardware comparison fetches instead of twenty-five point samples and twenty-five shader-side compares, for the same 5x5 filter.
The parallax march is skipped on materials with no parallax, which is nearly all of them. It was previously looping and refining to displace the texture coordinate by exactly nothing on every pixel.
A cloaked ship's rim, edge line and shimmer now build and dissolve with the hull for observers who never see the steady cloak. They used to pop on at full strength over an invisible hull.
The intro movie's loading throbber has been replaced by the shared loading indicator.
Modding
Planet track grant operators accept ignore_shroud_restricted_max_track_level, letting a grant bypass a planet's shroud development cap.
Abilities accept passive_cooldown_time, and buffs can drive change_ability_remaining_cooldown with a passive cooldown type.
Action data sources can declare buff_unit_modifiers with a buff_unit_modifier_id, so a buff can carry a modifier whose value comes from an ability's level values.
New per_current_corruption action value transform.
Main view icons support a shroud_progress_arc with brush, begin and end angle, direction, and progress and background colors, configured in main_view.uniforms.
The unity_mana_use_base_asset_conversion_rates and unity_mana_use_improved_asset_conversion_rates empire modifiers have been removed. Use the per-asset unity_mana_to_*_conversion_rate modifiers.
v2.01.0 Change List
Gameplay
[p align="start"]Iskazhar Epitaph (Buff)[p align="start"]The Eidolon Starbase has grown more powerful and precise, with one new upgrade and one improved upgrade.[p align="start"]The Dimensional Shifter teleportation can now be targeted to a specific location in its destination gravity well. However, with precision comes a need for information, and the ability now requires vision over the target to activate. Fortunate then, that the Eidolon can observe a destination unseen...[p align="start"]The Phase Destablizer has been added to the Starbase as a new researchable item. This device will damage the hull and drain the antimatter of enemy forces attempting to jump away from it. This cannot kill a target... But it can leave them weakened and perilously close to death.Dimensional Shifter: now position targeted. Select a visible location in the target gravity well to begin the 30 second relocation charge up, which is now shown in the tooltip.
Phase Destablizer: unlocked by Phase Destabilizer Design (Tier 4, 235 seconds, 1400/600/600, requires the starbase). Costs 2 Utility exotics, builds in 120 seconds, one per starbase. Enemy ships that phase jump out of the gravity well lose 50% of their current hull and 50% of their current antimatter over 5 seconds.
Void Missile: range from 10,000 to 12,500, pierce from 400 to 450.
Void Blast Charge (the missile it fires): top speed from 1750 to 2000, acceleration time from 7 to 8 seconds, turn rate from 75 to 60 and time to full turn from 3 to 2 seconds, armor from 5 to 10.
Its shock cannon is now tagged as a shock cannon dealing energy damage. It was tagged as a physical autocannon, so it answered to the wrong research.
Phasic Energy Regulation: every Phase Jump Inhibitor (TEC, Advent and Vasari) now removes 0.005 corruption from its planet every second and lifts the planet's shroud restriction by one development level while it stands.
Each step reduces the planetary corruption debuff and raises how far a shrouded planet's tracks can be developed. Fully researched, every line reaches the +4 development levels the old single research gave.
TEC: Dark Zone Designation (Tier 2, 150 seconds, 750/125/150), Phasic Telemetry Monitoring (Tier 4, 360 seconds, 1700/300/500 and 2 Defense exotics), Phasic Catastrophe Mitigation (Tier 5, 525 seconds, 2200/400/700 and 1 Ultimate exotic). Each cuts the corruption debuff by 25%, for +1, +1 and +2 development levels.
Replaces the single Tier 5 research (600 seconds, 2250/425/750, 50% debuff reduction, +4 levels).
Advent Reborn: Shrouded Embrace (Tier 1, 60 seconds, 250/25/75), Corruption Redirection (Tier 2, 120 seconds, 500/125/300), Shrouded Attunement (Tier 3, 270 seconds, 850/275/650 and 1 Economic exotic). Each cuts the debuff by 25%, for +1, +1 and +2 levels.
Replaces the single Tier 3 research (50% debuff reduction, +4 levels).
Advent Wrath: Telepathic Isolation (Tier 2, 120 seconds, 500/125/300), Sacrificial Cleansing (Tier 3, 225 seconds, 800/250/600 and 1 Economic exotic), Incorruptible Unity (Tier 4, 360 seconds, 1100/425/900 and 2 Economic exotics). Each cuts the debuff by 25%, for +1, +1 and +2 levels.
Replaces the single Tier 4 research (420 seconds, 1150/450/950), which removed the debuff entirely. The full line now reaches 75%.
Vasari Exodus: Phasic Energy Suppression (Tier 2, 150 seconds, 270 metal and 240 crystal), Phasic Counter Resonance (Tier 3, 270 seconds, 450 metal, 480 crystal and 1 Utility exotic), Inhibitor Adaptation (Tier 4, 420 seconds, 630 metal, 720 crystal and 2 Utility exotics). The steps cut the debuff by 18%, 18% and 36%, for +1, +1 and +2 levels.
Replaces the single Tier 4 research (50% debuff reduction, +4 levels).
Hull from 450 to 400, shields from 400 to 350.
Plasma weapon damage from 40 to 30.
Vespa Blueprint moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2, research time from 75 to 120 seconds, cost from 300/50/100 to 500/125/300.
Telepathic Coordination (was Material Communion): Tier 1, 60 seconds, 250/25/75. Converts Focus to credits at 2 credits per point of Focus.
Collective Distribution (was Greater Material Communion): Tier 2, 150 seconds, 550/150/350 and 1 Economic exotic. Raises the rate to 5 credits per point of Focus.
Material Communion (new): Tier 5, 600 seconds, 1450/625/1250 and 1 Ultimate exotic. Adds 1 metal and 1 crystal per point of Focus.
Previously the line sat at Tiers 2 and 3 and converted Focus to credits, metal and crystal at 10 of each per point, rising to 20 of each.
Eidolon supply research is cheaper: Clandestine Caches from 155 to 105 seconds and 1000/350/350 to 650/200/200, Siphoned Industry from 235 to 175 seconds and 1400/600/600 to 1050/400/400, Vanguard Coordination from 330 to 260 seconds and 1800/850/850 to 1450/650/650.
Retributive Capacitive Shield Design: research time from 175 to 260 seconds, cost from 1050/400/400 to 1450/650/650.
Zhaltharien Anathema: the Crest cloaking buffs now end when the ability is released instead of lingering.
Shrouding a planet can now draw on the market. Hold Alt when shrouding to buy the missing resources.
Right clicking a Shroud Mode button, on the quick bar or in the Planetary Corruption window, now deactivates the planet's active mode. Previously the gesture did nothing, or focused the planet.
Alliance offers can no longer demand more influence than the ally holds or can hold. The demand tooltip shows the amount, the button is disabled when the visible side holds no influence, and a stale demand can still be taken back.
Fixes
Strikecraft are removed when their carrier's slots are removed.
Achievement progress that accumulates over a match (Systemic Corruption, Dust and Echoes, plate spins, resources raided) now survives save and load. It was silently reset by every load. The Fear of Icebergs capital-ship latch is re-derived on load so it can no longer be laundered by reloading.
Closed a desync in server-hosted games: AI diplomacy reactions to gifts and to enemy culture domination were applied on the client rather than in the simulation.
Lobbies without the Harbinger DLC can change the starting mode again.
The lobby map settings tooltip no longer crashes on an unknown starting mode.
The map preview keeps starting gravity wells accurate: overrides match the launched game, dragging a position enables and resets overrides, generated maps keep their random starts, and legend colour markup renders correctly.
News items are shown in the right (published date) order.
The pirate king's Redline Navigation tooltip uses the shared "hull lost on phase jump" line.
1.51 saves load again.
Unit item names in the faction picker's unit preview come from localized text rather than file names.
\[Harbinger DLC] Rift fixes: a rift closes when its homeworld is lost but stays open until its queued delivery lands, a rift that failed to close after a Major Portal built a capital ship now closes, and a closing rift is non-functional on the tick its close is scheduled.
\[Harbinger DLC] Shroud restriction and corruption debuff modifiers from planet-scoped sources (such as the Phase Jump Inhibitor) are applied, and a non-owner's view of a shrouded planet's development limit no longer borrows the owner's track definitions and honours future research.
\[Harbinger DLC] The Eidolon Starbase’s teleporter's landing point is clamped to the gravity well, tested at landing height with the starbase's build footprint, and an icon click lands midway between the planet and the well edge.
\[Harbinger DLC] The Scourge weapon research description now says light phase cannon, which is what it grants, not a super heavy phase dart.
UI
The main menu logo has hover and pressed states.
Save and load menus can search icons of DLC-locked players.
Enabling or disabling a mod that contains shaders now shows a Restart Required dialog, since shaders only load at startup.
The front-end welcome message was retired in favour of the news screen.
New shared tooltip lines: hull, armor, shield and antimatter lost on phase jump, charge up duration, and teleport to target location.
\[Harbinger DLC] The Cloak button tooltip shows the shortest and longest cloak cooldown remaining across the selection, and honours unity cooldown status. The button's selection walk is cached per frame.
\[Harbinger DLC] Build tooltips show cloak detection, including player and level modifiers.
\[Harbinger DLC] New Show Corruption Lines setting. Corruption spread lines and rings fade with camera distance, their fibers collapse when zoomed in, and the fade stays continuous while following a unit through a phase lane.
\[Harbinger DLC] The "cloaked unit detected by enemy" notification no longer plays a sound.
\[Harbinger DLC] Eidolon influence research and the survey research have proper descriptions, and the Corruption Reservoir description was reworded.
Modding
Abilities can be position targeted with position_target_relocates_owner_unit and position_target_gravity_well_must_be_fully_detected, and buffs can carry a destination_position of target_position with a target_gravity_well unit type. This is how the Dimensional Shifter works.
Buffs can set make_dead_on_source_ability_released.
ignore_shroud_limit and planet_corruption_debuff_strength are honored from planet-scoped modifier sources such as buffs.
Corruption line zoom fade knobs in main_view.uniforms: zoomed_in_alpha_scale, zoomed_in_unfocused_alpha_scale, zoomed_in_fade_begin_distance_scale, zoomed_in_fade_end_distance_scale.
- Corruption Decay delay value changed to 60 seconds.
- Corruption Decay value changed to 0.001 (1 Corruption decays every 10 seconds)
- Azithel Mote Void Missile cooldown increased from 15s to 20s.
- Azithel Mote Corrupt Recursion Phase Echo duration reduced from 30s to 15s.
- Eidolon Very Light Void Missile (Azithel Mote, Amalgam Bomber) Armor Points removed, Hull reduced from 5 to 1.
- Eidolon Void Blast Charge Missile (Sythren Onslaught) Armor Points reduced from 10 to 5, Armor Strength reduced from 25 to 20, Hull reduced from 5 to 1.
- Eidolon Light Void Missile (Akeniel Geist, Lakhaziel Archon) Armor Points increased from 10 to 15, Armor Strength reduced from 25 to 20, Hull reduced from 5 to 1.
- Eidolon Medium Void Missile (Thalkerin Revenant, Lakhaziel Archon, Phase Dart Defense Platform, Zhaltharien Anathema) Armor Points increased from 10 to 40, Armor Strength reduced from 25 to 20, Hull reduced from 5 to 1.
- Eidolon Heavy Void Missile (Iskazhar Epitaph) Armor Points increased from 10 to 80, Armor Strength increased from 25 to 40, Hull increased from 5 to 10.
- Eidolon Vortex Missile (Lakhaziel Archon Vortex Missile Salvo) Armor Points increased from 10 to 15, Armor Strength reduced from 25 to 20, Hull reduced from 5 to 1.
- Afterimage Phase Echo duration reduced from 60s to 30s.
- Persistent Afterimage Phase Echo duration reduced from 90s to 60s.
- Nethril Husk Weapon Refit moved from Vanguard Tier 3 to Vanguard Tier 2.5.
- Azithel Mote Weapon Refit moved from Vanguard Tier 2.5 to Vanguard Tier 3.
- Material Communion focus conversion rate reduced from 10:1 to 1:1.
- Greater Material Communion focus conversion rate reduced from 10:1 to 1:1.5 (Final conversion rate with both techs is 1:2.5)
- Added correct ship corruption debuffs to minor factions and militia to account for edge cases where they gain control of capital ships.
- Fixed Advent Focus Conversion hud icon.
- Applied correct access limitation to Amalgam Grafter unit item (Carrier only)
- Corrected Sythren Onslaught preferred weapon range to favor its longer range missiles.
- Corrected Epitaph Starbase Super Heavy beam weapon name.
- Corrected naming of Culture Center Blueprint to match structure name (Communications Node Blueprint)
A small update today to add a quality-of-life improvement, balance adjustments for missiles and point-defense and other items.
Added visual range circles for defense structures during placement.
Fixed bug that prevented missiles from retargeting (still requires requisite tech unlock).
TEC
Garda Flak Frigate: increased each turret’s pitch/yaw firing tolerance by 150% to better track enemy missiles/strikecraft. This will greatly improve their ability to engage off-axis missiles such as those fired by the Tempest, as well as improving their ability to target missiles that are very close to the Garda.
\[Reinforcements DLC] Takadaran Command Ship
The Takadaran is intended to act as a force multiplier for the smaller units fielded by the TEC Enclave in the mid and late game. Increasing the magnitude of both its defensive and offensive support abilities should help it, and by extension fleets of frigates, cruisers and corvettes, remain relevant even in high lethality late game battles.
Hold the Line ability updated:
Ship damage reduction increased from -10%/-15%/-20%/-25%/-35% to -20%/-30%/-40%/-50%/-70%
Structure damage reduction increased from -20%/-25%/-30%/-35%/-45% to -40%/-50%/-60%/-70%/-90%
Magnetic Overshield damage prevention increased from 40%/50%/60%/70%/90% to 50%/60%/70%/80%/100%
This should help the Takadaran’s build variety by providing both greater returns on a single ability point investment in Magnetic Overshield, as well as allowing a full five point investment to completely mitigate incoming damage against the ship’s Shield, Armor or Hull while active.
Coordinate ability updated:
Corvette cooldown changed from -0.15/-0.2/-0.25/-0.3/-0.4 to -0.1/-0.2/-0.3/-0.4/-0.5
Frigate cooldown changed from -0.1/-0.15/-0.2/-0.25/-0.35 to -0.1/-0.2/-0.3/-0.4/-0.5
Cruiser cooldown changed from -0.05/-0.1/-0.15/-0.2/-0.3 to -0.1/-0.2/-0.3/-0.4/-0.5
Corvette linear speed bonus changed from 0.05/0.1/0.15/0.2/0.3 to 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5
Frigate angular speed bonus changed from 0.1/0.15/0.2/0.25/0.35 to 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5
Cruiser ability cost bonus changed from 0.15/0.2/0.25/0.3/0.4 to 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5
Updated new TEC portrait images (previous were older versions of the hand-painted redos)
Advent
Added ability for purchased Gauss Defense Platforms to gain shield burst and regen (via Advent synergies).
Added ability for Phase Jump Inhibitors to gain shield burst/regen (via Advent synergies).
Vigilis Sentinel: increased each turret’s pitch/yaw firing tolerance by 150% to better track enemy missiles/strikecraft. This will greatly improve their ability to engage off-axis missiles, such as those fired by the Tempest, as well as improving their ability to target missiles that are very close to the Vigilis.
Tempest Frigate: Missile damage reduced from 20 to 18 (-10%)
The Tempest is greatly overperforming - while PD changes will help to prevent it being a dominant pick, a damage reduction is also warranted to reduces its overall lethality when massed.
Vasari
\[Reinforcements DLC] Anarkul Command Ship
Countermeasure Pulse ability: added pierce value of 60 at all levels.
Junsurak Warden: increased each turret’s pitch/yaw firing tolerance by 200% to better track enemy missiles/strikecraft. This will greatly improve their ability to engage off-axis missiles, such as those fired by the Tempest, as well as improving their ability to target missiles that are very close to the Warden.
Increased range of ultra-light phase missile from 5100 to 7200
Point Defense Pulse Guns:
Decreased cooldown from 1.5 to 1 second
Decreased damage from 6 to 4
Increased range from 5100 to 7200
The Warden’s point defense guns were underperforming against the Tempest - faster firing PD guns with unchanged final damage per second greatly improves the Warden’s ability to suppress Tempest attacks despite having relatively few guns for a PD unit. In addition, longer range allows the Warden to screen for the Vasari fleet more effectively from a static position - this will further differentiate it from the short range but mobile Sulsurak Defensor.
More than a hotfix, but we’re calling it one anyway!
NEW - Texture Quality Setting
We’ve added a new setting to Settings → Graphics → Rendering Device to adjust the texture quality of units in the game.
Adjust this if you’re on a laptop or on Steam Deck, as those systems use Shared Memory for graphics and will crash if you run out of it. This is the #1 cause of crashes for players on these systems.
Custom Portraits
Updated default custom portrait directory for the legacy AI artwork so users can select pictures from previous versions.
Made various custom portrait bug fixes (e.g., garbage elements showing between menus, custom portrait selection not ‘sticking’ between menus/sessions).
Updated to allow you to use custom portraits for AI players.
Fixed bug where the map generator would incorrectly count planets.
Fixed bug that allowed quicksaving in tutorials.
Fixed various save game compatibility bugs.
Fixed the Map Search bar not working in the Change Map dialog.
Various localization fixes (more incoming).
- UI tweak to player setup window to add a button that goes to the full faction selection window. Also, updated behavior on clicking the full player faction button to be a quick dropdown selector as an alternate.
- Fixed crash bug caused by loading a save game from before neutral extractors/labs were invulnerable.
Fixed bug that could cause corvettes near a fleet leader to slowly tumble through space. This was due to the orbiting attack pattern that would cause flip-flopping on physics goals.
Fixed issue where allied AI players could end up in an endless tug-of-war trying to capture an object. This alters some of the capture mechanics:
Capturable extractors and labs are now invulnerable.
In cases where a human and AI ally(ies) are contesting a capture, the player will take precedence.
In cases where it’s multiple allied AI players, the first player on the same team takes the capture with allies contributing.
Note: We are aware of a bug where some Epic players lose their DLC. This is due to Steam client being open at the same time as the game (even if you don’t own Sins 2 on Steam). You can workaround this bug by closing Steam when you launch the game from Epic. It will be addressed in a new hotfix.The fix for Epic DLC users is included in this hotfix. If you still have issues, please let us know.
Version 1.60.3 (Hotfix) Notes
Fixed bug that would cause the game to display multiple languages at the same time, if you changed your language setting repeatedly within the same session. This should also resolve a rare hang bug.
Fixed bug that would have some tooltips display “inf” instead of their true value.
Fixed bug that would sometimes cause point-defense weapons to overkill missiles.
Fixed bug that caused units to ‘teleport’ to off the game map. This was due to a race condition in the physics system. Note that there’s a similar corvette bug that is not yet fixed (will be in next hotfix).
Map Generator:
Added additional invalid characters to name filter.
Prevented leading 0s on seed values.
Fixed issue that would snap seed to max value when entering a value larger than allowed.
Fixed issues with non-English name display.
Added new Phase Jamming icons.
Fixed bug that caused particle FX not to scale as intended (should be more visible now).
Updated Pirate Boarding Crew tooltip to reflect its new functionality.
Meson Bolt tooltip updated to reflect debuffs and bonus damage.
Transcencia Starbase Shield Booster renamed to Psionic Shield.
Flechette Blast ability now correctly has a 45 sec. cooldown.
Psionic Burst ability, Psi Power scaling reduced to 1:1 instead of 2:1.
Ion Torpedo ability missiles are now correctly named.
- Fixed unit momentum bug where unit velocity wasn’t being maintained in between orders. This would cause units to stop and then re-accelerate.
- Fixed loot collection AI bug where AI units would get ‘stuck’ trying to collect loot. Enemy AI units should now properly try to destroy units near loot so they can collect it.
- Fixed issue where units would not gain XP when collecting loot.
- Improved cursor selection behavior when selecting units in dense formations.
- Fixed unit pathfinding assert that could be caused by AI units trying to navigate around obstacles.
- Fixed audio engine crash that could be caused when unloading a mod.
- Fixed a crash in the GUI system when quitting the game.
- Fixed mod.io unlisted mod and mod mismatch issues that could occur.
- Fixed crash when loading old scenario (v1.50) save games.
- Hotfix to fix AI 'hang' caused by Pirate Galleon incursion bug.
Fixed crash caused by using wide characters in modding file path (e.g., Chinese, Korean, Japanese). This was preventing the game from starting up.
Fixed issue where existing mod directory wouldn’t migrate as expected. When you change your Mod.io directory now, the game will bring up a dialog to display progress and ask you to restart the game when finished.
Added ability to unsubscribe/install mods via the Mod.io Manage tab (click the X button on the left side). This now allows you to uninstall ‘dead’ mods that are no longer available on the Mod.io server.
Can no longer unsubscribe from an active mod. Need to deactivate it first.
Added download/install progress bar to the Mod.io Manage tab, so it now shows in both locations.
Fixed cleanup of leftover Mod.io directories after migration.
Fixed path overrun for mod tooltips.
Fixed mod crash caused by improper sound factory reset (happened when deactivating a mod).
Fixed potential null pointer crash on mod activation/deactivation.
Current Release
Build 25127248
Uploaded Sep 09, 2026
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System Requirements
How to Install
sins2_dev.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
Needed when extracting (WinRAR / 7-Zip) — not a site login.
BC96DD3E
0afec758315e54428c155d1e042785b3553592e1d8d895bf925054829871e1d0
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Download Sins of a Solar Empire II for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of Sins of a Solar Empire II for free. Sins of a Solar Empire II is a Simulation released by Ironclad Games Corporation.