This weekend update introduces a Tutorial mission. The previous release had an enemy empire AI issue, where at some point it switched into IRG spam mode. The issue has been fixed and the game AI expands normally, clears fauna, and attempts to conquer player systems. There is one AI limitation, it will not try to conquer player Administrative Nodes, only player systems that are in its Administrative Region. Next update will unlock full conquest. I haven't managed to make the in-game hints work for this launch, the test surface is too large and every change requires testing every hint, will land in a future cycle, when the game is close to completion.
List of changes:
Open ARMI on another system now switches the open panel instead of closing it.
Prestige Points now slowly decay (-1 every 96 turns, floor 0) instead of passively accruing, earn prestige through objectives.
Quantum Plague colony infestations start later (turn 100) and tick slower (every 8turns).
New Game now offers Tutorial/Sandbox: a guided 27-step mission on a hand-built starter galaxy covering economy, workforce, expansion, colonization, scanning, anomalies, combat, shipyards, and terraforming.
Late-game performance: UI hover lag at 2000+ turns eliminated and the event log is now pruned each turn, save files shrink ~90% (18 MB → 1.5 MB on a 2,300-turn game) and load/autosave faster.
Two crash fixes: completing a ship batch whose target fleet had been destroyed no longer crashes (the ships form a new fleet at the shipyard instead), and fleets can no longer be repaired, reinforced, or scrapped mid-battle (repairs and scrap countdowns pause until the fight ends, scrapping a fighting fleet is rejected up front).
Conquering an enemy Administrative Nexus now asks who rules it: a blocking popup at conquest presents your four great houses (dominant house pre-selected) and end-turn waits until you decide. AI empires keep the automatic assignment. Also: attempting builds or terraforms at a system in conquest cooldown now rejects with a clear cooldown error.
Taking a system now needs 2 occupation turns with your fleet holding presence (leaving or losing it restarts the clock). Liberation by the original owner is instant (no cooldown). Annex an enemy-claimed uncolonized system or non-star tile in your gate-network reach, or lift rival border claims, by parking a System Control fleet for 2 turns. Orphaned colonies now get picked up by whichever empire's region reaches them (with a cooldown for the new owner).
Border tiles can now be weak-claimed by multiple empires at once (each empire one gate-hop away holds its own claim) the tile's hatching stripes every claimant's color. A rival's weak claim now holds your region's automatic claim off a tile until lifted.
Charter PP cost moves to a Fibonacci curve (2, 3, 5, 8, ...). Researched techs show their unlocks again. New alert when a fleet repair stalls at an offline or unstaffed shipyard. Repair time estimates now match actual repair time (ship classes repair in parallel). Fauna-defeat alerts collapse to one per tile with a count.
Economy formula rebalance: AC capacity `floor(6 * sqrt(w))`->`floor(6 * sqrt(w) + 0.5 * w)` (per-worker sliver + turn-1 homeworld now +1 margin, easier start, still sub-linear) and RP `floor(2 * sqrt(r))`->`floor(2 * sqrt(r) + 0.15 * r)`.
Known bugs:
Wrong alert about fleet repair being stalled.
IRG shows 1 turn in transit if launched from the tile it was created in.
Next cycle (two weeks from now):
Unlock AI conquest of player ANs.
Victory conditions.
Ability to select AI empires and their personality.
Maybe the first version of Diplomacy.
Other quality of life improvements.
Thank you,
Oddbit