New Features For The New Year

As we head into the new year, we'd like to do a recap of the new features we have released over the last month. Most of these have already been announced in the activity feed, but in case you missed any...

New Interface Features

1. Ignore post feature added for activity feed threads and comments. Is there a post that you just don't want to see any longer? 'Ignore' it and you won't have to.

2. Ctrl-clicking or Shift-clicking on most of the transfer or build arrows will now function as a "MAX" setting, transferring as much cargo as possible, building as much as you can afford, etc. We'll work on making this more obvious in the interface, but the functionality is already in, so you can go ahead and start saving yourself some clicks loading those 10,000 MC, or filling that merlin, or building those 300 factories...

3. For the Horwasp, a new ship building tab available on the planets list. You can now get a basic overview of what pods and ships your planets are building. This tab essentially replaces the starbase list that the other races have to view their ship building.

New In-Game Settings

4. Auto-Sell Supplies to Build Ships - For your convenience, enabling this setting should eliminate the need to manually sell-off supplies to pay for ship builds at your starbases.

5. Live Measure Tool - When enabled, the measure tool will update as you move the mouse, allowing you to quickly measure various distances from an object. Also, when measure mode is on, the 'm' hotkey will now turn it off, while still leaving the measurements displayed. The 'x' hotkey or selecting 'Clear' from map tools will remove the measurements entirely.

6. Color Minefields by Player Color - If this is enabled and you have assigned a specific color to a player, their minefields (except webs) will be shown in that color, instead of the usual red/green/yellowish. You don't have to assign colors to every player for this to work. Those unassigned will just continue to use the default colors.

New Game Setup Options

7. New homeworld configuration: One vs Circle - Used in MvM games and could also be used for an "Ashes of the Empire" scenario, this setting will put Player 1 in the middle of the map, with the others circling them.

8. New starmap settings: Extra Planets / Extra Ships - As named, these settings will start everyone with more planets/ships in addition to their HW and medium freighter. This could be used to set up a "Disunited Kingdoms" scenario. In addition, if the One vs Circle setting is also used, you can set the extra ships/planets for the center player separately. There are also options to place the additional planets randomly across the map instead of clustered around the homeworld, to create a "Crazy Intermix" scenario.

9. Wandering Tribes settings - one of the most requested scenarios, "Wandering Tribes" starts you with no planets, but a number of fully loaded Super Transport Freighters to build your empire with. The number of starting freighters is configurable with 6 being the most common. Freighters are loaded with cargo as follows:

- 1500 clans
- 200 duranium
- 200 tritanium
- 200 molybdenum
- 500 supplies
- 1000 megacredits

There are also a few options for where the freighters start:

- Use Homeworld Areas - Based on whatever homeworld layout you have selected, will put each player's freighter fleet in the general area the homeworld would have been.
- Everyone at the Center - All freighters from all players start at the same spot in the center of the map.
- Random - The freighters are scattered across the map individually, instead of starting together as a fleet.

These game setup options are currently available for private games, though we plan to introduce some public scenarios using them in the future.

We hope you enjoy these new features!