Levels past 5 are damage, and bosses go out with a bang

Weapons

• Levels up to 5 shape the weapon, levels past 5 add damage. Each level up to 5 grows what makes the weapon itself: more bounces, a bigger blast, a wider cone, more mines aloft. It adds no damage, except on the 40mm Cannon, which still gains 25% damage at every level from the first: that is its thing. With Overcharge, every level past 5 adds 25% damage over the level before and nothing else, so reach, blast size, freeze time and the rest stay where level 5 left them. A level 10 weapon hits about three times as hard as the same weapon at level 5.
• Support weapons past level 5. Each adds damage its own way. Whatever the Lockdown Dart freezes takes 8% more damage from everything per level past 5, enemies inside a Vapor Screen bank 5% more, and enemies in a Gravity Well 6% more, bosses included. An enemy held by more than one of them takes only the biggest bonus. The Nanite Swarm bites 25% harder each level (its repairs keep their level 5 limit), the Static Ring cuts 25% deeper (it still never finishes a kill), and the Supply Drop's powder grows 5% a level, to +65% at level 10.
• Railgun. Everything behind the first enemy takes 60% of the hit at level 1 and 10% more each level, the full hit at level 5 (was 55%, plus 5% a level, the full hit at level 10).
• Thermal Lance and Corkscrew Beam. The lance's slash and the beam's line no longer grow with levels. The lance's levels widen the carve and lengthen the burning trail; the beam's lengthen the hold and grow the burst.
• The RPG Launcher's blast starts smaller. 48 px at level 1 (was 64), growing 16 a level to 112 at level 5. Its levels no longer speed the rocket up: every gun leads its shots now, so the faster motor added almost nothing.

Specializations

• Levels past 5 raise a specialization's damage too, the burns, fires and fragments it leaves included. Its other numbers stay at their level 5 values.
• Kill Chain (new, Orbital Designator, replacing Broad Column). A strike that kills its mark sends the designator straight on to the next cluster, painting it in under a third of the time. Up to three more strikes can follow, each a little lighter, until one fails to kill.
• Cryo Round (new, Orbital Designator, replacing Firestorm). The strike freezes everything in a wide burst around it for nearly two seconds (bosses half as long).
• Storm Net (new, Balloon Mines, replacing Tethered Mines). When a balloon pops, lightning leaps from it through every balloon aloft. Each arc strikes whatever it crosses, and every balloon it reaches lashes out at the enemy nearest it.
• Ball Lightning hits much harder. Every zap now leaps on to two more enemies nearby, and the zap itself is stronger.
• Implosion Charge pulls for real. The charge now drags everything in reach into a tight pile for a full second before it goes off. Before, the pull lasted a blink and barely moved anything.

Enemies

• Shots that hit the ground leave a mark. Enemy fire, boss lance strikes and Ram crashes now kick up dust and dirt, throw sparks in the colour of what hit, flash along the ground and leave a scorch that fades.

Bosses

• Bosses go down in a blaze. A destroyed boss no longer just vanishes. Its burning wreck lists and sinks as explosions run along it, faster and faster, then it blows apart in one huge blast with a flash, a shockwave and wreckage thrown across the sky, and the screen shakes. The blasts always show, however much else is exploding around it.
• The Revolver's core rocks in three dimensions as it fights, faster as it fails.

Economy

• Flux Beacons and Flux Refinery (new research). The flux cells' answer to Salvage Beacons and Salvage Refinery: Flux Beacons makes cells drop more often, and Flux Refinery makes each cell you catch pay more. The Refinery appears once you own the Beacons.

Orbit

• Orbital lasers cost more than satellites. The first laser is 9,000 flux and 3,000 scrap (was 5,000 and 2,500), half again a satellite.
• Beam Focusing (new research). The lasers' answer to Panel Efficiency: each of five ranks raises the scrap every laser earns by 15%. It appears once you own the Orbital Laser Program.
• Programs open one at a time. Each milestone now opens one new program: Panel Efficiency with your first satellite, the Orbital Laser Program with your second, the Orbital Factory with your third, and Beam Focusing with your first laser. Flux Beacons opens when you buy the Salvage Refinery. The doctrines open as your fleet grows, and Jump Drives with your first detachment. Programs you already own stay put.
• Clearer launch options. The Satellite and Laser options say what they earn: flux or scrap, even while you're away.
• Scan a world for a sharper reading. Select a charted world on the star chart and send a scan: 8,000 flux and 3,000 scrap, back in two hours, real time. A survey probe's first reading is rough, and each scan that comes back narrows the world's defense range. Survey Analysis now makes every scan sharpen it more, instead of narrowing every world at once.

Sites

• Every site has a landmark. Five more sites join Svalbard's research station and Antigua's temple with something to look at behind the guns.
• Mojave Mesa: a deep-space tracking station, its giant white dish tipped up at the sky between the buttes, two smaller dishes beside it and warning lamps blinking on their rims.
• Atacama Salt Flat: an observatory on a mountain summit, four silver telescope enclosures in a row with their slits open, and an orange guide laser reaching up into the stars.
• Pacific Atoll: an ocean launch platform offshore, a rocket standing in its tower beside the hangar and crane, with its command ship moored nearby.
• Himalayan Plateau: a cliff monastery climbing a rocky spur, whitewashed and gold-roofed, prayer flags fluttering down the slope.
• Serengeti Reach: a safari lodge of thatched huts on a granite kopje, and hot-air balloons drifting low over the plain beyond.

Interface

• Programs shows what opens the next ones. A new list, "Opens new programs", names the steps that open more research, such as launching another satellite.
• Maxed perks and finished programs still say what they do. Their collapsed line keeps the effect under the name.
• More in the Command Record. Scrap glints and flux cells caught over every run, and the most flux and the most scrap a single return from being away has paid. Worlds taken stays hidden until the Deep Survey opens the invasion.

Sound

• Explosions are quieter. Kills and blasts sit under the guns instead of drowning them out, and back-to-back blasts pile up less.

Fixes

• Frag Balloons' card no longer says it needs the Flak Battery mounted.
• The Orbital Designator's spec sheet says it paints the thickest cluster in reach (it has since September), not the farthest enemy.