Have you recovered from the Steam Summer Sale yet? Did you buy an upgrade while we had them on sale? While those sales (including ours!) were happening, we've been working on some ship upgrades, primarily for the Duets and Quartets. Here's a little preview of some of the upcoming changes we're composing for you in V15: Duets will have the ability to toggle their torpedo launcher to fire a Large Cannon shot instead of a torpedo, with the greater damage and longer cooldown time (30 seconds) of the LC. You can toggle between them at will in combat, but be aware of the timing of the LC's long cooldown and short range, and the fact that the LC shot doesn't have homing capability. Quartets will have a few major changes. To compensate for their lack of a Science station, their Firewall ability is now a standard ability for all Quartets. It instantly remodulates your own shield frequency upon use, as well as prevents any scanning/hacking effects against your ship for its 30 second duration. Beware, because it also has a cooldown time of 30 seconds, and you can still get scanned again. The other major change to the Quartets is something we've been having a lot of fun with in our closed beta testing: Race-specific torpedoes! The Tactical officer can toggle the ship's Large Cannon to fire one of these special torpedoes instead of the LC. - Humans get a Splash torpedo that explodes upon impact, which causes both damage and a push effect to ships in its explosion radius. It's most useful against groups of clustered enemies, for obvious reasons. - Zurna get a Gravity Well torpedo. It creates one upon impact, and that draws nearby objects toward whatever is at the center of its radius, for a short duration. For extra hilarity, fire it at a cluster of Hive ships in The 25, and watch them slam into each other until they explode! Alternatively, fire it at an asteroid when an enemy is nearby, and let the big rock damage its hull for you. - Davul get a Cloak Hunter torpedo. This unorthodox weapon will automatically home in on the nearest cloaked hostile target, and then triggers a Disrupt Cloak effect upon impact. Does it have a tailpipe? This torpedo can find it! - Santoor get a Hull torpedo. This torpedo ignores shields, and directly damages the hull of its target. This is rather effective as an opening move, since your targets are likely to have full shields when you initially engage them. - Udu get an EMP torpedo. When it hits its target, it applies the same effect as the Udu Trio's EMP ability, but just to the one ship instead of a large area. It hacks the target's engines, weapons, and shields, bringing all three of the systems offline for ten seconds. As noted, these special torpedoes are unique to the Quartet class ships. A few Quintets have also been altered: The Zurna Quintet now has the Energy Shield ability, which was previously found only on the Zurna Trio. This huge shield covers the front of the ship, and absorbs any incoming weapons fire that makes contact with it, for a short duration. The Santoor Quintet has been given a new ability: DAT Booster. This area effect gives a short buff to any friendly D.A.T.s within its radius. Their systems are more effective while the effect lasts. Beam lasers are getting some changes in this update, too. The Zurna, Davul, Santoor, and Udu ships' lasers have been changed, to either deal less damage per shot, but fire more rapidly (Zurna), or fire a more damaging cutting beam with a longer duration and longer cooldown between shots (Santoor) for example. All the ships of these four races have these updated lasers. Since Humans are the base line race, we left their lasers as they are. Also: Capture Wars! I mentioned this in a previous announcement, but we've been working on this new mode, with 81 sectors in which to fight (75 of which may be captured for the glory of your chosen race!) This persistent mode is nearly ready to go live. We're just knocking out some of the tactical improvements and bug hunting before we push this version onto our closed beta branch. Might you be interested in helping us beta test? We'll probably post some information about that in the next announcement, so stay tuned!

Have you recovered from the Steam Summer Sale yet? Did you buy an upgrade while we had them on sale? While those sales (including ours!) were happening, we've been working on some ship upgrades, primarily for the Duets and Quartets. Here's a little preview of some of the upcoming changes we're composing for you in V15: Duets will have the ability to toggle their torpedo launcher to fire a Large Cannon shot instead of a torpedo, with the greater damage and longer cooldown time (30 seconds) of the LC. You can toggle between them at will in combat, but be aware of the timing of the LC's long cooldown and short range, and the fact that the LC shot doesn't have homing capability. Quartets will have a few major changes. To compensate for their lack of a Science station, their Firewall ability is now a standard ability for all Quartets. It instantly remodulates your own shield frequency upon use, as well as prevents any scanning/hacking effects against your ship for its 30 second duration. Beware, because it also has a cooldown time of 30 seconds, and you can still get scanned again. The other major change to the Quartets is something we've been having a lot of fun with in our closed beta testing: Race-specific torpedoes! The Tactical officer can toggle the ship's Large Cannon to fire one of these special torpedoes instead of the LC. - Humans get a Splash torpedo that explodes upon impact, which causes both damage and a push effect to ships in its explosion radius. It's most useful against groups of clustered enemies, for obvious reasons. - Zurna get a Gravity Well torpedo. It creates one upon impact, and that draws nearby objects toward whatever is at the center of its radius, for a short duration. For extra hilarity, fire it at a cluster of Hive ships in The 25, and watch them slam into each other until they explode! Alternatively, fire it at an asteroid when an enemy is nearby, and let the big rock damage its hull for you. - Davul get a Cloak Hunter torpedo. This unorthodox weapon will automatically home in on the nearest cloaked hostile target, and then triggers a Disrupt Cloak effect upon impact. Does it have a tailpipe? This torpedo can find it! - Santoor get a Hull torpedo. This torpedo ignores shields, and directly damages the hull of its target. This is rather effective as an opening move, since your targets are likely to have full shields when you initially engage them. - Udu get an EMP torpedo. When it hits its target, it applies the same effect as the Udu Trio's EMP ability, but just to the one ship instead of a large area. It hacks the target's engines, weapons, and shields, bringing all three of the systems offline for ten seconds. As noted, these special torpedoes are unique to the Quartet class ships. A few Quintets have also been altered: The Zurna Quintet now has the Energy Shield ability, which was previously found only on the Zurna Trio. This huge shield covers the front of the ship, and absorbs any incoming weapons fire that makes contact with it, for a short duration. The Santoor Quintet has been given a new ability: DAT Booster. This area effect gives a short buff to any friendly D.A.T.s within its radius. Their systems are more effective while the effect lasts. Beam lasers are getting some changes in this update, too. The Zurna, Davul, Santoor, and Udu ships' lasers have been changed, to either deal less damage per shot, but fire more rapidly (Zurna), or fire a more damaging cutting beam with a longer duration and longer cooldown between shots (Santoor) for example. All the ships of these four races have these updated lasers. Since Humans are the base line race, we left their lasers as they are. Also: Capture Wars! I mentioned this in a previous announcement, but we've been working on this new mode, with 81 sectors in which to fight (75 of which may be captured for the glory of your chosen race!) This persistent mode is nearly ready to go live. We're just knocking out some of the tactical improvements and bug hunting before we push this version onto our closed beta branch. Might you be interested in helping us beta test? We'll probably post some information about that in the next announcement, so stay tuned!