Hello everyone, Brendan/Owlfeathers here.
While we don't have a full roadmap laid out, here's a little update on what we're currently working on and what additions and improvements you can expect in the near future.
Apocrypha Side Story
The next major bit of content (at least for campaign-enjoyers); this should be out within the next few weeks. Set between The Shallows and Kreydell chronologically, Apocrypha takes you out of Junior's shoes and has you following a small Vaalkorei Coalition task force, sent to discover the fate of a missing archaeological expedition deep in the Spance. This will be a string of six missions with full Relaxed/Normal/Trauma difficulty options.
QoL Improvements
There's been lots of great community feedback since our early access launch, and we're adding in a bunch of features that have been widely requested. You'll be able to select the production of yards before placing them, pick which structure to build by clicking on an existing one, drag-select multiple yards without other structures clogging up your selection, and fast-forward cutscenes (full skip coming later).
Character Portraits
Thanks to everyone who has purchased the game, we now actually have money to commission artwork to replace the AI-generated placeholders. While I don't support the use of AI-generated "art" in general, this game was developed on a frankly miniscule budget and it was all we could afford. This will take a bit of time but it's coming.
Kreydell Difficulty Settings
The game's second campaign, Kreydell, launched with only Normal difficulty available. We don't want to go the lazy route of just increasing/decreasing enemy stats to create artificial difficulty, so difficulty variants for missions take a while to make as we need to tune things like enemy composition, base layout, event timings, triggers, etc separately for each version. We didn't quite manage to get to it before early access launch, but we're working on adding Relaxed and Trauma versions of each mission.
Other Stuff
New skirmish maps, more control over skirmish AI difficulty, various balance tweaks, spelling/grammar fixes, Vaalkorei databank lore entries, a couple of new structures. Adjusting some levels that people had issues with, particularly Vultures (Trauma) and Game Theory (in general). Vaalkorei AI in Skirmish is also no longer completely obsessed with spamming only Strix/Cormorant forever. Also probably some other stuff I'm forgetting and may or may not edit in when I remember it.
Things to Come?
Beyond the aforementioned stuff coming in the immediate future, the next big thing will be Fortune's Progress, the Vaalkorei campaign. This is planned to be 19 missions long; it will be a while before it's released but we'll get there. Also the next two side stories after Apocrypha... not sure if these will be ready before or after Fortune's Progress; we'll see. All five campaigns are fully plotted out story-wise so now it's just a matter of actually making a whole lot of levels, building assets for them, and testing them thoroughly to make sure they actually work. Also, the Tychon faction is being worked on pretty constantly; it'll be added to skirmish once it's in a somewhat more complete state.
Thanks again to everyone who's supported the game; we're very happy to see how well it's being received on the whole.
P.S. To those who don't buy early access and are waiting for full release: totally reasonable; we get it. Early access is always a bit of a risk since you're trusting the devs to actually finish their product, and money is tight these days. We hope you'll enjoy the full game once it's out.