IXION News

Attention Administrators,

As part of the Difficulty Options update coming next month, we are introducing a brand new achievement for the completion of the ‘Hard’ difficulty setting, and we want you to name it.

For your chance of making a permanent mark on IXION, all you need to do is come up with a great name for the achievement. The competition is now closed.

Please keep in mind that submissions must be appropriate, non-NSFW, and suitable for the ‘Hard’ difficulty achievement.

The submissions window closes on Thursday 20th April at 2pm BST. The best entry will be chosen by us, with the winner announced via Steam, Discord and social media platforms, so keep your eyes peeled for the announcement.

Show us your creativity, Administrators!

Attention Administrators,

We’re excited to announce that a new update, which will bring a range of difficulty presets and advanced difficulty customisation options to IXION, will be dropping next month.

Following the announcement in January of our proposed update plan, and due to your valued feedback in our Discord and Steam forums, we decided to bring forward the Difficulty Options update in the schedule to allow more players to enjoy IXION sooner.



Since release in December, a lot of players have expressed a desire for a less punishing experience that would give them a better chance of seeing the game’s gripping narrative through to its epic conclusion. With that in mind, the update will include an ‘Easy’ difficulty mode that will present a more manageable challenge, ensuring the Tiqqun’s hull, and its crew’s trust in you, are easier to maintain.

For those hard-bitten Administrators seeking an even greater challenge than the original, intended gameplay experience (which will now be classified as ‘Normal’ mode), there’ll be a ‘Hard’ difficulty setting available, too. If you finished the game soon after launch, this is a great excuse to return to the Administrator’s chair and experience all our post-release updates while putting your station-management skills to the test.

Each of the three aforementioned modes have been carefully tuned to ensure a balanced experience that never feels either trivial nor unachievable. You will, however, have the opportunity to tweak and tune the game’s individual difficulty parameters yourself in the fourth and final game mode, ‘Custom’; here you will find a dizzying array of parameters to adjust, allowing you to put on your game designer hat* and set your own level of challenge.



In terms of what this schedule change means for our other planned updates, such as Accessibility and Visual Tech Support, we’ll provide an update on in due course.

*Update does not come with hat

Attention Administrators,

The first update of 2023 is live and consists of general bug fixes, UI changes and starvation mechanic changes.

We will continue to look at all feedback and bug reports on Steam and our Discord as our focus is on items raised by our players

The patch notes for Build 1.0.3.6 are below.

Also this week, we are hosting an AMA on Reddit where Bulwark Studios will answer your IXION questions. The AMA will take place on Thursday 23rd February at 7 pm UTC, on the R/Gaming subreddit.



We have updated the way the starvation mechanic works in IXION.

The crew will continue to eat at set intervals, with meal cycles occurring every 5 cycles. If they are not provided with food at this time they will begin to starve. After missing three meals, the starving population will progressively die.

A crew member will now recover from starvation after eating a single meal. (Previously for starvation to resolve, a crew member would need to consume as many meals as they had missed).

Additionally, rather than waiting for up to 5 cycles till the next meal cycle, starving crew members have the option to eat at the start of the next cycle in which enough food is available. This behavior can be toggled on or off for a Sector from within the Mess Hall's building panel.



Technologies related to the critical path of the game will now only require time to research, with no associated science point cost.



Resource Transfer: implemented a simplified version of the resource transfer UI (the previous settings will still be available as a toggle option)

Cryonics Center: Simplified the building’s UI and removed the Sector limit to better convey that the Cryonics Center’s options only determine the destination of awakened crew, and not the type of crew to be woken



Fixed an issue where some planets had a graphical issue
Fixed solar panel construction placeholders displaying extremely brightly

• Fixed an issue where game could stutter or crash when deleting roads
  
• Fixed an issue where saving during Edden dialogue in Chapter 4 disabled the Piranesi
  
• Fixed an issue where the VOHLE jump button got stuck post jump
  
• Fixed an issue with starvation not resolving correctly
  
• Fixed an endless loading issue with save games
  
• Fixed an issue where certain trust negatives could get stuck and loop endlessly (leading to 0% trust and game over)
  
• Fixed an issue where opening events in Chapter 4 resulted in a dimmed screen and no way to resolve the event
  

• Fixed the 'Delivery!' ‘Drill Dozer’ & 'What they hide from us' achievements not triggering correctly
  
• Farms are now required to be built next to each other (and gaps cannot be created by farm deletion)
  
• Fixed an issue where multiple science ships / crews could be lost if at same event location
  
• Sector 6 can now be correctly opened from Sector 1
  
• Fixed a power issue with the Hull Temple where it could become possible not to be able to turn it on under certain conditions
  
• Fixed an issue with Solar Panel repair getting stuck if multiple panels were damaged during space weather
  
• Fixed an issue with accident warnings and accompanying Edden lines not triggering correctly
  
• Fixed an issue where blackouts did not trigger correctly during waste purging in the Nuclear Power Plant
  
• Fixed an issue where the Exo-fighting Dome’s stability bonus did not trigger correctly
  
• Fixed an issue where the Legislative Strengthening Center’s stability bonus did not trigger correctly
  
• Fixed an issue where the Exo-fighting Dome’s associated events did not appear correctly
  
• Three Factor authentication upgrade for Nuclear Power Plants will now function correctly
  
• Fixed an issue where if the Docking Bay’s storage was full, colonists would be lost if transferred to the building for a colonization event
  
• Cargo ships now correctly respond to priority gather
  
• Fixed an issue where working conditions would be delayed in updating following population transfer
  
• Fixed an issue where the ‘Sarcophagus To Eternity’ event would trigger incorrectly
  
• Fixed an issue where farms could continue to produce food when unpowered
  
• VOHLE jump hull damage now triggers correctly post VOHLE jump rather than at charge initiation
  
• The Health Center’s bonuses should now only apply when full constructed (rather than as soon as the construction site is placed down)
  
• Fixed an issue where the Health Center wasn’t being detected in Sectors connected by Train
  
• Fixed an issue where mass producing ships in multiple docking bays could lead to game breaking bugs
  
• The tier 2 food stability bonus now applies correctly
  
• Fixed an issue where if the Steel Mill was marked for dismantling, and then the dismantling canceled, iron would be caught in an endless loop of being taken and removed from the building
  
• When opening a new Sector, crew transfer will not take place until the Sector’s Gateway has a connecting road
  

• Fixed an issue where you could have double overlapping weather events in Chapter 3
  
• Fixed an issue where the stability bonus of a memorial persisted while building was being dismantled
  
• The ‘max’ values of the top resource bar should now correctly update
  
• Fixed an issue where credits would be triggered incorrectly on return to main menu
  
• Fixed an issue where the incorrect crew member was displayed as dead at the end of the ‘12D - High Temperature’ event
  
• Fixed some minor issues with how the Exo-Fighting Dome and Drone Bay displayed in the powered / unpowered view
  
• Fixed some minor issues with text being cut off on planet panels in the Planetary System Map
  
• Resource movement lines from buildings being dismantled now move in the correct direction
  
• A number of minor fixes to the text of various tooltips and certain objective’s tracking percentages
  

Hello Administrators,

The next IXION update is coming soon - we are looking to release before the end of February.

Alongside a large number of bug fixes, we wanted to detail a little more about what’s coming in this next update:

Starvation changes - We have tweaked how starvation resolves. Understandably there was some frustration (e.g. around EKP travel initiation) with having to wait 5 cycles till the next meal cycle for starvation to resolve when enough food was on hand.

We are still testing the changes to ensure they feel right, but now, if a crew member enters starvation, they will be able to access food supplies via the Mess Hall between meal cycles. (There will be a small UI update on the Mess Hall to convey this to the player).

Cryonics Center UI - We have simplified the building UI and removed the Sector limit to better convey that the Cryonics Center’s options only determine the destination of awakened crew, and not the type of crew to be woken.

Resource transfer - We have created a simplified version of the resource transfer UI (the existing settings will still be available as a toggle option). This should provide a more intuitive experience to the player when moving resources between Sectors.

Also in the update will be DLSS support as well as a change to the Chapter 1 and 2 story technologies - these will now only cost time, rather than Science points to prevent gameplay locks.

(The update will apply to both new and existing saves)

There are a large number of fixes to the issues that have been reported, we are grateful for your continued feedback and bug reports as they have helped us improve the game and, ultimately, your experience playing IXION.

Attention Administrators,

The team is back from the holidays and we’ve been setting our 2023 plan for IXION in motion, starting off with analysing bug reports and working on fixes.

Now, we can announce what the upcoming updates to IXION will entail.

Update 1 (coming soon!)
- Fixes and UI updates

Update 2
- Accessibility and Visual Tech Support

Update 3
- Difficulty Options

More information will follow in the coming weeks.

We want to thank you for all of your support; it’s great to see such a wonderful and supportive community form for IXION.