1) Multiple Waypoints - You can now tell you ship where to fly this turn and future turns. This is useful to remind yourself where you were planning to send a ship and to reduce playing time when used in conjunction with the Ready checkbox. To use the multiple waypoints press the shift key to specify the future points. 

2) "Am I cloaked?" display - If you ship is currently cloaked (as of the current turn) it will show the word - Cloaked next to your current location in Blue. This does not consider your current ship mission, only the state of your ship after the last host run. This is valuable if you set your ship to the mission cloak, but fly into an ion storm or are decloaked by a loki. You can know whether your enemies can currently see you or not.  

3) Range Circle - Displays a circle indicating how far this ship can travel at current warp from your target. In the map tools or with the ship screen hotkey "a" you can toggle range circles on or off. This will draw a circle around your waypoint with the distance that you would be able to travel at your current speed. You can also use this to get an idea of how far an enemy ship could travel in the current turn.  

4) Tow indicator - Indicates if this ship is being towed and shows the tow path. Tow paths are now shown in Magenta (bright pink). If a ship is set to be towed you will see your indicator with the different color.  

5) Snapping to waypoints - if you click anywhere near the end of a waypoint your waypoint will be set exactly to it. If you do not want to snap immediately to a waypoint either zoom in to 1000% or greater or use the arrow keys to make small adjustments.  

6) Warpwells are now included in the "how long till I get there calculation". 

7) Spreadsheet view - this feature was actually released last week. If you haven't noticed you can now view detailed tables of information for your ships, planets and starbases. You can click on the table headers to sort by the various columns.  

There were also a number of bug fixes released.  Most of these features were chosen because they were the most requested features on the feedback forum here: http://planets.uservoice.com. We would like to thank all of you for making the feedback site such a success. It has helped the development team organize, track and prioritize your requests tremendously.

Be sure to visit http://planets.uservoice.com to cast your votes for what we should work on next!  

One significant change is being made to the default configuration. After reviewing many games using the diplomatic planets win condition we have decided to setup new games with Max-Allies = 1. The current setting in most games is Max-Allies = 2.  By reducing the maximum number of allies which can win a game we hope to promote more combat, more challenging diplomacy and raise the difficulty level in gaining leaderboard achievement.  

Beginner games are now being segmented from officer games. Beginner games have a maximum rank of Lieutenant. Players who have achieved Lieutenant Commander or higher status in any race will not be able to play in these games and must join an officers game which requires Lieutenant or better rank. In addition new Senior Officers Games requiring a rank of Commander will be created once the existing games fill up.  As more players reach higher ranks we will develop 3 or 4 levels of games and players will be required to play against similar level players at all times.  

Enjoy all the new features and games. If you have any suggestions for improvements please post them on the feedback site: http://planets.uservoice.com

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!