Greetings Star Commanders! It has been a long time - too long! We always want to keep our wonderful community in the mix and we have done a poor job of that recently. That said, the rumors of our demise have been GREATLY exaggerated. So what have we been doing? Working. A ton. And we want to show you what we have been working on. To begin with we have more than doubled our team size with the expansion of our funding. This means many more people working on Star Command Galaxies - and much more content being built. We have been focused on moving towards Beta and finishing all features and focusing purely on content. The game is (relatively) bug free and we have undertaken to the final features. So let's take a look at what we have been doing!

Overhauled UI

Along with Stores, we have been focused on revising our UI based on user feedback and improvement based on lessons we have learned during the development of Galaxies. We are implementing a brand new system that is cleaner, less cluttered and takes into account how people are reading the screen. We placed everything that involves your ship and crew at the bottom of the screen. In our previous UI your eyes had to move to all three corners of the screen to make assertions about the status of your ship and crew. Now you should have to do a lot less searching to understand who needs to be healed, how much energy you have and what the abilities of a crew member are.
You will notice we have switched to bright pink for all energy sources. We found that many players were confused on what was using energy and where it was coming from. We have changed all in game assets that generate or store energy to reflect this as well so it is much easier to find an enemy generator or battery.
With the crew dock we really wanted to focus on who was using each ship system and what type of bonus they were receiving. This was always a little bit hazy and unclear in the old UI and we feel like the new system makes it very clear who is using what and what the status of that system is.
For the crew elements we really wanted to bring some elements forward and move some elements back in order of importance. Things like their equipment and any kind of status effects are much more clear now.
Mission information and goals should also be much clearer as we have revised that to be much more goal orientated. We felt that the drop downs on the lower right hand corner in the old UI were confusing and cumbersome.
When you mouse over objects that crew members can interact with you will get a lot more information about what exactly you are going to be using and what it will do for your character.
Right now the game does a poor job of showing you that this character will like that bed vs. hate a different type or what the results of using an item will be.
We are also revising things like Crew Details and just about every other menu in the game as we prepare for beta and release. We have learned many lessons about our own game and feel like this final UI will help players really understand what to click and why.
Even our dialog system will be getting an overhaul.

Stores

As we have developed new encounters and missions it became clear that we needed to close the gameplay loop. After you collect your resources and new crew members we want you to make progress in the game - and this is where stores come in.
At your space station you will now have the ability to upgrade stores. These add areas like general stores, security stations, embassies, ship hangars and a lot more. Within each of these stores are elements called modules: these are customized shops who offer exclusive equipment, characters or abilities. Each of these will require you to collect resources like money, scrap and extra crew to operate them. For example, if you build an embassy you will need to find a level 4 character of another race in order to operate them. If you find, or level up, a Midorian to the prerequisite you can now open a Midorian Embassy Module, giving you access to Midorian missions and other perks. This really is the last major feature of the game. For us it closes the loop on exploring, collecting and upgrading your capabilities in order to fight off the enemies of the galaxy.

AI

We have fixed 85% of our issues in regards to AI. Characters are dying correctly, their target acquisition is smooth and consistent and right now we are working on more advanced concepts like race tactics and goals. This will likely be an area of focus all the way up to release but we feel that the game should be fair, challenging and, most of all, fun.

Grol

We have implemented the Grol, the big enemy of the first release of Galaxies. These will be the boogeymen of the galaxy, pressing the player to make allies and upgrade their ship and station to combat the threat. After we launch we plan to introduce other major enemies like the Cortex.

Missions and Encounters

We have finished our encounter system and have been lining up the final list of missions and encounters that we are going to produce for the release of the game. Right now we have a single test mission for each of the archetypes (explore, destroy, collect, etc) and as we finish all of our features and move into beta our primary focus will be on this content.

Other Tweaks

Some minor stuff we have been working on includes adding drinking to characters in the game, fixing up a lot of the animation inconsistencies like where weapons emit from and we are currently exploring getting destruction physics in the game for grenades, ship weapons and other explosions that will lead to characters being thrown in the air - and possibly sucked into space. In conclusion, we have not stopped working one bit on Galaxies. We are in a transition point as we lock down our final features and finish off our UI. We are working on getting a release out as soon as our UI, stores and the final game flow are in. After that our only focus is on content, content, content. As a rule, the quieter we are the more we are working. We are really very very focused on getting Galaxies in the most stable, fun and expansive point we can. We are confident the wait will be worth it. We love our community and have worked VERY hard to build it and have a relationship with you. As we come up for air during beta we will be much more involved in the forums and gathering feedback for the full release of the game. We hope that you are as excited as we are for the next update - should be the best yet. Cheers, Warballoon