Improved Extermination, New Game Settings and Better Map Generation

Improved Extermination, New Game Settings and Better Map Generation

We’ve been hard at work on the full version of Astro Protocol, adding new factions, units, anomalies and technologies. These additions are not available in the demo but update 0.18 brings a big wave of improvements for the demo as well.

Extermination Now Takes One Turn

Exterminating a planet used to be an instant action and didn't have any cost or drawback while colonizing cost you a ship and energy. This incentivised attacking planets and made any hole in defence very costly.

This update changes extermination so that the ship must bombard the planet until the start of your next turn and cannot counter-attack during this period. If the ship is destroyed, the extermination attempt fails.

This change makes extermination more tactical and increases counter-play opportunities for opponents.

New Game Settings

This update adds new settings to control over how each match plays:

  • Added setting to start a game without minor factions.
  • Added game length setting.
  • Added possibility to randomize game settings and faction.

Map Generation Improvements

  • More variance in player starting positions.
  • Medium-level anomalies can appear anywhere instead of only in the center of the map.
  • Less stars, gas giants, and asteroids for more scarcity and room for strategic plays.
  • Added randomized minor faction spawn distance from the center.

Improved AI & More Defensive Minor Factions

  • AI now makes better decisions in tech research, ship construction, and anomaly rewards.
  • Minor factions now behave more defensively, making them harder to wipe out early.
  • AI uses more efficient movement and production logic.
  • Early-game AI shipbuilding has been improved for stronger openings.

Performance & UX Improvements

A large part of this update focuses on speed and quality-of-life improvements:

Performance

  • Faster turn-ending calculations.
  • Better research placement performance.
  • Optimized map rendering performance especially for large maps.

UI / UX

  • New tooltip style
  • Smaller selected-ship panel and ship tooltips
  • Input icons added
  • Game settings now save automatically
  • Improved end game menu
  • Close menus when placing ships, stations and techs
  • Improved anomaly tooltips

Fixes

  • Fixed minor faction relation visualization
  • Fixed tutorial texts
  • Fixed navigation crash

⚠️ Important Note: Your Settings Have Been Reset

Due to internal technical changes, your video, audio, and gameplay settings have been reset. Please reconfigure them after updating the game.

December Playtest - Sign Up Now

We’re preparing a new playtest in December. If you would like to experience the content available in the full version before the game is released, sign up here: https://nullvectorstudios.com/playtest


Thank you all for playing, supporting development, and giving feedback. See you in the weekly challenge — and among the stars!