Plan for 0.7 features

As promised, the feature list planned for next milestone, after two features are already done :). This milestone will more deliberately follow a way of working which emerged in the previous one: one under the hood change, one feature implementation and then preview release. On top of that I'll try to add more meat to the game and work toward establishing similar rhythm of implementing systems and adding game content.

Features planned for 0.7:

• Save game preview, a small thumbnail image of a game state in a save game list. This one is already implemented and you can see it in action in previous release.
• Organization traits. Previously a player could pick an organization he is going play as but it was not reflected in gameplay, every organization was virtually the same. With this feature each organization will have a preferred research field and it will advance faster within that field. It's not as groundbreaking as MoO II racial traits but I hope to design research in a such a way that each field would promote different play style. Also already implemented but will be included in next release.
• Stareater brain is going to be a special star system, kind of like Orion system in MoO series but with more prominent importance. Controlling this system will grant owner an ability to control whole stareater and work toward victory condition: leaving stareater's pocket space.
• Colony maintenance is a comeback for a feature before last rewrite but with more time in the oven. Each hostile planet trait will incure certain maintenance fee per population which is going to be payed by whole nation, not just that particular colony. It's similar how Sword of the Stars handled hostile planets and discouraged too fast expansion. Additionally global maintenance system is a groundwork for future mechanics (like espionage).
• Population migration is another feature comeback but this one is as simple as it sounds. As colony gets more crowded people will try to migrate to more roomy places. I may complicate it with planet habitability being a factor in migration desirability but for now I'll limit migration range to planets in a star system. In some future version I might add interstellar migration.
• Area of effect weapons are going to be weapons which damage all units in a tile. Top unit of a target stack will receive full damage while other units in the area are will get reduced "splash" damage. Another feature I'll try to push with this feature are torpedoes, missiles which travel on the map like ships do in order to reach target and can be shoot down.

Since I've already finished two the listed six features I may add more along the way but on the other hand there is plenty of non-feature improvements waiting to be done too. I seriously need to change GUI engine and that's a huge work. Fortunately it can be broken down to small manageable pieces but I still have to be careful with architecture. Then there are graphics. I'm working on procedural planet generator for minting high resolution cartoony planet images and it's progress is so-so. I have decent asteroid algorithm and rudimentary rock planet recipe which should work for Earth-like, Mars-like and Mercury-like planets. I'm still looking for good random stripe generator for gas giants and Venus-like could covered planets. For starships I've finally developed a tool which suites my style of drawing so there is an opportunity for updating existing ship graphics and include source code of images in version control instead of binary data. That's plenty of work to do, will see how much time and energy I'll have, my real life situation is about to get permanently changed.