Hey everyone, I'm currently testing out a change to how game modes work in the game. The "passive mode" setting is still going to be the default for new players, so there shouldn't be a change for anyone onboarding in the game. But if you've played already and are looking for a little more challenge or changes to how the game works, read on!

In the game settings ('game settings' button on faction select for a new game), I've changed the 'Passive Mode: On/Off" button to be a game mode button with three options now.

Passive:

- This is still the default, hostile planets don't attack you, plays more like an idle game. You can walk away any time without pausing and there's no risk to your progress

Active:

- Hostile planets have their original attack timers that slowly tick up, and will attack an adjacent (non-home) planet and flip it to hostile. This works the same as before but the strength of the planet remaining will be about 1/3rd of the attacking planet which was originally bugged and only being set to 2 regardless of attack

Challenge:

- Some players have requested something a bit more challenging out of active mode. This setting is experimental right now and likely to change (along with some new UI to better explain modes coming soon). Details below.

Challenge mode is basically the same as Active mode with two key changes. "Auto Explore" automation is on by default and cannot be toggled off once automation is available to the player. This means turtling and building fleet with no hostiles on board is much harder to do, there will almost always be hostiles preparing attacks... unless you strategically enclose your empire, which felt like fun emergent gameplay so it's staying for now.

Additionally, every galactic jump increases the speed with which hostile planets will attack you. The level of difficulty is probably still a bit too low for seasoned players, but I'll be making some changes to how new games are configured (with a new game settings UI) coming soon. In the mean time, let me know what you think of this in it's experimental stage.

To try this out: Start a new game, click 'game settings' on the faction select page and then change your game mode to one of these options to play around. Have fun!

It's been a great release so far, tons of players jumping in, conquering galaxies and checking off achievements. Thanks to everyone who's grabbed the game so far, it's been a fun 24h. As always, thanks as well for your reviews and feedback. I read it all, and try to find the best ways I can to incorporate as much of the feedback as possible.

This update, as well as a few of the hotfixes yesterday, includes addressing a bunch of feedback received so far.

Camera controls have been updated with a few new features. I've made significant changes to how the camera was handled internally, which opens the door for a lot of additional improvements. One of which is multiple zoom levels. You can still zoom in and out with the mouse wheel, and the game will seamlessly blend between a few presets (I believe 5 in total). Because of the changes, I can now add more of these if needed though it felt like 5 was a good mix of offering more visibility options without overload.

Additionally, I've added some common keyboard controls as options to control camera movement. These aren't currently configurable but there are some duplicates so you can use whatever is more comfortable for you.

Controls Summary:

• A, S, D, W / Arrow Keys - Now controls camera pan, and should key general sensitivity even for all zoom levels (still being tweaked a little)

• E / Q - Zoom in and out without using the mouse wheel

• Numeric keys 1 through 5 - shortcuts that bring up the various action menus from the bottom left of the HUD

• Space - Instantly zoom back to full map

UI windows that have back buttons, cancel buttons, or otherwise optional actions can now be closed by clicking out of the window. This should help dismiss windows faster without having to always move to the back button. You can also press the "Esc Key" on your keyboard as a back shortcut for most of these windows as well.

Fixed a bug with the UI controls where some keyboard keys were synthesizing mouse clicks (holdover bug from the shared framework with another game). This could cause some very interesting situations in the UI if you accidentally hit some keys while playing around. This ended up being the root cause for a couple bugs that were reported yesterday.

While this game is attempting to bridge a few genres and ideas, the largest portion of the audience interested in the game are coming from the idle game space. Because of this I've changed the "Passive Mode" game setting to default to "ON" instead of "OFF".

If you've played already, you'll still have to go into the game settings (on the faction select page) and click this to "ON" to enable it. But all new players will have this on by default. This option prevents the current implementation of hostile planets from taking over your planets on an attack timer.

The functionality hasn't changed, and if you enjoy the time pressure of this mechanic (more coming soon as well), then just make sure it's enabled in your settings and you'll have the same functionality as before. For all new players, I think this provides a better laid-back experience where you can easily step away any time without pausing, more inline with the promise of the game's detail page.

No changes to any techs or upgrades at this time, but I'm keeping an eye on where things end up through all the feedback and watching videos of play throughs. There will probably be more of a data balance update in the near future.

*Additional note on idle game features: Automation and other automation related actions / upgrades are coming soon(tm).

Now that the camera is easier to control, and has more range, the full game board has been increased by an additional ring as well. This is around 60 new explorable hexes per generated map.

Thanks again, see you in the next update or feel free to reach out on any of the socials to get in touch.