Sorry for the long delay since our last post here. Things are going great over here and we're still on track to release somewhere in June or July. It's going to be a pretty bumpy ride over the next few months as we sprint to the finish but I have reason to believe that we'll make it.
While I'm here, I figure you guys would appreciate a sneak peak into the new Research system. It's going to be a blast and will keep the gameplay in the Research system fresh and exciting; every playthrough you can expect a different playthrough on the Research end. We'll also be offering options to spend your hard-earned resources on such things as Research Grants or donate your top scientists to an interstellar consortium which provides you with a large base of free research in technologies and subsystems that the council is researching. (The council is a non-empire NPC, so they're impartial and we've put in a few gameplay to make early-adopters to the council get in easier and late-joiners have a much higher entrance fee -- they also do not tolerate war)
Making something new and fresh in 4X research has been something we've spent a long time discussing and planning out. We're really excited about it and can't wait to show it off to you guys when it's finished.
(note: this gameplay element is still under construction; the final version of the system may function slightly differently/look slightly different than the version here)About the last batch of applicants: Wow! We weren't expecting nearly that many applications. Thanks for writing in - we were totally taken off guard by the amount of attention we got and just didn't have enough slots to fit you all in. We'll keep your applications in our database and review them but we're getting pretty close to getting out of internal alpha so there may be only a few more waves left.
Sorry to those that didn't get in, better luck next time. We'd like to bring you all in, really, but we like to keep cozy with our testers so that we make sure we hear all their opinions and suggestions out.