Today was all about depth and connection — linking research to real gameplay effects, improving feedback systems, and laying down infrastructure for systems that depend on each other.

🔬 What Got Done

• ✅ Research System Enhancements: Added more technologies, unlock tiers, special projects, and gating for buildings and ship components. Research is now central to player progression.

• ✅ Energy System: Ships now have power capacity, and weapons consume energy per use. This creates tactical limitations and strategic outfitting tradeoffs.

• ✅ Building UI Fixes: Squashed bugs related to construction interface logic.

• ✅ HUD Improvements: Added a clean and functional Next Turn button.

• ✅ Smart Notifications: Implemented a new system to surface pending actions — like unassigned research, idle shipyards, and colonies needing orders.

🧠 What I Noticed

Generating believable Terran planet sprites remains tough. GPT tools frequently lean on Earth-like continents and familiar geography, even when prompted otherwise. I had to toss a lot of attempts. The mitigation strategy continues to be selective generation, manual filtering, and stitching.

⚠️ Still Unfinished

• Systems are interdependent and tangled now. Many features can’t be finished in isolation — research depends on diplomacy, AI logic needs construction, and unlocking tech touches everything.