Sector Overseer

Economy balance pass. Several full playthroughs turned up two problems and both are fixed. The opening was too tight to bootstrap a second colony — you now start with two colony vessels and can build more, plus scouts, directly at the Home Station shipyard; a developing colony roughly breaks even instead of bleeding; and expansion kicks in at lower infrastructure and never stalls. And a large empire's income used to run away with nothing to spend it on — now every colonised system past the fifth adds a scaling administrative bill across the whole treasury, so a developed empire is comfortably wealthy while a sprawled, undeveloped one goes broke. Sector-jump costs climb with each corridor you open, and mission targets were raised to suit. Also in this pass: the three overseer cards were rebuilt into a tidier uniform layout, and a credit-focused game now still ticks the tech tree over from a small passive research trickle on every colony.

Defence Stations. A standalone frontier picket you can build at any owned colony — heavier defence than a Sector Hub and a longer sensor reach, so inbound raiders and rival ships are spotted much further out. Build as many as you like along a border; your Military Overseer will request one when a colony keeps getting hit with no warning. Also: the new-game "sector size" now only sets your home sector — every sector you chart later holds a random 2 to 25 systems.

Overseer objectives. Set targets your overseers work toward — Populate or Develop a system, Colonise a world, Reinforce or Hold a colony, Build a Sector Hub in a sector. Objectives don't override the directives you set; they bias which requests and advisories each overseer raises, and the order when two compete (reorder them in the objectives panel). A Hold order has teeth: your Military Overseer won't recommend abandoning that colony — instead, if it genuinely can't hold it, that becomes a decision it puts to you. Sector Hubs now work the same way: the Economy Overseer authorises the spend, the Logistics Overseer builds it out over about four weeks.

A Logistics Overseer, and stars you can read. The third overseer seat is filled: the Logistics Overseer owns the trade network and autonomous colonisation — when an Expansion Hub is ready to send a colony ship it now proposes a target and waits for your approval (or you can set it to act on its own, or hold). Every star has a hidden stability grade — S, S- or S+ — that sets its odds of a collapse crisis; send a scout to assess a system before you settle there. And when a star does go supernova, the system gets an exploded-star marker and can be re-surveyed — the blast leaves debris fields, rogue planets and comets in its place.

Reinforcements take time. When your Military Overseer asks for more hulls, approving it now places a procurement order with Regional Command rather than conjuring ships instantly — they're built and shipped in, arriving a few weeks later, and they cost noticeably more than building the same class at home. Hover any warship, in the fleet list or on the map, to see its combat strength, build cost, procurement cost and weekly upkeep. The "grow the sector" mission target was also doubled to match the new population caps.

The economy, rebuilt. Every planet now has a carrying capacity for its type — population grows on an S-curve and levels off, no more runaway. Output and the reinvestment a colony needs both scale with its population, so a developed world is a real earner and a young or distant one costs you until it finds its feet. Distance is a cost: colonies far from a base pay a logistics premium, which you offset by building a Sector Hub — a logistics anchor that also fields sensors for earlier warning of inbound ships and adds to the system's defence. Mining and industrial worlds convert their output to materials, so the resource you're short of depends on the worlds you settle.

An Economy Overseer, and a Regional Command that talks back. A delegated Economy Overseer sits beside your Military Overseer — set one sector-wide economic policy (reinvest for growth, maximise revenue, austerity, underwrite the frontier, build reserves) and they run the treasury to it, sending you requests to approve. Each overseer now has its own mailbox with its own icon. Regional Command periodically asks the sector for ships or resources against a timed reward, and you can requisition a scout or colony ship back from them — with a free emergency vessel if you've lost everything. The two overseers moved up into a strip at the top of the map.

A rival power. A named rival empire a few sectors away now charts toward your space in straight horizontal and vertical runs. Once your frontiers meet it telegraphs its intent — probing, then massing — and mounts periodic assaults on your weakest border colony. Hold the line with Forward Posture; lose a colony and an overseer request lets you mount an operation to retake it. The scripted invasion mission is now this rival's all-out finish.

Raiders and real combat. Ambient raider groups spawn at the edge of charted space and strike weakly-defended colonies or unpatrolled trade routes. Engagements are resolved by the simulation — a lost ship is really lost — and your Military Overseer intercepts them according to your doctrine. A raid can loot and damage a colony, but a raider can never take one.

A delegated navy. You never move a ship. A Military Overseer — a character with their own competence, aggression and loyalty — positions the whole fleet to match the single doctrine you set, and sends you requests (emergency shipbuilding, a directive change, abandoning a position) to approve or deny. Every warship carries a small weekly upkeep.

Expansion has a price. New colonies draw a weekly subsidy from the treasury until they reach self-sufficiency; over-reach and infrastructure decays and idle ships get mothballed. Switching a strained system to Build Infrastructure always digs you back out.

Terraforming and unbounded expansion. A new Frontier tech lane lets you reshape a hostile world into something habitable; a Jump Drive opens sector-by-sector expansion across an endless grid, with sectors bordering the rival flagged as contested. The tech tree is now fifteen nodes across five lanes.

Interface. Hover tooltips across the map, the fleet panel and the directive panel; a sticky header; and the whole game now sizes to fit the screen without the page ever scrolling.

First release. Fog-of-war exploration, the governor and planet-leader chain of command, the three-resource economy and tech tree, planetary Centres, the star lifecycle, invasion-wave hazards, and trade routes.