Hey everyone,
Big news. In a week or two at most I'm putting out an update that basically adds a whole new layer to the game. Some of it is stuff that was supposed to be in at launch but was too buggy to ship, some of it is new. You'll be able to create your own character and play as them, and Events are finally going in.
Custom Character Update
So yeah, not just civilizations anymore. You'll be able to control characters down to micro actions. One thing to be clear about though: this new part isn't about creating things or ruling the universe like everything else in the game so far. It's much closer to an open world RPG, or a life sim. (For now it's isometric only, and your character is represented by your ship moving through space rather than a character model. It runs on a new Character Actions system I built for this.)
This time you're not a creator. You're just a person with goals. (or one of the other life forms :) )
Events.
Civilization scale, local system scale, galaxy scale and universe scale events are all going in.
Some of you probably saw the events listed in the universe laws on panel 4 and wondered why nothing happened. That's because I had them turned off, they were buggy. They're going in now. Civilizations are going to have a much rougher time even when you don't touch anything.
The Structure
The old "Destiny" panel is being replaced completely and the algorithm behind it is getting rewritten. You'll be able to shape the galaxy with a few lines of text (for now this only covers civilizations and life sim interactions).
Visual updates
Warships and combat effects got an update. The new city and nature work is also coming with this same package.
Technical and optimization
I'm aiming to have the problems with landing on planet surfaces, and the problems on the surfaces themselves, fixed with this update. I can't promise anything because none of these issues ever happened on any PC I tested on, but I really think it's sorted this time.
One more thing, I want to run a small poll. Tell me which celestial bodies you want added, or which ones you think are missing from the game. I want to make planets and space objects a lot more varied and this helps me a lot.