Hello Executives, a few fixes today to help make the game run smoother.

• Defence station missiles now do damage again.
• Rocket launchers should now fire forward more often.
• Door hacking over multiplayer should work better.
• Easier for AI to reach tech 3 and beyond.
• Defence platform opening animation now synced over multiplayer.
• Defence platform now generates turrets over multiplayer.
• The delivery ship now deducts money properly.
• Cargo dropped in space is now synced correctly especially when retrieving.
• Taking control of ships mid jumping no longer causes the background to go black.
• A problem where you could no longer click on units if you pressed ESC to exit a screen has bit fixed.
• Can no longer ask troops to follow you when they are sitting in the troop transport
• Will no longer break the game if the troop transport explodes just as you are getting into it
• Troop transporter now syncs better over multiplayer.
• Outpost missiles should no longer shoot docked gateways.
• More robot navigation fixes.
• AI no checks to make sure it doesn't build hundreds of troop transports.
• Fixed a camera error if crouching as an Executron and then switch back to 1st person mode.
• Can no longer self destruct your self when captain of star ship.
• Trading menu now scrolls.
• Fixed problems with ships trying to dock and opening/closing the docking bay doors.
• Fixed a problem with diplomatic messages going mad and freezing the game.

One thing that has been bugging me for a while is the current state of the tech tree which I am still not happy about. Even though I have tried to make the torpedoes and cannons do more damage against buildings I still don't use them and instead I just make a bigger fleet. Also it didn't make sense to me having both gateways and troop transports as they were very similar to each other.

After discussing the issues with the community I am going to look at implementing a faction system in the game which will really help bring the tech tree alive. It will also result in companies looking graphically different to one another and this will be determined by which branch of the tech tree you choose. This is a very similar concept to other games so it seems about time I bring it into mine.

So for example there will be a dirty tech faction who loves machine guns, bullets, mass drivers, nuclear power, missiles, rockets, troop transports with big rusty but functional ships and cloning vats for their cheap but weak troops. There could also be a more high tech faction who has shields, fusion power, lasers, gateways and robots with expensive but powerful ships and finally there could be a more sneaky faction who has stealth tech, stealing, spying, sabotage, solar power, assassination, cyborgs and teleportation, the sky's the limit really.

This will obviously take some time to make including planning it all out, hiring artists for all the new graphics and making sure the asymmetrical tech is balanced, however I will keep all this on a separate development branch while I keep the game maintained on the main branch so please don't stop playing and reporting issues/bugs.

Cheers,
Rob