Here is the third trailer, the early-access update and release date announcement. https://youtu.be/1TPh2GLhDgQ

The scheduled release date for early-access is:

16th of December, 2023.

Also, here is a summary of the notable changes in November:

'Argon' Update

This update focuses on preparing the game for early-access and adding some major improvements to the gameplay experience. Part 1 and 2 have been completed.

'Argon' Update - Part 1

Galactic Gold (Resource)

- Gold can be found on certain planets, and is used for purchasing things and maintenance etc. - You can exchange collected resources into gold in starhubs. - You can also export resources into gold from colonies. - New Financial Hub buildings creating 'Investor' jobs which produce gold on colonies. Also, some resource icons were reskinned and recoloured.

Victory Conditions (Time, Conquest, Survival, Ascension)

- Ascension victory means you can claim the galactic center to win. - Conquest victory means you can claim 51% of systems to win. - Survival, and Time victories mean being the last empire, or having highest score at the end of the game respectively.

New Seamless Borders

The cool 2D 'blobs' that indicate empire borders.

'Argon' Update - Part 2

Galactic Center - New Region of the Galaxy

Celestial Squid - The current 'final boss' of the game.

New Main Menu

4 New Galaxies (Visuals)

Animated Neutron Stars / Pulsars

Narrations to Beginner Tutorial

Here's the full changelog of the changes the changes in the last 3 weeks. [expand type=details]

'ARGON' 1-2 [2023.11.08 - 2023.11.29]

Add - Tips panel -> Click/hover SFX for action buttons. - Pings -> Form union and SFX (with event panel). - Pings -> Our/their siege complete. - Seamless -> Meteor VFX spawns randomly on the galaxy map. - Ubiquity -> Neutron stars with VFX. - Ubiquity -> Pulsars with VFX. - Victory conditions (configurable from main menu). - Mid-game event -> Open galactic center (cosmic convergence). - Univeral SFX (trailer) -> Lose battle SFX. - Pings -> Our/their liberation complete. - Ubiquity -> Pulsar prefab with emissions VFX. - Ubiquity -> Neutron star prefab with emissions VFX. - Ubiquity -> New blue galaxy to spawn in. - New 'Argon' galaxies. - New main menu background. - Added more playtesters to credits. - Added gold resource. - Various resource icons have been reskinned. - Replaced jumpscare tech complete sound with the same SFX used for starbase/colony queue complete. - Added gold resources, basic resources, advanced resources, time management tip screens to help new players. - Added the financial hub building, and the investor job which focuses on commerce and production. - Since gold is the main currency of the galaxy, there is no tech required to build it. - Added narrations to tutorial tips. Changed - Change: Colony Panel -> Population is now included in siege difficulty, for simplicity. - Game events no longer repeats the same event chains in systems, and this is saved with the game. - Added more playtesters to credits. Improve - Seamless -> Claims should have visible borders. - Improve: UI -> Player Headers now show "Unknown Player" for unknown players. - Improve: Siege -> Having any enemy fleets to the sieger or liberator will pause a siege. - Improve: Combat -> Optimization -> Ships no longer recalculate base stats while in combat, since it has no effect in battle and was CPU intensive. - Improve: Ubiquity -> Animated Combat -> Ships shoot less in larger battles (i.e. 100 vs 100) to prevent insane lag in large. - Note that large battles were originally intended to be something like 30 vs 30, and 100 vs 100 is unrealistically large. - Improve: Empire icons now center around known systems. - Improve: Colony Siege -> Siege status changes a day to give more realistic and responsive feedback. - Improve: Colony Panel -> Added affordance for colony panel upgrade. - Refined tips text to make it more clear to new players. - Logistical modifiers also decreased to allow faster-paced gameplay. Tweaked - Tweak: Asteroid appears game event is now twice as rare. - Tweaked asteroid game event probabilities. - Balance: Arid worlds are half as likely to spawn, and other world types are much more likely to spawn. - I have not seen rocky worlds in a very long time in the game. - Balance: Reduce minimum time it takes to explore planets from `8` days to `5` days. - Tweak: Void worlds now have a `15%` chance to spawn if there is a black hole, instead of a `25%`. Fixed - Battle Panel -> Retreat button is hard to see when not interactable. - Building -> Tooltip siege icon is not shown on tooltip manager variables (appears as text instead). - Built -> Ubiquity -> Space entity -> Does not play move animation when moving. - Claim Drawer -> Player icon remains after being defeated (opacity also does not update). - Cobalt -> In-game settings -> Clicking ESC button does not close panel. - Colony Panel -> Context menu -> Upgrade button not interactable when can upgrade. - Colony Siege -> Population adds to siege difficulty, instead of multiplying, making it feasible to siege large colonies. - Combat System -> New fleets that enter combat radius do not trigger in combat (this should be done passively). - Cosmic convergence -> Since event is triggered multiple times, duplicate hyperlanes spawn. - Cross-scene -> Hotkeys such as 'E' key are not registered by input manager. - Diplomacy Panel -> Basic tooltips for summary indicators. - Endgame screen -> Defeat -> Exit to menu button is missing. - Endgame screen -> Spectate button returns to menu. - Fleet -> Not visible when in FTL travel. - Fleet -> Trails colours appear white for all empires. - Galactic center -> Supermassive black hole spawns away from center on non-tiny maps. - Game Event Panel -> Asteroid event -> Disconnects client. - Game Event Panel -> Stretched ubiquity inspector panel. - Liberating text appears for 0% (when nothing is being sieged). - Load save -> Breaks game (occurred when loading save of 3 in-game years). - Optimize -> Asteroid fields are very GPU intensive. - Siege -> Does not work for colonies (i.e. capital colonies). - Solace Ship Builder -> Changing turrets disconnects client. - Solace Ship Builder -> Closing lens buttons hides lens buttons. - Solace Ship Builder -> Plays sfx randomly in game. - Space Squids -> Appears as pre-initialized player. - Space squids -> Should not have normal ship ambience sfx. - Space Squids -> Uninitialized without meeting all players. - Starbase Label -> Starbase label for colony shows starbase occupier as owner, when colony is not occupied. - Tips Panel -> Can be closed with ESC. - Tooltips -> Not wrapping correctly. - Turrets -> Don't look correct way (for sideways turrets). - Ubiquity -> Civilian ships have no trails. - Ubiquity -> Combat -> Beam turrets do not fire. - Ubiquity -> Combat -> Pirate ships don't shoot at anything. - Ubiquity -> Combat -> Shields activate when projectile is fired. - Ubiquity -> Combat -> Shields don't toggle when deactivated. - Ubiquity -> Combat -> Ships continue shooting when destroyed. - Ubiquity -> Combat -> Solace ships don't appear as destroyed when destroyed. - Ubiquity -> Combat -> Too many shots are fired from turrets causing lag. - Ubiquity -> Combat -> Trail colours are not applied correctly (sometimes). - Ubiquity -> Construction sparks appear for a few seconds in unclaimed systems. - Ubiquity -> Healing VFX shows after ships have finished healing. - Ubiquity -> Large ship movement is not smooth (use rotation speed ship stats). - Ubiquity -> Light intensity was not rescaled correctly resulting in dark planets next to stars. - Ubiquity -> One-ship fleets appear to not be centered correctly. - Ubiquity -> Orbit lines don't initialize until scroll up. - Ubiquity -> Planet bounds not recalculated when loading save in-game, causing ship pathfinding to break. - Ubiquity -> Ship -> Movement too fast on high FPS. - Ubiquity -> Ships -> Healing VFX -> Sometimes appears wrong colour (until ubiquity is reopened). - Ubiquity -> Space Squids -> Move animation does not play when moving. - Ubiquity -> When ships are in combat, orders can still be visualized. - Ubiquity -> Ships -> No fade between idle and move ambience (removed distinct engine move ambience). - Ubiquity -> Camera -> Map bounds did not cover entire system up to hyperlanes. - Colony Panel -> Building -> Tooltip shows cannot level cap error when acting as foreign business. - Fleet Panel -> Ubiquity inspector for ships displayed ships away from center and with trails. - Game Event Panel -> Current event sometimes uses image of previous event. - Fix: Ship builder -> UI for stats overlaps with turret selection on ultrawide displays. - Fix: Ship builder -> Ambient background does not expand correctly on ultrawide displays. - Fix: Cosmic Convergence -> When event is triggered multiple times, duplicate hyperlanes spawn. - Fix: Star system in the center of the galaxy spawns too high. - Fix: Input FPS practically doubled due to removal of deprecated code. - Fix: Key binding modals don't open assigned panels or show correct hotkeys. - Fix: Configured victory conditions not being respected. - Fix: Colony Siege -> Sieging a colony is unbalanced and completed instantly. - Fix star clan government type tooltip showing empty unique building and primary ability. - Fix: Ubiquity -> 'Object 51' no longer randomly appears in star systems. - Fix: Fleets that are not visible to the player are shown in known Ubiquity system. - Fix: Ubiquity build starbase animation -> not scaled correctly and appears too small. - Fix: Interstellar -> Vaporize links -> Does not go to nearest hyperlane. - Fix: Colony Panel -> Condensed colony building tooltips to address off-screen tooltips. - Fix: Tips panel -> Did not show correct background colors for species avatar. - Fix: Starbase label HUD not being displayed correctly in occupied systems. - Fix: Colony game events did not occur. - Fix: Quest panel -> Does not auto close when click away from panel. - Fix: Global cooling event does not occur. - Events -> Cosmic convergence -> Occurs multiple times. Changed - Change: Decrease star height deviation to prevent them from being under the map. - Changed: Main menu theme 'Planetary Nebula' to 'Beyond the Planets'. - Tweak: Ubiquity -> Solace gunboats are now one third larger. - Tweak: Map generation -> Non-binary systems are now slightly more common than binary systems. - Tweak: Stars -> Now slightly more visible to see them more easily on the map. - Game duration changed to keep the game fresh: - Online Speed -> Game duration went from `25` to `10`. - Fast Speed -> Game duration went from `36` to `20`. - Standard Speed -> Game duration went from `50` to `30`. - Half Speed -> Game duration went from `75` to `40`. - Half Speed -> Game duration went from `100` to `50`. - Upscaled space squid textures to from `1024x1024` to `4096x4096`. - Reduced space entity spawn cap by 2.5x. - Supernova and hypernova game events are now twice as likely to happen. - Map generation -> Stars closer to the galactic center are closer together. - Fleet panel -> Now shows military stats if player is known. - Repeatable techs are now only researchable after all non-repeatable techs are researched. - Tweak: Working class workers now cost `1` gold, and specialists now cost `2` gold in upkeep. - Tweak: Population -> Base growth rate changed from `1/10` to `1/9`. - Added gold to ship upkeep and lowered metals and energy costs for all buildable ships. - UI background now appears darker to blend in with the space background. - 'Asteroid appears' event is now 5x more likely. - I haven't had this event happen while playtesting in a very long time. - Add time manager controls affordance to pause indicator UI. - Tweak: Starport -> Build speed changed to `+50%` for Level 2, and `+100%` for Level 3. Removed - Removed: Old veil nebula VFX (caused too much lag). [/expand] The more readable changelog is available here: newstarsgame.com/changelog [hr][/hr]

Confusion

The biggest thing playtesters have issues with is that the game is confusing/hard to learn, while often noting that the game has enough content. While that is generally a problem shared with the genre, especially 4X games, this is a more long-term problem that will likely not be fully addressed in a single update. If you have played Stellaris, or other similar galactic 4X games however, the game should be naturally easier to understand, however a lot of the mechanics are different and have their own learning curves. This is why accessibility may be a bigger priority, over adding new features for example, in the near future at least.

Multiplayer?

I have not got round to working on multiplayer yet, since I decided to focus on improving the core game. While multiplayer compatible with Steam is already implemented, it is not stable enough to be released yet. The addition of multiplayer support may require hundreds of multiplayer-only bugs fixes, and I already have hundreds of single-player bugs to fix.

Argon - Part 3?

The plan for the last part of the Argon update is to focusing on playability, in order of significance: [olist]

Stability (Bug fixes)

Flow (Balancing)

Accessibility (Improvements to make game less confusing) [/olist] There is more than enough content in the game for early-access. Expansions to the game content can be done after early-access, although the main systems of the game are practically complete. In the past, I have got carried away with adding features, as opposed to fixing bugs. Adding features generally creates a lot of bugs, and sometimes removing features is often an efficient option to fixing/preventing bugs. Even after early-access, there may be an urgent need for hotfixes and improvements, therefore additional content will likely be worked on when things are more stable and if/when players are generally happy with the gameplay. [hr][/hr]

Stay tuned for more updates...

Feel free to comment your suggestions below. View the Changelog: newstarsgame.com/changelog. Playtest New Stars: adamjr.xyz. Wishlist New Stars to support development. This page is intended to be a development preview, which may not reflect the final state of the game.