Nothing's changed. I've played this game for several years now, and it's still the same. I guess a few things have been added lately, but overall the game is in disrepair. Stephen adds something, then walks away again. I mean, all the unused galaxies in the rankings? Bugs that have been around longer than I have? That's part of it.
The other thing is it's slow. Not like "hour long ticks are too long" kind of slow, but the fact that it takes so much time to do anything when you have a large empire. Infra jumps take hours, sending fleets, etc. IC has become a game of scale. Tons of planets, fleets, etc. And the micromanaging of it has bogged it down.
/begin personal vendetta
Now, I understand that Stephen doesn't want things automated, but honestly? I believe that a game should take skill, not time. You shouldn't dread an infra jump because you have 200 planets. I've done what I can to speed things up some, but it's against the rules to make scripts to do any real help for players. If IC is going to survive, I think it should be opened up for more people to help improve. I'm not saying it should be open source or anything like that, but those are the types of programs that work best. If Stephen doesn't want to keep IC alive, allow us to.