I just put out another story update, it is about 30 minutes to an hour worth of game play. It features 1 new ship (with a variant) and as usual intense space combat. The new mission addition has a "sort of" a boss battle - I'm particularly excited about it because it is a big battle without being big in ship numbers and has a unique flow to it.
Story/mission wise the game is nearly complete - the next mission update should include the conclusion of that aspect of the game. But before I start working on that I'm going to revisit the rest of the game and see what needs to be improved.
One aspect that I kept seeing that needs a look at is ship build times - I'm not sure whether I'll just decrease them, add in an "research upgrade" to decrease them, or allow bases to build more than one ship at a time or some combination of the above (or another solution).
I'll see where there is a need for music in the earlier game and add it in (now that there are a lot more music tracks than when I started).
I will most likely also add in a few features - for example the ability to get resources via gates (versus just nearby bases).
Finally I'll see where the earlier story could benefit from game engine improvements and from things I learned over the more than a year that the story game play has been in development. I'll try to make battles bigger without necessarily increasing the difficulty.
So I hope to work on the above for the rest of the week, and then continue towards release.
Thanks for supporting the project!
Paul
PS: once the above are done I'll post a "what is left to do" type of an update.