Release history

What changed, and when.

Every release that altered something you meet inside a match, newest first. Releases that only touched build tooling or this website are not listed — there are a few of those, and they would only pad the page. Currently 27 releases with player-facing notes; the full technical history, down to the commit-level reasoning, lives in CHANGELOG.md in the repository.

0.62.1 OCT 20 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ The Brain Takes Planets
  • Brain strikes now finish the job. When its fleet clears your system, a colony ship moves in and takes your planet, and bombers empty the others so it can settle them.
  • It saves up for the landing. Expect a quiet colony of its own to stop building for a moment while it prepares the next colony ship.
0.62.0 OCT 20 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ The Brain Builds, Defends and Strikes
  • The Brain opponent now fights. Pick "Brain" as your opponent: it builds a real fleet, comes to the rescue of colonies it can hold, and sends strike fleets to take your stars.
  • Its strikes come to take, not just to hurt. A strike arrives together, clears your defenders, then lands colonists on your planet or bombs it out and settles it. Watch for a lone colonizer waiting near a fight.
  • Leaving a colony unguarded is now a risk against every computer opponent that plays it, and a raid of bombers alone no longer goes unanswered by the Brain.
0.61.2 OCT 20 · 2026 FIX
▸ Computer Fleets Commit to a Plan
  • Computer opponents commit to one fleet type. Before they have scouted you they pick a plan (a fighter swarm, a frigate line, or fighters with cruisers) and build it, instead of a little of everything. Once they have seen your fleet, they switch to the fleet that beats it.
0.61.1 OCT 19 · 2026 FIX
▸ Smarter Fleet Mixes
  • Computer opponents pick their warships from the battle data. Before they have seen your fleet they build a mix with frigates in it; once they have seen it, they build the fleet that beats it best on the test bench.
0.61.0 OCT 19 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Fleets Fly Together
  • A fleet you send together now arrives together. Select fighters, frigates and cruisers and give one order: they fly at the speed of the slowest ship until the enemy is in gun range, then everyone engages at once. Your fighters no longer race ahead and fight alone.
  • Formation drags and computer opponents' strikes do the same. A ship you order on its own, or one that reaches its spot, flies at its own speed again.
  • The counters read cleanly now: frigates beat fighter swarms, a swarm of fighters beats fighters with cruisers, and fighters with cruisers beat frigates. Scout what you are facing and build the answer.
0.60.1 OCT 16 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Overtime
  • A domination hold no longer gets cut off by the clock. If someone is holding 60% of the stars when the 30 minutes run out, the match goes into overtime: it ends when the hold completes, or the moment it is broken (then the player with more stars wins). Overtime lasts at most 2 minutes.
  • The banner at the top says so: "Overtime: Enemy holds 60% of the stars: 1:24 of 2:00". Take a star back to end it.
0.60.0 OCT 16 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Every Warship Has a Counter
  • Fleet composition matters now. Fighters beat cruisers and bombers, frigates beat fighters, cruisers beat frigates and starbases. Bombers kill planets and cannot fight ships at all. A fleet of one hull type loses to its counter.
  • Every warship costs 100 minerals per supply: fighter 100, frigate 200, bomber 200, cruiser 300. Equal cost is now an equal fight.
  • Fighters shred bombers. Send bombers with an escort, and the escort now stays over the target until the bombing is done.
  • Bombing a planet out takes time. Each bomber kills 1 population every 2 seconds, and a planet under bombardment does not grow: once the starbase is down, eight bombers take a 250-population home in about a minute, sixteen in half a minute.
  • Domination must be held for 2 minutes. Owning 60% of the stars no longer wins on the spot: keep it for two minutes. The top of the screen counts the hold for both players ("Enemy holds 60% of the stars: 1:24 of 2:00"), so you see it coming and can take a star back to reset it. The end screen says how the match was won.
  • Cruisers are the siege ship. The home starbase now reaches 380 and shoots back at cruisers that stand off, but a few cruisers with a scout still take it for less than any other fleet.
  • Ships prefer the targets they counter. Frigates go for fighters, cruisers for frigates and starbases, fighters for cruisers and bombers.
  • Computer opponents adapt their fleets to what they see of yours.
0.59.1 OCT 14 · 2026 FIX
▸ Menus Fit the Screen at Every UI Scale
  • Menus, settings and the replay viewer now fit the screen at every UI scale. From 0.5 to 2.5 nothing runs off the edge any more: the main menu, the tutorials list, Settings and the lobby scroll where they do not fit.
  • At large UI scales the replay list ran off the screen and its Open, Delete and Back buttons could not be reached. The list now fits, each replay takes two lines, and it scrolls.
  • In the replay viewer at large UI scales, the end-of-replay banner and the event list no longer cover the replay's info lines.
  • The in-game menu no longer stays open behind the end-of-match screen.
0.59.0 OCT 14 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Computer Opponents Attack Your Home
  • Computer opponents now gather their fleets and attack your home when they can win. They wait until their fleet is strong enough for what they know is there, then strike, instead of parking their warships or feeding them in one at a time.
  • Their fleets arrive together. Frigates and cruisers come in just ahead of the fighters, so a computer attack hits all at once.
  • They keep a home guard only when they see a threat. A computer player that knows of no enemy fleet near its home sends nearly everything; one that does keeps enough back to hold.
  • They only know what they have seen. Computer players plan with what their own ships and scanners have spotted, as you do, and remember enemy fleets for a short while after losing sight of them.
  • At UI scale 1.5 to 2.5 the planet, system and fleet panels at the bottom were cut off; their columns now wrap and the panel scrolls.
0.58.0 OCT 13 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Supply: a limit on fleet size
  • Each player has 120 supply. Every ship takes some of it: a fighter, scout, colonizer, miner or freighter takes 1, a frigate or a bomber 2, a missile cruiser 3. Starbases take none.
  • The top bar shows your supply, for example Supply: 87/120, and so does the Ships column of a planet. Each build button shows what the hull takes.
  • A ship takes its supply when you order it and gives it back when it is destroyed, when a colonizer settles, or when you cancel the order. A ship that no longer fits is greyed out, and its tooltip says why.
  • The computer plays by the same limit. Battles stay at a size you can follow, and the game stays smooth to the end: the largest matches went from over 500 ships to under 200.
  • The statistics panel shows supply over time on the Military tab.
  • Replays recorded in 0.57 and earlier were played without the limit. They still open, with the usual warning, but a long one will not play back as it happened.
0.57.1 OCT 13 · 2026 FIX
▸ Large battles run about twice as fast
  • Late-game matches no longer slow down as early. With hundreds of ships on the map the game fell behind and stuttered. The work the game does for every ship in a big fleet or a big battle has been cut down, so a match with 400 ships now runs as well as one with 270 did.
  • Nothing about how the game plays has changed. Same fights, same results, ship for ship. Your replays from 0.57.0 play back exactly as before.
0.57.0 OCT 13 · 2026 BALANCE
▸ The AI plays a real game
  • AI colonies develop. Every computer opponent now builds mines, factories and shipyards on all of its planets. Before, most of its colonies sat empty and only its home world worked, so its economy stopped growing after two minutes.
  • The AI attacks your home. It misjudged how strong a home starbase is and almost never dared to attack one. It now comes for your home world once it has the fleet for it. Expect matches against the AI to be harder and to end sooner.
  • Bigger AI economies, bigger AI fleets. An AI colony grows with its population instead of stopping at ten mines and ten factories.
  • A build order is only accepted from the player who owns the planet.
0.56.0 OCT 13 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Replays
  • Every match is recorded. Open the new Replays menu to watch any of your last 50 matches again, from either player's view or with the whole map revealed.
  • Starts instantly, seeks instantly. Playback starts right away; while you watch, the game analyses the match in the background, and the part it has analysed (shown on the timeline) can be jumped to in a fraction of a second.
  • Full controls. Pause, step, 0.25x to 16x, jump to battles, click or drag the timeline.
  • Share them. Replay files are tiny (about 10 KB per 10 minutes). Send one to report a bug or show off a fight. Both players get a copy of a multiplayer match.
▸ Match statistics
  • See how the match went. Press S in a replay or on the end screen for history charts: stars, population, production, minerals earned and spent (and on what), army value, ships by class, losses and a list of battles. Click a chart to jump there.
  • No spoilers. While watching a replay the charts stop at the current moment unless you turn on "Show whole match".
  • Dock. Press D in a replay for a slim strip of live trends above the timeline.
  • In your own match, F2 shows your own statistics (never the enemy's).
0.55.0 OCT 12 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Battles you can actually watch
  • Fights last about twice as long. Every ship has double the hull it had, so a dogfight plays out over 10–15 seconds instead of a quick flash. You can follow who is chasing whom.
  • Team-coloured engine trails. Your trails are your colour, the enemy's are theirs, so you can tell the sides apart mid-furball.
  • Cleaner effects. Explosions are short, sharp bursts instead of lingering glow that hid the fight underneath. Battle and contact rings no longer cover the screen when you're zoomed in.
  • Fights stay together. Ships drift less far from the battle, so a fight stays in one place instead of breaking into duels across the system.
  • Smoother movement. Ships glide and turn smoothly every frame instead of in small steps.
▸ New pace, new numbers
  • Home starbases are much stronger. One hit destroys a fighter. Six fighters won't take one; bring ten or more.
  • Cruisers hit twice as hard, so with a scout spotting for them they beat frigates again.
  • Frigates fire slightly bigger bolts, a little less often: three hits now kill a fighter.
  • No more free opening salvo. Fighters fresh off the line used to fire sideways before turning; now everyone has to bring their nose onto the target first.
  • Big battles are fair. A hidden edge that gave one fleet a few extra percent in large fights is gone.
▸ Multiplayer feels better
  • Enemy ships move smoothly, with no twice-a-second hiccup, even on a typical internet connection.
  • Rapid orders stick. Clicking quickly in different directions no longer makes a ship briefly head for an older click.
  • Shots line up. Tracers start and end on the ships you see, and explosions sit on the ship that died.
  • Test matches. The host can tick "Test match" in the lobby so both players can spawn ships to try things out. Press Ctrl+D in any multiplayer match for a network panel (ping, smoothness, packets).
▸ Fixes
  • Ships no longer head for slightly different spots depending on where the camera has been: planets now orbit the same way whether you're looking at them or not.
  • The game plays the same at every speed: fast-forward no longer changes how fights and movement turn out.
0.54.0 OCT 10 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Fighters Dogfight
  • Fighters fly, they don't orbit. A fighter now has a turning circle and guns that only fire forward. It has to bring its nose onto a target to shoot, so fights turn into passes, loops and tail chases instead of two ships circling and trading fire.
  • Position wins fights. A fighter is hard to hit while it crosses your line of fire and easy to hit while it flies straight at you or away from you. Get on a tail and you have the shot; the pilot in front does not.
  • Break turns. A fighter with an enemy close behind it breaks hard to one side, with a short burst of speed, to shake the pursuer.
  • Fleets spread their fire. Fighters pick the target in front of them, avoid piling onto a ship that is already being shot at, and peel off to help a wingman who is being chased. A big battle breaks into many small duels.
  • Each burst hits harder. Fighter attack is 64, up from 32: two bursts kill a fighter. Fighters still beat cruisers, but now lose to frigates at equal cost and need more numbers to take a starbase.
0.53.1 AUG 30 · 2026 FIX
▸ Reading the Map Just Got Easier
  • The ship overlay now shows who's actually there. The old military ring glowed on every system you owned whether or not anything was happening — a quiet colony read the same as a battlefield. It's now a plain count of the identifiable warships sitting in orbit: white if they're all yours, red the moment someone else's are there too.
  • Habitability and population share one view. Two separate map layers that were both really answering "can I live here, and how well" are now one — habitability, the population cap, and current population side by side on the same three bars per world.
  • Mineral readouts were hard to read at a glance. Each bar now carries its own number and a small permanent label, so you don't have to remember which bar was which or hover for a tooltip.
  • Overlay bars and ownership rings could linger on screen after you zoomed out past the point where a world's stats stop being shown — a stale reading left over from a world you'd already zoomed away from. Fixed so the display always clears when it should.
0.53.0 AUG 30 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ See the Galaxy, Not Just the Stars
  • Territory at a glance. Every system you or your opponent controls is now washed in its owner's colour, with a hard edge marking the border of what's actually held.
  • Four ways to read the map. Toggle between minerals, habitability, population, and military strength — one map button cycles them, and a key opens each directly. Zoomed out you get one number per system; zoom in and every world in it reports separately.
  • The map only shows what you've scouted. Live readings where you have a ship watching, a dimmed last-known value where you've been before but moved on, nothing at all where you've never looked.
0.51.0 AUG 29 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Worlds Have Real Size
  • Every planet now has its own size. Worlds used to share one size with the star they orbit, so every planet in a system had identical build capacity and drew at the same radius — there was no reason to prefer one over another. Now two worlds in the same system can differ by nearly three times. Mine and factory caps are per-planet, so check each world before you commit to it.
  • A bigger world is a bigger deposit. Total mineral yield now scales with size and concentration, not concentration alone. Previously every planet held the same amount of ore no matter how large it looked — which meant big worlds, with more mine slots, actually ran dry sooner than small ones. A large rich world is now worth what it looks like.
  • Habitability decides how much of it you can work. A huge hostile world has mine slots its population can never staff. That makes the rich uninhabitable giant a genuine prize rather than a curiosity: you can only strip it with miners, and hauling the minerals home means freighter runs worth escorting — and worth intercepting.
  • Systems look like systems. Planet radius is drawn from its real size, so a glance at a system tells you which world is the prize and which is a pebble.
0.50.0 AUG 29 · 2026 FIX
▸ The Enemy Stops Broadcasting
  • Worker staffing tells you what to do. The planet panel would say "understaffed" without saying which side was short or by how much — so the one question that matters, mines or factories next?, was unanswerable. An info icon by the idle-worker count now opens the full breakdown: workers in mines, workers in factories, how many have nowhere to work, and a plain-language read on whether you need more buildings or more population. Those lead to opposite decisions, and "understaffed" was pointing at the wrong one.
  • You could hear the enemy through the fog. Construction and warp sounds played for every planet and ship in the galaxy whether or not you had ever scouted them — from the opening seconds you could hear your opponent's build cadence and fleet movements without spotting a thing. Sound now obeys the same rules as sight: if you can't see it, you can't hear it.
0.49.3 JUL 31 · 2026 FIX
▸ Fog of War Holds Up
  • What you hear now matches what you can see. Audio and visuals tell the same story: nothing leaks through the fog that your sensors have not earned.
0.49.0 JUN 14 · 2026 BALANCE
▸ The Difficulty Ladder Sorts Itself Out
  • Harder opponents are actually harder now. The ladder was inverted — the beginner-friendly Settler was beating Hard and Brutal outright. If you had been treating Settler as a warm-up, it was quietly the toughest fight on the list.
  • Enemy colonies build shipyards. The root cause: AI colonies never built a starbase, and a planet without one cannot build ships. The entire enemy fleet trickled out of a single home world while minerals piled up unspent across every colony it owned. Established colonies now build starbases, so expect real fleets arriving from more than one direction — and defended colonies when you counterattack.
  • A settled opponent starts massing. Once it holds enough systems and the front is quiet, the AI stops thinning itself with new colonies and builds a standing fleet instead. Leaving a large AI alone to develop is no longer free.
  • Matches resolve. Around nine in ten now end in a decisive win rather than running out the clock.
0.48.0 JUN 6 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Trade Routes Get Rules
  • Routes decide for themselves how much to move. A route now carries a pickup rule and a delivery rule rather than shifting everything it can. Keep a percentage of minerals at the source, fill the destination to its maximum, or cap it at a number and stop.
  • Colonist routes keep a world productive. Set a colonist route to max productivity and it keeps enough population home to staff every building; set it to max growth and it holds the world at the half-full point where population climbs fastest.
0.47.0 JUN 1 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Patrols and Formations
  • Ships can hold a line. Right-drag with a group selected and they sort along the axis you drew, evenly spaced, instead of piling into a blob.
  • Patrols run themselves. Arm a patrol, click two points for a there-and-back, or chain several for a closed loop, and the ships keep walking it until you tell them otherwise.
0.44.0 MAY 11 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Four Tutorials
  • The game teaches itself now. Basics, Movement & Scouting, Combat, and Economy & Logistics — four guided scenarios covering everything the game otherwise assumed you already knew, each one finishing with a tick on the menu.
0.39.0 MAY 8 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Miners, Freighters and Trade Routes
  • Rich worlds you cannot colonise are worth taking anyway. Miners park in orbit and pull minerals out of any world you own or nobody owns, at the rate of a fully-staffed land mine.
  • Freighters move what miners dig. Set up a standing route between two planets and a freighter runs it without further instruction, carrying minerals or colonists. One freighter can hold several routes and cycles between them.
0.35.0 MAY 5 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ The Game Has a Soundscape
  • Eight sounds, placed in the world. Autocannon, plasma, missiles, capital lasers, explosions, warp, colonisation and build completion — off-screen sources are culled and distant fights sit lower in the mix, so the audio tells you where to look.
0.21.0 APR 25 · 2026 FEATURE
▸ Fullscreen and Display Settings
  • Fullscreen from anywhere with F11, plus a resolution picker from 720p to 4K including 21:9, and a UI scale slider. All of it persists between sessions.