The bottom line (based on projects that attempted to revive the old universe).

With the collapse of 3DO, all hopes for the development of the old universe by the official developers vanished. With the departure of Ashan, the last hope disappeared. However, I heard somewhere, or saw on the website of the Equilibris mod creators, that their plans include creating continuations of the storyline in the form of campaigns, or simply story campaigns for the fourth installment. That is, in addition to balancing adjustments, new features, etc., we will also get a new story. I would like to hope for this. But recently, I tried to find out something new about the development of Equilibris, but I couldn't find anything, or at least anything about the progress after version 3.55.