Orbit Imperium 0.2.0
Colony Ships, Impulse Drive, and Astrophysics bring planetary expansion to Orbit Imperium, alongside a new Empire overview and clearer combat reports.
Orbit Imperium 0.2.0 adds the research and ships you need to expand beyond your empire. Research Impulse Drive and Astrophysics, build a Colony Ship, and send it out into the galaxy to establish another planet.
There's also a new Empire overview, more useful combat reports, and a collection of fixes to make the game easier to navigate. Thank you for all the feedback!
# Expand your empire
- Impulse Drive becomes available with Research Lab 2 and Energy Technology 1. At level 5, Small Cargo ships switch to impulse propulsion, with a higher base speed and fuel coefficient. Fleets already in flight keep their accepted travel times and fuel costs.
- Astrophysics requires Research Lab 3, Espionage Technology 4, and Impulse Drive 3. Research levels determine how many planets you can own and which positions you can colonize.
- Colony Ships require Shipyard 4 and Impulse Drive 3. A successful colonization consumes one ship and establishes a planet with its own size, temperature, and room to grow. Cargo arrives with the colony; extra ships and escorts return. If colonization fails, the fleet returns with its ships and cargo.
- Deployment lets you move ships and cargo between your own planets. Galaxy actions and fleet dispatch explain research requirements and colony capacity.
These features require universe rules activation after installation. The official server's deployment and activation are being coordinated with this release; self-hosted universes follow their operator's rollout.
# A clearer view of the game
The new Empire overview brings your planets, production, queues, and fleet activity together. Navigation stays within the planet or task you're working on, with more compact headers and pinned navigation on desktop and mobile.
Combat reports make losses, survivors, loot, and debris easier to read. New reports attribute firing and damage by side and origin for each round. Unread reports now show up in navigation, and galaxy views and reports display public player names.
# Fixes and everyday improvements
- Production percentages save automatically when changed.
- Temporary connection failures recover automatically, including transient failures while communicating with Accounts.
- Fleet dispatch validates destinations and explains why a launch is blocked.
- Galaxy views show beginner protection and disable attacks against protected targets.
- Locked buildings remain inspectable, and building actions refresh correctly after construction or cancellation.
- Resource and energy quotations use clearer numbers. Zero-capacity storage no longer produces a misleading full-storage warning.
- Universes have names and readable URLs. Installed home-screen navigation stays inside the app.
# Upgrading a self-hosted universe
Back up your database and retain the previous image and active rules before
upgrading. Install orbit-imperium:0.2.0 across every API, worker, and operator
process before enabling new content. Startup applies the included schema
migrations for enrollment timestamps, universe names, analytics, and colonization.
Existing enrollment timestamps remain unknown where they were not recorded.
Deployment preserves your saved rules. Export them and apply the supplied
preparation scripts in order: Impulse Drive, Astrophysics, then colonization.
Use a fresh export and review orbit rules diff before each orbit rules apply.
The colonization rollout guide
and rules operations guide
cover activation, verification, and compatibility. Keep your own universe ID and
settings; the official beta's identifiers in the rollout guide are not defaults
for independent servers.
Activation preserves existing progress and accepted work. Refresh clients to load the new catalog. Once new rules or state are in use, don't downgrade to a binary that cannot read them; disabling new launches doesn't undo accepted flights or remove colonies.
Download the source archive, Linux amd64 Docker archive, and SHA256SUMS from the
GitHub release.
See the full source comparison
for all changes.
# Still to come
Moons, expeditions, and colony abandonment remain unavailable. The official beta may reset before the full public launch; this update does not reset the universe.