Greetings Lords of Rigel,
This update has some more fixes to user reported bugs, and AI improvements to build queues and colonization. Our next major quality of life feature for closing out EA1 is still a loading/saving system for the build queue.
Two of the larger quality of life improvements are the filters in the Empire (Image 1) and Planets (Image 2) menus. You can now filter controlled planets by if they are colonies, outposts, or have empty build queues. The top sorts do filter out outposts, but this makes it easier if you want to find a particular outpost or need to scrap them. The empty build queue filter also lets you easily manage your empire and enter into build queues or use autobuild.
The Planets menu filters include colonizable planets (removes asteroid belts and gas giants), habitable planets (ones with climates that support food production), mineral rich planets, and a gravity filter that filters out planets that would have gravity penalties based on your species traits. This should make it a lot easier for players to use filters and sorts to pick new worlds for colonies once they’ve explored the galaxy a bit.
Image 1. Empire Menu Filters
Image 2. Planets Menu Filters
For this week’s deep dive: the Yalkai!
The Yalkai play into the “blue space women” trope we see in a number of scifi franchises (Mass Effect, Master of Orion, Star Control, Star Wars). But in reality they are more starfish like predators that use telepathy and illusions (Image 3). As you’re a human player, you see the Yalkai as humans and not their true form. The Yalkai are feudal and have research penalties but gain bonuses to their ships. This is reflected in their larger, bulkier, ships and the large windows compared to Human ships hint that they are a bit different in their actual shape than what they show (Image 4). The arcs on their designs also hint at the true tentacle horrors that the Yalkai are. The Yalkai are not as great at ground combat as other species (minus the Ornithon who are terrible at it), but this is offset by their ability to use telepathy to outright take planets. From our initial concepts we wanted to keep a strong imperial vibe for them like the Centauri from Babylon 5 and an air of the Yalkai “keeping up appearances” (Image 5) to avoid them just being blue space elves.
Image 3. Yalkai true forms
Image 4. Yalkai Cruiser
Image 5. Yalkai Ambassador
Let us know what further changes you would like to see or if you have encountered any technical issues. Please post on the forums, reach out to us via Discord or send an email: [email protected] Saved games and clear steps to reproduce the bug are critical. It helps us more quickly track down the bug and get it fixed. Additional information on bug reporting tips can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/437440/discussions/.
As always, we appreciate the feedback, conversations, and support from all of you!
