The Belt Remembers
Cultures of the Belt v0.4.0 is our biggest update yet. Three headline features redefine what it means to run a mining colony in the asteroid belt: ARIA now learns your leadership style, ancient civilizations hide in the rocks you mine, and combat is no longer theoretical.
ARIA Delegation Spectrum
ARIA has always been your advisor. Now she's your mirror. The new Delegation Spectrum tracks seven dimensions of how you lead — autonomy, trust, communication style, and more. Over time, ARIA's personality and advice shift to match your patterns. A hands-off commander gets different counsel than a micromanager. The new dialogue stage machine means conversations with ARIA follow structured arcs, with LLM-powered intent classification shaping every response.
Seven Civilizations
The rocks you mine are not empty. Scattered across the belt are archaeological fragments from seven ancient civilizations. Find them while mining. Chain fragments together to reconstruct lost knowledge. Each civilization left different traces, and the discovery system persists across saves via a full migration layer. The belt has a history now — and you're digging through it.
Combat arrives
The belt is no longer safe. A four-phase combat overhaul introduces kinetic threats, claim jumping, signal jamming, and a threat response UI. Hostile factions don't just trade and posture anymore — they contest territory with force. Your robots can now be veterans of conflict, gaining experience across five tiers through the new Robot Intelligence Gradient.
Also in this release
Species-origin lore overlays connect each faction to the broader Precursors universe. The Nommo canonicalization ties CotB's alien encounters to cross-game lore. Cultural sovereignty, deep field instinct, and silence protocol add three new isolation trait mechanics. Automation Blueprints let you save and restore configs. The Commander's Log gives you a persistent journal. Belt Echoes shows what other players have found. Late-night ambient mode plays calmer music after 10pm.
On the stability side: notification spam is fully eliminated, a rogue service worker that was caching stale assets across all games has been fixed, building costs are properly calibrated, and ARIA works out of the box for new players without an API key.