Stellar Throne Changelog Week of August 8-15, 2025

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.

New Features

• Orbital Bombardment System — Comprehensive orbital bombardment mechanics with UI controls allowing fleets to weaken planetary defenses before invasion
• Ground Invasion — Ground invasion capability integrated with bombardment UI for seamless planet conquest workflow
• Ground Combat UI Redesign — Enhanced battlefield visualization with army strength bars displayed above unit columns

Combat Improvements

• Incremental damage application synchronized with weapon effects
• Clear visual indicators for destroyed ships
• Ship Detail Panel now closes automatically when combat begins
• Smoother battle completion and input handling for consecutive battles
• Auto-Resolve fixed to jump directly to final combat state

Bug Fixes

Multiple combat UI issues resolved including scroll isolation, input handling, and grid cell highlighting. Fixed ship targeting regeneration bug, timing issues with destruction animations, ships with zero energy capacity, double damage issues, and input handling problems between combat and starmap views.

UI/UX Improvements

Enhanced scroll wheel isolation, improved memory management, better defender priority handling, and cleaner modular architecture for combat UI components.

Technical Updates

Refactored project documentation, resolved SpatialGrid naming conflicts, reduced test suite orphan count, and removed debug statements.

Performance & Stability

Improved combat animation performance, enhanced memory management, and better error handling for bombardment operations.