Hello everyone !

We're back with a brand new build, this one introducing several major improvements in several areas. Research, ship design and combat are three of the areas we focused the most, so as usual we're eager to know what you think about the brand new stuff !

-If you don't have enough research production, certain technologies and branches will be invisible to you.

-The tree has been rebalanced and new technologies have been added. This is the first half of what we plan to do, the next update will include a new batch of technologies and ship parts, as well as some more balancing to do.

-Added Shield component. Armor now adds to the hitpoints of the ship, while Shield eats up damage until it's completely depleted. You now have two Defence slots where you pile up armor or shield parts, or use combinations of armor+shield, just shield or just armor.

-Added a new weapon type, Plasma. Plasma inflicts damage directly regardless of whether or not the target has shield. Plasma weapons have the same range as beam weapons but are significantly heavier.

-You can now use different weapons in the same ship design, allowing for interesting combinations and tactics.

-UI has been improved in several areas.
Visually, we tweaked several details so as to feel less washed out and more pleased to eye, the negotiation screen now shows the landscape of the respective race you're talking with, along with it's portrait and the Research menu is now full screen.
To know more information about each fleet or stationed unit you just have to hover the mouse over it's respective icon instead of using the right mouse button.
The Unit panel now shows a icon of the respective weapon type(s) it possesses.

-The overall presentation has been improved, with a brand new menu screen and new menu song.

-Each galaxy is now significantly bigger, and we added a new galaxy size named "Massive" which is more than twice as big as the "Huge" galaxy size in previous builds.

-Each player stats with the Defence Tower building available, but with less building slots. More slots can be researched.

-Revamped the Draakians's Heavy and Capital ship models.

-The usual batch of bug and crash fixes. We tentatively fixed one particular crash that occurred frequently by mid game, please let us know if the game still crashes for you.

Hope you enjoy this new update, have fun !