Greetings Explorers, The next phase of Early Access draws near, so it’s time for our latest update on changes coming to the game based on your feedback. With most of the game systems now implemented the development team can focus on the bigger changes you’ve been asking for.

Early Access 5

Up next is phase 5 of Early Access, and it’s going to deliver the most changes of any phase so far. Some of them are very big, so we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts on them as we continue to improve the game. Here’s what we’re planning for phase 5: Races

• We’re implementing our first pass of a significant rework of race traits, including the way they’re presented to you and some of the traits available (e.g. Psilon now get Creative, which unlocks all “choice” techs rather than making you choose)

Colony Management

• It’s now possible to move multiple population between resource cells at a time
• Tooltips have been added for specials and we’ve modified the way security is displayed to be more clear
• Autobuild now uses the improved AI colony management logic and prioritizes infrastructure (food, production and research) before things like security and defense
• The build window should no longer randomly reorder the icons each time you open it

Tech Tree

• We’ve added even more choices, not only to support the racial trait additions but also to add more meaningful decisions (e.g. Deep Sea Cooling and Soil Enrichment Facility are now choices in the same tech)

Victory Conditions

• Excellence has been renamed Score to be more clear in how you achieve that victory
• We’ve added functionality to the panels in the Path to Victory screen that provides context to the actions / elements of gameplay that are generating progress for that victory condition (e.g. ship / structure contribution to Conquest score)

Espionage

• We’ve replaced “Reduced Duration” with “Reduced Risk” as a bonus that you can unlock in the tech tree (many of them are choice techs) to make Espionage missions easier to complete
• Mission success chance will now display, giving you an idea of how difficult it’s going to be to complete the mission at a given colony

Diplomacy

• When exiting out of an audience that you’ve started, you’re now taken to the diplomacy screen rather than the galaxy screen

Custom Races

• We’ve completed a balance pass on trait costs during custom race creation

Game Setup

• It’s now possible to set your opponents to random
• A Timeline setting has been added to specify how frequently the game should be saved, including the option to disable the Timeline feature completely
• When choosing Pre-Warp, pirates will no longer spawn until a player has unlocked space travel

Ship Design

• When editing a blueprint, the changes to stats (e.g. Attack Rating) will update in realtime as you add/remove components

Tactical

• A “Hold” order has been added

Empire Management

• Columns for Pollution and Morale have been added

More to Come

Early Access 5 is just the next phase of development. Here are some of the items on the development team’s to-do list to be added after the next phase: Gameplay

• It will be possible to view race traits within a match

Ship Design

• A “Clear All” button will be added to blueprint editing

AI

• Further refinements to colony management AI to reduce the usage of pop for research in early stages of colony growth
• Refinement to AI expansion so that they do a better job of expanding to new star systems with each colony early on instead of colonizing multiple planets in the same systems
• More focus on pollution structures for the AI instead of wasting valuable turns on the pollution cleanup project

Espionage

• Counterespionage will start automatically upon an agent’s arrival at one of your colonies

Diplomacy

• A confirmation popup will be added for war declarations

Colony Management

• More clarity on pollution, what causes it and how to manage it
• Newly built colony ships will no longer be merged into a combat fleet that is guarding the planet

Game Setup

• More difficulty levels are coming
• The Balanced Starting Conditions setting will be made more clear as to what it does

Multiplayer

• Custom Races!
• The turn timer will have an audio cue added when it’s about to run out
• The turn timer will be updated to display while you’re viewing other screens than the galaxy screen (e.g. ship design)
• An indicator will be added to the chat window when it’s minimized to let you know there’s new messages

Tactical

• We will allow you to define a timer that auto-pauses combat at the desired intervals

That’s not everything on the development backlog, but they are all changes coming to the game based on your feedback, and we’re intending to make even more changes before Master of Orion is finished. Early Access 5 will begin very soon, so be on the lookout for the update when it hits Steam! As always, thank you for playing and please keep your feedback coming. Early Access 5 would not be the same without it, and we can't wait to hear your thoughts on the update.