New in Version 1.7

These are the changes in this version.

Information Presentation

Stars with events are easier to recognize

For stars with events, a "!" is displayed after the name.

System with event
System with event

Future colonizations are easier to recognize

When a colony ship is on its way to a destination star, the tile is half drawn with the player colors.
This makes it easier to see if a colony ship is already underway than just from a thin line.

System that will soon be colonized
System that will soon be colonized

Future probe arrivals are easier to recognize

For unknown systems the question mark is drawn with yellow instead of red background if a probe is on its way there.
This makes it easier to see if a probe is already underway than just by looking at a thin line.

System that will soon be explored
System that will soon be explored

Turn off route lines

The route lines for commands and ships can be turned off.
Even though the route lines are very useful during the game, it can help to deactivate the route lines to make the map clearer and ships easier to spot.

Route lines on
Route lines on
Route lines off
Route lines off

Filter events about enemies

Events about enemy ships can be filtered.

These are the filterable events:

  • Foreign Ship Construction Started
  • Foreign Ship Construction Finished
  • Foreign Ship Started
  • Foreign Ship Arrived
  • Foreign Ship Scrapped
  • Foreign Ship Lost

Filter events
Filter events

More meaningful disaster reports

You can now tell if a colony has been wiped out by the disaster message. For example: A murderous zombie apokalypse has eliminated the population.

Rule Changes

  • In the trading formula, the spectral type of the starting system and the happiness of the destination system are are weighted more heavily.

  • Man-made disasters now only occur in systems with at least 1 pop.
    Until now, it was enough that the system was colonized.

  • If a battleship reaches a system of its own empire, but the system has no free population, it will be disbanded.
    This also happened if there was a battle in that system in the same year.
    Now it fights in that battle.

Other Changes

  • The generated maps are now better balanced. This eliminates the need to pre-calculate 1000 seeds, which used to keep my computer busy for about 8 hours when making rule or AI changes.

  • More than 128 stars are now possible.
    This is only an internal change for now, the largest selectable map still only has 90 stars.
    Currently I'm toying with the idea of governor ships, with which larger maps would still be playable.