An Update on the Roadmap

Hey Gang! Happy Thorium Thursday.

It's been a while since I've posted. Here's what I've been up to during 2026:

Finished the training system and demonstrated it by writing training for the Pilot station
Experimented with a new app bundle format. It still needs more work, but it should be more stable and performant than what I was using before
Long Range Communication system for sending messages to and from the players
Short Range Communications for real-time conversations with NPCs
Exocomps, repair robots which are assigned instructions to move through the ship and fix systems
Major dependency updates and improvements to the theming system

All of these have required some refactoring and adjustments to the foundation of Thorium Nova — real-time data, the Flight Director core controls, sound effects, the events system, etc. — which has made the whole system more capable and robust overall. At the same time, pieces like the ship map have performed incredibly well as-designed, which made implementing the Exocomps relatively easy.

Also, we've gotten some good contributions from the community, including:

Spontaneous system failure damage and system instability damage by Frank Neilson
Shield damage efficiency fixes by Eric Mansfield
Fixes to JSON serialization by Bryce Tucker
Autopilot improvements by Jonathan Bowen

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!

So, what's the plan for the future? Here's the current roadmap:

Short term, I'm pivoting to content to make it easy to get up and running with Thorium Nova. That means fleshing out the star map, writing damage reports, completing training for all the cards, adding more ship classes, and writing another mission that takes advantage of all of the available features. This will surely highlight some bugs that I'll promptly fix.

Once all that's done, I'll release another Alpha and begin doing playtests to see if what I've built is actually fun or if I need to go back to the drawing board. This should be another opportunity to find bugs and potential improvements.

Following that, I'll continue building out ship system features for small ships, like the Tractor Beam, Transporters, Docking, Engineering Panels, and Status card — Enough systems to fully flesh out a ship with up to 5 stations and 1 captain, which is typical of starship bridge simulators.

I'll also make sure there are appropriate core controls for the Flight Director for all ship systems, add proper factions support, and get the Viewscreen working correctly. Despite not knowing how I'll implement them, I'm insistent that asteroid fields and nebulas are included in the first release, since they'll play a big part in the campaign missions. Speaking of which...

As these features are developed, I'll start building out the missions for the first Thorium Nova campaign, which will take place over 10 missions. The premise is that humanity has just christened the first warp-capable starship — your ship — and charged you with exploring the nearby stars, getting in contact with human colony ships that were sent out at sub-light speeds over a century ago, and answering the age old question "are we alone in the universe?" You can look forward to playing that when Nova enters beta.

When will that happen? Almost certainly after everything above is complete. I'm a firm believer that Alpha means "not feature complete" while "Beta" means "likely full of bugs". Anyone is welcome to try playing Nova during the Alpha, but you might not have much fun because it's missing a lot of pieces. Once Nova reaches Beta, the only thing stopping you from having fun is the bugs in the way.

After an appropriate Beta duration, when I am satisfied that the most obvious bugs are squashed, I'll announce Thorium Nova 1.0. The base game will be done and will be fully playable. And, since the question has come up and will definitely come up again, you can anticipate Thorium Nova 1.0 will be released when my kid is old enough to enjoy it, which I'd firmly say is 8 years old. Unfortunately for all of you, I just had another kid, so the timer has reset. 😈 That said, I'm pleased with the progress over the past few months and hope to release it sooner than anticipated, but no promises.

Meanwhile, I intend to fully implement show control features including the Music Player, DMX lighting controls, and MIDI devices. And, if I end up getting bored building out any of those features, I can always continue work implementing Thorium Classic cards in Legacy Mode. That said, I don't consider any of this necessary for a Beta/1.0 release. They might make it, they might not. But if they aren't in 1.0, show control features and Legacy mode will arrive in a 1.x release.

I already have plans for Thorium Nova 2.0, which will expand the engine's capabilities to include more dynamic simulations, starbases, larger ships, and extra ship systems including Stealth Field, Hacking, Signal Jammer, Shuttles, Fighters, and Probes.

It will introduce NPC crew and add station controls for Damage Control Teams, Security Teams, and Medical Teams. Intruders, sickbay controls, random in-ship scenarios, and ship map door controls will all be included. Players will be responsible for getting their crew on-task, which provide buffs and bonuses for the ship that make it work better. The extra ship systems and NPC crew controls should allow up to 12 player stations.

Thorium Nova 2.0 will also include the second campaign, which builds on the conclusion of the first. No spoilers 😁.

Sometime around this time, I'll work on an integrated service on thoriumsim.com that will allow you to track your flights, earn points and badges, share results, and buy and sell content and missions.

So, lots of work to do, but I'm excited to see things come together.

If you've made it this far, thank you for your interest and support. If you want to support development on the project, we have an Open Collective for accepting donations. Think of it like Patreon, but more transparent. Your donations help keep the lights on and will eventually be used for building new hardware and software integrations, prototyping merch (imagine, Thorium-branded uniforms, props, hardware panel kits, lighting kits, etc. all designed to work perfectly with Thorium Nova. A long shot, but a fun one to think about!), and more. If any of this excites you, feel free to drop a few bucks in the jar. And thank you for those of you who already have donated.

I'd love to hear from you about any of these ideas — if theres anything you're especially excited about, something that you think I should include, or questions, I'd be happy to reply to your emails or Github Discussions.

Aside from that, take care of yourselves. Until next time!