Check it out here!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/445690/


Contents of this post:

1. DLC Description!
2. Patch Notes!
3. Your discussion of the DLC!

For those of you who choose to support our ongoing development today, thank you! I've worked very hard to provide what I hope will be many more hours of unique gameplay for you. What you're about to play will be StarDrive 2 at its core, but I think these changes and additions will really make your games feel like totally new experiences.

Now, we have tested this puppy from top to bottom and I think it's solid as a rock from a QA perspective. That said, ♥♥♥♥ happens! I could have broken the entire thing yesterday with a single key-stroke. If you encounter a bug, please don't yell at me. Just tell me what you're seeing and I'll nuke these bugs from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

This DLC is not the end for StarDrive 2. It's just the start of a new era. Hopefully this will prove to be a successful venture - i.e. a good investment of my time and resources. One way or another, you can expect ongoing support for SD2 and the expac, plus I've been getting a lot of requests for a Ship Pack DLC in the future, and that sounds kind of nice to me too. I'll be putting my head together with you guys and with Iceberg to figure out where to go after this.


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Alright first, off, here's the DLC description:

You're interested in buying this DLC? Well, hold on there bucko - I'm not sure if you're rated on DLC that's this hot. If you think you can handle this kind of horsepower, then what you're looking at here is an incredible new set of features and content for the award-winning* galaxy-spanning PC entertainment experience that is StarDrive 2.

This baby takes the base game of StarDrive 2 and overhauls it with massive changes to the structure of the galaxy. First and foremost, the galaxy is now divided into Hexagonal Sectors, providing new resources, terrain features, chokepoints, and reasons for you to commit genocide on the friendly plant people. New deep space construction mechanics allow you to fortify sectors with battlestations, mining outposts, science stations, and more. Sectors are jam-packed with new anomalies to explore, quests to unlock, and dangers to bravely run away from.

Sector Zero now features several new ways to win the game, including a technology victory, a story-based victory, and a score victory. You can view your progress towards your victory goal on the brand new victory screen. Dozens of new technologies have been added to support these new mechanics and the AI has been given some serious upgrades to help them win the game too!

Planetary Invasion mechanics have received a serious overhaul in this expansion pack as well. While the legacy 3d battle system will remain in place for story-based battles, planetary ground combats will now take place over several turns, allowing you - and the AI - an opportunity to gain space superiority and to reinforce a besieged planet.

But do you think we'd stop there? Because we didn't! We also increased the maximum amount of Star Systems from 100 to 200, while providing you tinkerers with the option to crank that maximum up as high as your PC will allow!

All of this and more can be yours for a mere ten Earth dollars, rounded down to the appropriately psychologically enticing amount.

*PENDING!


FEATURES

• New Hex-tile Strategy Map, with deep space terrain features like nebulae, wreckage fields, and more
  
• New Deep Space Construction mechanics that will allow you to fortify sectors with battle stations and economic buildings
  
• Three new ways to win the game
  
• Dozens of new quests, anomalies, technologies, and events
  
• Overhauled ground combat
  
• Improved UI and AI
  
• Increased Galaxy Size options

Here are the other patch notes. I was pretty bad about keeping patch notes so some stuff that's been fixed is not listed here. Lots of small fixes in addition to these bigger things:

• Added a new Victory Conditions screen which will show your progress towards beating the game
  
• Added a new scoring system and a new Score victory, which will grant victory to the player with the highest score total at the end of 1000 turns. This game length value is configurable in the config file if you want a longer or shorter game.
  
• Fallout Radiation now dissipates more slowly
  
• The AI will trade for more techs among themselves, with an emphasis on getting shields if they didn’t already have them
  
• The AI will not research future techs while there are still regular techs left to research. previously they could, at times, head too deep into the future tech while ignoring potentially more helpful regular tech
  
• Increased the frequency that the AI will refit its ships
  
• Placed the “Max Systems” count number in the game config file, allowing you to crank up the number of star systems to whatever you want. Note that this may choke your computer to death with space tentacles if you go too high. Default is 100 for vanilla and 200 for the expansion.
  
• Limited the number of carriers an AI empire will build, to assist in them getting a more diverse fleet that is less system-crushing in huge battles
  
• Changed the particle FX on heavy rockets because large numbers of rockets could stress graphics cards
  
• Refactored all projectile code for increased performance and a lesser strain on the physics engine
  
• Increased the penalties to production and research for having an unhappy populace, and slightly increased the penalty to happiness imposed by overcrowding. The goal of this change is to encourage pursuit of a wider empire, as I think Tall empires currently have an edge
  
• The AI will now potentially make peace with one another after a prolonged war
  
• The Znodforce One now has power!
  
• Experimental technologies now have a cost multiplier the further down the tree they are
  
• The MegaHospital building will now rapidly heal troops when out of combat. Otherwise, troops stationed at a planet will heal 5 hp per turn.
  
• AI players will contact the player with offers and demands less frequently now, as it could get a bit annoying
  
• Nuclear Bombs have had their effectiveness versus troops reduced
  
• Fixed an issue where ships capable of exterminating your populace were not using their bio-terminators
  fixed issue with leaders killed in manual combat remaining in the leader screen
  
• (Expac Only) Many tweaks and changes have been made to the auto-combat calculator after manually playing battles and consistently winning, and then consistently seeing losses in the auto-calculator. The following changes have helped normalize those results:
  Fixed an issue with the auto-combat calculator that set the cutoff for long range weapons at 600m. I lowered this to 500m, so weapons such as heavy rockets will be considered long-range weapons for auto combats.
  Reduced the effectiveness of fighters at the long-range and mid-range phases of the auto-combat calculator.
  Increased the odds of killing a fighter in the close range combat phase of the calculation
  Point Defense weapons will mitigate damage received, with reduced effectiveness at closer ranges
  Reduced the variance in damage that could be taken from ship to ship; ships will now be guaranteed to take a relatively equal portion of damage relative to the number of ships in fleet, with a +/- 30% variation possible
  Corvettes and Frigates each receive a sizeable damage mitigation bonus during long and medium range combat phases