Once Upon The Universe patch notes & updates

Military Overhaul - Ships, Customization & Strategic Orders

The military system has received a major overhaul, introducing new warship classes, modular ship designs, expanded combat mechanics, improved fleet management, and new...

Vassalization System

Introduced new vassalization diplomatic actions, allowing stronger civilizations to establish dominance over weaker ones. Civilizations can become vassals through diplomatic agreements or as an outcome of war.

Improved Harbinger diplomacy with action descriptions, context-sensitive diplomatic requirements, and simplified military alliance conditions. Experimental game speeds are now enabled by default.

This update brings improvements to diplomacy for Creators controlling a Harbinger civilization, including a dedicated Harbinger Diplomacy view, new diplomatic actions, and military alliances.

Harbinger Civilization

Do you have a favourite civilization you'd love to see succeed in its quest for interstellar domination? This update has you covered! And who doesn't enjoy playing favourites from time to time? Introducing Harbinger Civilization mode, a whole new way to play!

Special Resources

This update introduces the foundations of the Special Resources system. Unlike raw resources and industrial goods, Special Resources are extremely rare, cannot be traded, and must be discovered and collected through entirely different means.

Civilization Cycle and Population rework

This update is mainly focused on clearing some tech debt and reworking the Population tab UI. Instead of the previous text dump it should be much clearer and easier to read now.

Destroyed combat ships now have a chance to leave behind small amounts of heavy matter as debris. Atmospheric Event can now be cast from anywhere on a planet Surface, applying its effect to the entire planet.

Planetary Focus.. something I personally felt was missing. Star and planet naming should also be more logical now. Have a great Friday!

Added Focus Military Action, allowing the Creator to direct a civilization war action against a chosen enemy while preventing peace negotiations until the focused conflict ends.

Simplified cultural bonus information in the Politics panel, with detailed trait effects now available through hover tooltips.

Vanity civilizations can now construct Beacons of Vanity in deep space, reducing Creator Point generation until the Beacons are destroyed. Beacons can be targeted by hostile fleets, Heavy Particle Collision, and Doomsday Shower.

Just a small weekend update. Have a great Saturday! :) Added Planetary Defense Systems: fortified planets can now engage hostile fleets directly and must have their defenses destroyed before they can be captured.

Politics and Vanity

With this update, the second part of the Civilizations Cultures system is being introduced: Politics. A civilization's internal politics now determine how it interacts with its different cultures, how its society is structured and how it approaches other civilizations.

Civilization Cultures

! Civilizations will now create and develop their own cultures based on their early background or colonial origins. Cultures develop additional traits over time, providing unique modifiers to civilizations.

Heavy Particle Collision can now target individual surface tiles, destroying local infrastructure, creating temporary lava fields and causing a short-lived planetary happiness penalty.

Ice Caps, Sea Levels and Hydrology

Ice caps and water evaporation. With this update, planet land surfaces will no longer have a fixed water-to-land ratio. Instead, it is now actively affected by the level of ice caps on the planet, which will grow and melt depending on the planet’s temperature.

Added a dedicated Remove Building action to the Surface panel. Planet list rows can now be clicked anywhere to quickly focus the selected planet. Added Creator metric tooltips to civilization General panels, making recent Influence and Antagonism changes easier to trace.

Added Ultrawide resolution support with instant resolution preview and automatic rollback if the new resolution is not confirmed within 15 seconds. Fixed Heavy Water Stations remaining in space after their civilization went extinct.

Roads and Ports

! It's an introduction to the planetary logistics system, and the next step toward making each planet feel like a living, breathing entity instead of just an economic data point. With this foundation in place, more planet surface changes will follow soon.

Added social class breakdown and current social building expansion limit to the Surface civilization panel. Fixed multiline text display Industrial Production in General Panel. Added feedback when attempting to open Sector View while an anomaly power is armed.

Improved building tooltips with maintenance costs and clearer section headers. Improved Creator's Hall tooltips with clearer current effects, level bonuses and upgrade restrictions. Added new pixelart image for Pine tree flora group.

Added Eject Mass, a new Anomaly Power that expels part of a star mass as hydrogen. Added Bad Luck Protection to repeated Inspire and Demand attempts, preventing extreme failure streaks on the same action.

Sandbox Settings are finally here! This is the foundation, with a few basic customization options for now and more to come soon. Customize Creator Points generation, including Infinite CP. Choose the number of sectors in your universe.

Fixed Impact Probes sometimes failing to catch fast-moving planets. Close Watch alerts can now be clicked to jump directly to the watched star or planet. Early faction activity no longer fills the Event Log. Fixed some tooltips requiring a second hover before appearing.

Fixed early civilization building pagination. Updated Mines to also produce Gold. Early factions no longer need Gold to be targeted for integration. Only the faction initiating integration needs Gold.

Improved Biosphere population limit clarity. Prevent civilizations from starting Dyson Spheres they cannot maintain. Added Close Watch feature for stars and planets, with critical alerts for dying stars, supernovas, dangerous host stars and predicted planetary collisions.

Early factions can now build up to set limit of each building type. Buildings captured beyond this limit are kept. Early civilization territories are now shown with colored borders, keeping the natural planet surface visible.

Fixed multiple tooltips flickering in Sector View.

The Big One - Surface update

Time for the Big One. This update adds a new Surface system and greatly expands the early history of civilizations. It is something I wanted to release since day 1. Civilizations no longer appear directly in the Space Age.

Added Civilization Relics - fallen civilizations now scatter collectible relics through space, which can be recovered by worker ships and provide unique bonuses when their activation requirements are met. Civilization relics preserve and display their origin history.

Artificial Stars in Critical Failure now continue generating Energy Materials demand, preventing civilizations from selling resources reserved for their upkeep.

Entropy and Megaprojects

In the end, everything drifts toward entropy. The universe slowly loses energy and matter throughout its existence. The only thing that counters entropy is Life.