Today's work focused on cleaning up gameplay feedback, fixing persistent combat edge cases, and polishing core user experience elements across research, construction, and fleet management. These improvements bring Stellar Throne closer to a cohesive playable loop.

🧭 UI & UX Improvements

• ✅ Persistent Notifications now route correctly to their respective panels (e.g., idle colonies → construction screen).

• ✅ Top-bar navigation buttons added for: Research, Diplomacy (placeholder), Construction, and Fleet Management.

• ✅ Research Notification on Load now reflects actual tech status.

• ✅ Shipyard Bug Fix: Clicking the bottom ship now properly selects it.

• ✅ Combat Visualization now only shows when the player is involved — no more interruptions for AI-on-AI skirmishes.

• ✅ Colony Panel Fixes:

  • Newly constructed buildings now appear as expected

  • Available buildings list now displays more options

⚔️ Combat Logic Edge Cases

• ✅ Ships In Transit Are Now Immune to Combat: This prevents weird logic loops and unresolvable battle triggers.

• ⚠️ AI vs AI Combat Bug: Battles between non-player factions were pausing the game indefinitely. This has been identified and will be addressed.

🔍 CLAUDE.md Audit (In Progress)

A first pass of the codebase audit has begun. Naming conventions are largely consistent with camelCase, but some file structure and function naming still need cleanup. The audit continues tomorrow.

💡 What I Learned

When a system feels tangled or risky to change, use Git branches more proactively. Branching lets me explore fixes or improvements without endangering working code. It’s a simple tool I need to use more often.

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.