I hope everyone had a wonderful summer! We've been putting the finishing touches on the newest content patch and are playtesting it in advance of its release in a week or two. Full patch notes will be released alongside the patch, but I thought I would give everyone a taste of what to expect with this big patch! Firstly we've added warpgates!
These are a really interesting new feature that will allow players to jump between systems quickly instead of having to use the old warp drive to move. They can only be built around gas giants as they rely on the intense gravity of these planets to function! This means gas giants have even more utility now. You only need one per system and ships will use the gates whenever possible. They still spend dilithium fuel when they jump, it is just now a much quicker journey. The second big feature is a bevy of new late game techs! Including the aforementioned warp gate technology.
These techs will add a lot more longevity and interesting decisions late in the game! The third really big feature of this patch is the distribution delivery rule. This can only be used on planets with a distribution hub and receiving center. This allows you to setup "warehousing planets" more simply than previously. Now the cargo will immediately flow logically to the planet that needs it most within the distribution hub's range. The fourth big addition are generation ships. These ships will be sent to distant star systems with a planet that is highly habitable. They carry 100 million people and will instantly offload a large number of people from your starting planet (Earth) to this new distant world! It's an exciting new concept that should spice up the interstellar phase of the game some! There are a bunch of other smaller, but still very significant changes such as more performance optimizations, the ability to lock pads for multi-use or rockets only, random seed for galaxy generation, more color blind support, all future ships visible on order ships screen so you can judge their worth, etc.. You can help us test all of this by opting into the pre-release build in betas. Please don't forget to leave us your feedback here, in the discussion forums, or on Discord! Or just wait another week or two and this will all be live in the game for everyone! =)