Yes, there will be a buy option - eventually - but it won't be the instant buy option that BOTF had. Instead, you will just increase the build speed by paying your workers to do overtime. We've had several
years worth of discussions on this particular feature, and the build rate increase instead of instant-buy is the system that people eventually agreed on. However, part of the construction problem is because of the low populations in the game; BOTF allowed for much higher populations in certain instances. I've suggested a couple of ways to solve this to Mike, but they would invlolve major code changes as the code that decides on population sizes is surprisingly complex. It's therefore unlikely that Mike will makes the chanes - or if he does, it won't be coming for a long while.
I've fixed the Silicobiology typo. Thanks for that.
The ships that are currently implemented in the game are going to be overhauled soon - in fact i'm doing the overhaul myself. 891 million raw materials is definitely a typo in the editor.
The freeze bug is something that has plagued the game for a long, long, time. We still have no idea as to the cause, but we're looking for it. Thankfully it's rare, but that also makes it harder to find. All I can say is make sure you save your games on a regular basis. Also, if you manage to save the game on the turn
before a freeze, it would be very helpful for us if you could attach a copy of that save game to a post, as it may help us to track the cause of the bug.
This is another ship-related bug. I'll fix this when I perform the overhaul on the ships.
The lack of the Prometheus is probably related to either the tech requirements or the type of shipyard it needs. Again, i'll fix this when I perform the overhaul.
The Federation construction ship will get one upgrade, but the construction ships of the other empires currently do not receive any upgrades. This may change in future though, depending on how well the game is balanced (IE. does the Starbase 2 take a million turns to build)
Thanks for the feedback, and don't worry about repeating things; it's better to repeat than to miss something out. The more eyes that are on the game, the more likely it is the bugs will be noticed, so if you notice anything else keep posting.
_________________"Anyone without a sense of humour is truly at the mercy of the rest of us."