Changelog
What changed, release by release. The game updates in place — when a new build ships, an in-game chip offers a refresh.
2026-07-28
No more free landings
BALANCE v51- The back door is closed: you can no longer found a base on an empty world straight from the build bar. Presence is earned the designed way — land a colony pod, drive the construction vehicle, deploy — and the build menu now greys out with the reason on worlds you don't hold. Every cross-world price (rockets, cargo, escorts, orbital denial) means something again
- A commander razed to its last world stops waiting to die: with the siege at its walls and its income gone, it throws what it can still field at you in desperate last-stand sorties instead of idling behind a Blackout flash every two minutes
- The club-difficulty commander finally spends deep wealth: long games against Medium now meet growing turret rings, longer walls, bigger fleets and a deeper garrison instead of a frozen base sitting on a third of a million credits
- The Long Nine stops plinking empty ground to dodge your umbrellas — a big enough prize is worth firing at through coverage. And a commander holding a charged Blackout will EMP the umbrella and land the shell inside the blackout window: the suppress-then-shell play a veteran tester discovered is enemy doctrine now
- A dying commander stops converting its last credits into a parade of undeployed construction vehicles — rebuild attempts are capped, and hopeless ones stop after the first
- Two construction vehicles squatting on each other's deploy footprint now step aside instead of deadlocking forever, and harvesters remember which deposit just wedged them instead of bouncing between a stuck pair on a two-minute metronome
- Autosave names tell the truth again: rotating slots restamp the matchup and clock on every overwrite — no more HARD games wearing a MEDIUM label from three saves ago
- Save format upgraded — saves from earlier versions can no longer be loaded
2026-07-26
The endgame bites back
BALANCE v50- Stage an invasion army on an enemy world and it gets noticed: a landed force with no buildings used to be invisible to enemy commanders — now the garrison rides out to spoil your staging instead of watching you mass at its doorstep
- Enemy comeback drops stop being free kills. A commander facing hopeless odds holds its construction vehicles at home instead of feeding them to your fortress one at a time — and when it does come back, the army lands FIRST and the builder follows only once the beachhead holds
- Decoy turrets stop working: a lone gun in a far corner no longer drags an entire attack wave away from the real base. Enemy waves now go after defenses that actually guard something
- A commander cornered on its last world sweeps its orbit for every pod you send, not just the big waves — the final landing is contested now
- REGOLITH SHIPS: cargo pods and mass drivers carry regolith between worlds at last. A capped mine on one world can supply a construction boom on another
- Mars is worth the war — deposits across the red planet are noticeably richer on new maps
- Enemy colonies stop landing in the middle of the map every single game: colony sites now spread across the whole world, so no two campaigns look the same
- Rich veterans keep buying fortification long past the old ceilings — deeper turret rings and longer wall lines instead of a growing pile of unspent credits
- Garrisons react sooner: defenders start massing while your hammer is still forming up, not once it is already inside the base
- Enemy air finds the gap — strike wings read your anti-air coverage, pick the naked flank, and route around the flak pack instead of flying straight through it
- The Aegis Umbrella is now one per Construction Yard instead of one per world: coverage grows with your empire, and a sprawling base can finally be shielded properly
- New tells: an ENEMY LANDING alert with a minimap ping when hostile pods touch down on your turf, a warning when a warehouse sits full and deliveries are being wasted, and save slots that name themselves with the matchup and clock
- Balance version 50 — older saves keep loading, with a one-time notice
2026-07-26
The endgame runs smooth
- Late-game performance overhaul: marathon empires — a thousand buildings, wall rings, air wings across three worlds — now render far smoother. Frame cost at that scale is down by a third, and the stutter spikes that made big endgames feel laggy are cut in half
- Under the hood: buildings and units share render materials instead of carrying one each, off-screen bases skip their idle animation, and the interface stopped re-scanning the whole empire twice per frame
- No balance change — saves, replays and the AI are untouched
2026-07-25
The AI builds an empire
BALANCE v49- Veteran commanders now play for domination: three expansions from minute 3, the Moon from minute 8 — and every base they plant gets its own turret ring, anti-air umbrella and a threat-facing wall line. Outlying bases stop being free kills
- The AI finally builds WALLS — fortification lines rise across the approach to every base once its gun ring stands (the club difficulty builds a thinner line; the learner still leaves the yard open)
- EMP assaults land ON TIME: the Blackout's pulse now fires as the attack wave reaches your walls, so the blackout actually covers the breach — no more spent-and-gone EMPs minutes before the army arrives
- Bombers join the AI's air war on every world — strike wings hit the turret lines and power plants its assaults are walking into, veteran commanders keep two airfields busy, and its Moon and Mars colonies now fly their own interceptors, skimmers and strike landers
- Deep wealth buys standing armies: a rich veteran garrisons far past the old ceiling, and its off-world colonies keep noticeably more defenders at home
- The soundtrack grew: reworked audio throughout, two new background tracks, and eleven new Moon and Mars themes join the in-game shuffle — plus a refreshed intro, menu music and attack klaxon
- Balance version 49 — older saves keep loading, with a one-time notice
2026-07-25
The AI stands its ground
BALANCE v48- Assault a veteran's base and the garrison digs in deeper: defenses now train past the peacetime ceiling while your push is at their walls, and a commander driven off its homeworld garrisons the remaining colonies harder — backing it into a corner no longer makes it easier
- The Long Nine banks its 250 He-3 round the moment the charge completes: a gun that reads CHARGED always fires. A theater that can't cover the next round shows HOLDING — SHOT BILL DUE on the bar instead of failing silently, and the AI's own exports no longer eat the round out from under its gun
- A very rich enemy keeps converting its bank into map presence well past the old limit — deeper turret lines, more refineries, bigger harvester fleets, an extra expansion — each step pricier than the last
- Enemy construction vehicles walled in by their own base growth stop hogging the expansion program: the job moves to a vehicle that can actually reach a build site
- AI cargo rockets stop shipping into full warehouses — a third of its freight was quietly evaporating at the dock
- A shipment of yours destroyed by an orbital sweep now says so — SHIPMENT LOST, ORBITAL SWEEP — instead of a landing that silently never arrives
- Saves tell you when the cloud got them: a SAVED TO CLOUD confirmation on save, plus CLOUD SYNCED / LOCAL tags on every slot in the save menu
- The Aegis Umbrella's coverage grows again: one umbrella now shields a real base core, not just the block it stands on
- Balance version 48 — older saves keep loading, with a one-time notice
2026-07-24
The AI plants, spends, and flies
BALANCE v47- Enemy expansion convoys stop parking forever on crater slopes: construction vehicles now scout a real, reachable flat pad before they commit — and give up and re-site instead of jittering at a bad spot until someone shoots them
- Crater-rim resource prizes spawn on buildable ground on every world (new maps) — the Moon's metal prizes were quietly sitting on the rim band
- A rich enemy commander spends it: banked credits buy extra refineries, deeper turret lines, bigger harvester fleets and more expansions — the veteran grows instead of hoarding
- Hopeless-odds assaults arrive as one heavy, Blackout-led push instead of a constant stream — and no more EMP charges burned on waves that dissolved at birth
- The Aegis Umbrella pre-pays its interceptor the moment the charge completes: if it reads charged, it fires — and an owner who can't afford the rearm sees UNARMED on the strategic bar instead of a silent failure
- Air-focused enemies commit to the sky: the wing gets funded first, gunships lead the mix, a second airfield arrives at scale, and jets fly escort over ground attacks
- The AI mines regolith ahead of its construction queue instead of one emergency load per building
- Balance version 47 — older saves keep loading, with a one-time notice
2026-07-24
The AI besieges back
BALANCE v46- An enemy commander who can't crack your line stops feeding reinforcements into it — fresh units dig in at home while the siege turns to superweapons
- Massed artillery now counts as a fortification: AI attacks respect howitzer walls, Blackout punches aim into them, and the Long Nine will shell any artillery line it can see
- The Aegis Umbrella covers a much wider area — and you can finally see it: a coverage ring shows at placement and whenever the interceptor is armed
- AI superweapon guns keep themselves fueled — no more silently starved cannons sitting charged with no He-3 for the shot
- Mars metal prizes no longer spawn up on mesa tops (new maps), and any harvester — yours included — sent at a cliff-hugging deposit now routes around to a face it can actually mine
- Balance version 46 — older saves keep loading, with a one-time notice
2026-07-22
Harvesters stop getting stuck
BALANCE v45- A harvester that can't push all the way to a built-over deposit now starts mining from short range after a moment, instead of shoving at the wall forever — building tight around your deposits no longer silently strands trucks
- Two harvesters meeting head-on on a narrow route no longer lock up nose-to-nose: a truck with nowhere left to go pulls off the road instead of parking in the lane
- Balance version 45 — older saves keep loading, with a one-time notice
2026-07-21
The top bar is now a space control center
- Every superweapon countdown lives on the top bar as its own tile — your arsenal on the left, enemy programs grouped by type in their owners' colors on the right
- Fire from the bar: a ready Long Nine or Blackout arms targeting in one click; the Kessler opens a confirm panel that counts exactly what its sweep will catch
- Enemy tiles pulse red at READY, and an armed enemy Aegis shows as shield intel — check it before you commit a strike
- One ORBITAL readout replaces the transit, orbit, and satellite chips — click it or press O to manage satellites, inbound flights, and parked waves on every body
- The strategic console sits centered, holds still while your credits tick, and only appears once you have assets in space
2026-07-21
The AI learns when not to fight
BALANCE v44- Enemy commanders facing hopeless odds now hold, regroup, and rebuild instead of feeding endless waves into your defenses
- AI harvesters stop rolling replacements into ambush sites — and steer new routes around recent losses
- A besieged AI now fires its Blackout Charge defensively into the assault
- Kessler sweeps escalate: swept pods are knocked adrift, and a second sweep destroys them — with alerts when it happens to you
- Off-world colonies pick landing sites with real mining access, and rally exits no longer strand units on crater rims
- Save format upgraded — saves from earlier versions can no longer be loaded
2026-07-20
Save slots you can manage
- Delete and rename save slots — locally and in the cloud
- Overwriting an occupied slot now asks first
- Esc inside menus and dialogs no longer unpauses the game underneath
2026-07-19
Superweapons
BALANCE v38- Four late-game programs: the Long Nine coilgun, the Blackout EMP, the Aegis interception umbrella, and the Kessler orbital sweep
- New top-of-tree techs gate each program; enemy commanders research, build, and fire them too
- Superweapons can be switched off per match in the setup screen
- A shared shock rule keeps volleys honest — no single strike can one-shot a key building
2026-07-19
The download got 73% smaller
- Music now streams while you play instead of shipping in the download — 45.7 MB down to 12.4 MB
- Tracks play at original studio quality
- Quitting to the menu no longer doubles the soundtrack
2026-07-18
Map editor, round two
- Carve canyons and riverbeds by dragging (SHIFT snaps to 45°)
- Player start kits with owner-tinted previews and symmetry-aware placement
- Save dialog with rename and overwrite protection
- Middle-mouse pan, HOME to frame the map, drag-to-place, and undo ordering fixes
2026-07-17
Worlds look like worlds
- Craters read as real excavations; Earthrise hangs over the lunar horizon
- Vehicles leave tracks — permanent in Moon dust, fading in Mars sand, none on Earth roads
- Vacuum combat: silent flashes and spark jets where there is no air to carry smoke
- Per-world skies, light, and color grading
2026-07-16
AI colonies that refuse to die
BALANCE v36- AI colonies no longer freeze when their economy gets walled off — they reroute, rebuild, and fight on
- Reconquest: a surviving off-world colony will come back for Earth
- Harvesters stop pushing at cliffs forever and find another way
2026-07-15
Combat feel
BALANCE v35- Units prioritize enemy units over buildings in every stance
- Everything returns fire when a defense shoots it
- Idle aggressive units chew on enemy structures nearby
- A proper attack-alert klaxon
- Resource deposits 25% leaner on every world
- Downloads now resume through connection drops
2026-07-14
Cloud saves and usernames
- Optional sign-in syncs six save slots across devices
- Unique usernames, picked on first sign-in
- A durable save format — future updates load old saves with a notice instead of breaking them
- Building picking fixed: you select the building you see, not the one behind it
2026-07-13
Map editor arrives + a fairer AI
BALANCE v30- Build custom maps in the browser editor and play them instantly
- The AI ladder rebalanced end to end — an honest Easy / Normal / Hard
- AI opening waves sized to its real economy, not a script
2026-07-12
Terrain with teeth
BALANCE v29- Real elevation: craters, canyons, and terraced cliffs that pathfinding respects
- Openings softened across every difficulty
- FIRST MATCH preset for new commanders
2026-07-11
Aether Ascent
- The game has a name — Aether Ascent, by Ovitar Studios
- New intro, main menu, and match setup flow
- Deep pathfinding and performance passes under the hood