Release notes here!

Lots of quality-of-fun improvements here, including much-improved support for having selections of stuff from multiple planets, helpful new info on the AI Defenses galaxy display mode, descriptions of many common units, and another round of basic balance changes.

But the main thing is definitely the addition of targeting modes for control groups. Now you can go into a planet with your fleet using “Defense” targeting, and it will defend itself against the main threats to your shield cover. Then you can switch to “Siege” targeting to have your long-range units focus on knocking out the enemy units that can hit you back. After that, you can switch into “Pre-Assault” to focus on neutralizing the things that would mess you up if you just charged straight through (tractors, shields, etc). Finally, during an actual charge, you can switch into “Assault” to prioritize tractors and shields in your way. If things don’t go your way, “Retreat” prioritizes the enemies that can catch you, are near you, or can wreck your shields. Once you’re done you can change it back to “None” and the individual weapon system target sorters will do their thing (as they will anyway if your group’s setting doesn’t have a preference between two targets).

Modders can also change these modes and add new ones. Look at the “TargetSorter_Siege” class in the external code project for an example (to add a new one you also need to add a line to GameData/TargetSorter/KDL_VanillaEntries.xml , but it’s straightforward).

Enjoy!

Keith