NOVA v0.22.0

What's New

Buy a star outright

• Diplomacy contracts can now trade territory, not just money: offer a commander credits for one of their stars, and if they accept, the star — factories, upgrades, and all — changes hands on the spot.
• The handover is all-or-nothing and instant. The seller picks where their garrison retreats to (any star they can reach), so nobody's ships are left stranded.
• Sometimes a purchase is cheaper than a siege — and the seller keeps their fleet.

Find your way back

• A new Back button in the panel remembers where you came from — drill from a star into a fleet into a message thread and walk back out the way you came in.
• Every view also remembers where you'd scrolled, so returning to a long list puts you right where you left it.
• Panels now name what you're looking at — Star, Fleet, Spy probe, Nova bomb — instead of generic titles.

A better first map

• New games now default to the Sym+scatter layout — identical, fair starting regions with a scattered, contested middle — and the layout choices are ordered by how much we recommend them.

Map feel

• Focusing a star (tapping it in a list, or following a link in the news) now zooms the map in to a legible scale instead of just centering it far away.
• Fleets in motion repaint only as fast as they visibly move, so the map is easier on your battery.

Fair endings

• A drawn game now reads TIE on every result screen — no more being told DEFEAT when you finished level on stars.