0.5.3 stops driving. The old opening tour locked the interface, walked you through 81 steps and then left you on a cliff. It taught, but it drove. In its place: an objective ladder that tells you what is worth doing next, and an Administrator who explains why, both of which then get out of your way.
Existing saves pick up the new ladder on load, crediting everything you have already done.
The objective ladder
A new Objectives panel, on its own top-bar button. Chapters open one after another, each rung saying what it wants and paying out when you do it.
Order inside a chapter is free. Do the rungs however you like, and anything you had already done ticks the moment the chapter opens.
Locked rungs stay visible and name what they are waiting on, so you can always see where the ladder goes next.
The chapters carry the opening much further than the tour did: ore and power, first trade, the lab, deep-space sensors and their long-range dish, a spaceyard and a real cargo fleet, your second world, then heavy industry.
Your Administrator speaks
The leader you picked comments on what just happened and what is worth doing next, in a comms card that never pauses the game and never takes the mouse away from you.
A "Show me" button sits on their cards and on objectives. Every lesson the old tutorial taught is still there, now on demand, and none of them seize the controls.
Three separate toggles in Options: "Show me" hints, first-time guides, and Administrator commentary.
The relic arc, all the way to the Warp Gate
Once a deep scan picks something up, a second objective stack opens alongside the main one, so the mystery never blocks the economy.
It runs the whole way: chart the relics, decode all five fragments, research Precursor Gate Physics, build the Gate, read the star address and warp out.
The old relic quest panel is folded into the Objectives board, so the whole arc reads in one place.
Around the base
Icons for the tech tree and for building upgrades: 13 research emblems and 27 upgrade emblems, where there used to be a generic flask and plain text.
Research nodes now list the recipes they unlock, not just buildings and upgrades.
Every fault a building reports carries a one-line fix under its status. Two silent stalls got their own status, alert and map glyph: a factory sitting on a finished batch it cannot deposit, and a Seller with nothing selected to sell.
Labs, Surveyors and Detectors get crew and power ahead of amenities. A Lab used to be dead last in the queue for both.
Mine cores line up with every other building: docking pipes reach their airlocks, landing pads sit flush, and the selection frame hugs the hull.
Everything that shipped in 0.5.2, including the whole ice, water and food chain, is now in French.
Balance
A hidden research objective quietly paid 1,400 credits in the first seconds of every new game. It now pays when you actually earn it.
Claiming your first extra world costs 30% less, so expansion sits within reach of one good trade cycle.
The first trade objective asks for 500 credits of sales instead of 1,000, and points you at a second good to put on the market.
The first relic bay is built from tier-1 goods, so the arc opens on what you already make. Later bays still want the rare materials.
Fixes
Feature shadows were invisible on building exteriors, painted over by the roof every frame. A regression since 0.4.2.
Building shadows rendered flat: all three height tiers cast the same length.
A repaired building kept a low-power badge forever.
Deliveries against Earth's demands now count ware by ware, instead of a finished row staying grey because a different ware was short.
A batch of backlog bugs fixed.
Feedback and bug reports are always welcome.