We have recently released V19 Stable of the game on our Normal branch, which is basically three months of changes rolled into a single large patch that has had much more testing than our usual updates, and should therefore be fairly stable (though it is still in beta and will not be completely bug-free). It will break save games, however!
This is a brief summary of the improvements made in V19 over V18:
- Vastly improved game balance
- Dramatically improved AI
- Alien Base missions fully functional
- All research descriptions written and edited
- Various visual updates like a new world map, many more painted ground tiles, etc
- Lots and lots of bugfixes
That only covers the changes at a very high level; the full changelog can be found here in a (very long) forum post. Things like balance and the AI are still being worked on, and there are still missing art assets that have not yet been completed.
However V19 was the first time someone sat down and worked on balance for several weeks and the result is something that feels much more like a "game" than it has before. It's still a bit rough around the edges, perhaps, but you can see the final shape starting to emerge.
We are presently working on V20 (which will appear on our Experimental branch first). We are planning this to be the last update to the game that will include new features, and will be where we integrate the new interface, add all the maps, finish the AI, fix some problems with the game accuracy model etc. If all goes to plan, anything after V20 will simply be bugfixing and final balancing on the existing systems.
We are hoping to get the game by the end of the year. This is by no means a firm commitment, but it is the internal deadline we're working towards. The game has come together well over the past three months and if progress continues at this pace then completing the game in another three months is feasible provided nothing major goes wrong.
Finally, I just wanted to say that the money raised from Early Access has been an immense help to the team. The volume of work required in finishing the game has been mind-boggling and I strongly suspect we'd have had to cut some corners without the funding that we've received since launching on Early Access, so thanks once again to all that bought the game!