More Subsystems

Armageddon

More Resources

More Research

Full Changelog

Steam Workshop and the Mod Editor

Planet Surface Improvements

Shields

Full Changelog

Added

• Added vsync and antialiasing options.
  
• Added Steam Workshop Support!
  
• Added in-game tool to edit many types of game data files.
  
• You may enable your various installed mods.
  
• Added news pane to the main menu.
  
• Added temporary-final art for all weapons.
  
• Gave more buildings better/more distinct temp art.
  
• Added new music track.
  
• Added Shield Generators.
  
• Added new buildings: Warehouse, Metropolis, Megacity, Refinery.
  
• Commerce Stations now have 4 abilities, one of which can be used every 3 minutes to purchase some bulk influence, energy, research or labor with money.
  
• Outposts now protect their system from capture and generate and use empire defense to create support ships.
  

Changed

• Planet surfaces in planet management screen have been redone.
  
• Planets switch to icon view further away.
  
• Portraits and flags can now be added to the game without editing data files.
  
• Influence sites (e.g. Mall) can be played when only one empire or team exists.
  
• Destroyed ships now spray some graphical debris.
  

Balanced

• Building in oceans or on volcanic lands increases the cost of construction.
  
• Civilians expand more slowly through oceans, volcanic lands, and ice.
  
• Tweaked cost and effect of some technologies.
  
• Generally reduced amount of HP given from tech to prevent combat from slowing to a crawl.
  
• Various structures are cheaper to build on specific biomes.
  
• Building ships on orbital shipyards is now 20% cheaper in build cost than on planets.
  

Fixed

• Music volume would significantly change from the menu to the game.
  
• Fixed graphics memory corruption during loading periods.
  
• Numerous small fixes and usability improvements.
  
• Various bugs that affected modders.
  
• Images with specific widths would appear greyed/striped, and could cause crashes.
  

Research Overhaul

The Expanse

Graphics Improvements

Full Changelog

Added

• Added completely overhauled research system!
  
• Large maps will now start containing barren planets - planets without a resource - in order to keep resources scarce and the game playable. Can be controlled with the "Resource Scarcity" slider.
  
• Ships in move or attack orders now path around stars instead of moving or shooting through them.
  
• Added unlockable 'Emergency Supplies' and 'Self-Destruct Device' subsystems.
  
• Planets can now have rings.
  
• Added quickbar for pending auto-imports.
  
• Added Skip Drive and Ion Cannon as unlockable subsystems.
  
• Added new map: The Expanse. Full of remnants, it expands as you defeat their ever-stronger fleets.
  

Changed

• Bulkhead and Targeting Sensor now need to be unlocked through research.
  
• Improved the aesthetics of stars and coronas.
  
• Joining in progress no longer pauses the server while the player connects.
  
• When defense destinations are set, defense is distributed equally from all sources across all destinations.
  

Balanced

• Increased pressure from level 3 resources.
  
• Hydroconductors now give +40% labor generation.
  

Fixed

• Fix gate constructors being able to deploy without a maximum range.
  
• Various performance improvements related to memory garbage collection steps, should reduce lag spikes in large games.
  
• Animation was not properly threaded, leading to significantly reduced framerate in large galaxies.
  
• Various notifications in multiplayer were blank or incorrectly labelled.
  
• Fixed various issues with icons being rendered out of order.
  
• Attempt to fix shader issues with specific graphics cards.
  

AI

• The AI would not recognize its fleets if it upgraded their designs while the previous was being built.
  
• The AI will use partially finished fleets if immediately necessary.
  
• The AI has a basic understanding of Revenant parts.
  
• Improved the AI's logic regarding remnants and internal defense. Notably, it can deal with The Expanse.
  
• Improved the designs created by the AI.
  

The Flying Dutchman

The Revenant & Artifacts

Random Design Generation

Full Changelog

• Add automatic design generator. Simply press a button in the design editor, and receive a randomly generated design.
  
• Ship icons are now based on the design.
  
• Add "Rush" and "Call Out" influence cards.
  
• Add art for the fusion and antimatter reactors.
  
• Added a tractor beam capable of pulling ships, asteroids, artifacts and orbitals.
  
• Added unique artifact parts of The Revenant. Activating each gives a passive bonus and having all parts active allows you to control the most powerful warship in the universe. (Can be turned off from game options)
  
• Add two planetary weapons.
  
• Added and overhauled a number of Artifacts for better gameplay.
  
• Add some hint messages when players crash their economy, explaining what is happening.
  
• Add Dread Pirate mechanic. The dread pirate roams the galaxy killing civilian ships and storing its loot in deep space stations. Killing it or its stations gives you the money.
  

• Votes show the time remaining before it passes/fails, based on how the vote is currently going.
  
• Rebalanced many influence cards to provide varying incentives for their use.
  
• Unusable resources explain why they are unusabled.
  

• Fix situations where flagships could drop supports while in FTL.
  
• Activating hyperdrives for multiple fleets via the action bar works correctly.
  
• The AI could attempt to order billions of supports into a damaged flagship's fleet, destroying its economy.
  

• Capitalism can't start with more than one leverage against a given empire.
  
• Damage reduced by armor can't be reduced to lower than 20% (up from 12.5%)
  
• Repair requires and consumes supply.
  
• FTL Interdiction applies to fling destinations.
  

• The AI designs new ships over time.
  

Freeform Ship Design

Community Features

Game Options

Full Changelog

• Add some macro controls to support ship management, such as auto buying new or dead support ships until the fleet is full.
  
• Fleets will now pick up support ships from your nearby planets automatically to auto-fill up their capacity. Can be turned off.
  
• Object popup tooltips now show the flag of the empire that owns them in the background.
  
• Started work on new blueprint/subsystem sprite art.
  
• Some planets will now have a Planet Condition that modifies them or their resource in some way.
  
• Add Targeting Sensor subsystem modifier.
  
• First iteration of multiplayer match queue system, players can queue up for matches and automatically join other queued players.
  
• Ship information panel on the bottom left can be expanded to give a bigger view of the design.
  
• Replaced the empire flags with better versions.
  
• Changed Wiki tab to Community tab, which includes the wiki and where players can share their designs online.
  
• Dumbbell Galaxy map that can be configured to be perfectly mirrored on both sides.
  
• Several game and universe settings can now be changed from the new game menu.
  
• Add post-game stats and standings screen with graphs displaying the progress of the game.
  

• Lasers now have a limited firing arc.
  
• Weapons can no longer have their firing arcs shoot "through" the ship, but must be pointing outwards.
  
• Engine exhausts can now only be placed on hexes that have open space on either one of their backwards-facing edges.
  
• Supply Storage hexes destroyed in combat will now leak supplies over time.
  
• Losing ship power generation that you are using in combat reduces the ship's effectiveness.
  
• Destroyed Support Command hexes can end up making the fleet lose control of support ships.
  
• Ship designs no longer have preset hull shapes, but the model that is the closest approximation to the shape you draw is used.
  
• Slipstream exit points are now generated inaccurately within a radius of the target. The further away they're generated, the more the target inaccuracy.
  

• Fix perfectly circular territory borders showing up bugged.
  
• Fix previously scouted remnant fleets showing their health/supplies/etc even when out of vision.
  

• Halve station repair rate.
  
• Double station hitpoints.
  
• Increased ship efficiency (power cell, name flagship, etc) can no longer increase repair rate above 100%.
  
• Plate and Neutronium armor now have DR.
  
• All forms of armor now increase the health of all adjacent non-armor hexes by 1/6th of the armor hex's hp.
  
• Fleets with no supplies left are now at 25% of normal effectiveness (down from 50%).
  
• Weapon turrets now have their own innate DR to reduce incoming hits.
  
• Significantly increased the range of all weapons.
  
• Capitalism now only has a single Patrotic Surge, but it has one extra quality.
  
• Cost of using Fling FTL is now no longer dependent on distance, only ship/station size, and is cheaper.
  
• Larger slipstream generator ships are more expensive in various little ways.
  

• Improved Hard AI's expansion speed.
  
• Improved the AI's use of influence.
  
• AI can use anomalies in a basic way.
  
• Improved the AI's ability to wage war.
  
• The AI will scout out other galaxies, allowing them to interact in those galaxies.
  
• Gave the AI some more sensible rules for when to declare war.
  

Bulkheads

Engagement Behaviour Controls

Donations

Full Changelog

• Empires can now make donations to each other, similar to how offers in votes work.
  
• Placing an orbital shows the labor cost / ETA of building in that location.
  
• Vassal empires now have their master's color stippled into their territory borders.
  
• Added the ability to send pings to allies. Defaults to 'v.' Hold control to send an alternate ping, and shift to ping to everyone.
  
• Added achievements for scanning an anomaly, using an artifact, and terraforming a planet.
  
• Added controls for changing fleet engagement range and behaviour.
  
• Added a color picker for choosing empire colors.
  
• Added menu option to end the current game.
  
• Added simple descriptions about what each pressure does.
  
• Masters receive 10% of their Vassal's money, influence, energy and research generation rates (the Vassal does not lose this portion).
  
• Masters can establish a conquer edict to reward vassals for taking the target's planets, or killing their ships.
  
• Added some more variety in the types of pickups protected by remnant groups.
  
• Added the Bulkhead module. Can be equipped to a flagship subsystem to add 100% of its base HP, while doubling the cost.
  

• Reduce repair rate in combat to 25% of normal instead of 33%.
  
• Additional bridges no longer give extra repair, only secondary crew facility hexes do.
  
• Orbital scaffolding now starts at 1% of total hp, instead of 25%.
  
• More things, notably research, grant points.
  
• Fleets can now do some limited re-pathing when new gates/tears are created while en-route.
  
• Any ships you have selected when ordering a slipstream tear to be generated now move to the other end of the slipstream tear automatically, after it is created.
  
• Vassals add 20% of their total points to their master's point total.
  
• Added smaller speed steps near 1x.
  
• Stations cannot capture planets, but can still prevent capture.
  
• Auto-colonize orders execute in the order they were given.
  
• Teams go to war and make peace as a group.
  
• Food resource bonuses no longer transfer on native resource export.
  
• FTL Jammer orbital now only needs 0.15/s FTL upkeep (down from 0.25).
  
• Level 1 planets now only have up to 1 base pressure cap.
  
• Level 2+ planets now have increased population growth.
  
• Remove 'Enhance' card from Communism start.
  
• Improve object hover prioritization.
  
• Expand and improve the Tutorial's economy section.
  

• Fixed a bug in the mover code that was causing support ships to desync from their fleet formation, especially at high time acceleration.
  
• Fixed flagship acceleration being half of what it was intended to be.
  
• Completing construction of a station now does not fully heal it, but starts it at the scaffolding's hitpoints.
  
• In-game IRC chat would sometimes cut off the first letter of a message in the textbox.
  
• Planets not fully colonized could drop to 0 loyalty permanently if captured.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause ships to fly far away from the galaxy.
  
• Fixed a few AI bugs related to wasting resources.
  
• Fixed a few fog of war leaks.
  
• Fixed empire military strengths being wrong after a load.
  
• The starting Fling Beacon should not cost maintenance.
  
• Fix being unable to fling stations.
  
• Fix being able to shift-queue fling orders that would work outside beacon range.
  
• Victory conditions now work in team games.
  
• Fixed some situations that prevented support ships from engaging in combat.
  
• Improved performance in loaded saves (only new saves).
  
• Fix a few situations where the tutorial could get stuck.
  

• The AI will import labor resources to improve its construction speed.
  
• Expanded the AI's influence capabilities.
  
• The AI better understands how teams work, and is able to work with allies somewhat.
  
• Slightly improved early AI colonization.
  
• Improved how the AI handles its fleets.
  
• Fixed AIs sometimes surrendering in situations they shouldn't be able to.
  
• Fix AI not being able to see pickups.
  
• The AI will now order support ships into the queue for new flagships.
  

2 New Maps!

Treaties and Surrender

Station Hulls

Rebalancing and Expansion

Full Changelog

• Added a simple formation.
  
• Added basic cooperation treaties/alliances. Will be expanded on in the future.
  
• Corkscrew Galaxy map.
  
• Clusters map.
  
• Empires can now be assigned to teams on the new game screen.
  
• "Station" hull that can be placed like an orbital.
  
• Added achievements for beating different difficulties of AI.
  
• Players may now subjugate or demand the surrender of another player.
  

• Player home systems are guaranteed to have at least a food, a water, a level 1 and a level 2 resource spread over their neighbouring systems.
  
• Planets now have drastically reduced extra income from planet levels higher than their native resource's level. This makes sending a water to a food planet no longer net ridiculous amounts of money.
  
• Planets being captured can no longer use or project any of their defense.
  
• UI Zooming has more steps.
  
• Redid how the network handles object updates to be much faster for the host computer.
  
• Planets now require a minimum amount of population in order to sustain a level. (ie, planets must have 2 population to be level 1, 6 population to be level 2)
  
• Overhauled Orbitals content.
  
• Reworked weapons to have a wider variety of viable weapons systems.
  
• Improved support ship movement logic to handle a wider variety of fleet compositions.
  
• Orbitals placed in planet gravity wells now orbit the planet.
  

• Map generation no longer generates almost exclusively food and water near player homeworlds.
  
• Capturing planets when low on supply ended up costing far more supply than indicated.
  
• Machines with an intel gpu and a nvidia gpu should now automatically select the nvidia gpu.
  
• Enhance could be used on Intelligence cards, but did nothing (now can't be used).
  
• Null pointer exception after using a planet buster.
  
• Statuses caused by systems (Name System) stayed after the object left the system.
  
• Various issues related to renaming designs.
  
• Popups could be clicked while under other UI elements.
  
• Can no longer build ships with 0 command.
  
• Multiplayer server list would sometimes permanently fail to load.
  
• Weapons other than beams were not consistently firing.
  

• Massively reduce flagship maintenance cost.
  
• Roughly doubled flagship weapon damage.
  
• Very small support ship weapons have severely reduced range.
  

Combat Effects and Weapon Skins

Governments and Early Game

Offers and Bribes

Full Changelog

• Some additional auto-tools for assigning auto-imports to planets.
  
• Right clicking a star lets you colonize all that system's planets at once.
  
• Planets Tab mode to display used and total amount of surface tiles.
  
• "Join via IP" button to multiplayer menu for direct connect.
  
• Empires now need to make first contact before doing diplomacy.
  
• Support ships move during combat, to block shots against their flagship, and to find an opening to attack their targets.
  
• Empires can now put up various offers on influence votes to entice other players to vote their way.
  

• Tweak resource income curves early game to make other resources more useful earlier on.
  
• Energy generation is now reduced the more energy you are currently storing.
  
• Race "Government" choice now determines more about an empire's start, and gives a free fleet at the beginning of the game.
  
• Improved ship visbility. Support ships are visible as models from further away.
  
• Improved weapon and ship explosion particle effects.
  
• Empires now have differing visual effects for their weapons.
  
• Flagships can no longer stay inside stars indefinitely.
  
• Improved performance in large galaxies where you have vision in many systems at once.
  
• Swapped controls for issuing facing and 3D movement orders.
  
• Changed a number of vote support cards to go along the new Offers system.
  

• Reduced income per money pressure from $100k to $75k.
  
• Tripled support ship armor HP to match flagship plate armor.
  
• Buff railgun damage output, especially on support ships.
  
• Fix reactors not costing maintenance relative to their supply storage.
  
• Increase overall supply regeneration rate.
  
• Reduced maintenance cost of level 0 worlds from -100k to -80k.
  

• Remants could end up wanting to fly to the center of the galaxy.
  

• The AI wasted large amounts of money on redundant colonization.
  
• The AI should manage multiple groups of fleets better.
  
• Medium and harder AIs will jump their fleets to relevant targets in systems, sometimes.
  

Designs Sandbox

Civilian Trade Network

Gevron Dreadnaught Hull

Full Changelog