Dev Notes

Relic Raid banner · stability fixesUpdate

The main screen now carries a Relic Raid banner, in the same style as the Pirate Raid. It counts down from thirty minutes before the window opens, and once the event is running it shows your attack count, score and estimated reward live.

We also fixed a failure where committing a very large fleet pushed the score past an internal storage limit and broke event handling. Any size of fleet now records correctly.

Expedition balance · build cost rebalanceBalance

Tech fragments came in far too quickly from expeditions. We cut the rate from 15% to 5% and the quantity from 5–15 to 3–8. Finishing the entire Unknown Tech tree in a month removes one of the few long-term goals in the game.

We also revisited the cost ratios of ships and defenses. Fourteen of the twenty-seven units used no gas at all, so gas piled up and crystal mattered less than metal. Metal was left alone and only the minimum crystal and gas shares were raised (crystal ≥ metal × 0.6, gas ≥ metal × 0.2), so existing build orders still work.

New event: the Relic RaidNew content

Every evening from 20:00 to 21:00, an ancient relic opens at orbit 17.

• There are no defenses. Anyone can attack.
• You lose no ships. It is pure gain.
• Flight time is one fifth, the same for every hull and distance.
• The reward is 15% of your attack score, split 50 metal / 30 crystal / 20 gas, paid in one go when the event closes.
• Each attack has a 2% chance of 1–10 unknown tech fragments.

With no losses, the one-hour window is the only constraint. Launch from somewhere close and you can run it two or three times.

The Pirate Raid warning moved to 21:10 so it picks up right where the Relic Raid ends.

Full audit of resource transfersFix

A report that transported resources arrived but never appeared led us to audit every path resources travel.

The cause was a concurrency race. The game polls several endpoints at once, and when the resource accrual and the cargo delivery overlapped, whichever finished last overwrote the other. Resources are now row-locked before they change, which fixed transport, returns, salvage and plunder alike.

Gas added to expedition rewardsBalance

Gas was missing from expedition resource rewards — only metal and crystal were paid out, so the scarcest resource of all could not be earned from expeditions.

Rewards now include 6–12% gas, deliberately below its share of mine output (about 17%). Gas is fleet fuel; make it plentiful and expeditions start funding themselves indefinitely.

Newbie protectionNew feature

A commander below 50,000 points can no longer be attacked by anyone more than 5× their score. Scouting is exempt, and it does not apply to NPCs or unowned planets.

It exists so that a new commander is not farmed out of the game by a veteran.