Planets and Moons:
- New starter planet: Dead
A very hard starting planet in the midst of a nuclear winter with a focus on scavenging and salvaging to obtain the supplies needed to survive and build a SV to escape the planet. Requires advanced knowledge of game mechanics and is recommended for experienced players only.

- New Swamp planet: Mire
Rescue citizens of the other factions from crazed cultists.

- New Planet: Tropical
Still a work in progress. Will add more custom POIs to it later. Beautiful and peaceful paradise with a favorable climate to grow crops outdoors.

- Added the default and unused Desert Moon as a Copper-Rich Barren Moon.
- Added Research North POI set to Ice planet.
- Added Alien Drop Base to Alien POI set.

- Ore balancing on default planets
Generally reduced size of the larger deposits and removed some deposits from a few planets. This might make it a bit harder to find ores like Erestrum and Zascosium because you'll no longer find those two ores on the same planets usually. This is going to slow down the mid and especially end game. You'll need to explore a bit before you can build that giant end-game battleship now. :D
- Converted most deposits to the SSOR underground nugget style deposits. I did this because autominers don't deplete voxel deposits even when autominer depletion is enabled. Deposits on starter planets should be pretty clumped up so you should be able to just dig straight down to them with the survival tool without needing an ore scanner. You might have to watch your inventory space though.

Space:

- Added a new Syndicate Outpost and a new Smuggler outpost POI.
- Freighters now show up on the map from 6km away.

Trading Overhaul:

- Added a bunch of new Polaris trade stations and factories to orbits in the middle solar system.
- Added new Polaris Trade Station playfields with a focus on either industrial or civilian trading.

Each station or factory POI buys and/or sells large quantities of trade commodities and sometimes other basic supplies as well. The trade commodities can usually be bought and sold at a profit to other stations.
Traders list which profitable commodities they buy or sell, but there's no guarantee you'll be on speaking terms with the faction who will buy or sell you the goods!
Most bulk traders have a 3 hour restock timer.
Still very much a work in progress. There's a lot more planned for trading. Let me know if you think the trading profits needs to be adjusted up. I started them out at a low profit margin but that can be easily changed.

- Added Leather Farmer, Sugar Farmer, and Corn Farmer to default Talon Cropfield POI set.
- Added Fertilizer Factory and Biofuel Factory to default Polaris Industrial POI set.
- Added Waste Treatment Plant to default Rados POI set.

Misc:
- Tweaked solar system generation. Less Lava moons. Spread all the planets out a bit more to avoid planets spawning too close to each other.
- Minor tweaks to various POIs.

Known Issues:
- Coop is probably still broken (haven't tested it yet). I still have the bug report open here: https://empyriononline.com/threads/cant-start-large-random-scenarios-as-coop.49428/
Please let me know if you are able to start a coop game. Otherwise, you'll have to run a dedicated server to play with your friends until the bug is fixed. :(
- You can see through small parts of the asteroid the Pentaxid Mining Facility is built upon.

Many of the new POIs are from the amazing community. The collection of blueprints used has been updated to give credit to the original authors of those amazing creations.

A new game start is required to get the changes.

- Updated scenario for Alpha 10 compatibility.

Changes from previous Alpha 9.7 version:

Planets:

- Added a red dwarf/neutron "star" binary pair. No custom POIs for it yet.
- Set Odd Temperate as a starter planet. (From Monroe's Survive and Discover)
- Activated the default SwampStarter as an additional starter planet.
- Added new Irradiated starter planet WIP. Don't select it, it's not done yet. Will be a scavenging and salvage focused starter planet.
- Updated planet start screen to make it a bit easier to navigate between all the starter planet options.

Space:

New special encounters and POIs:
- Added Xen'uan carrier to outer solar system (original design by Kaeser).
- Added Pentaxid Mining Facility to middle solar system.
- Added Syndicate Casino to middle solar system.

Updated Space Playfields:
- Incorporated new Alpha 10 music.
- Added custom descriptions to most space playfields. Very important for the special encounters.

Misc:
-Moved resource spawns further from POIs due to changes in how close resource deposits can spawn to a POI.
Known issue: Rados Ore Silos on Methane Moon have no ore. I'll have to redo those.
- Added shield generator to one of the Alien POIs.
- Added traders to the Foundy on Lava Planets (for real this time).