Added

• Settled worlds now light up at night: city lights glow on their dark side, brightest on Earth.
• A new **Gameplay** options page gathers language and tutorial settings in one place.

Changed

• **A sleek new look**: the whole interface has been rebuilt in frosted glass, from the top bar and build bar to panels, menus, tables, tooltips and the system and galaxy maps, with soft light glows shining through the glass.
• The empire panel got a full redesign: flush sidebar navigation, stat cards with trend lines, and cleaner, antialiased charts.
• The notification tray is now a slide-down drawer with an unread badge; important events open it on their own, and the history is filterable and searchable.
• Planets render with much finer pixel detail, richer terrain shades and softer coasts and clouds, and the galaxy backdrop is crisper.
• Shuttles, freighters, colonists and orbits now glide smoothly at 1x speed instead of stepping.
• Immigration policy moved into the empire **Population** page; the separate planet Colony page is gone.
• The main menu puts the game's name and tagline front and center over the backdrop.

Fixed

• A batch of backlog bugs fixed.

Performance

• A major performance pass: framerates are up sharply everywhere, roughly half again as fast in large bases, both outside and inside, and at fast-forward speeds.