Phase until they have used their Strategy Card, and all other players always have the option to use the secondary ability of a Strategy Card once activated, even if they passed on a previous turn. The Status Phase is a book-keeping and maintenance phase. Players score public and secret objectives in the same initiative order from the Action Phase (not clockwise from the Speaker), reveal the next public objective, draw action cards, remove and regain command tokens (and may redistribute command tokens among their tactical, strategic, and fleet pools), ready all exhausted cards (including the strategy and technology and planetary cards), repair any damaged units, and return the strategy cards to a common play area. The Agenda Phase has replaced the Politics Phase. Once a player has taken Mecatol Rex, it is appended as the fourth phase after the Status Phase to each round. In the Agenda Phase, players convene the galactic council on Mecatol Rex and vote on two Agendas. Agendas are either Laws (permanent changes to the current game's mechanics, such as allowing all players to build War Suns without needing to research the qualifying technologies) and Directives (a one-time effect such as each player drawing a secret objective, or giving a victory point to the player in last place). Each player casts votes by exhausting their planets for its influence score (where each point of influence is one vote), and may spend as many as they have for the agendas, or abstain from voting. Players may not spend trade goods as influence for casting votes in this phase, but the voting (the active) player is free to offer deals - Promissory Notes, commodities or trade goods - to influence or purchase another player's vote. Players are also allowed to make deals and transactions during the Agenda Phase whether they share borders or not, allowing for the exchange of promissory notes, and commodities and trade goods. Once both agendas have been voted on, the players refresh all their exhausted planets so they have the resources and influence and technology specialties available for the Action Phase in the next round. The technology tree has been simplified. Rather than a confusing flow chart of pre-requisites, technological advancement is through four linear branches, and players can upgrade most of the available units by satisfying pre-requisites in the four branches. Trade has been simplified. Players now exchange faction commodities which become trade