Happy new year to you all and thanks to those who continue to support the game and that have supported so far... If you only play occasionally, make sure you sign in in the next few days for the firework rocket. If you missed the snowball cannon, and/or Mr Frosty bomb, then you will be able to get them again next christmas. So I've had a bit of a break over christmas and its done me some good, I burnt out a bit towards the end of the year, and having some time off has allowed me to refocus. Last year I think I managed to deal with most of the glaring issues (text size, VR issues) so, although there's still lots to fix/improve I am hoping to start aiming towards the finish now. So this year before too long I hope to do the following:

• Overhaul missions - I have been making a system where I can more easily design "fixed" missions and I am hoping to allow some players to access this also. I'm hoping this will at least add some focus and variety to general gameplay as well as a way to encounter other races in a more organised way than just stumbling upon them. This might lead to some more story-ish missions, (but I wouldn't expect anything too deep). Those that have explored everything will then have all these missions to work through also, extending gameplay
• Improve and add AI - A a great thing about this game I think, is that you can randomly just encounter enemies and have a good battle with them and because you can be rewarded with loot etc, it can be fun and rewarding, rather than just a chore to get through. But I think this could be improved especially later in the game, so I hope to add different AI personalities so that enemies will have different tactics. Things like: "hit and run", "evade when shields low", "only attack from behind", that kind of thing.
• Conquest: this might be a bit later, but I'm thinking that I will have some star systems that are player built - players will build stations and defences using minerals that they've mined and will be able to capture and destroy other stations. But I will keep this separate to the main gameplay, so it will be an opt in thing designed as end game content
• More races and star systems: I've got several races in production, including a new reward for someone who gave me a donation, they are going to help flesh out the galaxy as well as provide some more weapons items, and I'm hoping to add the "capital" star systems that I've been pondering for a while...