Posted May 03, 2026 by LoopForge Games
⚔ New: Warfare & Conquest
- Frigate warship — new ship type with 220 hull and dedicated weapons slot. Build at any shipyard once you research Weaponry.
- Three weapon mods: Railgun Battery (5/tick), Plasma Lance (9/tick, requires Point Defense), Missile Array (14/tick, requires Orbital Warfare).
- Frigate orders: Defend (orbit a friendly planet, intercept hostile scouts), Patrol (cycle a route — requires Naval Doctrine), Conquer (siege rival
garrisons — requires Orbital Warfare).
- Defense Turrets actually shoot now — Mk II/III deal 25%/60% more, Point Defense tech adds another +25%. Hostile rival scouts within 5 AU of a
turret-defended planet take per-tick fire.
- Planet takeover: Rivals can now genuinely colonize their claimed planets, putting them behind a garrison. Send a frigate with Conquer orders, grind
through the garrison, and the planet flips to your empire (population takes a 60% hit and the prior owner gets a –40 disposition / +30 tension hit — bring
napkins).
🪐 New: Rivals Feel Alive
- Race-colored claim flags rendered on planet dots in the System Map.
- "Claimed by" / "Rival colony · garrison X%" badges in the Planet Overlay header.
- Power and Tech bars (replacing flat text) on the Star Map rival info panel.
- Rivals draw deterministic positions, broadcast more situational chatter, and now occasionally upgrade abstract claims to actual colonies.
🔬 Expanded Research (14 new techs across all 6 branches)
- Energy: Kinetic Collectors (+15% reactor power), Solar Apex (+50% solar output)
- Exploration: Hyperdrive (+30% ship speed, stacks with Warp), Quantum Logistics (unlocks Transmat), Subspace Relays (–50% transmat cost), Orbital
Platforms I/II/III (+3/+6/+10 tiles per planet)
- Biology: Genetic Uplift (+25% growth, –10% food demand)
- Military: Weaponry, Naval Doctrine (+15% warship hull + Patrol order), Point Defense, Orbital Warfare (Conquer order)
- Commerce: Currency Arbitrage (favorable currency spreads)
- Covert: Martial Law (+50% Enforcement Hub effectiveness, Amnesty action), Civic Doctrine (–0.2/tick passive crime decay everywhere)
🏗 New Buildings
- Crime-flavored producers (require Shadow Operations): Black Market (components + Flux, raises crime) and Bio-Synth Lab (electronics + Flux, heavy crime
footprint).
- Niche specialists: Orbital Lab (Data juggernaut), Cryo Vault (massive housing), Munitions Foundry (components + speeds up ship build), Atmospheric
Processor (rations from power), Quantum Battery (+1600 power storage at Mk III), Embassy Spire (Authority + Flux), Black Site (Data + Flux + crime).
- Shipyard upgrades finally matter — shipBuildSpeedBonus is now wired in and stacks with Munitions Foundry. Capped at –60% build time empire-wide.
💱 New: Per-Race Currencies
- 8 race-tied currencies (Solari Aurels, Lithvek Pulses, Verdani Sapworts, Cerebrite Logits, Ferrokyn Ingots, Dravok Marks, Qeylar Crowns, Xelvari Hex)
with fluctuating exchange rates that drift every 50 ticks and react to your relations.
- New Currency Exchange modal in the bottom bar (appears after first rival contact). Buy/sell at a 40% spread that drops to 10% with Currency Arbitrage.
🚀 New: Resource Teleportation
- Research Quantum Logistics to unlock the Transmat modal — instantly move power, ore, alloys, components, or electronics between any two colonies for 0.5
Flux per unit (halved by Subspace Relays).
- Storage-cap-aware (won't transfer past target's headroom).
🛠 Fixes & Balance
- Authority cap actually grows now — Satellite Dish Mk II/III bonuses were being silently dropped.
- Storage upgrades scale: refinery alloys storage now 50/100/175, satellite authority 50/100/200, fusion power 100/175/275, etc. Every tier-2/3 building
that previously had a flat-tier storage value got real growth.
- Mining is permanently finite — barren-planet deposits no longer regenerate. rich_deposits planets get 2× max as a deliberate jackpot.
- Ancient Ruins finally do something — colonizing one yields a +200 Data archaeological dump and a permanent +25% Data bonus on that planet.
- Crime recovery exists — Enforcement Hubs now use their tier-specific reduction (0.3 → 0.5 → 0.8/tick), abundant food cools crime by 0.1/tick, Martial
Law +50%, Civic Doctrine adds permanent passive decay. Lawless colonies are no longer stuck.
- Maintenance multiplier hard-capped at 3× with a visible row in the Empire Economy panel ("×1.45 (124 buildings)").
- Crew drain protection — launches now refuse if they'd drop a planet below 1 population.
- Standing Orders persist through save/load (was being dropped).
- Memory leaks fixed — UI store subscriptions, window listeners on the System Map, Three.js starfield disposal, post-processing resize listeners.
- Empire RateBreakdown now tracks components and electronics production correctly.
- Components/electronics fully aggregate in empire rates (was hardcoded to 0).
- Removed dead perks.ts. Defensive merge in applyLoadedState so old saves with missing fields can't NaN.
⚙ Performance
- Empire-wide maintenance scaling computed once per tick instead of per-planet.
- Resource-key lookups switched to a Set (avoids string compares in the building consumption hot path).
💾 Save Compatibility
- Save format 30 → 34 with four migrations (standingOrder, weapons slot, planet ownership/garrison, currencies/wallet). Old saves will load, with sane
defaults for the new fields.