Greetings Lords of Rigel! We've just passed a year in Early Access with that we've entered EA 3. With the past two updates we've put in some major updates such as the Elder Races, Doomsday Clock, AI aggression, and an update to the user interface. Legendary galaxies (1024 stars) are also available.
Based on your comments we did a reskin of the interface along with some adjustments on where UI button elements are. Switching out buttons to be brighter is intended to make it easier to identify intractable parts of the UI. AI aggression is the next major area we're working on, making sure that military force use is tied to the AI personalities. As players have noted some AIs aim to “build tall” instead of expand and others spread outwards, so we've wanted to make sure AI aggression is also showing the same variety.
With EA3 we're working towards a 1.0 release aimed in 2024, but we're wanting to continue to incorporate balance and UI quality of life improvements from your feedback.
EA3 features will include:
- Research Victory
- Grand Menaces
- Ship refitting
Figure 1. Updated, reskinnable user interface.
Figure 2. UI prompt with new color scheme.
For our latest deep dive, Space Pirates!
In the LoR galaxy space pirates are some of the forces that reached the galaxy from the Synth's creators on their hunt throughout the universe to destroy all machine-life. Turning to raiding and piracy, these groups patrol some systems, and there are also occasional raiding fleets.
Style wise we wanted more rugged less technologically advanced ships with a mix of Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica design sensibilities. Pirate ships are also loaded out more with kinetic weapons and heavy armor. Pirate ships include corvettes, frigates, and large capital ships with centrifuges to generate gravity. Generally good early to mid game player ship design should counter pirate forces easily.
Figure 3. Space pirates!
Figure 4. A pirate mothership in editor- a preview of an EA3 Grand Menace.
Also moving forward we'll be calling these Community Updates as opposed to "roundups."