The invasion

Weapons

• The Thermal Lance scythes. The sweep takes more than twice as long, and the fire is a trail of burning segments right behind the beam instead of a scar left standing. Each piece burns for a moment after the beam passes and then goes out, so at level 1 nothing lingers once the sweep ends. Levels lengthen the trail, the slash itself hits harder and grows every level, and successive carves alternate direction.
• The rail pierces from the start. A level 1 railgun punches through its first victim into the one behind it. Each level still adds one more.
• Smaller flak clouds. The flak burst's smoke and its caustic cloud open tight and grow with every level, reaching the old size at level 5.

Specializations

• Thunderhead is a ring of lightning. The storm the Tesla Coil's specialization leaves on its first victim is drawn as electricity crawling around its edge, with bolts leaping inward, instead of a grey disc.

Waves

• Waves open in formation. Through wave 8, every wave leads with a squadron flying in as a wing, and the rest of the wave holds until it is on the field. Wave 1 flies two wings back to back before the rest trickle in.

Prestige

• Flux burns with the perks. Buying a rank clears your perks and your flux balance. Scrap, research, weapons, satellites and your records survive.
• Rank 2 and up cost scrap. About a third of the flux price, paid alongside it. The first rank is still flux only.

Economy

• Orbital lasers. The Orbital Laser Program, under Programs once your first satellite is up, adds a Laser payload to mission select beside the satellite. It rides the same timed launch and climbs a little longer.
• Passive scrap. A laser on station burns whatever comes in high, and recovery crews bank the wreckage in real time, even while you are away. Every laser adds the same again, the way every satellite adds to your flux.
• Priced like a satellite. The first costs a little less than a satellite and each one after climbs gently. The scrap it earns pays for it in under a day.
• Two constellations. Lasers circle the globe on mission select and outside the hangar doors on orbits of their own, and the homecoming report lists their scrap apart from the ground batteries'.
• Automated Defenses stays as it was. It is the ground's scrap; the lasers are orbit's.

Orbit

• Commit a detachment. In Deep Survey, select a charted world and build the force to send against it ship by ship, with the odds recomputed as you add hulls.
• Two hours in transit, in real time. A committed detachment leaves orbit at once and is resolved when it arrives. The world's card and its label on the chart count down, and a world can face one detachment at a time.
• A win pays and costs. The world's bounty lands in flux and scrap, the world leaves the chart, and the survivors return to orbit minus ships worth about half its defense, cheapest first. A detachment stronger than the top of the intel band cannot lose.
• A loss costs the detachment. Nothing comes back. The world stays on the chart at the same defense, and nothing else is touched.
• The odds follow what you send. While you build a detachment, the percentage on the world's card and on the chart is that detachment's, not the whole fleet's. Every stack has an All button beside its stepper, and the picker has Everything and Clear.
• The chart stays put while the list scrolls under it, and worlds no longer sit on top of each other.
• Jump Drives. A new program in the Fleet section of Programs shortens every detachment's crossing. Four ranks take the two hours down to 49 minutes.
• Watch the battle. Every assault can be watched from Deep Survey's list of recent battles, from conquered worlds on the Command Record, or from the battle report. The detachment descends, the world's guns take exactly the ships that were lost, and then the guns fall and the survivors land, or the last ship dies and the guns fire into an empty sky. The outcome is decided when the detachment arrives. The scene shows how it went.
• Four alien skies. Garden worlds sit under a ringed giant among mushroom trees. Colony worlds are dusk settlements of lit domes under two moons. Foundry worlds are refinery spires and magma seams under a smoke-red sun. Fortress worlds are bastion walls under a shattered moon, with searchlights sweeping the sky.
• Alien guns. Every world defends itself with grown guns, one to four of them by kind, each firing a corkscrew of violet light.
• Ships away. Orbital Command lists ships in transit apart from ships in orbit, with the world they are bound for and the time left.

Interface

• Research is now Operations. The header group holding Perks, Arsenal, Programs, Orbital Command and Deep Survey was named for one room. Operations also has its own front page: every room you have unlocked, what it is for, what it spends, and whether prestige clears it. Reach it from the header menu or the All rooms link on the hub.
• Battle reports. A battle report opens when a detachment lands while you are on the deck, and the homecoming report names every arrival: the world, what it paid and what it cost.
• Worlds taken. A new stat on the Command Record, with every conquered world listed under it: what it was, how it was defended, what it paid and when. The list survives prestige.
• What each specialization did. On the defeat report, a weapon's row stacks its specialization's share in orange after the weapon's own cyan, with the specialization named beside the weapon: Thunderhead's storm bolts, Ricochet's hops, Cluster Warhead's bomblets, Napalm's burn and the rest. The copied report tags them too.
• Two wrecks, two shapes. A scrap glint is a gear on a bent strut and a flux cell is a lit power capsule. They used to be the same plate in two colors.
• The Line breached banner is gone. The alarm and the pulsing integrity bar carry the moment.
• An Orbit tab in the Gallery. The satellite, the laser and the platform on turntables, and the three rooms you see them from, live: the holo-globe, the hangar and the star chart.
• Two dispatches join the archive: one when the first detachment launches, one on the first conquest.

Fixes

• Every damage source is named. The Tesla Coil's strikes, the Thermal Lance's fire and a few other hits were landing under Unattributed on the defeat report. They are credited to their weapons now.