We’re happy to announce The Last Federation’s first expansion Betrayed Hope has officially released on Steam, GOG.com and other digital storefronts. To celebrate, the new content will extend its beta discount of 10% through launch week, and the base game is on sale for 55% off as well.

The expansion includes 17 new ships, 2 new solar system backgrounds, 32 new abilities, 19 new achievements, 13 new music tracks and 5 new quests. It also introduces two completely different ways to play the game — Betrayal and Invasion:

Betrayal Mode reverses the usual game flow, making you a full planetary power trying to achieve solar domination — adding a new layer of 4X onto the existing game. You gain the ability to command armadas and ground troops, and the meaning behind political deals is very much shifted. Rather than working toward unity, you attempt to destroy all your foes through subterfuge, war, and temporary alliances.

Invasion Mode sees you working with the other races to survive slaughter by a grave new threat, putting yet another major spin on things. Forming the federation isn’t a priority when you are trying to keep a terror from consuming the entire system.

The Last Federation 2.0 arrives alongside the Betrayed Hope expansion this week as well. Here’s what’s been added or improved upon between 1.0 and this new release:

– Tons of improvements to GUI clarity, explanatory tooltips, etc.

– Auto-resolve option for battles.

– Permadeath made optional (and off by default).

– Awesome new ship graphics for during battles.

– New Burlust “Turmoil” mechanic.

– New ways to persuade races to join the federation.

– New actions that NPC-races take when it seems appropriate to them.

– Six new quests.

– Added player actions to support a ground invasions, oppose them, or simply start bombing stuff independently.

– Added the Ark and the Mire, two randomly seeded unique buildings that help make each game different.

– Major improvements to how RCI, Attitude, and Influence numbers work so that they make more sense to the player.

– Major revisions to widely-disliked missions like “Clean up AFA”, “Deliver Spacefaring Technology”, etc.

– Radical shifts to solar map pacing and many revisions to how actions work to increase player agency.

– New moddable “Bullet Pattern” engine that allows some really crazy new behaviors for enemy shots. Tons of new and revised bullet patterns.

– You can now do practice combats at the black market to try out tactics or just enjoy blowing up tons of ships.

– Substantial CPU/GPU performance improvements.

– Rebalancing both in combat and on the solar map.

– Multitudinous bugfixes.

For those interested in delving deeper, the full release notes from version 1.0 to 2.0 total more than 61,000 words.