v.55 is Now Available

Play as the Yor

Our first non-organic species. The Yor have no growth rate and don't require food. Instead, they manufacture their population as other species manufacture buildings. They can also colonize a variety of worlds that can't sustain organic life right from the beginning of the game.

Their citizens start out with generally weak stats, but they have access to unique technologies that upgrade the capabilities of all of their citizens and can make them very strong later in the game. Do keep in mind that in GC4 your civilization can be made up of citizens of many species so even though your Yor might not care about food, if you capture a world of Mimot they will become very angry if they don't have anything to eat.

In addition to the above, all of the Yor Command ships are generally weak, but they boost the abilities of the fleet they are in, and each other if you decide to go full Voltron with them and make a super fleet.

• Endless Zeros- Boosts the Hit Points of its fleet.
• Echoing Void- Boosts the Moves of its fleet.
• Suffering Within- Boosts the Beam Attack of its fleet.
• Before Creation- Boosts the Missile Attack of its fleet.
• After Death- Boosts the Defenses of its fleet.
• Infinite Resolve- Boosts the Kinetic Attack of its fleet.
• The Nameless- Dramatically boosts the Repair rate of its fleet.

Mimot Brotherhood

They may look cute but anyone who has played against the Mimot knows that they are deceptively powerful. They have the highest Growth rate and the highest Food requirement. Meaning that you always have plenty of citizens (they fill up their worlds quickly) and will often be struggling to find them new homes and keep them fed. You will never struggle to find a citizen to man a Colony Ship to a Starbase with the Mimot.

Their "rapid reproduction" applies to more than creating new citizens. The Mimot have the Proliferation ability which means that whenever they construct a ship, they get another for free. 2 colony ships, 2 constructors, 2 gunboats. This is why they spread so quickly. But their quick construction comes at a cost as all of their ships suffer a significant Hit Point penalty. If the Mimot's are to win wars they won't win against evenly matched fleets, they will need to overwhelm with greater numbers.

The Mimot Command ships also play into this theme of reproduction as many can produce new ships on their own. Making even a lone Command ship dangerous if it is able to produce an entire fleet if given enough time.

• Appeleur- This small scout ship can turn resources into new Probes to expand its search.
• Puca- A weak ship that is able to escape from battles that are going against it.
• Loireag- A legendary warship that is able to produce clones of itself.
• Harpazein- A dangerous ship that is able to fire antimatter bombs at enemies (more about those later).
• Dullahan- A slow carrier ship that is able to produce full Transport ships to invade core worlds.
• The Gruff- A deadly warship on its own, augmented by the fact that it can produce more warships to join its fleet.

Galactic Achievements

Galactic Achievements are a new feature we are testing. From this menu you can select a story event or challenge to undertake. Some require you to have met certain conditions before you can start them and all provide bonuses (including Prestige, the coming global stat for winning the game) if you complete them.

Traditionally we would have had these as random major events to occur in the game. We are testing them as player-initiated events (ie: you say when you want the event to start). That may break the immersion a bit, but also gives you control over your game. It also allows us to make them even more challenging since we don't worry about them hitting you randomly (word of warning: beware opening a dimensional rift right next to anything you value in the Orb of Draginol story).

The three introduced in this update are:

• Shard of the Mithrilar- Find a perfect world deep in the depths of space. Hopefully, before your enemies do. You must research the Mithrilarian Epics technology before you can attempt this.
• The Everwar- Lock all players into 200 turns of war with each other. There is no ability to declare peace within that time frame. All you can hope to do is survive. You must be at least 200 turns in the game before this story can be started.
• Orb of Draginol- There are rumors of a powerful artifact in the universe. But it is in another player's hands. You must find it (which involves creating a dimensional rift and attracting the attention of the Dreadlords) and defeat the player before the Orb's power has made him unstoppable.

Minor Civilizations

There are a host of new Minor Civilizations in the game. They have their own homeworld and shipyard. They can build ships but will never expand beyond their homeworld. More opportunistic players may decide to take their homeworlds and collect some new citizens for their empire. But players that opt to be more diplomatic can attempt to fulfill the minor civilization's request, it is unique for each civilization. If you give the minor civilization the help they are asking for they provide a gift every turn in tribute. The type of gift they provide is up to the player to pick from and depends on the minor civilization being talked to.

For example, the Burran are being harassed by Pirates. if the player takes care of their pirate problem they will offer either some Research, Credits or Thulium every turn in gratitude.

Prestige Victory

GC4 is going to support a Prestige, Conquest, Alliance, and Cultural victory. A player achieves Prestige by controlling ascension crystals, having advanced technology, being a military leader, an economic powerhouse, completing Galactic Achievements, etc. Basically, it is a way of ranking all the players in the game. If you have won by beating all the other players in several categories we don't make you play out the game, we award your victory (then if you want to play it out you can).

New Battle Actions

We added our first battle action in the last update, the ability to fire missiles on the main map. This update adds more new ones (all the Mimot Command Ship abilities to spawn ships are battle actions) as well as the ability to have these actions cost resources. The new battle actions are:

• Antimatter Bomb- This costs 1 Antimatter to use. It deploys like a missile but when it explodes it damages all enemy fleets, shipyards, and starbases within a 1 tile radius.
• Repair Drones- A ship that is outfitted with Repair Drones can repair any fleet within a 5 tile radius as a battle action.

Events can be Civilization-Specific

Events of all types can now be specific to a particular civilization. If you find the Festron survivors as the Festron there will be different options and dialog. The same for Drengin finding the Drengin Prison ship. The Yor also have some new events for colonization based on their unique perspective.
Colony ships now have an Auto-colonize command.

Check out the full changelog here.

Get into the Alpha now