This last weekend we ended up doing some bug whack-a-mole, as our testers found issues immediately after they started playing the game. Because of Murphy's Law - anything that can go wrong, will - we have published a patch update.

Night battle.

Because we also believe that if you fix something you should improve it, we added some other cool stuff to it as well. So here's the full changelist.

Changelist:

• Space View no longer draws over left side of UI. Depth drawing issues are an ongoing problem with Libgdx so we've had to do the equivalent of building a real house with Legos with our code.
  
• As an optimization we removed mines giving empire wide materials buffs, because if you had a huge empire generate it would freeze up your turn. (This is the reason we're putting this patch up, had a turn freeze on playtest.)
  
• Fixed a nonfatal crash with FTL system mouseovers.
  
• Because we believe every time we fix a bug we should improve something... FTL systems now show what kind of fleet is in Deep Space. Now if a fleet is in FTL it will show you if it's a transport fleet, an explorer fleet, etc.
  
• All FTL systems now known as "Deep Space".
  
• Down on planetary view was binded to "D" instead of "S", fixed - whoops.
  
• Fixed a missing color in the generation view for empire colors, now "Violet Pink" is an empire color option.
  
• Now if you find any system with a compatible atmosphere it will generate a beacon instead of just a habitable one... now extremely rare.
  
• Fixed an exploit where if you deployed fighters, it would INCREASE the number of fighters you had. leading to infinite fighters being deployed by AI and players with a single carrier. (Why we aren't releasing yet.)
  
• Deployables were still broken, now they're working as intended.
  
• Radio systems now only show if the system is "Owned" by an empire, not filling the entire galaxy with radio blips because of Gaia fleets.
  
• If a planet is dangerous to land on, it now flashes yellow and red in the indicator.
  
• Fixed mouseovers of celestial bodies in solar view and their appearance.
  
• Likewise for other planets, we color coded the indicators so that now you'll be able to know which have good atmospheres, which are dangerous, etc.
  
• Likewise if a planet is deadly to land on and your army will get vaporized it will flash white and red.
  
• Improved indicator behavior and appearance in solar view.
  
• Indicators will now disappear if zooming too far out in solar view.
  
• "Cluster" systems now called "Globular Clusters" because that's what they are.
  
• Stars now shine like the suns they are.
  
  Solar view will show this as well, and Galaxy view for when we add quasars - a planned feature.
  
  
• In the planet view stars and planets no longer move faster than the background.
  
• ...As a side effect of the aforementioned, now if you move to another planet in the planet view, it will allow you to see in the same direction in the planet view.
  
• Removed indicators for other celestial bodies in the planet view, too distracting.
  
• New image for nebulae in galaxy view, more realistic appearance.
  
• Backgrounds in systems near the galactic cores were straight up awful, they've been redone. We're probably going to add additional ones or redo them in the future before release.
  
• AI will now use antimatter missiles also instead of just nuclear ones.
  
• Did my best to improve urban combat as much as possible with a small update, now urban areas will generate parking lots, grass fields, and plazas randomly. Still bad fragment artifacts on them but the buildings do draw better. (We're eventually going to have a huge update of urban combat at some point that's going to improve it massively, but it was near unplayable as it was.)
  
• Added more space between buildings in urban combat so that units aren't cramped in small areas.
  
  Screenshot was WIP, but you can see how we're making ground combat more interesting with sidewalks and small parks and such.
  
  
• Fixed urban combat city generation so that now the same map (specific to that city on your planet) will generate for the same city every time. What this means now is that if you have an army attack another army on a city, it will generate the same map for that specific city if you attack it later.
  
• New textures for buildings and sidewalks. Buildings in the battle map now generate with a variation of color, determined randomly. There will be more variation of city textures in a later update.
  
• A few other bugfixes.

We have more stuff planned, we have a feature-freeze till release but because we have some time we might put some more features in, such as:

• We're going to continue to work on urban combat and improve it with different textures and more interesting generation.
  
• 2D sprites of cities for the flat view.
  
• Some more sandbox buildings to construct, like different farms, or wonders/monuments that give huge bonuses, highways, planned cities/settlements that you can construct.
  
• Garrisoning of buildings with infantry in the battle map.
  
• Terraforming, the ability to change a tile on a planet with a specialized unit.
  
• Terraformers that if you construct 5 on a planet will convert the atmosphere to your atmosphere.
  
• Shipyards and ships that can construct other ships.
  
• Buildings on oceans and gas giants.
  
• Ability to talk to other ships in the vicinity. When you move a fleet closer to another fleet, you can hail the fleet and communicate with the other fleet's leader. AI will also try to hail you frequently, and you'll see a flashing indicator with the fleet that you can simply click on the fleet with a dialog.
  
• Surrender and retreat/cancel options for when attacking.
  
• ...A few other things that we're planning on keeping secret for now.

Cheers,
Reptilian Games, LLC

Yes, I've heard this game called "The game everyone wanted to play back in the day." And yes we are building that game that everyone wanted to play back in the days when the RTS dominated.

We're absolutely shooting for that.

I've actually been working on this closer to 15 years. As stated, games like this used to be commonplace in the 90's. However, we weren't able to secure Steam Early Access release, so we're currently polishing the game to kingdom come for the purpose of making sure that there's ZERO issues on launch. We've had to push back our release date because of this, and while we have a release date in mind, we've keeping that internal until April 30th when we will announce our release date.

So we've done some massive changes as we're preparing, including a balance pass, a graphics and UI pass to ensure that the game is playable, fun, and well... perfect on launch.

I spent 3 days on improving the planet flat view alone to make it useable.

So the past two weeks I've been nonstop working on this every day. We've released another internal testing update for pre-release players. Thus, we have a massive changelist for you here, with this new internal release.

We've also done a huge graphical overhaul, including redoing the lighting on ground maps.

(Semi)-Complete changelist:

• Changed generation of units, now fleets will generate differently EVERY time - for example a number of units you used to see repeatedly are now going to be more rare. This is also seeded per fleet, every fleet you fight will be different now.
  
• Added a whole number of new templates for armies. Armies will now be seeded differently.
  Added a whole number of new templates for armies.
  
• Added the possibility of ocean fleets to start with a ton of patrol boats.
  
• AI will now command starships will now attack and move ships in 3-D.
  
• Attacking from a differing height will affect the damage you do. What this means is if you're on a hill, you do more damage on lower units on ground combat. If you're in space, the greater your height difference, the more damage you (and they) do.
  
• Pirate/Raider Civs now can and will have more varied units.
  
• Added new units Nuclear Missile Launchers, Nuclear Bombers as superweapons that will generate 1-2 occasionally per army, blasting forces with full-scale nuclear bombs.
  
• Added Antimatter Missile Launchers, Antimatter bombers as deployable units also.
  
• Increased the scale of Nuclear Artillery explosions (but not damage range) and fixed a number of issues with those.
• Added 3 new units called Heavy Gunship, Advanced Heavy Gunship, and Superadvanced Heavy Gunship (like an AC-130 except it can take off into space and attack aliens on another planet) because it was in years ago and now is back. Can replace Space-Corvettes in fleets.
  
• Nanite Artillery was way, way, way OP, nerfed substantially and made more expensive.
  
• Ocean based ships are now called "Ocean-Corvette", "Ocean-Cruiser", etc.
  
• Changed name of the strategic missile ships, "Space-Strategic Cruiser" is now "Space-Strategic Missile Cruiser" for example. (At some point, yes there will be Ocean-Strategic Cruisers - or pehaps in a mod.
  
• Missile launchers now drive slower.
  
• Nerfed the cost of Strategic Bombers to reflect deployment.
  
• Quadrupled the cost of Nanite Artillery
  
• Also changed the way units were generated, no more fleets of massed Land-Carriers or Nanite Artillery - only 1-2 superweapons per army spawned at most.
  
• Redid the combat window, now you can see some of the enemy leader's traits, age, and so forth.
  
• Reduced the display size of plasma flak, looked way too large for the damage it was doing.
  
• Fixed a nasty, nasty fatal crash on the combat window because of LWJGL3 exploding on playing the combat music.
  
• Fixed green arrows drawing over mouseovers in overmap with scrolling items.
  
• Added last resort error checking to all threads.
  
• Fixed a tooltip in the generation view.
  
• Attempting a fix at black holes warping the UI after entering the planetary view.
  
• Melee units now describe themselves as such in descriptions.
  
• Units will now try to approach to the minimum possible range of any their weapons to attack. What this means if that if the unit has a melee attack they will close in as much as possible.
  
• Some units no longer retreat, or suffer morale damage - such as biological horrors, energy beings, robots, or suicide bombers.
  
• Added new unit "Warriors" an infantry unit buildable at cities for warlike civs.
  
• The music system was crashing the game to desktop repeatedly when it was attempting to read certain music files - randomly no less. So I rewrote one Sunday.
  
• On Tuesday I booted up the game and noticed that the alternate view for planets was extremely laggy. So I rewrote portions of it and sped up the planetary view massively.
  
• Also, new, better flat view appearance with backgrounds. As seen above.
  
• Redid a number of the solar view backgrounds for realism, eye strain, and appearance.
  
• Redid a number of appearances and attacks for units such as Beam Cannons and Ion Cannons.
  
• Added a button to switch between flat and 3D planet view.
  
• Changed the way that planets render, now they look slightly better.
  
• Fleets merging no longer flies your camera view across the universe to that location.
  
• Fixed an issue with cursors on certain displays acting oddly.
  
• Planet view warping on neutron stars and black holes scales with zoom now.
  
• Zooming all the way out in planet view now removes icons so you can see the planet as it would be in space without the HUD.
  
• Ocean Transport ships no longer have the combat weapons and stats of a Ocean-Destroyer, now they just have in itty-bitty machine gun to defend themselves. As it should be.
  
• Nebulae dust clouds now generate around all over the system instead of being clustered in the center.
  
• Fixed a really odd bug where units would end up hovering over the terrain.
  
• Fixed a serious bug that would result in a soft crash if you defeated an enemy empire and they somehow still had an army leftover... and then attacked one of the leftover armies it would throw errors. (This is exactly why we aren't releasing just yet.)
  
• Improved error handling so that if an error occurs or something is unknown - the simulation will create eldritch abominations in it's wake... have fun with that modders...
  
• I saw another game do this and I loved it... so I added it as a feature - Colony worlds now have a button that if you press and agree to, will turn the planet into a new vassal empire that will be subordinate and allied to you as a vassal. This will turn every army and building on the planet over to the newly formed vassal civilization.
  
• Fixed a number of issues with armies, artifacts, and buildings spawning on the unwalkable poles.
  
• Fixed armies trying to path on poles.
  
• Fixed drawing of planet rings in planet view.
  
• Herculean Infantry stats and appearance have been upgraded, they can now fight for your godlike-emperor the way they were meant to fight.
  
• Superpowered Infantry have a new appearance, upgraded stats.
  
• Finally added the ability to press up and down in the console to repeat commands.
  
• Added a ton of visual effects to the battle map like unit trails, tanks kicking up dust, etc.
• Redid movement of ocean ships, air units, and space units. Now tanks actually behave more like tanks, aircraft and fighter jets behave more like you would expect a fighter jet to, ocean ships act like seagoing vessels and so forth.
  
• Added a Space-Explorer Vessel that's basically a faster version of the Warbird that is used to explore space and defend itself.
  
• Scout Ships and Warbirds now have different stats, they use a Long Range Microwave Blaster that acts like a weaker version of the railgun that can harass at a large distance, and shoots faster the closer they get.
  
• Added a Particle-Cannon Frigate that shoots a short-range, high powered beam cannon when facing their opponent that can easily wipe out the largest capital ships. Unlocked with Antimatter Power Generation.
  
• Added a Particle-Cannon Destroyer that has the similar stats as an advanced destroyer but has a Heavy Particle Cannon like the Particle Cannon Frigate. Unlocked with High Power Engineering.
  
• Added probablly the newest and strongest ship in the game... the Particle Cannon Space-Dreadnought - which instead of shooting carrier fighters, shoots aforementioned particle cannons... Three of them.
  
• The late-game technology "Superstring Space-Time Engineering" not only gives you Superadvanced Warp but will now allow you to unlock the ability to land starships on walkable planets, like air units. (You'll still need armies to take control of buildings)
• The technology Controlled Singlarity Evaporation now is only researachable after discovering Pentiultimate Capital Ships and now unlocks Particle Cannon Space-Dreadnoughts.
  
• Added a "Scatter" button in the battle map to scatter units out in every direction. This can be used to avoid that pesky nuclear missile that will destroy your entire army in a single shot, or to increase the size of whatever formation they are in.
  
• Basic tank projectiles travel faster, and now have tracers.
  
• Armies and fleets no longer generate with units outside their tech tier. No more Dreadnoughts when starting T1: Space Age.
  
• Colony ships can now be landed on any planet with a compatable atmosphere, not just ones with biospheres. (As in real life, apparently.)
  
• Redid ground combat tilesets to match the art style, made them have 3.8 times the resolution.
  
• Completely redid the lighting on ground combat terrain so that it now looks way, way better.
• Complete overhaul of graphics and sound in general. Battle maps now don't sound like noisy chaos.
  
• No more craters in space combat.
  
• Most effects have a better appearance now.
• Unit AI redone, acts smarter now.
  
• Battle map now notifies you if a unit is destroyed.
  
• Raindrops move with the camera.
  
• Antimatter explosions now generate better and don't explode the entire map.
  
• Fixed an issue with AI not retreating when being crushed.
  
• Redone the event menu UI and fixed some issues with text rendering.
  
• Settings now write to the settings.cfg.
  
• Borders now draw on what percentage of the system you own.
  
• Redid the view/UI for selecting a civ on the galaxy map.
  
• Fixed an issue where the diplomacy menu options drew over the window.
• A ton of other bugfixes and graphical fixes.

Again, we will announce our release date April 30th

Cheers,
Reptilian Games, LLC