Those patch notes read so damn good.
When you have unspent social skill points in a category, the text at the top of that category on the social progress screen now shows up highlighted so it's much easier to tell which tree to look in. Later other changes will be made to the nodes themselves in the relevant tree to help players see their options more clearly, but right now that screen is still in kind of a "rough graphics" stage to say the least (actual icons themselves aside).
This bugged me as well, always closing the skill tree and then realizing that I still have points to apply.
I can't remember who suggested it, but that's been bugging me since before the beta even started, too. I just never had time to clean it up until now!
A number of the AI buildings now have lore-based explanations for their functions, providing some insight into their races. It's only something like 15 buildings out of 300+ alien buildings, but it's a start!
Thats the stuff I like. Just reading a little lore int he game to entertain yourself. I really missed this on the AIs side. It also makes stats reading easier because you look at the text and think "Oh, so that's its purpose."
I wrote so much of this sort of thing already when I was describing the tiles to Marcin, the artist who drew the underground buildings. I was a lot more dry with the surface buildings for Cath and Blue and Gen and Charity, but I still have a lot of things to note about them. I really have a long way to go with that, and I view it as more of a later-beta thing to do overall, but I feel like it's so important to the feel of the game. And having that bit of humor throughout, versus being super-serious boring lists of backstory is something that I really value.
There are now some auto-terraforming advantages for a few races when in the hands of the AI, making them more thematically fitting in their areas as well as providing some interesting challenges specific to them:
The following all applies only to land that is not already terraformed, land that is not mountains, natural wonders, water, ice, or rocky.
Thoraxians: anything adjacent to or under their buildings is auto-terraformed.
Burlusts: anything adjacent to or under their buildings that is not desert is automatically turned to desert.
Acutians: anything adjacent to or under their buildings that is not desert is auto-terraformed.
Andors: anything adjacent to or under their buildings that is not some sort of forest appropriate to their latitude automatically becomes forest appropriate for their latitude.
Boarines: anything adjacent to or under their buildings that is not desert is auto-terraformed.
Fenyn: anything adjacent to or under their buildings that is not jungle becomes jungle.
That's a really interesting change and makes me wonder about two things:
First, will the Ai get unstoppable terraforming and two, will we get also some kind of semi-automated terraforming for ourselves?
One thing that is coming is the ability to bomb the AI's terraforming, which someone (ptarth?) requested and I thought was a great idea. Cath has been working on the art for the bombed-out racial terrains, and then on the other side of that it's a matter of us having time to code that in once she's done.
In terms of unstoppable terraforming... I don't know about that. For some of the races, them being ablsolutely nasty with their terraforming and being semi-unstoppable is definitely a thing. But if you keep them physically restrained to a small surface (as opposed to underground) area, you implicitly limit their auto-terraforming. There might also be some political deals in the future.
I thought about auto-terraforming for the player, but at least as it stands right now the players just build so much larger than the AIs in terms of surface area of their cities that it would quickly overwhelm all the other races, so I'm not too sure about that.
Awesome to be part of beta 
Aaand my first game ever is going "great" because skylaxians are being jerks and shooting down all my buildings I'm trying to build with their fancy planes :'D I've wasted so much power and only thing I built was farm... I guess I have to build everything on south side
What do natural wonders do btw? I built my lander on top of Yvenge or whatever it was called ^^;
Awesome to have you! And yep, the AI is a little overly aggressive right now... that's one thing that needs to be worked on with the military in general. The way the military fighting works is great in my opinion, but it's the lead-up to fighting that is all kinds of borked. Aka, you need a reason -- and the AIs do -- NOT to bust out the guns and start shooting immediately. I have what I think are some excellent plans on this front, but it's going to take the next couple of weeks to see those to fruition.
I always keep coming back to the idea of Risk, where you get these awesome buildups of troops but neither side attacks because there is then a weakness where you spread yourself more thin after doing so. But then some critical line gets crossed, and all hades breaks loose.
I feel like that general idea is really important to seeing the importance of combined-arms warfare in this game, and it's the sort of remote-base-building I envisioned from the start of the design. I just hadn't anticipated the current first-mover advantage for whatever reason, but there are definitely ways around that.
As far as building on top of Ylvinhenge with your lander, as ptarth says that's definitely one for mantis if you don't mind! Also, I am a little surprised that nobody here has yet to get the references (or at least comment on them) with half the natural wonders. Not all of them are a reference to anything, but that one is almost a double-reference (THIS is the finest henge I've ever seen), and there are a variety of others like Mount Takei and Nesmith Spores that are probably more obvious to this particular audience.
Anyway, I've noticed little bit annoying thing about anti airguns: The enemy planes will avoid them, but they can still from out of reach shoot building right next to anti air guns...
Wait, what? Are we talking bombers or helicopters? They're hitting targets right next to your AA? That sounds like a bug if it's helicopters, and I don't recall any of the AI buildings providing them with bombers.
Note: Skylaxians are so close to me that they are able to shoot down building north east from my landing space. As in, they shoot down second ever building I built that was next to surrounding landing area you can't build on, are they supposed to be able to be that close to me?
To some extent that's an unlucky start that they are that close to you, but yes they are definitely supposed to sometimes start that close, particularly depending on the type of map. That said, they shouldn't be just ripping you to shreds immediately... that's a "welcome to being an orangeshirt" thing, unfortunately. Sorry about that.
What size of map? I've noticed in .810 that the AI started pretty close as well.
AA has a chance of failing to intercept. Having extra helps. Shooting the Skylaxians first is my preference.
Oh right, I forgot about the percent chance to fail to intercept. I should really take that out on the player side, because it feels like a bug there. I like it on the AI side, but this is one place where I feel like the player deserves a break.
