This week’s updates brought big strides in polish and clarity for Stellar Throne. Ground combat now displays strength bars above their respective forces, making planetary invasions easier to read. Ownership now correctly updates after successful invasions, and the final phase of an invasion plays out as intended.

On the combat side, the battlefield grid now renders fully, fleets start in centered positions, and you can left-click + drag to move the map. Support ships have distinct plus-shaped icons, colony ships use circles, and troop ships have been fully renamed for clarity. Fleets with no ships are automatically cleaned up after combat, reducing clutter.

Outside battle, draggable UI panels (shipyard, diplomacy, bombardment) were unified under a new DraggablePanel base class, making the interface smoother. Loading screens are more responsive, and territory borders now update dynamically after colonization. The border system itself has been revamped with shaders, opening the door for smoother, more striking visuals.

This update brings Stellar Throne one step closer to feeling like a finished 4X experience.

🌟 What’s New

This week brings major planetary warfare upgrades with the new Orbital Bombardment and Ground Invasion systems, a redesigned Ground Combat UI, smoother combat flow, and dozens of bug fixes and performance improvements. If you’ve been waiting to crush enemy worlds in style, now’s the time.

🆕 New Features

• Orbital Bombardment System — Added comprehensive orbital bombardment mechanics with UI controls, allowing fleets to weaken planetary defenses before invasion.

• Ground Invasion — Implemented ground invasion capability integrated with bombardment UI for a seamless planet conquest workflow.

• Ground Combat UI Redesign — Enhanced battlefield visualization with army strength bars displayed above unit columns for better awareness.

⚔️ Combat Improvements

• Damage Visualization — Incremental damage application synchronized with weapon effects for more engaging combat feedback.

• Destroyed Ship Feedback — Clear visual indicators when ships are destroyed in combat.

• Ship Detail Panel — Panel now closes automatically when combat begins.

• Combat Flow — Smoother battle completion and input handling for consecutive battles.

• Auto-Resolve — Fixed to jump directly to the final combat state.

🐞 Bug Fixes

• Fixed multiple combat UI issues including scroll isolation, input handling, and grid cell highlighting.

• Resolved ship targeting bug where destroyed ships could regenerate.

• Fixed timing issues so destruction animations play at proper turn end.

• Corrected ships having zero energy capacity in combat.

• Fixed double damage and combat synchronization issues.

• Resolved input handling problems when switching between combat and starmap views.

• Fixed ground combat final screen to properly display complete phase results.

🎨 UI/UX Improvements

• Enhanced scroll wheel isolation between UI panels and galaxy view.

• Improved memory management in combat UI systems.

• Better defender priority handling for grid cell movement conflicts.

• Cleaner, modular architecture for combat UI components.

🛠 Technical Updates

• Refactored project documentation into a modular structure for better maintainability.

• Resolved SpatialGrid naming conflicts in CombatManager.

• Reduced test suite orphan count and fixed various test failures.

• Removed debug print statements and cleaned up temporary test files.

🚀 Performance & Stability

• Improved combat animation system performance.

• Enhanced memory management across UI systems.

• Better error handling for bombardment operations involving Building resources.