New Multiplayer Server Starting October 24th + Version 12.00 Release!

Hey everyone! We have our 7th Multiplayer Server launching next weekend - 24th October at around 1500 GMT.

Pre-registration will be available tomorrow by opening the Multiplayer menu in game and selecting the Official Server at the top of the list.

This update features a lot of new changes (most from community and player feedback) that we will be trying out on the new server.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Radar & Vision Rework

With the introduction of fog of war, radar upgrades and fleet espionage had become somewhat redundant. We've reworked radar to give upgrades more value and add another layer of strategy to gathering intelligence.

• New mechanic — Radar Accuracy: Each radar level improves the reliability of fleet information shown on the map:
• Near range (1–4 tiles): +8% accuracy per level, up to 80%.
• Far range (5+ tiles): +5% accuracy per level, up to 50%.
• Near-range radar shows estimated ship compositions and counts, such as Halo Automaton: 100 (80% accuracy).
• Far-range radar shows only an estimated total ship count, such as Ships: 100 (50% accuracy).
• Readings can vary within the accuracy margin. For example, a fleet containing 100 ships viewed at 50% accuracy could appear to contain anywhere from 50 to 150 ships.
• Successful fleet espionage reveals the fleet with 100% accuracy, making spy missions valuable even with an upgraded radar.

Station Limits

• The number of fleets you can station on the map is now limited by your radar building's level. This is intended to reduce spy spam and make positioning and vision control more strategic.
• Reaching your station limit does not prevent you from sending attack, raid, spy, or intercept missions. You simply cannot stop and station additional fleets until capacity becomes available.

Espionage Improvements

• Enemy player statistics remain hidden until you successfully spy on one of their settlements. The statistics screen now displays intel age, so you can see how current your information is.
• Allied factions share this intelligence.
• Successful settlement espionage now reveals much more information, including buildings, SPU bonuses, Directive bonuses, Soul Shard upgrades, and more.
• Combat simulations created from spy reports automatically include any known SPU, Directive, Shipyard, and other relevant bonuses.
• Spy fleets are no longer invisible. They follow normal vision rules, appear as Incoming Spy, and can be intercepted.
• Spy fleets now support normal travelling fleet controls, including stopping, stationing, redirecting, and recalling.

New Supply Buildings & Fleet Upkeep

Each culture receives a new building:

• Astraean: Supply Station
• Veil: Moon Pool
• Varkon: Ironlung

These buildings provide more control over fleet capacity and upkeep.

• Each building level adds 200 Astra supply capacity for fleet upkeep.
• Colonies and outposts begin with 200 supply capacity at level 0.
• Fleets exceeding their supply limit incur an increasing upkeep penalty based on how far they exceed it.
• For example, a fleet requiring 1,100 upkeep against a 1,000 supply limit incurs a 10% penalty, bringing its upkeep to 1,210.
• At 1,200 upkeep against a 1,000 limit, the penalty rises to 20%.
• You can construct multiple copies of these buildings.
• Military colonies now face a meaningful trade-off: build more Shipyards for firepower and training speed, or more Supply buildings to support larger fleets efficiently.

Thanks to @azgarreth for the idea!

Combat Simulator Improvements

• Combat simulations launched from spy reports automatically apply bonuses revealed by your intelligence.
• You can now select a specific enemy commander to simulate against. The simulator automatically populates and calculates their known bonuses.

Galaxy Map Generation

• A more distinctly galactic map generation algorithm is now the default for new games.
• Choose from multiple galaxy layouts, including Ringed Spiral, Spiral Arms, Cartwheel, Elliptical, and more.
• Galaxy layouts use rotational symmetry where possible to help maintain fair multiplayer balance.
• Star systems now feature varied planetary orbits, single or twin stars, and asteroid belts. Rogue planets, lone stars, nebula ribbons, and open space give each galaxy more recognisable geography.
• New world generation controls let you adjust system density, planetary abundance, arm shape, orbital spacing, and other features.

Spawn & Game Setup Changes

• Multiplayer worlds using Full Independent Spawn now let players choose a starting region.
• Our upcoming multiplayer world will offer six options: Least Populated, North East, North West, South East, South West, and Outer Rim.
• Outer Rim is the original independent stronghold location in the far corner of the map.
• Game setup now includes two straightforward starting presets:
• Classic: Start with a supplied colony and a team.
• Multiplayer Style: Start independently with a scout and colony ship.

Ship Stat Rework

• Removed Tracking, Evasion, and Critical Hit stats, which were difficult to interpret and added unnecessary complexity to combat.
• New stat — Signature: Determines how much incoming fire a ship attracts. In the same formation, 10 ships with Signature 10 attract the same share of damage as 100 ships with Signature 1.
• Heavy ships generally have higher Signature per hull, making them better frontliners and less able to hide behind large groups of inexpensive light ships.
• New stat — Stealth: Each ship has a small Stealth bonus that reduces enemy radar accuracy. For example, 5 Stealth reduces an 80% radar reading to 75% accuracy.

Thanks to @decand for the Signature idea!

Directive Rework

The previous Directive system could feel overly complicated, with objectives that sometimes encouraged gimmicky side quests. Directives now follow a clearer progression system built around normal gameplay.

• Earn Directive Points by reaching milestones such as producing or raiding resources, building or destroying ships, expanding map vision, completing spy missions, and more.
• Spend Directive Points on Empire Specialisations, including additional colony slots, higher station limits, stronger fleets, increased production, improved base defence, and other bonuses.
• You can trade penalties for bonuses from the beginning of the game. Assign negative points to one specialisation to gain points for another. For example, accept −10% fleet attack power in exchange for +10% resource production.
• As you complete milestones, you earn more points to remove negative allocations or strengthen positive ones.
• Resets are available every 72 hours. Choose carefully because a penalty that suits your current strategy might become troublesome as the game situation changes.

Rare Metal Outpost Rework

Rare metal outposts previously relied too heavily on passive progression and RNG, limiting meaningful player control. The redesigned system allows greater specialisation and more deliberate empire development.

Each outpost now specialises in one of five SPU categories:
SPU CategoryBonusesEconomicsResource Production, Storage CapacityInfrastructureBase Defence, Building Strength, Building Costs, Build TimeOperationsTravel Speed, Ship Manufacturing Speed, Siege PotencyLogisticsUpkeep Reduction, Cargo CapacityEngineeringLight Hull Combat Bonuses, Heavy Hull Combat Bonuses

• A new outpost building lets you adjust the weighting of SPUs produced each cycle.
• Each building level grants 2 weighting points. Each point provides a +4% modifier that can be assigned to an SPU weighting.
• Rare metal outpost buildings now require Noctmarks to upgrade.
• Rare metal outposts no longer produce Noctmarks. These must instead be obtained through Noctium asteroids.
• The Noctium Refiner produces more Noctmarks at a lower cost, and you can now build multiple copies.
• Specialised outposts have a significantly higher potential bonus ceiling, which can be pushed further by adjusting production weightings.

Overall, the changes give you more control over your empire's strengths and allow outpost decisions to play a bigger role in defining your strategy.

Reduced Storage Costs

• Silo and Solar Cell upgrades on ordinary settlements are now 25% cheaper through level 20.
• Above level 20, upgrade cost growth falls from 7.5% to 6% per level, providing greater savings at higher levels.
• Cheaper storage also comes with lower siege durability.

Transmutation Improvements

• Transmutation now provides a steady flow of spendable resources throughout its duration, rather than delivering everything upon completion.
• Inputs are still paid upfront, while incoming resources now appear in production and upkeep forecasts, making Transmutation more useful for managing shortages.

Empire Colony Overview

• The Colonies menu now opens an Empire overview, displaying every settlement in a single sortable table.
• Switch between Economy, Defence, and Shipyards views to compare production, stockpiles, construction, defences, incoming threats, and training capacity.
• Empire-wide totals help identify resource shortages, idle shipyards, and settlements requiring attention without opening each one individually.

Thanks to @toaster!

Shipbuilding & Cargo Routes

• Automatic shipbuilding now has an optional Partial batches when short setting. If you lack enough resources for the full planned batch, production is spread across your chosen ship mix instead of prioritising the first ship classes.
• Partial batches are disabled by default. Enabling them may leave fewer resources available for building upgrades.
• Training lanes now remain in a consistent order as ships finish construction.
• Added an optional Training Queue Summary to make large shipyards easier to monitor.
• Production Overview now recognises completed “Up to” targets and no longer estimates resource spending for ships you are no longer requesting.
• Cargo route setup can now automatically calculate a suitable departure frequency based on your selected fleet's round-trip travel time. Use the hotkey at the top to select your ships first, then calculate the frequency from that fleet.
• Send now dispatches a convoy and restarts the route schedule from that departure.
• Shift+N (Send extra) dispatches an additional convoy without changing the existing schedule.

Thanks to @cron for the cargo route idea!

Colony Artwork Improvements

• Colony artwork now better reflects your culture and the buildings you've constructed.
• Buildings have more distinctive shapes, visually reflect their upgrade levels, and display additional copies, giving developed colonies more varied skylines.
• Resource buildings use their associated colours, while Solar Arrays now resemble fields of solar panels.

Thanks to @toaster for the artwork improvements!

Combat Reports & Alerts

• Combat summaries now show the total resource value of each fleet alongside losses, making it easier to evaluate battles economically.
• Dolbek Kraken spy previews and combat simulations now account for its actual boss strength.
• Incoming and outgoing combat reports now have separate alert filters.
• Battles involving stationed fleets now identify where the engagement took place (instead of defaulting to the first colony).

Revanchism

• Losing an Attack battle now grants Revanchism based on the fleet power destroyed, even if some ships survive.

AI Improvements (Attempt #463)

• AI economic planning now focuses on useful goals, such as clearing shortages, funding upgrades, and preparing affordable fleets.
• Faction members coordinate resource deliveries and military contributions more effectively while protecting essential income and defences.
• AI reconnaissance is more purposeful: bots investigate missing or outdated intelligence before committing to important operations.
• Military planning better accounts for travel time, reinforcements, and expected losses. Bots can wait for ships under construction, choose more productive raids, and withdraw from unfavourable exchanges.
• Diplomacy responds more naturally to changing interests, including cooperation against common threats and ending wars or alliances that no longer serve a purpose.
• When rivals approach victory, bots assess whether to attack, contain, or race them.

Multiplayer Performance & Stability

• Multiplayer updates and command responses now use less bandwidth and server processing, helping busy worlds stay responsive.
• Fixed missed updates that could leave players viewing outdated information until reconnecting.
• Reduced unnecessary disk activity, including a Steam-related issue that could cause excessive Windows Defender activity.
• Improved Advance Time performance in developed worlds, especially those with many moving fleets and cargo transfers.

Huge thanks to @toaster for these optimisations!

Victory Conditions

• The default victory condition for new worlds is now Keystone Valor.
• Our upcoming multiplayer world will disable the 0,0 victory condition to encourage competition around Keystone Valor.
• Hosts can still choose their preferred victory conditions and targets when creating a world.

Other Fixes & Improvements

• Lifetime combat statistics now persist across save loads and server restarts, rather than declining as older battle reports expire.
• Fixed multiplayer construction and training orders occasionally appearing twice.
• Fixed ships duplicating when an attack or raid was refused on arrival. The fleet now returns only once and becomes available again after landing.
• Losing a colony in the middle of a founding chain no longer creates an extra colony slot while its child colony survives.
• Relief convoys remain included in fleet power calculations.
• Expedition contributions now match the ships actually supplied.
• Upkeep forecasts now account for allied garrisons whose upkeep you pay.
• Neutral and Strained diplomatic permissions now behave consistently across single-player and multiplayer.
• Beacon transmissions now involve only eligible surviving factions. Single-player All Independent worlds no longer offer the beacon.
• Fleet ETAs remain visible when travelling over settlements.
• Improved clarity across infrastructure descriptions and statistics screens.