April 2026 Dev Update

New Features

New Cobalt Colonies and Colony Techs

More colony choices to help differentiate each run. Removed almost all of the stacks. Tier techs require 4 techs from the previous tier to be able to research (in addition to the resource cost). A host of new techs and removal of many old techs that were not exciting or doubled up on other features in boring ways. Added feature to show the exact tech requirements for techs.

Wall Placement V2

• Start/endpoint placement model

• Endpoints use cylinders for placement

• Big pass on fixing any gaps and other issues

• Wall minimap icons match what’s placed in the world

  (Early look at walls w/ stand-in art)

  

Story Run Progress Bonuses

Story runs (Chapter 3 and beyond) get extra starting resources and some extra already-won colonies. This helps players get far enough in the colony content within the single sectors of story runs (vs. the 3 sectors of a free play run)

Demo

Influencer demo. Limited to Chapter 3. Turned back off, obviously. But worth mentioning as it was the driver for a lot of balance and polish work.

Map generation improvements

Enabled the creation of a couple new maps and improvements/bugfixes in old maps.

Squadron De-overlap

While most of the squadrons move during combat, some do not. Thralls and Corruptors have code that does not let them overlap against stationary targets. This great improves the look and feel of combats as those ships won’t exactly overlap anymore.

Dynamic Relic Rollovers

Relics that confer a dynamic balance based on game-state show that value in their rollover text along with a shortcut over their icon.

Iteration

• Quality of Life Improvements

  • Friend or Foe color option

  • Achievements locked until after Chapter 1 to unask many questions

  • Better tech rollover display (cleaned up, less fluff data)

• Pass on what things show as their default selection panel

• Gamepad sticky targeting interpolates between targets

• Prelude improvements

  • Easier to finish

  • Improved rewards for Prelude 1 to showcase the fighter

• Obstructions raised up by 200 units to make them clearer in terms of where they are

• 2 new missions

• Warp boon iteration and fixes

  • New boons

  • Warp boon mission doesn’t count as a mission win since it’s not a mission as far as players are concerned

• Backstories

  • Non-blocking stories are presented in a randomized order. This makes things feel more natural.

  • New content

• Update some documents for use by the external QA person

• New relics

Key Balance Changes

• Balance pass on boss meter techs

• Chapter 1 and 2 balance pass

• Lots of work balancing story runs vs. free play runs

• Achievement reward balance pass

• Relics buffed (particularly early ones)

Key Bugfixes

• Extra scientist no longer spawned in the scientist missions.

• Fixed several loot table issues with reward drops

• Player should be not be able to reset camera zoom during a mouse-drag scroll

• Toasts should no longer get stuck on

• Lock up all the discovery trees behind the extractor discovery

• Better supply ship pathing

• Spelling pass on the string table

• Pass through obstruction and movement bugs

• Lighting bugs

• Background asteroid bugs

• Fixed situation where some objectives could update after completion causing odd/inaccurate displays on the HUD

• Fixed bug where CPAI was accidentally using the wrong units (from the other faction) sometimes

• Fixed several lingering or going-away-too-soon issues with commands

• Fixed up some edge cases where building placement would show as invalid even when it was valid

• Attack facing detects with less mouse movement now

• Fixed enemy ships getting too many abilities

• Fixed a few bad objectives in missions (completing too early)