We ran The Great Simulation March 11-18 and the testers delivered.
For those who missed it, we compressed a full 4 month season into one week to stress test the solar system metagame from start to finish.
Here's where the system landed by the end of the week:
Population: 902,104
Power Plants: 20/20
Farms: 20/20
Housing: 20/20
Spaceports: 6/6
Research: 30/30
Factories: 58/58
Season Progress: 100%
Players Connected:
Players jumped on Discord and started coordinating on their own. Which sectors needed what, which facilities to prioritize, how to buff the system for everyone. Automatic updates were sent to our Discord for each time a Sector was completed or discovered, and shouted out the player who completed it. The system felt alive and churning. It was great to see.
What we are tuning going into Early Access:
Individual stat progression is getting a boost. Some players put in serious time this week and we felt their personal growth should reflect their effort more. That's getting fixed, and the testers will get to keep their stats even when the system map resets for starting Season Zero.
Honestly we were expecting to find some big issues with the system expansion as we have never pushed it this far and this quick. But Instead it was mostly smaller bugs we were able to squash, and the overall system held up well. The balancing worked. The metagame functioned exactly the way it was designed to. We're really excited where this is heading.
We've got a few other big updates to push which we are working on now, and then we'll be ready to go for EA!