SpaceBourne 2 – Version 3.0.0 – Diplomacy Expansion
It's been a long time since our last update, and we want to thank you for waiting. In August we promised two things: a major bug-fix update, and a major content update right after it. While working on them, the two grew into each other — many of the fixes touch the very systems the new content rebuilt — so they arrive together in one release.
This update brings the Diplomacy Expansion from our roadmap — alliances, joint wars and trade agreements — and much more than we originally planned: a new war system with real armies and fronts, Houses that live and rebel, a Constitution whose every policy matters, an Academy for your soldiers, and dozens of fixes from your reports.
NEW: DIPLOMACY
Diplomacy has been rebuilt from the ground up
- Briefing, Relations, Treaties, Wars, Record and Houses now each have their own page.
- New Briefing page: your diplomatic position at a glance — your closest and coldest houses, your treaties and your diplomatic capacity.
Relations are now alive
- Each house's attitude drifts toward a target shaped by shared enemies, alliances, trade, bloodlines, old grudges and your own conduct — missions, trade, clearing pirates and defending stations raise it; crimes and firing on civilians lower it.
- The new Relations page shows exactly why.
- Houses now hold grudges, and diplomatic incidents happen between them.
Treaties
- New Treaties screen: build agreements clause by clause — alliances, defensive pacts, trade deals, joint wars, credits, systems and stations — and see how the other house will react before you propose.
- Every system and station you can offer shows what it is worth and what it earns per day.
- Territory now changes hands only at the peace table.
- Credits offered in peacetime are gifts that improve relations.
- New: Perfidy — declaring war on a friendly house costs you standing with everyone.
- New: Overreach — every system you take makes other houses wary.
- After a war, a truce prevents an instant alliance with the house you just fought.
Alliances and joint wars
- Form alliances and defensive pacts.
- When a pact partner is attacked, its allies march — and you will always be asked whether to join.
- Call your allies to arms, with the odds shown up front.
- Wars can now have several houses on each side, and a house that is not leading a war can make a separate peace and leave it.
Trade
- Trade agreements now bring daily income to both sides and cut your tariffs by 25% in their systems.
- Trade route volume now depends on the economies it connects.
- Convoys can be raided: a destroyed convoy damages the route, sours relations and makes the news.
Other
- New Record page: a timeline of the galaxy's diplomacy, including what every treaty actually said — saved with your game.
- Hover over any faction flag to see who it belongs to.
NEW: WARFARE
Real armies and real battles
- Wars are now fought by real armies.
- Every house fields named armies led by commanders; they march to fronts, raid, besiege, rout and rebuild — and their losses stick.
- Battles now come in kinds — raids, sieges, fleet actions and razing — each with its own outcome.
- Raids bring loot; war exhaustion can force a war to end.
- Wars now have goals — conquest, tribute, breaking an alliance or retribution — and a house that loses its last system is gone from the galaxy.
- The galaxy no longer waits: AI houses start their own wars early in a new game, and wars between AI houses now play out with their real fleets.
Wars page and history
- New Wars page: every war in the galaxy, front by front, with score, momentum and what peace would look like today.
- War History shows every raid and siege, and the ground that has changed hands.
- New Wars card on the Home screen.
- Besieged stations are marked on the system map, and your own raids are recorded on the Wars page.
Command your armies
- Set each army to defend, attack or act on its own, order transfers between fronts, and mark enemy fronts to raid, besiege or destroy.
- War fronts now exist in space: fly to a front, join the battle in person, and watch the battle HUD show who is winning.
- Distant battles have been rebuilt: clear threat and under-attack alerts, reinforcements you can send or recall, and a proper result screen.
- New tutorial for reinforcing your systems.
- The Galaxy War is now one galaxy-wide war: every house stands with one of two sides, and there is no way out but victory.
War summary and news
- New war summary: when a war ends, a summary lists the places that were damaged and every system and station that changed hands, in battle or at the peace table.
- Castles now change hands together with the system they stand in.
- All war news now comes to one tidy list on your HUD.
- Declarations of war, peace offers, war endings and battle results appear as a banner, then settle into the list beside your ongoing battles.
- Click a card for the details; battle cards can be minimised.
Peace
- Houses can now ask you for peace — the offer comes with its terms.
- Sue for peace opens the Treaties screen with the terms already filled in.
- When a house proposes the terms itself, the screen simply shows them as its proposal — Accept or Refuse is yours.
- Peace terms now follow a war ledger: what each side has gained and lost is weighed against the size of its own realm, so a house that took one station can no longer ask for a string of systems.
- The Wars page shows the war's net balance beside the momentum bar, and the Treaties screen shows how far a demand is from what the war has earned.
- Sue for peace now tells you why when it cannot be sent — no terms to offer, no war here, or the enemy is already gone.
Early game and enemy aggression
- In the early game you start with raids: you can take stations from houses right away, and full wars open once you hold your first system.
- An attack without a war is remembered — the house you hit will think less of you, and the news reports the raid.
- Defensive-pact calls and joint wars wait for your first system too.
- Enemy houses now fight to win against you: they can raid your stations for loot and besiege your systems to take them.
- Your capital cannot be taken.
Cost of war
- Declaring war now costs faction power, and the declaration panel shows the reputation cost before you commit.
- Your armies are paid from the faction treasury.
- A new war budget slider on the Economy page trades credits for faster recovery and morale — set it too low and your armies will wither.
NEW: GOVERNING YOUR FACTION
Overview and reports
- New Faction Overview page: the state of your faction at a glance.
- Your character's real face now appears at the top of your faction hierarchy.
- Your citizens now include your whole army — generals, soldiers, squads, recruits and members — not just your recruits.
- New Faction Reports page replaces the old faction log.
Government capacity
- Ruling more systems than you can govern lowers their income — hand systems to your Houses, or grow your faction to govern more.
- Outposts are now your main source of faction power and extend your government capacity, at an upkeep cost.
The Constitution
- The Constitution now plays a much bigger role: its policies shape income, stability, morale, relations, recruits and more, and the page previews tomorrow's changes before you sign.
- New policies take effect at the start of the next day.
- Your stance toward pirates is now more important: a lax stance invites pirate raids on your systems.
- Captives are now processed over several days, and each path treats them its own way: Justice sets them free (improving relations with their house), Order ransoms them for credits, and Chaos puts them to work for goods.
- Contracts completed by your soldiers pay a share into the faction treasury.
- The Constitution's mission cut can be set up to 50%.
- New path choice screen: see exactly what Order, Justice and Chaos do before you choose — when founding your faction and when you reform.
- Each path's bonuses now play a bigger part in how your faction grows.
Houses
- Houses now produce income every day and pay you tax — but tax them too hard, let them grow too strong, or drag them through a losing war, and their loyalty will fall.
- Disloyal Houses can turn defiant: they stop paying and only defend themselves.
- Internal Affairs shows why, and when they are likely to come back.
- Your Houses now join every war you fight; their loyalty decides how much they commit.
- House actions have been reworked: sending soldiers now reinforces their armies, and granting or taking back systems affects their loyalty.
- New Internal Affairs page for managing your Houses: loyalty, taxes, armies and finances in one place.
- Grant systems to your Houses straight from the Systems page.
- Founding a House has been reworked.
- New Houses page: browse every house in the galaxy — its fleet and lords, bases, castles and relations.
Economy
- The Economy page has been rebuilt as a clear two-column ledger, and its numbers now match the Systems and Internal Affairs pages.
- It also shows your soldiers' "Missions & freelance" income as a daily average.
- Hover over any resource in the resource bar for a breakdown of where it comes from.
- You can now donate personal credits to your faction treasury.
- Faction purchases have been reworked and can no longer overdraw the treasury.
NEW: ARMY, ACADEMY & MAIL
Academy and veterans
- New Academy: send members on pilot, infantry and rank courses, drill your serving troops for free every day, and watch veterans grow.
- Course times are shown in in-game days.
- Named soldiers can now fall in battle; medics improve their odds.
- Survivors of a battle gain experience as veterans.
Army and members
- Generals now fill their armies from your pool of members.
- New Auto Fill button on the Army page: it places your Ready To Assign members into your squads, putting the best pilots in space and the best soldiers on the ground.
- The large "+" box on the Army page now adds a member to your army when clicked.
- Rebuilt Members page.
- General orders are now more important: Research boosts research, Propaganda raises stability and support, Defend refills garrisons, and Train Soldiers speeds up drilling.
- A general's past missions are now listed.
- Only the first 8 unassigned members draw a salary; the rest wait as unpaid reserves.
- A tooltip on Ready To Assign explains how unassigned members improve.
Mail and freelance contracts
- Rebuilt Mail page with an Archive tab.
- Members sent on freelance jobs now report back by mail.
- New Freelance contracts: they bring no new members but pay more XP and power, and read like real job postings (LFM / LFP).
- Freelance contracts now level up the member you send, with the gain shown before you accept.
- Idle members are no longer sent on contracts automatically.
- Freelance contracts in your mail now match your members: roughly one job for every two free members, at a level they can handle.
- Idle members now keep learning on their own, slowly.
- A member sent on a contract learns about four times as fast in the same time.
Tutorials
- New Mail tutorial: your first freelance contract is guided step by step.
- The faction tutorials have been rebuilt.
- Founding your faction and preparing your first battle are now guided step by step: the screen dims and highlights exactly what to click, and explains what generals and squads are.
- Left click moves on; hold Space to skip.
QUALITY OF LIFE
- Added a search box to the Save/Load screen.
- Your inventory save now keeps three rolling backups. If the file is damaged, the game restores the most recent good copy and repairs it.
- Galaxy saves now keep backups too, and a save damaged by a crash during writing is restored at startup.
- Added a tooltip explaining what "I Got Stuck" does.
- Faction and diplomacy screens have a unified, cleaner look, and refresh instantly after you click.
- Saves from earlier versions are converted automatically when you load them, with a short note explaining what was carried over.
CHANGES & BALANCE
Existing saves will notice these.
- Faction power now scales with unit level.
- House strengths in existing saves will change.
- Operations now cost power based on the target station instead of a flat value.
- Faction system upkeep now depends on each system instead of a flat amount.
- The station construction requirement is now enforced; castles need enough dominance and take 3 in-game days to build.
- Construction is now twice as fast.
- Peace acceptance and the timing of peace offers have been rebalanced, and peace terms now scale with the size of each realm (see the war ledger above).
- Wars in progress in existing saves are assessed from their history when you load.
- Wars between AI houses that end on momentum alone no longer move territory unless ground was actually taken.
- The "asking for terms" notice on your HUD now shows only who is asking.
- New recruits now start at a level based on your faction instead of always at level 1.
- Very large Stability, Support and Fame values in existing saves are capped.
- The on-foot camera no longer bobs with the character's head while standing still.
LANGUAGES & FONTS
New languages
- Japanese, Korean and Ukrainian are now available.
Revised translations
- Turkish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese have been reworked from the ground up, with consistent terminology across every screen.
- They now also cover the new Diplomacy, War, House and Constitution screens and the Talent Tree.
Fonts
- Fonts have been extended so every language uses the game's own typeface.
- Russian and Ukrainian now appear in the main UI font.
- Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters now also show on the cockpit and HUD screens.
FIXES
Stability
- Fixed crashes in enemy HUD markers after a ship was destroyed, and during warp or death.
- Fixed a possible crash when closing a window while a dropdown list was open.
- Fixed a possible crash and out-of-range values when faction relations were updated.
- Fixed broken minimap icons and a possible minimap crash.
- Fixed the game freezing when inspecting a capital station still under construction.
- Fixed a black screen when entering interiors such as the Miner Guild.
- You can now skip the end credits (Esc, or Start/B on a controller), and the game returns to the main menu when they finish.
Getting stuck
- "I Got Stuck" now gets you out of small enclosed spots, moving you to the nearest open ground.
- Falling out of the world on foot now returns you to the last solid ground you stood on.
Quests
- Fixed the sniper rifle from Molyax in "The Constructer" arriving without ammunition, and its ammo exceeding the maximum.
- Fixed objectives in "The Molyax" being wrongly labelled as alternative, and two typos in its texts.
- Fixed the Faction tutorial getting stuck if you recruited or assigned members early, and its lines overlapping each other.
- Fixed Drane's portrait appearing on the player's lines in the Nelis rescue scene.
- Fixed a misaligned dialogue option in the Molyax and Jack meeting.
- Fixed the wrong tutorial video at the capture step of "Rise of the WRA".
- Fixed "Parley and Knee" stalling: the duel now starts reliably and you can take off afterwards.
- Fixed Swarm Carriers being refused for upgrades at the hangar, which blocked the ship-upgrade quest.
- Fixed the hoverbike not being summonable during "Get onto the Hoverbike".
- Fixed faction meetings applying the wrong choice: picking Justice or Order now plays the matching reaction and sets the policy you chose.
Combat
- Equipping a hand weapon now loads its magazine from your reserve ammo, so the counter no longer reads zero until you reload.
- Fixed talent tiers being learnable out of order.
- Fixed the Soldier's deployable turret destroying itself.
- Fixed the Pod Catcher refusing to fire after reloading, and slot 3 reading the wrong cooldown.
- Fixed explosive torpedoes detonating right after launch.
- Fixed drones and perks not working, and being unable to leave the ship, during system captures.
Factions & economy
- Fixed wars between houses only ending if you happened to open the diplomacy screen.
- Fixed empty "ghost" peace offers.
- Fixed guild ranks climbing past their maximum; broken ranks in existing saves are repaired automatically.
- Fixed station construction that could never finish (and blocked all other building) when a required resource had no income.
- Fixed a second construction sometimes never finishing when two were running at once.
- Fixed prisoners all showing the same race, the "Set Free" prisoner policy button, and the Xanthean listing a prisoner capacity it cannot use.
- Fixed the operation target summary showing placeholder numbers instead of the station's real population, income and wealth, and its Tactic line.
- Fixed the operation VS plate showing the wrong faction's flag when switching targets.
- Fixed a member's Current Task not showing the order you gave them.
- Fixed a "None Is Under Attack" notification.
Interface
- Fixed saves named "99" (or containing "99") disappearing from the save list, and one of two saves made at the same moment going missing.
- Fixed the news banner staying on screen after a news item, new news sometimes not showing, and misaligned text in the news ticker.
- Fixed recruit levels being partly hidden behind portraits under Ready To Assign.
- Fixed the ship icon on the flight HUD not opening the Ship page.
- Fixed overlapping text in the top bar ("Security") after warping through a stargate, and long system names spilling over.
- Fixed the raid loot counter being drawn over menus.
- Fixed the Miners Contracts map being blank in Galaxy Web; it now shows the contract's system and opens the Galaxy Map there.
- Fixed buildings on the tactical battle map being drawn twice in the wrong colours.
- Fixed the item comparison window showing stats in the wrong order or missing rows.
- Fixed the Systems table showing station status under Stargates and using outdated security colours.
- Fixed a stray divider line in Tracking Ships.
- Fixed long station names overflowing their box.
- Fixed contract goal text spilling out of the Contracts card on the Home screen.
- Fixed custom key bindings being lost after closing the menu, dying or loading a save.
- Added a dead zone to on-foot camera look, so a stick that doesn't return exactly to centre no longer drifts the camera.
- Fixed around 80 typos in contracts, mail, dialogue and menus
Audio & graphics
- Fixed saved volume settings not being applied when the game starts.
- Fixed the prisoner "Deliver" sound ignoring the volume settings.
- Fixed glass, window interiors and ocean water showing as a plain grey material in some places.
- Fixed the persistent blur on 2K and 4K displays: the game was lowering render resolution and post-processing quality on its own and never restoring them.
- Also fixed the motion blur setting having no effect at those resolutions.
Thank you for your patience and for every report you sent us — many of the fixes above come directly from them.
See you in space.
