Future Update

Once the Diplomacy Update for Bronze Age is out, I plan to take a break and do an update for Bronze Age: Space. This will bring Bronze Age: Space up to date with the latest features of Bronze Age, and explore some new features as well.

Overhauled Terrans

I feel like the Terrans in Bronze Age: Space are too similar to the humans of Bronze Age proper, at least in terms of how their economy works. I'd like to diversify them a little. The Terrans also don't have structure upgrades. The idea was to style them to have larger settlements, but I don't think the result is very interesting. I have a planned overhaul for them, inspired by Ascendancy, a game that I really enjoyed growing up.

The new Terran economy will be based around 3 areas: Industry, Growth, and Research. Industry will support units and construction. Growth will support population, and Research will support new technology (more on that later). These are going to make heavy use of bonuses, including terrain bonuses, with an attendant overhaul of the world generator.

Combat will also be getting an overhaul, with the introduction of ground units. Ground units will have an advantage in destroying structures and capturing settlements, while ships will be stronger in destroying other units.

Diplomacy

Bronze Age: Space will be updated to use the new diplomacy systems coming in Bronze Age 2.5, and will include AI Terran colonies.

Seekers?

With the coming AI terrans, and the overhaul to the way Terrans work, I'm not sure how Seekers will fit in. I don't think I have the time to overhaul the Terrans and the Seekers, and I'm toying with the idea of just ignoring or removing them for now. Anyone have any thoughts about them?

Pirate Black Market

There's a feature in Sins of a Solar Empire that I really like. There are periodic pirate raids that will launch from a pirate system and attack a random player. You can change their target, however, by bribing the pirates. The source of the bribes is hidden, however. This allows for an interesting way to carry out a proxy war through the pirates, without opening yourself to counterattack.

The pirate black market will function similarly. Much like you can bribe pirates to not attack you now, you'll be able to bribe them to attack someone else. The AI will also bribe the pirates, if they can afford to.

Research

In 2.4 there was a new feature, half implemented, unused, and undocumented. This would allow scripts to control access to some structures. I plan to finish the implementation of that for 2.5, and use it for research in Bronze Age: Space. Where in normal Bronze Age you unlock new structures and units by finding new resources (like copper and bronze), in Bronze Age: Space you'll research them. This will be handled entirely through scripts, and I aim to make the system easily extensible for others to use as well.