Galaxy Events: the Worm Swarm, Core Surges and a ringworld farm

Arenas now have events: things that happen to an empire, an alliance or the whole galaxy, with their own rules for a while. They are announced ahead of time, so you can prepare, and every event has its own card on the new Events page.

When an event is announced, starts or ends, a big popup tells you what is going on. If there are several, they queue up behind a Next button, and each of these moments also lands in your news. While an event is running, hover the day counter in the footer to see the current and upcoming events at a glance.

The Events menu entry only shows up while there is something to see. Events that have ended stay on the page, greyed out, so you can look back on them.

Once an alliance holds 40% of the galaxy's population, deep scans pick up something at the edge of the galaxy. Then, 120 days later, 8 giant worms full of dropium start crawling toward the black hole. Each worm takes 5 to 7 real days to get there.

If 4 worms reach the black hole, it explodes and takes the whole galaxy with it: the arena ends and the worms win. As worms arrive, the black hole on the map grows more and more unstable.

The worms never attack, but they are at war with everyone, and they only show up on your map while they are inside your own scan range. Send your fleets to attack them. A worm is tough: its hit points are based on the fleet of the alliance that brought the swarm, and it fights back with a brood of small worms that grows the more damage it takes. Alliance members fight a worm together.

Every worm carries 20 dropium. When it dies, everyone who damaged it (small worms count too) gets a share based on the damage they dealt, with a minimum of 1 each. The Worm Swarm card on the Events page shows all 8 worms with their status and hit points.

Once the galaxy is 80% settled, something big happens to all of it. One of five galaxy-wide events is picked at random, announced 24 hours ahead, and then lasts 24 hours. It is the same for everyone, friend and foe alike, so plan your moves.

The Tachyon Tide: a rogue magnetar flares at the galaxy's rim and its tachyon wave sweeps through the galaxy. Every ship and fleet flies twice as fast, worms included. Your ship speeds and arrival times update when the tide starts and ends.

The Kilonova Echo: two neutron stars collide in a neighbouring galaxy and every observatory records data that scientists normally wait centuries for. Science +50% on every planet.

The Cosmic String: a cosmic string sweeps through the galaxy and leaves magnetic monopoles behind, near-perfect magnets for every factory. Production +50% on every planet.

Comet Season: a dark-matter wave nudges the comet cloud around every star, and comets seed every atmosphere with water and nitrogen. Food +50% on every planet, so your population grows faster too.

Tidal Quakes: a dwarf galaxy passes close to ours and its tides push metal-rich veins to the surface of every planet. Ore extraction +50% on every planet.

The planet tooltips show the bonus as its own line while a surge is active.

Ringworlds could not be terraformed, so they missed out on the Terraforming Command Center. The new Halo Agrisphere fills that gap: it farms the ringworld's inner surface as one continuous belt under permanent artificial daylight. It gives +12 food, and the ringworld's 6x food multiplier applies on top. It is ringworld only and unlocks with the Ringworlds technology.

Losing a loyal world no longer wipes its loyalty. A captured planet remembers how loyal it was to you, and that memory only fades as the occupier spends Authority on it: every point of Authority they put in comes off your remembered loyalty. Retake it quickly and it is still almost fully yours. Leave it in enemy hands for months and you start over.

Chat now sits in the header from the start, labelled Chat, and on desktop the settings moved to a cog on the right.

The Orbital Refit Dock has its own artwork now, and the empire avatars on the audience screen keep moving instead of freezing.

The star list sorts by energy again, and spacing across the interface is now more consistent.