Custom Factions - Free Content Update

Custom factions are here! Build your own faction from the ground up!

You are no longer limited to the six premade factions. You can now customize the name, color, emblem, portrait, home planet and traits of your own faction. Most options are purely visual, but the home planet and traits can completely change how you play the game.

There are 97 traits available to choose from, with up to 4 per faction and 2 trait points to spend, allowing huge number of possible faction builds. Some traits cost more than others, and negative traits like Astroprocessing Blindness hand you extra trait points in exchange for a drawback.

Powerful traits like Precursors replace your explorers with the mighty Ancient ship. Reinforced Hulls make your ships convert all their shield hull points instead. Traits like Technological Geniuses decrease the cost of all techs by 2 gas, opening the door to a much heavier research focus.

Save and create multiple custom factions, let the AI design its own from scratch, or set the AI loose with factions you've built yourself.

In addition to custom factions, this update brings a long list of other changes and improvements.

Balance Changes

• Tweaked some premade factions

• Change network hub to always have range of 2

• Change the tech levels of many buildings and upgrades, generally making network extensions higher level techs

AI Improvements

• Fix an issue which prevented AI from overbuilding stations and an issue which made AI defend unnecessarily

• Make AI to build network hubs

• AI improvements for starports and metal management

UI Improvements

• Add delete save file button

• Add autosave frequency and file limit options

• Add faction specific cursors

• Improve text readability by adding black text outline

• Unify font sizes

• Show colonization cost in tooltip even when colonization is not possible

• Allow zooming closer

• Add possibility to increase network indicator alpha by clicking toggle network

Graphics Improvements

• Add faction specific weaponry sprites

• Improve Harbinger ship graphics

Bug Fixes

• Fix foundry world anomaly reward texts

• Fix issue which caused colonization cost to be wrong

• Fix an issue which left tech options empty

• Fix an issue which caused hackers to offer duplicates of same tech

• Fix minor faction relation tooltip texts

• Fix crash on AI turn

• Fix experimental ship code anomaly reward

• Fix stranded trader convoy anomaly relation changes

This content update increases the replayability a lot. If it's been a while since you last played, now's a great time to jump back in and build something absurd.