- Note from developer: Because it has been misunderstood several times I want to clarify, that Smugglers 5: Invasion and Smugglers 5: Secession are two different scenarios, which are supposed to be developed alongside each other in the future. A player who has only played one, will have a different game experience playing the other.
- New feature: The short circuit skill has been changed. The short circuit skill increases the chance of using the boarding skill successfully. It´s new effect is to double the chance of capturing battle droids during boarding. It has no effect on the self-destruction mechanism when capturing the bridge of an enemy ship.
- New feature: A special in-game message has been added to remind players that governors of capital systems cannot be convinced to commit treason and join the player´s pirate empire.
- Balance change: The "Experimental emergency" engine now increases shield strength by 25% permanently (plus you get the "shield boost" ability).
- Game change: The "Luck" skill now not only removes the first three skill slots in your deck to free up space for new skills, but moves all skills three steps to the side.
- Bug fixed: There was a bug where the "Luck" skill did removed the last skill slot occasionally.
- Bug fixed: There was a bug where the "experimental emergency" engine and the "auxiliary shield boosters" did not correctly increase your maximum shield strength.
- Bug fixed: Energy cage I and II were wrongly requiring 3 AP instead of 1 AP.
- Bug fixed / Game change: Fighters cannot be boarded now.
- Bug fixed: As you might remember that the improved combat system of Smugglers 5: Invasion has been included for free in Smugglers 5: Secession. When this happened, the chapter about boarding in the game manual of Smugglers 5: "Secessin" was not properly adapted. This has been done to clarify the changes that came with Invasion.
- Bug fixed: To enable boarding it´s now sufficient if EITHER the enemy ship is EMPed OR the enemy shields havedropped below 25% (you still need to fulfill the other pre-requisites).
- Bug fixed: It was possible to tow a captured ship to the port of a faction at war with your own faction.
- Manual change: The manual was not correctly updated in the past to include all changes to the boarding system. The manual has now been adapted accordingly.
- Bug fixed: The grammar in various texts has been corrected.
- Balance check (Invasion expansion only): The game balance regarding Bombers have been checked due to complains. I am hesitating to make them weaker. As a player you have the advanced ECM Mk. II upgrade for your ship´s ECM that increases ECM chance to 80%. The freely available booster skill ECM reconfigure increases the chance of a successful ECM attempt too. If the enemy uses the powerful ECM protection skill, you can use the freely available booster skill Immelmann you can delay the impact of an enemy missile by one turn. This should save enough time to ECM the missile. You can also use the "scatter gun" skill to destroy a missile during firing or the "Fast ECM" skill for an ECM attempt just using up 1 AP. I think this is a quiet powerful repertoire against bombers. On the other hand if I make it easier to ECM missiles or decrease the power of bomber missiles, bombers might be completely nerfed and be useless. After all they cannot fire any guns! I am absolutely willing to discuss this and invite everyone to email me their opinion.