I'm happy to announce a major update to Galactic Dominion bringing to you much needed improvements to the UI, quality of life controls, tutorial, gameplay balance, and new features. Here are some highlights. Hope you guys enjoy it!

1. UI Overhaul
   
2. Global Resources, Balance & Optimization
   
3. First Time User Experience
   
4. Full Changelist

[1] UI Overhaul
One of the biggest complaint was the game's controls. I've gone through each of the menus and controls in the game and re-implemented and expanded on quite a number of them. The new UI is more streamlined and efficient for fast gameplay. All the menu animation has been sped up to not waste precious time on menu transitions.

The Star Control is now a movable window that can stay open even when you select a Fleet. You can also clearly see both the Industry and Drydock queue as well as manage the Workers, Industry, and Drydock all in one panel.

Clicking on the Drydock panel will reveal the build commands to queue all the different ship variants. More on variants later.

The Fleet Control also received a major overhaul. You can now see detailed info on the health and hardpoints of each specific ship within the fleet. Furthermore, the previous need to "stage" ships before you can set a command in version 1.x has been removed. You can now click directly on the control commands on top that become available when the respective action is valid.

The Outliner is a brand new tool to improve the quality of life. It lists all the Stars and Fleets under you command and shows some important info regarding the state of the unit. A right highlight indicated that your Star or Fleet is engaged in combat. If you click on the item the camera will automatically pan to its location.

The Ship Designer brings a complete new layer of depth to the game. You can now design up to 3 different variants of a ship type by loading different weapon hardpoints. In fact, after unlocking the properly technologies your Colony Ships and Transports would be able to be equipped with weapons and engage in combat. Each ship variant comes with a different voxel model which allows you to know you fleet composition at a glance.

[2] Global Resources, Balance & Optimization
In the new update the empire resources are generated from industrial capacity. There are 4 types, Refineries, Factories, Farms, and Research Labs. Refineries generate Minerals, Factories generate Ship Parts, Farms generate Food, and Research Labs generate Crystals and add to Scientists to your empire.
Resource cost of industries and ships are consumed upfront now. If you cancel the build from the queue the cost will be refunded to you.

This has allowed for a great number of optimization to the game. The number of supported stars has been increased drastically for all galaxy sizes as well as increases the max speed to x5 and x10. Compare that to the previous x2 max speed.

Because of both the way resources are calculated and consumed, the research and its effects have been re-balanced (in some cases reworked), the AI has been improved, and the Campaign chapters have been updated to reflect these changes.

[3] First Time User Experience
One of the biggest problem was introducing new users to some of the quirkiness of the game. I've added a tutorial (Chapter 0 of the Campaign) which hopefully will guide the player through all the major controls that they need to know in order to play the game effectively.

[4] Full Changelist
For those interested in all the changes, the list can be found here:

• UI Overhaul
  
  • Control access now has icons and placed on the left side.
    
  • Added Ship Designer.
    
  • Added Outliner.
    
  • Complete overhaul of Star/Fleet Controls (more intuitive to use).
    
  • Time Control (added fast forward x5 x10).
    
  • Star & Fleet controls can be opened at the same time.
    
  • Tooltips show more relevant info.
    
  • All menus reviewed.
    
  • Menu transition animation sped up.
• Hardpoint concept
  
  • Colony Ships and Transports can support weapons.
    
  • Ships can support multiple hardpoints.
    
  • Supports up to 3 variants.
    
  • Research Tree updated
• Global resources
  
  • Star industries contribute to Industrial Capacity which in turn generate resources.
    
  • Resources are consumed upfront when queuing builds and returned when cancelling
    
  • Removed complexity of Infrastructure on Stars.
    
  • Added Research Labs to boost Crystal and Scientists.
    
  • Worker boost to industry, drydock, and growth updated.
• Campaign
  
  • Added First Time User Experience Tutorial.
    
  • Balance campaign based on global research and updated technologies.
    
  • Hardpoints are carried forward in Campaign (similar to Research).
    
  • Research & Hardpoint progression can be changed by replaying a Chapter.
• Improved AI behaviour
  
  • AI will now more aggressively try to colonize the entire Galaxy.
    
  • AI will no longer remove queued Ships since costs are debit upfront.
    
  • Various improvements to AI mission selection.
• Optimization
  
  • Optimize the way the Stars and units were updated.
    
  • Optimize the texture and text.
    
  • Increase max number of Stars for each galaxy size.
    
  • Increase max speed for fast forward.
• Balance
  
  • Initial Star always starts with a StarFortress.
    
  • Rebalance research technologies.
    
  • Rebalance economy based on global resources.
    
  • Nerf Missile damage.
    
  • Cheat mode now enabled (for those who can find the cheat codes!)
    
  • And more!
• Bug fixes
  
  • Players can now take back control from AI once empire assistance or Total War is activated.
    
  • Fixed issues with Tooltips not updating in realtime.
    
  • Fixed issue with sliders distributed incorrectly.
    
  • Fixed Star Fortress potentially getting stuck when reaching destination.
    
  • Fixed issue where unoccupied Stars show incorrect max Star Fortresses.
    
  • Fix potential crash when unloading in GroundInvasion.
    
  • Fix Star Lanes loading crash when StarLanes are generated or loaded from xml.
    
  • Fix sliders not distributing correctly when locked.
    
  • And more!

Until next time!