So, I said when I created the Facebook page that I'd use it to keep everyone update on the development of SF, as well as giving updates if SF had any problems or a new round was starting. I've posted a few preview pictures and such, but not really gone into detail on what I'm working on. At the moment I'm working on adding three new races and a new tech tree.

Races

Firstly, as well as adding races I'm altering the current races slightly, and giving Marvion some features so that it isn't a basic, empty race. Hopefully, it will make all races a little bit more competitive and add some variety to picking a race. Races have been pretty much the same for almost the entire history of SF. We have added a few different race specific ships and given Versuden 3 command probes etc, but those are only really minor changes.

To be fair to those minor changes though, it has altered the balance of the most popular race. I'm hoping that the changes and the new features will increase the balance even more so.

Tech Tree

The new tech tree will be pretty interesting. It has a number of a new researches, new features to research, as well as having some of the old research broken up a little bit. Example:

Old research: Advanced Mines

New researches: Tri-Lithium Mines - Level 1 and Tri-Lithium Mines - Level 2

I'm sure that some people will be annoyed at having to research more items. But the purpose of splitting current researches is that it will mean that players could be researching for the whole round. Players will need to build up a strategy of what is more important to have first. Right now, most players have the same strategy depending on whatever you're going for probes or not.

Race Specific Tech?

Is there going to be more race specific technology? Well, for the moment the only race specific technology is going to be Power Plants. Each race will have a different power tech, some will have three stages to research, others will have four stages. Each stage will provide a different boost to power production per race. So where a Herogen and a Ferrion have both researched level 2 of their power research, they could find that Ferrion has a much larger power output per tick. But if they both had level 3, then it could be must closer.

In terms of race specific tech, I am going to be adding more race specific ships. The differences between these ships could vary on a small scale, but also on a large scale depending on the size of the ship. The purpose is to make each race feel more different. Each race will get between 7-9 new ships, which will be added into a mixture of the old ships.

What's the deal with that Station?

The station will probably come just after the races and tech tree. The research items for the station will be added, but integration into the station will probably take a bit of time. The overall goal for the station is to become a part of your empire. In it's primary use it will need to be upgraded through research, but also through paying for upgrades with credits and resources. The secondary use could be as a form of attack between empires. A possible addition to raiding. This idea hasn't been given much consideration as of yet. The primary use is it's only planned stage of development as of yet.

Summary

Hopefully these updates will not take a huge amount of time. The time consuming aspects are editing the current code so that everything hard coded will use a reference in the database instead. The other time consuming part is adding the new features. As for further updates on what is being added, I will be posting some previews in the near future. So look out for previews of races, ships and new research items.