August 28, 2013
Hello everyone, I would like to bring you up-to-date on what we have been working on the past several weeks and what we are planning for the next major update for Horizon, due sometime in mid-to-late September.
As I had mentioned previously, the feedback has been tremendous from our early adopters.. Which has also meant delving to assess each one, finding the most common requests, prioritizing them and updating our original roadmap.
Based on these and our own assessment we have identified these broad areas to focus on in the short term which I want to share with you.
AI Improvements
* A more aggressive and challenging AI that will make battle plans and execute them based on racial traits.
* Better planet and resource management by the AI races so they are more effective
* An improved combat AI which includes better pathfinding and smarter target selection
Economy and Colony Management
* A more balanced and challenging economy
* Adding more decision making when building colony structures/types
* Different representation/animations for each level of buildings
* Better display of pertinent information like maintenance and what each structure does
Ship Design
* Adding more ship graphic choices to pick for your designs
* Displaying weapon arcs in the design process
Diplomacy Relations
* A new Report Screen for each race accessible from Relations view, to track major events and your history with that race
* Make diplomatic relations less accommodating with regards to making alliances and certain other pacts (more balance)
Graphics
* Improved UI panels and windows
* Improved and updated in-game animation Videos in HD
Quests
* Adding more alien race related missions
The list is the main points to give you an idea, so the update will contain many smaller changes and we will likely include a few more things in time for this major update. If there are things you were looking forward to but aren't in this list, don't be concerned they are not forgotten, we are making every effort to get as many things done as soon as possible.
As always we welcome any feedback or suggestions you may have and we thank you for your interest and support.
Raf - Horizon Team