As GDC approaches (now canceled it seems as of earlier tonight...But we are still going!), the push is to get the single player fully running by mid-March, which has unfortunately delayed the livesteams as we push for getting everything done in time.  (Sorry about that).  As shown in the pictures, there are two AI controlled builder bots slowly building a city each.  Not only that, but since it makes a reactor (for power) and research center, the WarMaster AI also researches.  It actually only starts with the plans for a warehouse, a reactor and research center.  It has to research the rest (as you do too as the player).  So it currently is actually able to do the full cycle of researching the buildings it needs to complete the city and in turn actually place and build them.  Once the factory is ready (and of course, the mine and refinery are ready), it starts to produce ships, like you've seen in other screen shots.  The difference is, in those cases, the city was built by the scripts, not by "hand".  Now the system is able to build the cities itself, as well as research on it's own.  Currently, there are minimal fleet commands within the main simulation, which means as a player, you can take the same path and research and build a city, and start making your own custom ships.  The fleet commands allow you to direct your ships without manually piloting them.  Such things as "fire at will" and "Attack my target".  The visual part of the interface still needs work, but the commands themselves work.  

Also, another major change is the Autosave feature is now implemented!  Currently it is running every 20 seconds for debug reasons, but the timing is settable in the configuration file quite easily.  The good thing is, the autosave is so quick that it is barely noticable, and only noticiable if you are trying to look for it.  It appears a a minor lag spike at worst.  Hence the 20 seconds so its easy to reload from what one had left off if there was a crash.  So now, I can have it crash, fix it, and see if I fixed it, rather than waiting the many minutes it might have taken to get to that point again.  I will admit, it is strange having the load/save actually work, but I'm happy it does.  (So many years without such a feature...)

Once the fleet commands are properly working, the game is basically ready to come out of Pre-Alpha and become Alpha.  There are LOTS of features that still need to be added, but a full basic game (very basic) would be possible.  Very scary and very exciting at the same time!

As far as GDC goes, the current plans are still to go to Game Connection that is(was?) along side GDC in San Francisco, and hopefully honor all the meetings that same week that were supposed to be at GDC.  I'm not 100% sure how that will happen, but Game Connection is still open, so perhaps use their meeting places.  I'm sure this will all get more worked out in the coming weeks.

Please check out the next livestream on Youtube and subscribe (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXex4ualUNFdSVHJhtxDsWg) and follow us on twitter at http://twitter.com/@LBPSInc !