2026-09-26
Menus, sound and administration
- New Game always appears first in its own section above Saved Games.
- Click starting locations in the galaxy view or Advanced deployment map to assign players in order. Click through all players to clear a location, then start again; assignments stay unique when players or locations change.
- Added ElevenLabs menu opening and closing swishes, warp engagement audio and looping pregame music that follows your existing music and sound settings.
- Existing administrators can promote another user through Admin Console → Players. Promotions require an interactive administrator session and are audited.
- Restored changelog entries removed during launcher initialization. Change Log is explicitly labeled on the main menu, with the newest release first and the earlier history preserved.
Technology, construction and fleet controls
- Added a searchable, hierarchical technology tree for every faction, available from the launcher, match toolbar and match menu. Follow prerequisite and production paths for research, ships, stations, abilities and resources; see your current progress during a match.
- Locked research is clearly gray and explains its missing prerequisites on hover. Completed research is green. Research costs use red for insufficient resources and green for affordable items.
- Centered command icons above bottom-aligned labels and rebuilt all 78 faction ship and structure portraits with closer framing from their actual model bounds, including Research Lab, Science Station, Beacon Array and Nebula support ships. Enlarged tile artwork makes each asset recognizable; captured constructors retain their native faction icons.
- Ship tiles show how many of that type are queued, including a single ship. Right-click removes one queued ship using the normal refund rules. Queuing a ship leaves other affordable, unlocked choices available.
- Newly built and repairing ships use each shipyard's actual front/back openings at full size. Ships align outside, cross the bay without turning or climbing through its hull, then clear the exit before following their orders. Repair traffic and fabrication take turns; oversized visiting ships receive service outside the entrance. Corrected capital-yard orientation and enlarged undersized faction bays. Docking state survives saves.
- Fixed the Auto Abilities toggle in the match menu, including while paused.
- Ability tiles show a visible countdown until ready, including Omega Lance's charge. Automatic Board no longer wastes cooldowns reinforcing healthy allies or attempting unwinnable captures. It rescues allied zero-crew derelicts while keeping at least half the source ship's crew aboard; manual reinforcement remains available.
- Improved narrow and short screens: Advanced settings remain reachable, resources and Menu stay on screen, and command/build groups scroll without overlapping.
Combat, cloaking and saved intelligence
- Restored mining ships orbiting the resource they harvest, including beside mining platforms.
- The selected-object window is now a slowly orbiting view of the actual battlefield, showing live attacks, shields and damage. Reduced-motion preferences stop the camera orbit.
- Selected ships show labeled Hull, Shields and Crew meters with current and maximum values. All three bars fit without scrolling, including the previously clipped crew bar. Group selections include total crew. Docking at a repair facility restores crew as well as hull and shields, including when only crew is missing.
- Friendly ships can climb above or dive below allied stations and turrets in deeper transit lanes, with hull clearance before passing. They return to compact flight height after clearing a station, even when stopping nearby or resuming a save. Stationary guard and attack orders no longer hold ships at extreme heights; modest vertical stacking remains for fleets and nearby traffic. Repair docks and reserved mining approaches remain accessible.
- Pulsating purple Long Range Volley warheads now travel twice as fast for every faction. Support ships still shoot them down with interception beams and prevent their impact damage.
- New and resumed matches start with the map facing north.
- Hold keeps ships anchored while allowing them to turn toward their targets. Long-range sensors reach at least 10% beyond effective maximum weapon range, revealing that area through fog of war.
- Long-range weapons pulse purple for every faction. Weapon origins follow the actual hull, and beams, projectiles and impact effects share corrected shield and hull contact positions.
- Quantum Torpedoes research upgrades torpedoes on both Main Stations and Starbases.
- Rebuilt Omega Lance with a charge at the weapon mount, a focused white core, cyan/violet energy and contact flares. Overload Pulse now expands as an electric shockwave with a transparent interior. The effects reuse pooled geometry and add no texture downloads.
- Replaced the paired support-ship and beacon circles with a single expanding spherical sensor wave, a luminous rim and faint moving energy traces. The clear center keeps ships and weapons visible. Detection behavior is unchanged, and the effect reuses a bounded pool without texture downloads.
- Vharuun and Ilyr constructors can build a Cloaking Turret after Cloaking Field research. Its 70-unit field conceals allied ships and stations, including the emitter. Firing reveals the shooter for eight simulation seconds; a shot witnessed by enemy or allied sensors leaves a last-known minimap contact for 60 seconds.
- Support ships with the Nebula Tachyon Sensor Suite detect cloaked ships and stations within 135 units and share that visibility with allies, even with Auto Abilities disabled. Destroying, disabling or capturing a cloak emitter immediately changes its protection.
- AI commanders now research and build cloaking turrets around valuable uncovered stations and mining clusters, preserving their economy and avoiding redundant allied fields. Fleets use safe allied cover; enemy fields prompt detector support and sensor research. Revealed emitters receive attack priority, while remembered hidden sites are scouted. Jev and strategic AI guidance now include these tactics and permanent Nebula detection.
- Saved games retain explored fog, remembered enemy structures and witnessed cloak contacts at their last observed positions. Fixed restored station contacts disappearing from the world and minimap, including stations destroyed outside sensor coverage; revisiting an empty site clears the memory. Multiplayer snapshots preserve each player's own intelligence.
Performance and release documentation
- Reduced repeated HUD work and rendering allocations, shared shadow rendering with the live portrait, and removed the portrait's duplicate models. Geometry, texture resolution and visual effect settings are preserved.
- Voice and sound effects load on demand. Model loading avoids duplicate downloads, limits simultaneous decoding and excludes 45 superseded model imports.
- Reduced Babylon JavaScript from 7.09 MB to 3.82 MB before compression. Added lossless Brotli/gzip delivery with correct caching, MIME types, HEAD requests and audio range support.
- Updated the README and performance report with the release changes, measured results and validation limits. Fixed campaign JSON line endings so Windows and production preserve the same cutscene checksums.
Earlier overhaul updates now documented
- The cinematic launcher, galaxy selection, briefings, warp transitions, compact HUD, account screens, campaign dossiers, settings, map editor and mission studio now share the console interface. Editors initialize only when opened.
- Added fleet-wide automatic abilities, Regroup that preserves paid construction and existing orders, decommission confirmation, tactical event pings, distinct faction capital ships and the revised Vharuun dreadnought.
- Added 44 ElevenLabs dynamic music tracks and client-hosted Jev watch/load simulations with fog-safe commander advice and validated purchase, repair and resource commands.