Empire Simulator: Release Notes (v0.1 alpha)

Empire Simulator: Release Notes (v0.1 alpha)

This is the first major drop of the Empire layer. It is a starting point, not the finished product. Lots of the foundations are in place but several sectors are still on autopilot and more depth is queued up for later patches. See "What is coming next" at the bottom.

TL;DR

You can now run your studio as the core of a wider conglomerate. There is a Command Centre, you can buy into 9 new business sectors, rivals diversify into their own empires, and the macro economy cycles around you. Two of the new sectors (Streaming Platform and Semiconductor Foundry) have minor dashboards already. The other seven run on autopilot for now with a clean placeholder screen until their deep dashboards land.

New: Empire Command Centre

A new sub-tab system on the Empire screen lets you flick between four views:

• Cockpit: top-of-page metric strip (Subsidiaries, 52w Revenue, 52w Net, Regulatory Heat), macro waves widget, portfolio cards for every sector you own, synergy heatmap, risk register, succession, and rival watch.

• Sector Marketplace: browse every sector in the game, see which ones you own, which need cash, and which are gated by era.

• Sector Detail: opens automatically when you click any Tier 2 sector card. Renders the deep dashboard if one exists, or a clean autopilot placeholder if not.

• Hall of Fame: dynasty perks, vertical integration milestones, era summaries.

The Command Centre now reads top to bottom in the order you would expect: Command header and week number, Lead Brief, Top 3 Actions, Risks, then the deep Empire portfolio below.

New: Sector Marketplace

Every sector card now shows two clear badges and a sensible button so you always know what you are looking at:

• [c]Dedicated tab[/c] for Tier 1 sectors that have their own existing screens (Movies, Newspaper, Wrestling, Football, Racing, Golf, Car Manufacturer, MOBA, MMORPG, Engine Lab, Space). The button takes you straight there.

• [c]Deep dashboard[/c] for sectors with a full bespoke management UI (Streaming Platform, Semiconductor Foundry today).

• [c]Autopilot only[/c] for sectors managed by your CEO for now, with telemetry-only placeholder dashboards (Telecom, Retail Chain, Media Holding, Theme Park, Music Label, Esports League, Manufacturing).

• [c]Owned[/c] pill if it is already in your portfolio.

No more confusing "use existing unlock flow" text. Every card knows where it should send you.

New: Tier 2 Sectors (9 total)

You can now unlock and operate the following alongside your studio:

With deep dashboards in this drop:

• Streaming Platform: subscriber tiers, originals slate, library, churn modelling, original IP bonuses, scandal control.

• Semiconductor Foundry: process node roadmap (planar, FinFET, GAA tiers), fab capacity and condition, yield curves, geopolitical exposure, mature-node margin decay, capacity utilization events.

On autopilot for now (deep dashboards in a future patch):

• Telecom / ISP: includes network outage events under harvest posture.

• Retail Chain: store closure waves under divest, expansion events under grow.

• Media Holding: bias scandals, ratings highs.

• Theme Park

• Music Label

• Esports League

• Manufacturing: supply chain disruptions and product recalls.

All seven still contribute to synergy, regulatory heat, the rolling P&L, and your conglomerate score. They just lean on your CEO instead of a hands-on UI for the moment.

New: Synergy Framework

Sectors now produce and consume synergy tags (Content, Distribution, IP, Talent, Hardware, Brand, Audience, Supply, Compute, and more).

• Synergy heatmap shows which tags are flowing and which gaps are unmet.

• Top Synergy and Worst Synergy Gap highlights surface in the cockpit readouts.

• Synergy is capped at +/- 20% per subsidiary so it never trivialises the game.

• Cross-empire warfare can deny rival synergy tags by poaching key staff or sabotaging supply.

New: Hands-on vs Hands-off Toggle

Every sector now has an engagement mode:

• Hands-on: you run it, full lever control.

• Hands-off: your assigned CEO runs it. CEO level and traits (steady, team_player, etc.) directly modify outcomes. Each hands-off sub gets a weekly autopilot summary line so you still know what happened.

New: Rival Empires

Rivals are no longer just other studios. They diversify quarterly into their own conglomerates:

• Rival personas with strategic postures and grudges.

• Quarterly narrative beats appear as headlines.

• The Rival Watch panel highlights any rival you have direct competitive overlap with using a red border.

• Rivals can deny your synergy through warfare actions of their own.

New: Macro Economy

A proper economic backdrop that sits underneath every sector:

• Economic cycles (boom, recession, recovery) with intensity and forecast.

• One-off macro waves: VR Takeoff, Cloud Gaming Breakthrough, Music Streaming Disruption, Experience Economy Surge, Energy Crisis, plus the originals.

• Each wave hits different sectors differently via a sector matrix. Energy Crisis pummels Manufacturing and Theme Parks but barely touches Music Label.

• Cycle forecast widget tells you the next phase and roughly when.

New: Regulatory Heat

The bigger you get, the more attention you attract:

• Regulatory Heat scalar with rising / steady / falling trend.

• Investigation event chains with branching choices.

• Lobbying spend slider on the Risk Register panel: trade weekly cash for slow heat reduction. Capped per week so you cannot pay your way out forever.

• Divestiture flow polish for shedding subs when heat gets dangerous.

New: Generational and Legacy

The empire is now a multi-generation story:

• Mogul aging with succession events.

• Heir scoring 0 to 100 with rationale, ranked from your existing staff (based on level, morale, traits).

• Chronicle compresses old events into one-line era summaries so the log never bloats.

• Decadal milestones, including a Centennial achievement at the 100 year mark.

• Dynasty perks carry over into New Game+: Press Baron, Live Legend, Centennial Heritage, Family Tradition, Music Mogul, Esports Pioneer, and more.

• Vertical Integration milestones (Press Baron, Live Legend, Music Empire, Global Industrialist).

New: Telemetry and UI Polish

• KPI sparklines and week-over-week deltas on every sector card.

• Performance budget warning in the cockpit when the weekly tick goes over budget (e.g. switch some subs to hands-off).

• Empire brief stripe added to the Weekly Brief so empire news appears in your normal flow.

• Macro Waves widget with intensity bar and forecast.

• Risk Register, Succession, Rival Watch, Synergy Heatmap, Sector Detail, all styled consistently with the rest of the game using the project's CSS variable system.

Plumbing and Quality

• Saves migrate forward additively (current save schema v82). Old saves load fine and gain the empire layer the first time the simulation ticks.

• New empire-specific smoke tests cover the core flows (default empire creation, telemetry trail, synergy resolution, cycle forecast, heir scoring, lobbying, etc.).

• Fixed: cockpit dashboard appearing unstyled after the first weekly tick. All empire UI now uses the project's inline-style + CSS variable pattern.

• Fixed: warfare ordering so synergy denial tags from rivals apply to the current tick rather than next.

What is coming next

This v0.1 alpha is the foundation. Future drops will focus on:

• Deep dashboards for the seven autopilot-only sectors (Telecom, Retail Chain, Media Holding, Theme Park, Music Label, Esports League, Manufacturing). Each one will get the same level of depth as Streaming and Semiconductor.

• A proper Capital Allocation screen with the existing widget mounted, plus a Strategic Posture grid for whole-portfolio moves.

• A bespoke Sector Executive View drawer when you click a Cockpit card, instead of the current sub-tab swap.

• More rival narrative beats, alliances, and hostile takeover attempts.

• More macro waves (currency crises, AI booms, generational tech shifts).

• More dynasty perks and NG+ scenarios.

• Tunable difficulty knobs for regulatory pressure and rival aggression.

If you spot anything weird or unclear, scream and I will fix it. Have fun.