Fog of war for the computer houses: they now choose what to attack and where to settle only from what their worlds and fleets have seen, as a player does. Attacks need a sighting from the last turn; an older sighting only tells them whether a system was unclaimed then. Their scouts revisit the systems seen longest ago, and they keep three.

New settings PeaceDays (10) and Difficulty (Easy/Normal/Hard) for the computer houses: they leave a new player alone for PeaceDays days, and play more or less boldly. See Computer houses.

Computer houses now build troops and land on worlds they blockade, instead of blockading for ever.

Fleets that had arrived were treated as still moving: blockades never cut production, and arriving patrols didn't join the guard fleet.

Settler fleets stopped at a guarded system now look for another world.

Research moves on to another track when one is finished, instead of wasting the points; the header shows “Research all done” at the end.

ermaint status keeps big numbers apart.

Ember Reach is now under the GNU General Public License version 2 or later; the source is released as REACHS05.ZIP. REACHB05.ZIP has the Lua bot.

Saving a game is safe against a crash or power cut at any point: REACH.DAT is put back from REACH.NEW or REACH.OLD if it goes missing, and the nightly run no longer takes a missing REACH.DAT for “no game”.

Houses on autopilot now get orders from the computer each night. They still leave the game after DissolveAfter days.

The game lock records when it was taken and how long it may be held, so a working program's lock is never broken by mistake. A MAINT.RUN left by a crashed maintenance run no longer keeps players out.

Splitting a fleet can no longer leave troops behind without enough Haulers to carry them.

First test release: the door, nightly maintenance, reachcfg, news and the Hall of Fame.