From my point of view no it's not a leak.
However it up to you if you want to believe me or not.

Apart from what of would of been in the space skirmish release if it ever happened, and the ground skirmish modes, all the other aspects of this mod were not part of the development of 5.0

To get into it the space skirmish release would only contain the new armour system for space combat, Freemode & Encounter. The core development of the space skirmish was mostly finished and could of been released as early as March 2024, with any later changes being a patch here or there.


But I should properly say why their was only going to be a space skirmish release and not a full mod that was planned.

After 4.0 the team thought we were going to do patches, just like other mods teams do to fix bugs and add new content, and most of us were planning just that. However secretly 2 members of the team got together and decided they just want to skip improving the current mod and go straight into developing 5.0 content.

Which left the other members shocked went it was dropped on us this new plan that no one understood and our own content that we had be working on, for a couple of months now, was scrapped and no patches were going to made for 4.0

This is properly the point where the team first started to fracture.
However we pressed on working on this new design for remake with flashy untested ideas.

Like having the reinforcements on space maps be blocked just like ground, and ground would become a control point contest with the ai.

Space combat would have a new damage and armour types to them, where you would have to counter with the correct unit every time.

For the campaign a host of new ground buildings was going to be added to effect income, new production lines for the economy, more buildings in general. Planets would have their own requirements, bonuses and upkeep cost after taking them; so you would have to rebuild them after destroying the previous economy.

Progress was slow, the campaign was only worked on a few months and then nothing for the rest of year. For space only a few units had been changed and the others were broken.

During this time of uncertainty one of the other dev's ask me openly to get the campaign working for a ground combat alpha as that part of the work progressed quickly. However as most of the space units were broken it didn't seem like a alpha was going to happen. Later all the changes made to get the campaign working were reverted back to it's broken state as it was not the planned content for 5.0 the others had secretly devised.

After that ground couldn't progress any further, which lead that dev to start creating new ground maps. Another fracture in the team.

Another year past and nothing was being completed. Which left the campaign in a perpetual broken state, only a few more space units were made into this new design, however enough to start a skirmish alpha focusing on the multiplayer side of skirmish mostly.

During this time more fractures started to happen as the other members wanted to ramp up the conversion of the space units, mostly those of the minor factions which would be used in the campaign and not in skirmish. However the dev who planned the overhaul didn't want others to touch the other space units, and told them that he would have to redo their work.

On top that another fracture happened at the same time, it gets a bit messy here.
Which lead to most of the team disbanding in October 2023

In the end the only thing that was worth releasing was the skirmish changes.
The campaign, maps, audio, ground combat which had gone through several overhauls after the failed ground alpha were all left in a broken state.

It was decided that the main page would remain 4.0 and the skirmish changes would be on a new workshop page.

As you can see that never happened.


So where did all this working content come from to allow this mod's release to happen? It can get complicated talking about what was left working or broken.
From me would be the simple answer.

As I removed a lot of the planned 5.0 content to get this all working.
I don't have a written change log, of the differences, as when you only have yourself you don't need to say why this changed.

To start off during the events of the development of 5.0 I pretty had nothing to do myself and to keep myself busy I worked on new gamemodes as I liked to call them. In the beginning it was new ideas for skirmish but as no one got to play them in the previous version I moved on to my own campaigns.

Which lead to the creation of Conflicts Begin a variant of the changes of that was happening in the main sandbox campaign, designed to help those with said changes and not have everything readily available so you could get used to what you have. At this time I had no idea what shape space and ground combat would take, and the end result of what had become of them is not what I had imagined.

The ai for the campaign was thwart with problem as it used those of the main campaign, so no more progress could be made, and I moved on to other ideas.

Like Economy Upheaval which was the campaign I previously designed when one of the other dev's asked for a working campaign for their planned ground alpha. Total different economy which had none of the negative aspects the main one would have, like having to pay up to 10k when taking a planet, and get the full use of a population upgrade system I had been working on for 4.0 to replace the current method of upkeep on ships.

However just as before no more progress could be made during this time due to the ai as it still not working, and after the incident with the ground alpha and my work being reverted I wasn't going to make any changes to the ai just to have that be reverted again.

Then a couple of months later the team disbanded and I kept on working on my own campaigns, which lead me to created Shattered Empire as ground only campaign and Stagnated Technology a unique multiplayer campaign experience which could become only one of many.

Next we jump to August 2024 the dev who had cause all the fractures of the team would leave remake for good, and again planned on releasing the skirmish only version. Giving his access of remake's repository to the submod teams of remake, to do as they like with the remaining content.

That release never happened either.


I on the other hand was working on getting my own content working.
Starting with the ground units, then the ground and space maps, a new user interface, ground fitters, working ai and all the audio I thought was important at the time.
Everything you expect a working full mod would have for my own release.

Then after that I decided to get the main campaign working again, using Economy Upheaval campaign as a copy, as I had everything as I liked it, text all written and everything setup as I planned it be. However instead of using the economy buildings I setup, I used those that were in the broken campaign. Which where the buying and selling of the population comes from.

Stripped the starting forces of each map and gave them random starting buildings and units.

After that I decided to add even more campaigns, Old World as I would call it, the space only campaigns from the 3.5 release of remake.

I was pretty much finished by November 2024 and getting ready to release it myself.
However the dev who caused the fractures came back looking around seeing what had happen since he left, and I told him of the progress I had made.
It was a big mistake.

He wanted to help me finish off my work, tweak some parts, and I let him.
Then he started to revert my user interface changes, and decided he would take over the tech system.


Then on hearing news he was reverting the main campaigns back to the broken content of where all this turmoil with the team began, I decided I would release it then and there, the same day, giving a statment on why this was happening just before the release.

Soon after I lost my access to the repository where remake's development was happening, only after I had added the patches for the fixes I found.

Now my work is being called a leak, full of bugs, unplayable.
Well that up to you to believe or not, play or not.


I know there are problems with is mod, my own Shattered Empire campaign is not how I wanted it to work, and I much as I would like to fix the space combat so you don't run out of memory forcing the game to close, I'm not planning on doing so in this mod. I kept it as close to the other members designs and that's how it will remain.

Though patches may still occur.