My June 23 dispatch covered mobile orbit friction - launchpads, factories, duplicate scouts, pad upgrades that finally scaled. That was mid-week. Since then the alpha kept teaching me, and I kept shipping: v0.21.0 through v0.23.2 in roughly two days, with more patches queued for UI rough edges you are still finding. This post is the week-one close: what landed, what the economy is telling me, and where I am still sanding mobile and desktop UX.
What shipped since day three
Player-visible changes since the mobile-orbit dispatch - not infrastructure-only tweaks:
- Orbital hangar fuel on phones - tap-to-load frurozin into a ship instead of dragging on Android (v0.21.0); the hangar drag path I warned about in the last post is partly replaced, not fully gone everywhere.
- Fleet command dock - colony strip at the bottom of the map lists your worlds; pick a fleet and scan nearby planets without hopping back to the planet overlay (v0.22.0).
- Clearer mobile dock - switching between fleet focus and planet focus on small screens is less cramped; construction upgrades and fleet ship assignments on the map are more reliable (v0.22.0).
- Double-tap to jump - double-tap a fleet or planet pin to center the camera; single tap still selects without moving the view (v0.23.1).
- Colony strip always on - the bottom colony bar stays visible even when you have no fleets deployed, so you are never staring at an empty map footer (v0.23.2).
- Fleet decay visible - idle fleets away from maintenance now show hull integrity decay in the fleet briefing bar (v0.23.2).
- Shareable support links - open Command relay from a URL that restores the right board tab and ticket thread (v0.23.2).
Refinement is finally readable
Several of you spent the week inside the refinement loop - pig iron, crystal, gold, then frubin and orizin once matter states split open. Early on, solid refineries dumped waste faster than your depots could breathe; that was my curve, not your mistake. The rebalance from v0.19 onward cut waste sharply and slowed tier-1 output on purpose. Upgrading refinery level still helps, but you should never expect one-for-one mass conversion on the ladder.
What changed in your reports is clarity, not just numbers. Per-resource storage caps, fractional waste that scales with refinery level, and matter-state gates (liquid frubin does not feed a solid refinery) mean the HUD finally tells the same story the simulation runs. When a commander writes that refinement feels costly but understandable, that is the signal I wanted from week one.
Early balance signals I trust now
Real play still beats spreadsheet guesses. After one week with live commanders, a few patterns look solid enough to build on:
- The ~two-hour path to a first scout recon ship still holds for a focused homeworld - several of you hit it without idle-waiting, which validates the staged extractors and scout-part cost tweaks from v0.17.
- Waste pressure belongs in mid-game, not minute ten - the solid refinery rebalance and the 100,000-waste world-first medal both match what I see in support threads now.
- Launchpad upgrades matter economically after v0.20.3 - bays, slot capacity, transit speed, and fuel quotes scale with level; several commanders confirmed the choice feels real, not cosmetic.
- Power and storage upgrades need consent - confirmation dialogs with simulated grid impact (v0.19.1) cut accidental demolitions and surprise stock loss; keep telling me if the preview misses something.
- Fleet idle decay (v0.16) is understood once the maintenance factory is on the map - decay in the briefing bar (v0.23.2) made the mechanic legible without a manual.
Fleet command keeps maturing
The star-map fleet panel was always meant to be a command dock, not a sidebar afterthought. This week it grew teeth:
- Scan from fleet - park next to fog, confirm fuel and countdown, read the dossier when intel lands.
- Colony strip - jump between homeworld and outposts from the dock instead of losing context on the map.
- Ghost fleet cleanup - migration 009 pruned orphaned map fleets; ship allocation checks are stricter so scouts do not double-book.
- Mobile briefing - compact tabs, stacked actions, and cargo exchange dialogs that reflow for thumbs (carried forward from v0.20.4).
UI and UX - still very much in progress
I will be direct: the game is playable on phones in places where it was impossible on Monday, but mobile is not finished. Orbit hangar cargo moves, some overlay stacks, and thumb reach on the fleet dock still need passes. Desktop has its own list - panel stacking is saner since v0.12, yet dense colony grids, research sheets, and map camera habits (now helped by double-tap) still generate fair friction in Command relay.
That is intentional pacing for alpha, not neglect. I am prioritizing logic bugs and economy lies over pixel-perfect polish, but UX debt is real debt. Expect continued mobile layout work, more tap-first flows where drag never belonged, and desktop density tweaks as I learn which panels you live in for hours versus seconds. If a flow feels insulting on your device, file it - screenshots and short videos still help me more than vague "mobile bad" notes.
Thank you for week one
One week in, this resurrection is farther along than any private build I ran alone. The bugfix volume was high because you reported precisely; the balancing insights are valuable because you played honestly through costly refinement instead of rage-quitting at the first waste depot. I am not opening the next cohort yet - I need another balancing pass and more UX sandpaper first. Until the next dispatch: keep breaking things loudly through Command relay, and tell me when refinement or fleet command finally clicks for you.
Sebastian "Degola" Lagemann