The Colonization release will be released on October 15th, 2025
General Notes
If your APEX console is stuck in a loading state after the update, please make sure to refresh it once after the update to ensure you got the latest version.
Nine new sectors have been discovered and added to the map. Beware though: these sectors do not have regular FTL connections to the previously known sectors. In order to reach them new methods of travel are required
Colony Ships
Colony ship blueprints have been made available for all companies.
These are massive ships using a new type of FTL engine, Vortex Engines, that allow them to jump from system to system without using the existing FTL connections. They are capable to reach the systems in the new sectors.
The flight controls have been adjusted and will show the reachable systems for a given colony ship:
The Vortex Fuel that allows colony ships to operate is based on Krypton and Einsteinium. New Krypton deposits have been discovered in the old and new sectors.
The construction materials for the upcoming gateway infrastructure are now available as well. Some of these materials require a new metal, Rhenium. Its ore can be found in the new sectors.
I am sorry to be negative, but I REALLY don’t like this expansion. The new sectors are pretty garbage - the ONLY reason to go there is to get the REO to build the gates - other than that there is nothing special about them, and thus no reason. Basically, each group will build one Colony Ship, bootstrap one player to get a base in the new sector and then just stripmine to get the RE. And frankly, until I know when the gates will be released my interest is zero. If the new sectors were really rich, like a good fertile planet, some great deposits of AML-needed inputs, better KR deposits then in the “old” galaxy, then I could see a land rush - lots of interest in colony ships, lots of bases and development of those sectors, and people moving bases into the new sectors. But I don’t expect much interest in it the way it looks.
The new sectors aren’t terrible (some of them even have fertile planets) but yeah, it’s hard to come up with a reason to do anything besides mine REO.
On a side note, when was info about which planets would have KR put out? It seems that people knew at least 2 weeks ago and set up bases on aw-006e and el-179g.
I would guess they might have been on the test server. I wish I had looked so I could have flagged this as an issue before it went live, but I just don’t have the time to play and look at that.
Do the planets in the new systems have higher concentration of resources for all/any materials? Like would a RIG provide a much higher amount of H2O per day? Would be a good way to offset the increased travel time/cost of new bases there
So Rhenium could be found only in 7 of the 9 new sectors ? And by 22 % chance the UI sector does not contain any. Is there any shipyard close to the other sectors ?
Guess I will need to wait for the ore to be available on CX one day
It is noted that the ship flight controls have been updated for the new colony ships. I think the blueprint test screen needs to be updated as well. If you type in a valid destination it will provide the correct flight data however you have to guess at it as there is no list of reachable systems. What is the range of these ships? Should I build it at a current shipyard and fly it to one of the new regions or would that be excessively costly in terms of fuel and time? Should I instead build a shipyard in a sector near one of the new regions?
After fiddling with it a bit, it looks like the tank will hold 10k vortex fuel and each flight segment (~10 parsecs) costs 5k fuel and takes about 4 days. So unless I’m reading it wrong it looks like trying to fly from the inner regions would take over a month and require a cargo hold filled with spare vortex fuel.
