Galaxies you have to discover
Fog of war, places on the map that change what happens there, crisp borders, and edge-on galaxies that look more like the real thing.
I spent a lot of the last two weeks on the galaxy map: what you can see, what the places in it do, and how it looks.
Fog of war
You no longer start knowing the whole galaxy. Stars you haven’t found are dim, grey and nameless, and you can’t click them. A star you’ve charted from afar opens veiled: you see the star, but its worlds are just “Unknown world” until you explore them. Hyperlanes only show once you know them, starting with the lanes out of your home.
Nebula names and the galaxy’s core stay hidden until you know a star near them. Dark clouds can’t be charted from outside at all, and rival fleets inside them stay hidden.
Places that matter
Where a star sits now changes what happens there. Nebulas slow fleets passing through; dark clouds hide the fleets and colonies inside them, and glowing nebulas help research and energy. Star clusters and a galaxy’s halo are rich in minerals and rare materials but harder to live on. Chokepoints, the stars on the only route between two parts of a galaxy, boost trade and give stations there stronger hulls and shields, with a risk of pirates. The core is dangerous: radiation wears down fleets that linger, no empire starts there, and route-finding steers around it.
Each effect shows as a chip on the star’s panel, with a card that explains it. The AI empires weigh these too. They head for good places and keep out of the core.
Seeing your space
Borders are now a thin, even line at every zoom. They used to go soft up close and jagged from far away. See-through spheres show how far your probes can reach and how far your Control spreads. Your fleets move along the lanes day by day, with their route drawn ahead of them. The Diplomacy and Intel map views colour every empire by how it feels about you or how much you know about it, with a pale seam between neighbours that share a colour.
Looks
Seen edge-on, a galaxy now thins out towards its rim like a lens, with a dust lane and ragged edges. It used to look like a slab. A few giant galaxies carry an Einstein ring, light bent round them, and that ring is no longer a drawn circle: it’s a little squashed, brighter in long arcs and broken by bright knots.