For years we have seen the development of planetary/biome creation toolsets. The assumption being that once you have enough biomes and assets added to this that you'll be able to move onto making multiple star systems. What are the current targets and goals for these tools and the expanding gameplay area in the short, medium and long term?asked by BoredGamerUK

As you know our asset libraries contain everything from geology, vegetation, surface materials etc. Let's say we get to a point where these libraries are filled with a great number of different archetypes of rock formations, cliffs, trees, flowers and more. The bigger and more diverse of a selection of assets that we already have, the less likely it is that we need to invest time into creating new content for new planets.

Example A: For a generic dusty rocky moon we have most assets we need - so we can start immediately putting together the moon and more similar variations if we want to.

Example B: Let's say we are asked to create a tropical island planet - in that case we need to build all the necessary content (palm trees, tropical shrubbery etc.) that is required, since those are not yet part of our asset libraries at this point.

The long term objective is to build up strong asset packs that can be reused for the majority of planets so that we can focus on adding more systems quicker. Due to our tools, we'd still have the capabilities to make planets feel drastically different despite some assets being reused

Significant tech & tools work was done every year so far and the most recent update lets us create a moon/planet even faster (again) while being more flexible than before, letting us update planets way easier which lets us do tweaks more often and achieve better quality. We are quite happy with the improvements and the team is looking forward to what can be done on the current basis of it in the future.