Alpha build 19 is live, and your key is waiting for you. If you have signed up, you have a key right now — you may just not know where it is.
- Signed up on the website? Your key is on your account page, and on the playtest page. Sign in with Steam and it is there, with a button that redeems it in one click.
- Signed up through Discord? The bot sent your key to you in a direct message. Search your DMs for Massive Frontier.
Nobody who signed up is waiting on us. If you cannot find yours, get in touch and we will sort it out.
Everyone starts fresh
The game database was rebuilt for the start of Pre-Alpha. Every commander, base, ship and fleet from the smoke-test week is gone. Sign in and you will be created as a new commander on a new world.
It may not be the last time — Pre-Alpha is early enough that we will wipe again if a change needs it, and we will say so here when it does. Reports you have already written are safe either way: they live on this site, not in the game.
New commanders start with 200,000 coins. Pre-Alpha is for finding out what breaks, not for grinding, so build something and push on it.
The Tide is in the sector
The Alien Hive is no longer just a name in the lore. Eight of its fleets now sit in the sector and drift between the solar systems under their own power — Hive Nest, Chitin Vanguard, Spore Swarm, Lone Harvester and the rest. They show orange on the star map, so you can tell at a glance what is not a player.
You cannot attack them, and they cannot attack you. Fleet battles still do not resolve in this build; an attack order is refused and tells you why. That is deliberate, and it is not the bug it looks like. They are there so that everything a battle depends on — ownership, movement, what the server thinks is where — gets tested against something that is not another player, before the shooting is built on top of it.
Also in this build
- Planets are bigger when you fly to them. A planet's size on the star map and its size in planet view are now two separate things, so a dot among many becomes a proper world once you are there.
- Fleet markers name the fleet. The fleet's own name sits under its owner's, so when three of someone's fleets are on screen you can tell which is which — theirs, yours, and the Tide's.
- Outposts ring their planet instead of all landing in the same corner of the map.
Everything else is in the full changelog.
Round 5 is open
Alpha Round 5 — The Tide and a Clean Slate is live: nineteen tasks covering the fresh-account path, the Tide's fleets, the bigger planets, and a few checks that nothing broke in the rebuild. Earlier rounds are still open too — if you have unfinished tasks there, carry on with them.
The one we most want answered: does a brand-new commander get a working game? Everybody is new today, so this is the only build where all of us can answer that at once.
See you out there, Commander.