April 28th Patch Notes (New Colony Progression + Stability)

Major Single Player Stability updates to advance time.

Colony and Spire Progression Rework

Colony progression felt a little flat in the old system, with too much of the empire-building experience concentrated into a couple of large jumps. This update introduces a first draft of a reworked progression system designed to do two things: 1) Add more variety and strategic decision making. 2)Make expansion feel more incremental, with clearer steps between early growth and full colony creation.

New Central Spire progression

Level 5 - Strategic Outpost

Establish a small strategic outpost in empty space.

Level 10 - Asteroid Mining Outpost

Establish a mining outpost on an asteroid.

Level 15 - Rare Metal Mining Outpost

Establish a rare metal mining outpost.

Level 20 - New Colony

Establish a full new colony on any valid map tile. What do the new outposts do?

Strategic Outpost

Strategic outposts can only be built in empty space. They do not produce resources and are limited to 5 building slots, so placement and building choices matter. Possible uses include: Colonising right beside an enemy, then shipping resources there to build up a siege fleet before they discover and destroy it. Creating a dedicated heavy or light hull shipyard beside your home colony. Saving home colony building slots for storage, commerce, or other specialised roles. Strategic outposts are not meant to be economic powerhouses. They are forward positions, staging grounds, and tactical tools.

Asteroid Mining Outpost

Empty space is now littered with asteroids. Each asteroid grants a bonus to one resource: Vulkron, Aurelite, Deuterium, or Noctium. At Central Spire level 10, you can colonise one of these asteroids and use it as a specialised production site. Asteroid mining outposts can then ship resources back to your home colony. Like strategic outposts, asteroid mining outposts are limited to 5 building slots. They are designed to give focused production boosts, letting you target resources you are lacking without needing to commit to a full new colony.

Rare Metal Mining Outpost

Rare metal mining outposts work like the existing mining outposts from the old system. They can passively mint currency from Noctium and craft SPUs that provide special bonuses.

New Colony

At Central Spire level 20, you can establish a full new colony on any valid map tile and unlock the full building slot system. You can still found a colony in empty space if the strategic value is worth it, but tile production rules still apply. Empty space provides no production bonus, even for a full colony. In most cases, founding a colony on a strong production tile will be the better choice. Empty space colonies are mainly for situations where the tactical position matters more than the economy.

World generation changes

Alongside the progression rework, world generation has been adjusted to better support the new system.

• Players now spawn on a Terran World tile instead of empty space, so early resource production feels more natural.

• Empty space no longer grants resources by default.

• Empty space is now filled with asteroids that grant a single resource bonus.

• Black hole spawns are now much rarer.

• Black holes should now appear in roughly equal numbers across each quadrant, at roughly equal distances from the map centre.

• Black holes and other negative production tiles now apply true negative production instead of simply bottoming out at zero.

• World generation settings have been tidied up for smaller map sizes.

• Smaller maps should now generate more intentional structures rather than scattered random layouts.

Other changes

• Central Spire upgrades are now more expensive.

• SPU bonus combinations now combine 2 SPUs at a time.

• SPU combinations now use a square-root formula instead of the previous simple 1.5x multiplier.

• SPU tiers have been reworked. The lowest tier is now Tier I, and tiers can extend up to Tier X and beyond.

• Combining SPUs now costs Noctmarks based on the tier being created.

• The upper limit of SPU progression is now indirectly tied to the amount of Noctmarks in circulation, helping keep the system balanced around world time.