This is an unplanned dev log as there has been an important conceptual gameplay issue dealt with after closed alpha v2.0 was released, which is also what has delayed closed alpha v3.0. I have made some changes to colony functionality related to how players use/"exploit" them. It technically affects only a small section of the game that has to do with how the colony and planet management works but it does have a very large impact on gameplay, so I thought it best to write about it.
Colony Changes:
The colony management window has been essentially replaced with a new one. Colonies work in a more indirect and independent way now, while the player picks more general level options for whatever types of colony is possible on said location. The reason I made this change at such a late stage was due to realizing that having so much control over how colonies work creates a lot of busy work for the player. It had a "meta" or optimal way to play to achieve goals that involved tedious effort that was frankly boring and extremely unappealing to me. It was obvious that it will take a lot of enjoyment away from the role playing part of the game, particularly aspects like exploration and engagement with the AI.
Colony actions like for example mining or salvaging in orbit or areas within the same system are now fully automated. Previously you had to select ships, locations and even percentages of what should be mined. Now you don't have to worry about any of that minutiae. Sentient beings on your colony and the governor will do their jobs and take care of that. You can however, order such operations halted or allowed(those are the smaller square buttons at the top of the related UI window above). Essentially, colonies will now develop and gain features in a more procedural and hands off way. More fitting of my original description of the game as in the summary itself here on Steam that I wrote more than a year ago.
Note: The player is still able to construct certain important buildings like shipyards, defensive structures build ships/units from the surface and so on. Also you are still able to direct a portion of industry for manufacturing specific resources.
Other regular developments:
Some minor improvements to the UI. I cut down on some of the outlines in the boxes and changes a few graphical assets to clean it up a bit. I did attempt a blur texture(to blur the background behind UI boxes) however that failed since it interfered with the cameras. Most of the other work are regular bug fixes and art related things, nothing to write much about. You will see some of it soon though.
So that deals with the last remaining major conceptual issue. This should also be the only log without an alpha build before public release. There will be two more major closed alpha releases and a couple of small fix builds(if warranted) in between that. The month of July will be a big month for Star Zeal 4x, so see you soon and thank you for reading.
Check out the discord link here, there are some better details about the closed alpha there: https://discord.gg/bm6wRYcZER
Website: https://starzeal4x.com/