Hi all! I just wanted to thank everyone for taking the time to write all these wonderful reviews over the years, which allowed my game to reach a staggering 94% Positive rating! I will be forever grateful for this! I guess it's a good time to share some plans for my plans for Sector Six . . . The next big milestone is 6 years on Steam anniversary in September. For that, I am planning to release a content update. I have a couple of ideas for that, but we'll see how it'll turn out. Relic weapons? Boss rush mode? Ability to gain level increases in abilities like Era's End? I do not want to promise too much because my time is extremely limited for Sector Six as I am working hard on my other projects. Speaking of other projects, towards the end of this year I plan to have wrapped them up. This means my hands will be free to pursue a Sector Six sequel/reboot! It already has a name: Perfect Shrapnel Zero! It is planned to be my magnum opus in a brand-new universe, with my signature storytelling, atmosphere, and mechanics inherited directly from Sector Six! In other news: I released a small patch that fixes a dupe glitch with amplifiers and restores the Final Ascension XP formula to its previous version - the new formula has been left enabled accidentally. Oops! Have fun and until next time~

Hi all, dropping another QoL update! Change list:

• Vendor in Rift region now sells crafting items in large quantities.
• Holding [control] button or [Right stick] on controllers now allows buying and applying full stacks of crafting items.
• You can now move during the Machine explosion cutscene and end the mission early.
• Fixed: Limitless inventory mode would not remove inventory restrictions in story missions.
• Fixed: If the player has XP to level Ascension more than once, leveling up Ascension level for the first time does not award Ancesion Reactor.
• Fixed: A crash that occurs when the game state is restarted.
• Fixed: A crash that occurs when switching to the Portuguese language.

Hey all, The yearly support/QoL patch is here! The key feature of this update is limitless inventory: If you trust your PC to handle it, it is now possible to disable the inventory limit and play with dozens of inventory pages.
It does come with loading times with sorting and selling hundreds of parts, but it may be a good alternative for some.
Have fun! Change list:

• Added limitless inventory mode to the settings: Removes 3-page limit for the inventory.
• Updated credits and intro to show V3663L, my new studio / artist name.
• Numbers above billion are now shortened to, for example, 1B instead of 1000M. The same applies to trillions.
• Absolute Deterioration decayed fragment reward is now capped at a maximum of 6600 fragments per attempt.
• Attempting to level up Ascension level now consumes all available experience and instantly converts it to levels.
• It is no longer possible to modify locked parts.
• The 'Sell all' function at vendors now affects relics as well.
• Removed several cheated entries from the leaderboards.
• Potentially fixed: The game doesn't boot immediately when launching on Steam. Updating the Steam SDK version appears to have helped.
• Fixed: Infinite Sustained Barrage when combined with Channel.
• Fixed: Modified threat level 3 minions do not count towards True Champion achievement.
• Fixed: It was hard to see how much ether the player has in battle HUD due to a display showing 4+ digits.

Hey all, Just a quick fix: Since the update all ability ether costs were being set to 0. This is now fixed. Until next time!

Hey Linux users, Unfortunately, due to a lack of resources, I will no longer be updating the Linux version of the game. If it's any consolation, the game appears to be working properly via Proton: Library > Sector Six > Properties > Compatibility > Enable: Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool > Select: Proton Next (The game doesn't work via Proton Experimental - other versions of Proton are untested) The non-latest Linux version of the game will remain untouched. I was unable to verify that it works properly, so I will be de-listing Sector Six as a game with a Linux version. I always wanted to have Linux versions of the game, but that has become too difficult for me. Thanks for playing!

Hey all, The promised update is live!
Here are the changes:

• Ascension Reactor is now generated at item level 90.
• Reliquary Diode item now sets relic level to your current spaceship level.
• Auto-fire is now toggled by holding [Control] + pressing an ability key.
• Auto-fire status is now saved between missions and game sessions.
• UI now indicates which abilities are on auto-fire.
• Added information about auto-fire to the manual.
• XP is now distributed faster (A.K.A. XP bar now fills faster).
• Gaining over 10 million XP in a mission will no longer cause lag + it is distributed instantly.
• 3 inventory pages are now the new default.
• Node + Strike attack visual effect has been toned down.
• Fixed: Pause menu 'controller cursor' was not usable.
• Fixed: Broken Infinity UI shows "NaN".
• Fixed: Setting instance severity via Infinity Instances increases altered part chances globally.
• Fixed: Entering New Game+ via Time Rift mission does not reset instance severity.
• Fixed: Mission overview shows incorrect difficulty rewards when viewing a story mission.
• Fixed: Alloy container ether/armor on kill boost was not updated when the container was removed.

A bit ago Steam proposed new default prices in Turkish and Argentine currencies. I am changing it now to these prices: Argentine Peso 115 -> 700 Turkish Lira 16 -> 95 The game used to cost very little when on higher discounts in these currencies so that's the main reason for this change. I believe this was exploited in several previous sales.

Hey all, Happy new year! It is sort of a custom at this point to write something about my plans for the upcoming year. First of all: The patch I hinted at once is finally in development. Planned changes: - Ascension Reactor fix: It will always be generated at item level 90. - [Hold shift + use ability] to toggle auto-fire. I find the current method to use auto-fire a bit annoying. - Auto-fire is preserved between missions and play sessions. - Abilities on auto-fire will be indicated as on auto-fire in the UI. - Several exploit fixes. - Possibly a change to how XP works to speed-up mission end screen XP distribution. With this patch I'm also porting the game to the new engine version: This long-term support (LTS) version is promised to not be updated with new features, meaning I will be able to return to this game years later and have it open without any problems. It means I might be able to make patches like these easier. In 2023 I plan to release at least 2 new games and clear up my development queue, moving forward toward Sector Six reboot. Sorry for taking so long with it all and I hope I can impress with upcoming releases of 2023! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1184450/Magic_of_Autumn/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1786910/Magic_of_Spring/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1097560/Light_of_the_Locked_World/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2152950/Beyond_the_Gate/

Hey all, Just wanted to share links to games I am currently working on right now.

Beyond the Gate

Magic of Spring

Light of the Locked World

Follow Small Moons to be notified about the new games

Hi all, Just a quick update on price changes: I've changed the base price from $9.99 to $9. For non-USD currencies, I've tried to keep the prices similar to the base price - the results may vary. Also, I might have mentioned a game update for Sector Six, but seeing as there are no critical problems and my filled schedule I think I'll pass on that one, unfortunately. This is not the end for Sector Six as I will be working on a reboot game in the not-so-distant future <3 That is all for now, Thanks for buying, playing, and leaving these wonderful reviews!

Hello everyone! As mentioned earlier, I am working on a new game, Magic of Spring. I'm happy to say that the development is going well and that a demo version is available now! [previewyoutube=IbRoDd_r3S0;full][/previewyoutube] The demo can be downloaded from the Magic of Spring Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1786910/Magic_of_Spring/ In other news: I'm planning to make a small quality of life update to Sector Six soon. Until then!

Hi all, Just jumping into the news feed to talk a bit about my new game - Magic of Spring!
It is what I've been calling a card adventure game - there is a story, a world to explore, deckbuilding, and a lot of card fights. I've been working on Magic of Spring with extremely skilled Minho Kim and Bert Cole. Bert Cole composed the music for Sector Six and Light of the Locked World, so you know he's good =] Minho Kim is the artist of Devespresso Games, the team that created the great-looking Coma games, Vambrace: Cold Soul, Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood. The demo for Magic of Spring should be ready to play next month. Hope this sounds interesting - if it does, don't forget to follow and wishlist the game <3 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1786910/Magic_of_Spring/ Good luck on those part drops and until the next game announcement, I guess ^_^ (One of those going to be a sequel to Sector Six, I swear!)

Hi all! A small update for those wondering what's going on: Small Moons is a studio created by me, Zuurix a.k.a. Aivaras Klimas.
I've created it in case I'll want to expand in the future and because saying that these games are made by me isn't entirely correct. Two of my biggest games are made with the awesome Bert Cole of Bit By Bit Sound. Please follow Small Moons creator's page to be updated about new game releases: Link >> That's all for now, until next time!

Hey all, I've just released a small update for the game! I was thinking to maybe add some new content, but couldn't figure out what would be interesting to add. So instead, I've decided to make some non-content changes. I've looked at the list of things I could do to improve the game and done a few. Huge thanks to everyone who bought the game and your generous reviews! (Please report any issues you might find after this update) Anyway, the update! Auto-fire Now holding an ability button for 5 seconds will enable auto-fire for that ability. To disable auto-fire, release the ability key and press it again. XP and experience changes The player's ship now gains experience no matter in what region it is. Also, difficulty level modifiers are no longer limited by a region level, they can be enabled anywhere. Finally, the players no longer need to reach level 5 to enable difficulty modifiers. Number formatting Number formatting updated to display more numbers. E.g.: 20.1M weapon damage -> 20.19M weapon damage. Altered parts Increased altered part drop chance and a chance of altered parts to become more altered. Absolute Deterioration Absolute Deterioration XP multiplier is now active for spaceships of all levels. Endgame shortcut removed This option has some problems with it, so I've decided to remove it. Fixed Nuke does not deal any damage while Azimar's Killframe is disabled. Manual mentions that relics cannot have scaling properties, which is incorrect since relic rework. Item generator creates low-level altered parts. Have fun! PS.: If you wish to support me, check out my other games: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1097560/Light_of_the_Locked_World/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1184450/Magic_of_Autumn/

Get it now for a historically low price - Sector Six enters Itch.io and GameJolt with its first 80% discount! Sector Six on Itch.io >> Sector Six on GameJolt >> Sector Six on VoxPop Games >> (First 80% discount on Steam will be happening in January, probably) If you guys would Rate/Like the game on these new stores I'd be eternally grateful! Right now games are my only source of income, so every dollar matters to me =] Thanks again for buying Sector Six on Steam, the game just passed 150 reviews, it's truly amazing <3

This update adds Simplified Chinese translation by Wang Li a.k.a. Jether! Also fixed Lantern of Chances + Azimar's Killframe bug thanks to playstrike2004. Until next time!

This update is an attempt to even out power levels of the sets. Lodeon's Ultimatum should no longer be the only set capable of reaching 10+ waves in Absolute Deterioration. The new and improved set effects:

Etherion's Clash

Cor's Voidmass

Ultranid's Torment

Kithalia's Blight

Oesa's Radiance

Azimar's Killframe

Lodeon's Ultimatum

Endgame shortcut

Other changes

• Relays + Unload: Mines created by this combo now deals 10% less damage instead of 50%.
• Updated store and library assets.
• Pylons + Unload: Mines created by this combo now gain damage while immobile and start seeking enemies automatically after 5 seconds.
• Nodes + Unload: Mines created by this combo now pierce enemies.
• Awakening of Inner Power ability now also removes minion maximum armor.
• Added armor text to the HUD armor bar.
• Set description now shows a total number of set components installed. E.g.: "Etherion's Clash - 11/6 components".
• Sacrificial alloy containers, Lantern of Chances, and Pearl of Deterioration now give 5 seconds of invincibility after saving the spaceship.
• Relics that increase relic limit no longer require one empty relic slot to be installed.
• Fragment fusion is now instant when fusing more than 4 relics.
• Replaced Steam store page artwork.
• The leaderboard button now opens the leaderboard in the Steam browser.
• The leaderboard button now opens the Absolute Deterioration leaderboard.
• Fixed: Automatic alloy containers are not counting towards Consumer achievement.
• Fixed: Automatic alloy containers are not helping with Malasmar fight.
• Fixed: Automatic alloy containers are slow.
• Fixed: Alloy containers are inheriting tooltip lines from relics.

Have fun!

Hey all, just a small update - version 1.5.6c - for Linux. Version 1.5.6 used to crash for some users because of a debug command I forgot to remove. Also, it was slower. I can't tell how much exactly, but quite significantly. I am only 90% sure that the new version will work, so I left version 1.5.6 accessible: Go to Library > Sector Six > Properties > Betas: Enter the password "fallbackbranch" and select "fallback" from the list. If the Linux crisis is finally over, I'll start doing set rework in a week or so. I really want to do set rework well - I want this update to have a huge positive change to endgame build diversity. Because nerfing Lodeon's Ultimatum doesn't seem like a desirable option, the goal is to bring other sets to Ultimatum's power level. That is the goal, but the way there is unknown. These factors make it impossible to not do set rework blindly: - It would take a while to test every known build thoroughly even with cheats and I don't have much time allocated. - I don't have any tools to accurately model the stats of endgame spaceships. - There is always some uncertainty when making changes like that, even in with the best tools. So here's the plan: - I'll hack together a set rework giving buffs and changes based on my experience in the endgame and the power level of Ultimatum. - After it's released, I'll continue making smaller-scale changes based on your feedback until all sets feel decent. I have created a pinned discussion for that: https://steamcommunity.com/app/465020/discussions/0/1737762134390535712/ So that's the news for now, thank you for your patience, and until next time!

Hey all, I have uploaded Linux version 1.5.6b which is faster and doesn't have that crash caused by a leftover debug command. I couldn't make it live because it has one problem: Clicking "Play" in the Steam library does not run it. To run it: Go to Library > Sector Six > Properties > Betas Enter password: "password12345", select "beta - Beta branch". Then "Browse local files" and run SectorSix executable or run.sh script. I have tried several things yesterday and I can't figure out what is the problem. If you get an error that could help me or have any ideas on what's wrong, leave a comment. Until next time.

Hey all! - Fixed: Chance calculation bug. 100% wave chances and deflect chance used to not guarantee that these mechanics would pass the checks every time. - Fixed: Font related memory leak. - Fixed: Strange part generation bug/crash. Possibly. Watch out for weird part behavior. Linux: A new build has been uploaded, it runs on my virtual machine, so hopefully, it will run for everyone else. If it doesn't work properly, please report that to me. Have fun!

Hey all, A small update: Sector Six's original soundtrack (OST) that was previously a "DLC" has been ported to Steam's new soundtrack system - now it's separate from the game in your libraries. I've also added two new tracks that weren't in the game when the OST was first uploaded back in 2016. Enjoy =] https://store.steampowered.com/app/469520/Sector_Six_OST/

Hey all, Just a quick update on what's going on. Linux is still broken, but I am working on it almost every day. You can see that in detail here. After I have fixed the Linux, I'll be spending Saturdays making set rework. I have done some brainstorming about set rework in this discussion. I've also got a suggestion to make a set that promotes the gameplay that resembles the old class system. I'll share more concrete details once the set rework is in progress. So, that's the news. I hope the new year has been good already, until next time!

Hey all, I've just released a new version of the game: Shadow of the Past no longer shows flags. Text added and changed with relic rework update has been translated to BR, BE, FR, and DE. Linux status: It's still not possible to launch the game. The problem is very annoying because it doesn't show any error message, so I have no idea what's wrong. I've made a thread in Steam developer's discussions and now I'm waiting for a reply. Hang in there.

Better endgame, better relics, Belarusian translation, and more!

Endgame changes:

Relic rework:

• Legionvault, Fractal Arsenal
• Scepter and Needles
• Suun's Loom, Atomic Library
• Deathlink, Assault Adapter
• Surge Accelerator, Exothermic Focus
• Eternity of Destruction, Arsenal Extender
• NA-1, Naonic Archive
• Strengthsource, Tridenkorian Flagship Systems
• Zero Spire, Coolant Injector
• Mark of Defender, Hero's Exempt
• Radiance and Blight, Aberrant Alliance
• Flame Tower, Redirection Hub

• Asymadrenlysk, Craeno's Final Creation
• NA-1, Naonic Archive
• Eternity of Destruction, Arsenal Extender
• Everlasting Light, Ether Networks
• Legionvault, Fractal Arsenal
• Trism of Glory
• Duality of Transience, Etherion's Catalyst
• Upgrade Sockets, Amplifier Well
• Strengthsource, Tridenkorian Flagship Systems
• Surge Accelerator, Exothermic Focus
• Crippled Vault, Broken Reality

Cor's Voidshape set effect changes:

Belarusian translation:

Have fun!

Hey all, this is just a quick post about the current status of the game's development. So, first of all, yes, I am currently working on a relic rework update.
It's pretty much done, this is what changes it'll bring: [quote]Dismantling relics now always gives reliquary diode. Relic property amount: Increased from 7 to 9, one above fully upgraded etalons. Relics can now have scaling properties. E.g.: +x maximum armor, +x ether on kill. Graphically improved Upgrade Sockets, Amplifier Well. Tempoquake, Cryostasis now reduces weapon damage by 50%, instead of 90%.

These relics now increase relic limit by 1 and no longer compete with stronger relics for relic slots:

Now it's possible to disable animations of these relics by rotating them:

Endgame changes:

After that, I'm thinking about doing the set rework. I think I'll finally nerf Lodeon's Ultimatum and rework Oesa's Radiance, Kithalia's Blight, and Etherion's Clash sets. I also might add a new mission type - something to add some visual variety to the game.

Some have things have changed. 1) Sector Six is no longer published by Michael Jendryssek. Without him, Sector Six would probably not be on Steam today and I am very grateful for that - I'm sure all those players who enjoyed Sector Six can relate, so let's thank him =] From now on everything will be managed by me, Aivaras Klimas a.k.a. Zuurix. That should not affect players in any way. 2) Sector Six might get some updates. I have decided to dedicate Saturdays to working on low priority projects - side projects and finished major projects. This includes Sector Six! Currently, I'm busy with Magic of Autumn, but after some time I'll be able to start updating Sector Six. First of all, I'm thinking about doing a small relic rework - a bunch of minor changes to making relics truly the top tier parts. But more about that later - for now that's all the news. Until next time!

This update adds German translation by Spiffosi and Milkshaker! Other changes: Techamer's rewards are now better: +200% inate loot quality for parts created by Techamer. Destroyed areas now no longer draw backgrounds. Trism of Glory achievement number is now displayed with a custom font in all languages. Fixed: Trying to take screenshot by pressing F12 while using controller switches to keyboard and mouse mode. Fixed: Shadows of the Past graphical glitch. Fixed: Ship surfaces are not removed. Fixed: Switching languages deletes wrong fonts. Have fun!

This update adds French translation by Alexandre Magin a.k.a. All_Zebest! Also, fixed a bug that made Strike + Nodes deal more damage than it should. Have fun!

Wow, I did it again.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1097560/Light_of_the_Locked_World/ A new game by Zuurix! Light of the Locked World is a fantasy RPG with local multiplayer, inspired by old school MMOs like Ultima Online and RuneScape. The World Gate has malfunctioned and you are taken to Caios II - the Locked World. As you build a new life for yourself, you notice that something sinister is going on. You might be in danger - you must find out what's happening. Features: Light of the Locked World has all of the beloved RPG features - quests, exploration, crafting, and deep character customization - executed in uncommon ways. Combat: Real-time, uses only one button to attack, effectiveness is based on equipment stats and player's positioning skill. Local multiplayer: Take the game to the next level by inviting another player to play with or against you. You have the freedom to compete for rare items, cooperate to overcome difficult tasks, steal, trade, duel, and more.

This update adds Brazilian Portuguese translation by Digital Kaz Brazil! Changes:

• Minor graphical and text changes.
• Minor localization selection changes.

• Fixed: Arena reward says "undefined".
• Fixed: "Error Error Error" achievement description says "Jam minion three times".
• Fixed: Auto-sell button tooltip is visible outside vendor interface.
• Fixed: Several spelling mistakes.
• Fixed: "Safe and Sound" achievement is unobtainable.

Here it is, the last Sector Six content update! Altered parts: Level 90+ or altered parts are here! Altered parts get additional property and their properties scale based on alteration level. For example, level 90 altered part with alteration level 10 will have properties like level 100 part. Altered parts start to drop after completing the story. Final Ascension: Highest level altered parts require Ascension level, which can be increased by spending XP after reaching level 90. Also, Ascension level increases the amount of Ascension Reactor's amplifier slots. Ascension Reactor is added upon reaching Ascension level 1. Altered instances: Make Broken Infinity instances as difficult as Absolute Deterioration for an increased chance to get altered parts! The Signal: Get all achievements, install an altered part, clear altered instance, and increase Ascension level to unlock an introduction to Sector Six's sequel, Sector Zero. Item sorting: The most wanted Sector Six feature is here! You can now sort items by grade, properties, type and other options - similar to how "Dismantle all"/"Uninstall all"/"Sell all" functions work! Automatic selling: Connect to a vendor to set up automatic selling! While it's enabled, dropped parts of the selected grade range will be turned into units. Help interface rework:

• Multiple quality of life, graphical, and control improvements.
• Help interface button now glows until it's clicked.
• Updated some data interface entries and added new entries.

• Failing a mission is now a lot faster.
• Rapid Fire Mode now speeds up all attack abilities.
• Evolution mechanic improved: Minions now evolve into bigger minions faster.
• Added level 90 weapon skins.
• Achievement spoiler: Symbol of Life and Cache achievements can now be achieved in Broken Infinity.
• Changed XP sound.
• Made several improvements to language selection systems.
• Changed item tooltip system: Tooltips will no longer go outside the screen.
• Ability interface now shows ether cost clarification if Flow Stagnation modifier is enabled.
• Dismantle all button moved to vendor interface to make space for sort button.
• New parts are now highlighted and can be interacted with through management: Uninstalled, dismantled, sold, filtered, and sorted.
• Added flipped versions of a station, deflector, inhibitor, and antenna skins.
• Item experience boost is now capped at 200%. NA-1, Naonic Archive increases the cap to 300%.
• Power Shield ability now attempts to cause white wave when activated.
• Level parts 89 are no longer generated in level 90 missions and vendors.
• Weapons are now slightly more common.
• Weapons are even more common in regions 1-4 to help the new players get enough weapon damage.
• Frailsphere, Pearl of Deterioration no longer halves maximum armor.
• Legionvault, Fractal Arsenal now also increases double drop chance.
• It's no longer possible to create level 90+ instance.
• Improved part tooltips.
• Increasing difficulty now gives +5% loot quality and +1% double drop chance per difficulty level instead of 10% and 2%.
• Lodeon's Ultimatum set effect now scales with the number of parts installed: Armor to damage conversion reaches 100% with 80 parts installed.
• Relics can now be sold for units!
• For technical reasons it's no longer possible to use anodes on Upgrade Sockets, Amplifier Well relic.

• Fixed: Instance loot quality does not work.
• Fixed: Elimination mission objective reminder mentions escorting the carrier.
• Fixed: Vendor items in Broken Infinity are affected by instance loot quality.
• Fixed: Scrambler Belt Escalation achievement description spelling mistake.
• Fixed: Locked parts cannot be uninstalled via uninstall button.
• Fixed: Crippled Vault relic is preventing level ups from increasing the part limit.
• Fixed: Area tooltip + The Decision modifier problem.
• Fixed: Level 75 level up screen does not show that part and weapon limit has increased.
• Fixed: Story spoiler: Infinity is called Broken Infinity before it's broken during mission 13.
• Fixed: Mission 12 cannot be completed.
• Fixed: Minor alloy container issues.
• Fixed: Mistake in Fear Bringer Ourend's minion spawning code makes enemies jump forward after been spawned causing all sorts of problems.
• Fixed: Sections are generated with weapon skins.
• Fixed: Non-rotating skins + rotated parts + skin applying problem.
• Fixed: Re-stock button tooltip is visible outside vendor interface.
• Fixed: Controller cursor doesn't stick to the spaceship building grid in vendor interface.
• Fixed: Wrong level 80 node skin.
• Fixed: Map arrow button controlled hint.
• Fixed: Restoration War may select already secured region to be contested.
• Fixed: Minor resurrection mission glitch.
• Fixed: Sell all result notification shows the wrong unit amount.
• Fixed: Minor selling particle effect glitch.
• Fixed: Guillotine + seeking projectiles problem.
• Fixed: Pearl of Deterioration effect triggers Sacrifice achievement.
• Fixed: Contribution and vendor statuses are not updated when new missions or instances are generated.

It's time for me to end Sector Six content development. For the last several months I've been switching between working on Sector Six and Light of the Locked World. I love both of the games, but I want to dedicate all of my time to LOTLW, and I can't do much to Sector Six to make it better. What I can do, I'll try to do with the final update. This is what it will contain: Item sorting: The most wanted Sector Six feature! It will make it possible to sort items by grade, type, properties, etc. - every option that works with the current filtering system will work with item sorting. Final Ascension: Final Ascension will be an endgame activity that gives maxed players something to work on. Experience received after reaching level 90 will be used to increase the Ascension level. Increasing Ascension level will reward players with random skins from new skin set. Ascension level will also be a requirement to install altered parts. Altered parts: Altered parts will let me add meaningful, scaling item rewards and level 90+ parts without having to increase the level cap. After the update, all parts will receive a chance to become altered as they are generated. This is how it will work: 1. Part is generated. 2. The code is run to check if the part should be altered or not. 3. If it is, it gains 1 alteration level. 4. The code is run to check if the part should be altered further. 5. If it is, the alteration level increases by 1. Step 4 and 5 are repeated until one of the checks fail. It means that high alteration level parts will be much rarer than lower alteration level parts. Alteration level will improve part's properties. For example, currently, the code sets part's maximum armor property like this: Increases maximum armor by (part level * 250). After the update it will work like this: Increases maximum armor by ((part level + alteration level) * 250). Altered parts will also receive additional property. High-level altered parts will require Ascension level to be installed. E.g.: Level 90, alteration level 9 part will require Ascension level 9 to be installed. Altered instances: You will be able to spend alloy to make Broken Infinity instances as hard as Absolute Deterioration. Altered instances will have an increased chance to get altered parts. The Signal: Reach level 90 and get all achievements to unlock the introduction to Sector Six's sequel, Sector Zero. Many fixes and changes: Like with every update, the game will receive a lot of improvements - including increased mission failing time, new part highlighting, evolution mechanic improvements, and old glitch fixes. I intend to end Sector Six development with 0 known glitches remaining. In conclusion, this will be a big update! To clarify, this is the end of new content and reworks development only - support updates to fix glitches will continue. Hope all looks good, until next time!

Build a monster spaceship and become #1! If you can beat current best at wave 20 that is. It's pretty insane considering the scaling of the deterioration. Hopefully, this will encourage to upgrade spaceships to ludicrous power levels =] View leaderboard >> Quick update on Sector Six development - or lack of it: At the moment I'm working on another game, but I'm planning to get back to working on Sector Six... soon? The next update should add real item sorting and another batch of glitch fixes/improvements. Later this year I might be making something I call Final Ascension - an endgame activity for players who have reached max level. Something something level 90+ parts! I hope everyone is enjoying the game and until next time!

This update adds much-needed challenge for players with really high power level spaceships, improved vendors, many quality of life changes based on player feedback, and important fixes. New endgame activity: Absolute Deterioration This is the end of your invincibility. All of the worst instances collapsed to form absolute deterioration. In this vortex of nightmare incarnations, your enemies will become more and more powerful, until your strongest weapons and best tactics are worthless. Until you have no choice but to flee or be destroyed. If you're lucky, you will escape with treasures born in twisted realities of deterioration. Absolute Deterioration is a mission in which you will have to fight waves of enemies. Enemies will enter your range as fast you destroy them, and with each wave, their power will increase. Fight as long as you can, then extract - the more waves you will defeat, the more decayed fragments you will get. Decayed fragments fuse into absolute deterioration relics: New relic: Stolen, Hidden, Forgotten, Lost This relic increases relic limit by 2. Flame Tower, Redirection Hub With this relic installed, projectiles your ship will deflect transform into seeking missiles that deal 100% weapon damage to enemies. New relic: Physical Linking System This relic gives +1% weapon damage per three projectiles, meaning that you will deal more damage the more projectiles there are. New relic: Radiance And Blight, Aberrant Alliance This truly unique relic will allow you to have both Oesa's Radiance and Kithalia's Blight set effects active at the same time. New relic: Frailsphere, Pearl of Deterioration Frailsphere will restore your armor 50% when it drops 0 once per a mission. New relic: Horrorcradle, Darkspindle Horrorcradle will become more powerful based on the highest number of waves survived in absolute deterioration. Vendor rework: A recent breakthrough in quantum logistics have allowed improving long-distance part distribution systems: You no longer need to enter secured regions! This leap in technology has also led to the fusion of spaceship building and vendor interfaces: All building functions are now available during trading.

• Improved vendor interface and accessibility.
• Connecting/disconnecting to/from the vendor now is much faster.
• Now it's possible to uninstall/install/compare/dismantle parts and containers while connected to the vendor.
• Sell all/dismantle all/uninstall all/disconnect buttons now give proper confirmations.
• Vendors are now limited to one connection per mission completed.

• You can now lock/unlock items by moving the cursor over them and pressing L or - for controller users - Start.
• Locked items cannot be sold and dismantled.

• Moving cursor over filtered item now will make it visible.
• You can now filter/highlight/dismantle/uninstall/sell set components and parts with certain properties.
• Improved item selection in item management.
• Surge Accelerator, Exothermic Focus relic effect now works with Power Shield, Channel, and Creation of Energy abilities.
• Resurrection mission revenant phase now takes 10 seconds instead of 60.
• Black Rain shards now deal 25% weapon damage instead of 100% at max level.
• You no longer need advanced access to view sets, manage inventory, toggle map key, and jump to a region.
• Overload ability cooldown has been increased to 75 seconds to make it less exploitable.
• Gatherers and scions now stop shifting after firing 5 projectiles, instead of 10.
• Abilities 1, 2, and 3 can now be activated with the mouse: Ability 1 - left button, Ability 2 - right button, Ability 3 - middle button.
• Ancient container now gives 100 alloy when you pass dust cloud, making it more useful for certain mission types.

• Fixed: "Sell all" button sells crafting items.
• Fixed: Mass Detonate achievement description is wrong.
• Fixed: Level 13 region non-story mission crash.
• Fixed: Nemezium Plating sprite.
• Fixed: Relic limit boost exploit.
• Fixed: Retrieval mission + The Rain of Fire problem.
• Fixed: Siege cannon ammo is not picked up when behind player's ship.
• Fixed: "Unbreakable" achievement doesn't work with apex and the Machines.
• Fixed: You can use alloy container during dialogues and cutscenes.
• Fixed: Average difficulty in Broken Infinity is not saved.
• Fixed: Cathode stacks disappear when using cathodes in vendor interface.
• Fixed: Black Rain shards hit the player with full weapon damage during shield duration end animation.
• Fixed: Mission II sequence break glitch.
• Fixed: Malasmar's damage zones deal no damage.
• Fixed: Risk For Reward + loot box graphical glitch.
• Fixed: Several grammar and spelling errors.
• Fixed: Crash occurs in Broken Infinity after failing a mission.
• Fixed: You can get negative loot quality during time attack missions.

• It's now possible to choose Chinese and German languages - the game isn't fully translated to these languages, this is just for testing purposes.
• Make some changes to the code for localization features, such as different fonts for different languages.
• Now you can use the controller to select the language in language select screen.

2018 was a difficult year for me, but it was another year of growth, especially the second half of it. I got flu two times, went to hackathon which was an unpleasant experience, I worked more than ever this year and had a hard time after Sector Six was released - glitches, stress, constant inner conflicts. But this was also the year when I got close to my goal of living from making games - thanks to Sector Six's success in December. I also did some of my best work during this year - I think I'm most proud of relics, the Machines, mission 11, and Broken Infinity. I'm better now - more experienced, more confident - than I was before 2018 and I'm happy about that. My plans for 2019: In early 2019, possibly January, I'll release Sector Six update, that will add things that it currently really misses - better vendors, better highlighting, and brutally difficult challenge for top players to push themselves. After that update, I might be doing a balance update to trim the absurd power levels, if that proves to be necessary. I'll also try to repeat December's success and if I'll succeed - maybe I'll make another big update. If not - I'll just a make a few small updates, mostly support ones to fix glitches and implement small quality of life improvements. 2019 is meant to be a year for Light of the Locked World, my ambitious RPG project. Once Sector Six's update is out of the way, I'll be working on Light - that's how I ended up calling it for short. The promised alpha demo will probably not come out in January. After I'll release Light's alpha demo, I'll keep making updates to, just like I did during Sector Six alpha/beta. So, to summarize, in 2019 I'll release the alpha demo for Light of the Locked World, then I'll update it, at the same time working on small updates for Sector Six. I hope this year will be great. Until next time!

Today Sector Six got its 100th review! Thank you all for complaints, suggestions, compliments - it's very helpful and inspiring. I'll keep developing the game as much as I can =] Currently working on reward relics for the new endgame activity, later going to finish up the activity itself and start working small feedback-based improvements. After that the update will ready for release I guess. So until then!

Recent discounts have increased player count by a lot of and I've got a lot of feedback. Because all of that, I decided to do one more big update - with so many sales and positive reviews, I think Sector Six earned it =] The development of this update has begun with proper sell all/dismantle all/uninstall all button confirmations. This should prevent accidental selling/dismantling of valuable items, and is possibly faster than previous system - no need to wait for "Cancel" time to run out.
The next thing I did was a vendor rework. Clicking on a secured region instantly opens vendor interface, and the interface was merged with spaceship building interface - now it's possible to dismantle/install/uninstall/compare parts and alloy containers while trading.
The other change is that now it's not possible to visit the same vendor again until you complete a mission. This was done because it would very easy to connect and disconnect to vendors to generate new stock for free - and the game needs that unit sink. Also, it makes having multiple secured regions with the same vendor type useful.
Overall, I think it's a large improvement to the whole trading experience, and I can't wait to release it. Now I will be working on a new endgame activity - Absolute Deterioration. The feedback I got about this, suggests that players who make it to max level are so powerful, that no current content is challenging to them. Absolute Deterioration will change that. This endgame activity will have players to do an endless mission, in which enemies keep getting stronger. The current plan is to make enemies spawn every time there's no more of them left. E.g.: You destroy heavy and veteran spawn in its place immediately - there are no pauses, combat is constant. After you destroy a certain amount of enemy groups, a new wave begins and enemy power increases. E.g.:

• Wave 1 - Enemy armor and damage is multiplied by 2
• Wave 2 - Enemy armor and damage is multiplied by 3
• Wave 3 - Enemy armor and damage is multiplied by 4.5
• Wave 4 - Enemy armor and damage is multiplied by 6.7
• Wave 5 - Enemy armor and damage is multiplied by 10.1
• ...

• Waves survived: 1 - 2% relic chance
• Waves survived: 2 - 3% relic chance
• Waves survived: 3 - 5% relic chance
• Waves survived: 4 - 7% relic chance
• Waves survived: 5 - 11% relic chance
• Waves survived: 6 - 17% relic chance
• Waves survived: 7 - 25% relic chance
• ...

• Add language select button controller support.
• Make Flurry and Unload abilities benefit from Rapid Fire Mode ability.
• Extend highlight options.
• Add an option to "favorite" parts, making them impossible to sell.
• Reduce the time it takes to fail the mission.
• Reduce the time it takes to resurrect during resurrection missions.
• Speed up evolving.
• Make highlighting easier to use.
• Allow inverting LS with DPAD.
• Allow mouse binding for ability slots 1 and 2.

The biggest update since the release! It makes all weapons useful, adds new relics and enemies for more variety, improves time attack missions, and more! New enemy: Planar Planar is an alternative version of sentinel. It's a medium - threat level 2 - enemy. Currently, it's the only enemy that releases projectiles from the left of the player ship. Like a sentinel, planar uses a shield but activates it earlier. Planars can be encountered in regions 20, 23, 27, 29, Broken Infinity, and arena missions. New enemy: Launcher Launcher attacks player by launching missiles, that fall on the player from the top of the screen. The launcher is another medium, threat level 2 enemy, it also uses a shield. I want to increase the number of shielded enemies to keep shield removal abilities relevant - weapon rework adds two attacks that ignore shields. It's why I changed Breach ability as well. Launchers can be encountered in regions 10, 12, 14, 17, 20, 22, 25, 28, Broken Infinity, and arena missions. New enemy: Wasp Wasp is a threat level 0 enemy, comparable to swarmling. Unlike swarmlings, wasps have high damage for a threat level 0 enemy. Wasp's only attack ability is telegraphed, giving you more than enough time to move out of the way of attack. Wasps can be encountered in regions 7, 9, 12, 16, 22, 24, 28, and Broken Infinity. New relics: Weapon rework removes ether efficiency and cooling rate, making it impossible to change ability ether costs and cooldowns by installing nodes and pylons. Instead, I have added new relics that have those effects. I have also added two relics that are not related to weapon rework, but also expand the possibilities. As usual, new relics come with unique animations. Suun's Loom, Atomic Library: This relic halves ability ether costs and maximum armor, which is a small price to pay for cheaper abilities. Zero Spire, Coolant Injector: This relic halves ability cooldowns and doubles ability ether costs. It's supposed to synergize with Suun's Loom, Atomic Library. Zero Spire, Coolant Injector is a less extreme version of Tempoquake, Cryostasis. Tempoquake, Cryostasis: Tempoquake, Cryostasis reduces ability cooldowns and weapon damage by 90%. This game-changing relic makes some of the faster damage abilities as fast as attack abilities. Combined with Zero Spire, Coolant Injector, it can reduce ability cooldowns by insane 95%. Still, its downside is massive and might require ridiculous amounts of weapon damage or ether generation to be useable. House of Hate, Isotope Equalizer: House of Hate, Isotope Equalizer might be the most powerful relic of the six added with this update. It doubles weapon damage, ability ether costs, and ability cooldowns. Because ability ether cost and cooldown modifiers do not affect attack, shield, and shield removal abilities, House of Hate gives you more than it takes away. Crippled Vault, Broken Reality: This incredible relic increases the part limit by 10 and reduces core attributes - maximum armor, maximum ether, and weapon damage - by 25%. It also doesn't increase the weapon limit. Surge Accelerator, Exothermic Focus: It's a simple, but useful relic - it generates ether amount equal to 5% of maximum ether when an enemy is destroyed. Weapon rework:

• Attack abilities now release projectiles from all weapons.
• Projectiles released are based on weapons and attacks that released them.
• All weapons now have base weapon damage.
• Weapons now have more skins - they are unlocked every 10 levels until level 80.
• You can no longer use weapon damage amplifiers on sections and engines.
• Removed cooling rate and ether efficiency properties.
• Missile Strike ability has been renamed to Strike.
• Concentrated Fire ability has been renamed to Flurry.
• Spread Mines ability has been renamed to Unload.

• Time attack missions now support all modular difficulty system modifiers except The Decision and Hivind's Army.
• Different regions now spawn different minions for time attack missions.
• Instead of scaling reward, now you get +150% loot quality in the beginning of the mission, that decreases by 1% every second.
• Time attack missions now give standard rewards.

• Mythical parts now cost about 2 times more than fractal parts.
• Etalons now cost about 3 times more than fractal parts.
• Reduced amount of alloy received from dismantling mythical parts and etalons.
• Compressed parts no longer have higher prices than normal parts.
• Oesa's Radiance set effect nerfed: Now ether amount required to get a damage boost starts at 10 and increases by 10% every level.
• Etherion's Clash set effect nerfed: It only increases weapon damage by 120%, because installing different weapons no longer has a downside.
• You can now extract engine skins with cathodes.
• Changed how skins work: Engine skins can only be applied to engines, weapon skins - to weapons, and section skins - to sections.
• You can no longer use skins on installed parts.
• Added etalon engine.
• Slightly increased spaceship speed and acceleration.
• You can now check experience in spaceship building interface by going to spaceship stat page 5.
• Trism of Glory now increases weapon damage instead of cooling rate.
• Changed base ether cost of Piercing Laser ability to 5 and base cooldown to 45.
• Dropped parts are now picked up automatically if they are behind player's ship.

• Fixed: Game does not appear on the taskbar.
• Fixed: Mission 12 "Start mission" button in new game+ takes the player to a non-existent region.
• Fixed: Apex's lasers do not disappear when the apex is destroyed.
• Fixed: Black Rain ability effect remains active during story cutscenes.
• Fixed: Story spoiler: Broken Infinity level during mission 14 is wrong in the new game+.
• Fixed: Story spoiler: Mission 12 regions remain to be destroyed after the story is completed.
• Fixed: Achievement spoiler: Life rune spawns in Etender, Labyrinth, instead of Bloom.
• Fixed: Pyramids never appear in Broken Infinity.
• Fixed: Relic animation graphical glitch in start interface.
• Fixed: Relic level can go above level cap.
• Fixed: Volume bars doesn't work with a controller.
• Potentially fixed: Linux + language select problem.

I have started working on a new game! It's called Light of the Locked World. It's a fantasy RPG with local co-op and PvP, set in a world of Caios II. Three hundred years from the game's present, magical artifacts were sunken in the world's only sea. Magic leaking from artifacts and pressure of the depth created perfect conditions for abyst crystals to grow. Abysts amplify magic and are very valuable. After abysts were discovered, miners and all kinds of opportunists have rushed to Caios II. Abysts have a dangerous property - if there is a large quantity of them in one place, they cause anomaly called the Glow - abysts start glowing and all sentient beings close to them permanently lose sanity. This and the fact that abysts can be used to create very powerful weapons forced the Council of Lords to send contraptions known as worldlocks to Caios II. Worldlocks disrupt teleportation spells, making it impossible to enter or leave Caios II, keeping the abysts isolated from the rest of the worlds. Three hundred years from all that player characters arrive at Caios II. It's a wild, vivid world, full of dangers, ravaged by wars, and tainted by occurrences of the Glow. The game will not have a main story quest chain, instead, it will have several independent chains. Complete all quests to win the game. You won't have to read much - there won't be many dialogues. The meat of the game will be exploration and combat. Combat will be real-time and position based: The way you attack will be based on what tile you will stand on. There will be three types of tiles: The ones next to solid objects will be called "Limited", the ones next to enemies - "Melee", and the ones that are neither - "Open". You will be expected to move between different tiles and use abilities to deal with constantly changing situations, all while dodging enemy attacks. Weapons will determine which abilities you will have. You'll get weapons and other equipment by completing quests, from enemy drops, trading, crafting, and exploring. You will be able to fully equip your character and equipment will change your appearance. There will be several cities in the game - in them you will get most quests, craft, buy, and sell items, but the rest of the game will take place outside cities, in uncivilized, poorly mapped lands. In them, you will find enemy encounters, loot, secrets, and many other things. Your character will start with nothing, it will be bad at everything, but it will learn and become strong. Doing activities will make you better at them, and will increase the level of roles. For example, fighting with magic will increase the level of Mage role, and crafting items will increase the level of Materialist role. The current plan is to have 9 roles: Warrior, Archer, Mage, Survivor, Materialist, Gatherer, Alchemist, Explorer, and Merchant. You will be able to invite a friend to play with you, against you, or anything in between. No content will be exclusive to co-op, it will be possible to fully complete the game playing solo. I want to complete this game in a year, but it might require more time, as it is quite ambitious. So that's pretty much it. Keep in mind that this is my current vision of the game - things will probably change. More things will become clear when an alpha demo will be available, which should happen in early 2019. As for Sector Six, I won't abandon it, but as I will be focusing on Light of the Locked World, the updates will become less frequent and smaller. Still, I'll keep fixing glitches and adding new content. The next Sector Six update is planned for early December. Anyway, I'll be tweeting about Light of the Locked World regularly on Twitter, and posting entries to its development blog on my website. That's primary places to keep in touch with the game's development. You can also join my Discord server. Invite link >> I hope all of this sound good, until next time! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1573213477

Hey all, Because of large reworks and old save file deletions, I said I would add Sector Six 0.9.5 legacy version. Now that the whole save system mess seems to be over - haven't heard about corruptions or anything like that since last save system fix, it would be the time to make a legacy version available. Question is, does anyone want it? If you want it, please tell me so. As a reminder, Sector 0.9.5 is a version with an incomplete story, no relics, no endgame content, old save system - you would be able to play with ships you built during Early Access if you kept the save files, and old XP/weapon/ability/class/part systems. PS.: Still working on weapon rework, not much left now. Today I'll add last of the planned new relics and start working on time attack mission changes + new enemies.

I've been working on another weapon rework for a while now. The first weapon rework made pylons and nodes reduce ability cooldowns and ether costs. It was a good idea on paper, but because pylons and nodes don't affect attack abilities, relays were much more useful than pylons and nodes. So I have decided to have another rework to make pylons and nodes useful. Another goal is to increase attack variety. Second weapon rework makes all weapons increase weapon damage, and work differently with different abilities. For example, Missile Strike will release missiles from relays, shards from pylons, and AoE waves from nodes. Same is with other attack abilities, so in total there will be 9 different attacks, 3 for each weapon type per attack ability. As I'm writing this echo, I have already made 8 attacks, only one to go! So that's part 1 of the second weapon rework. Part 2 is to re-implement ability cost modifying effects to the game. Right now the plan is to add relics with these effects: === House of Hate, Isotope Equalizer: Triples weapon damage Doubles ability ether costs Doubles ability cooldowns === Atomic Library And Muon Loom: Reduces ability ether costs by 90% Reduces weapon damage by 90% === Tempoquake, Cryoflash: Reduces ability cooldowns by 90% Reduces weapon damage by 90% === Zero Spire, Coolant Injector: Doubles ability ether costs Halves ability cooldowns === The Pendulum: Halves ether generation Reduces ability ether costs by 25% === Part 3 is giving abilities weapon synergies. For example, installing relays will increase the chance of Shards of Chaos ability releasing 10 shards instead of 5. Most of the abilities should have some sort of weapon synergy effects. It's a lot of work to come up and implement these effects, so I will be adding them gradually. Attack ability changes and new relics should come out with the next update. The next update should be released this month. Aside from weapon rework, the update will include new enemies and time attack mission rework. Hope this sounds good. Until next time! PS.: You can now help translate Sector Six to your language >> https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1563321679 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1558959075

Now you can help to translate Sector Six to your language! Get started: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1555466753 If you have any questions, need more help, or anything, go to this discussion: Link >> In other news: I'm working on weapon rework! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1558959075

Changes:

• Mission page is now saved.
• Changed initial player name to "Aos".
• Removed "Gain XP" toggle, because it's not needed anymore.

• Fixed: Amplifier Well, Upgrade Sockets relic crash the game.
• Fixed: Damage from colliding with minions is not calculated properly.
• Fixed: Pyramids have wrong names and threat levels in arena missions.
• Fixed: The Core changes after you fail the mission.
• Fixed: Vendor hint bug.
• Fixed: Potential issue with True Champion achievement.

The new relic - Amplifier Well, Upgrade Sockets - crash the game. Not instantly, but after you save and press "Start" on the main menu - so avoid installing this relic. If you already have Amplifier Well installed and saved in your save file, you have two options: 1) Wait for the update. 2) Erase save files with Amplifier Well, Upgrade Sockets. To do that, run Sector Six, then go to C:\Users\\AppData\Local\SectorSix, find the folder that contains your save files, and delete them, then close the game and start it again.
It should look something like this Note: If you want to keep backup copies of your save files, don't keep them in SectorSix folder. I'm very sorry!

Changes:

• Changed reliquary item drops: Triodes are now as rare as diodes, no relic fragments.
• Shortened relic fragment description.

• Fixed: Version 1.0.2 save files cause a crash.
• Fixed: Anodes generate a different level part.
• Fixed: Minor number formatting bug.

While fixing version 1.0.3 save system problems, I have made a mistake and save files created in version 1.0.2 crash the game. You have two options: 1) Wait for the update. 2) Erase version 1.0.2 save files. To do that, run Sector Six, then go to C:\Users\\AppData\Local\SectorSix, find the folder that contains your save files, and delete them, then close the game and start it again.
It should look something like this Note: If you want to keep backup copies of your save files, don't keep them in SectorSix folder. To find out if you have version 1.0.2 files, simply run the game, press "Start", and if doesn't crash, you can play.

Save system status: This update should fix the last problem with the save system, hopefully, save files will no longer get corrupted. If you're still having problems - report them immediately. I also recommend backing up save files just in case - don't forget that Sector Six save file folders get synced and backups get erased in they are stored there. New content:

• Added new minion: Pyramid.
• Added new relic: Incarnation of Impossibility, Trapped Phasar.
• Added new relic: Amplifier Well, Upgrade Sockets.
• Added new relic: Duality of Transience, Etherion's Catalyst.
• Added new relic: Mark of Defender, Hero's Exempt.
• Added new relic: Strengthsource, Tridenkorian Flagship Systems.

• Removed region XP bonus.
• Enemies now give 200% more XP.
• Boss enemies now give less XP, but with global 200% increase it should still be right.
• Reduced region XP rewards back to 50%/100%/200%.
• Players will no longer gain XP after failing mission.
• Players will no longer gain XP in lower level regions.

• Reduced mythical part and etalon prices.
• Removed generic and optimized part vendors.
• Removed some of the advanced part vendors.
• Replaced removed vendors with fractal part vendors in regions 2, 6, 9, 15, 17, 20 and 29.
• Replaced removed vendors with part vendors in regions 2, 8, 15, 18, 20 and 25.

• Reworked Guardian of a Thousand Worlds ability.
• Reworked Breach ability: Now deals weapon damage whenever enemy shield is removed.
• Searing Beam now unlocks at spaceship level 18.
• Entropic Missile now unlocks at spaceship level 4.
• Spread Mines and Detonate now unlocks at spaceship level 12.
• Attract Mines now unlocks at spaceship level 13.
• Creation of Energy now unlocks at spaceship level 22.
• Concentrated Fire now unlocks at spaceship level 6.
• Phase Recognition System now unlocks at spaceship level 11.
• Entropic Fracture ability has been renamed to Dimensional Fracture.
• Unstable Shield ability has been renamed to Heat Shield.
• Entropic Missile cooldown has been increased to 10 seconds.
• Entropic Missile ability has been renamed to Nuke.
• Capacity ability has been renamed to System Capacity.
• Resistance ability has been renamed to Defense And Retaliation.
• Moved Rapid Fire Mode animation.
• Made minor improvements to Assemble Obelisk ability.
• Player bladed mines now pierce destructible minion segments.

• "Phase threshold" changed to "Phase charge speed".
• "Phase intensity" changed to "Phase damage".

• Optimized parts now have two properties, but can no longer be upgraded with amplifiers.
• Dropped parts can no longer have cooling rate and ether efficiency.
• Changed part upgrade chance: Creates pop-up, upgraded instantly.
• Instead of "Warning: Difficult mission" game now shows recommended spaceship armor and damage for that mission.
• Waves now affect all minions on screen - minions outside the screen are not affected.
• Changed what minions spawn in regions to reduce repetition.
• Effect timers no longer stop while spaceship is in a dust cloud.
• Improved Asylomandrenlysk's animation.
• Improved mission 1 artifact carrier collisions with the player.
• Reduced the number of missions required to fully clear regions. Note: Changes will be visible in new saves only.
• "Press any key" now applies to the mouse in a first game screen.
• Base phase damage has been increased from 0% to 100%

• Fixed: Physical part boost calculation mistake - works with virtual parts as well.
• Fixed: Damaging wave damage calculation mistake.
• Fixed: It's possible to break story mission 1.
• Fixed: Mission 3 database collision bug.
• Fixed: Bulwark pulls problem.
• Fixed: Oesa's Radiance set effect is not changing maximum armor correctly.
• Fixed: Overload ability cannot reduce spaceship's armor to 0.
• Fixed: Phase delay timer graphical issue.
• Fixed: Cathode region reward.
• Fixed: Players can receive level 91+ items.
• Fixed: Vendor hint is visible after the player gets advanced access, not before.

For a while now Sector Six had a bad gameplay loop. This is how I think it works: 1) Level 1 player plays at level 1 region and reaches level 2. 2) Player sees "Warning: Difficult mission" on level 2 region missions because often player's spaceship has level 1 items. 3) Player decides to stay at level 1 region to get better items and to clear the region. Because it's a lower level region, the player gets XP slowly. 5) After completing numerous missions in level 1, the player reaches level 3 and moves to level 2 region. 6) But level 2 is now a lower level region, and the player continues getting XP the slower way. Region 3 missions still have that "Warning: Difficult mission message", because the player was playing in level 1 region and can only have level 2 parts. 7) At this point players only have two choices: Play in level 3 region that is difficult and slow because enemies are strong or play in level 2 region which is easy, but leveling up takes a very long time because enemies don't give much XP. The only way to get out of bad gameplay loop is to play those difficult level 3 missions, until the ship is good enough for them and move to level 4 region as soon level 4 is reached. The other choice can make the player always stay in lower level regions, always out of range of good experience. Probably there are more reasons to why that happens, such as mistakes in spaceship building, the high rarity of weapon damage parts, players just wanting to clear the regions, etc. In the end, it all combines into a hellish mixture of mechanics that makes game slow and boring. I intended for players to always stay in their level regions - that's where the game is most fun. Changes to combat the bad gameplay loop: 1) Change "Warning: Difficult mission" message For example - "Recommended maximum armor for this mission: 4000 | Your ship has 3800". 2) No longer give XP to players after they fail the mission. 3) No longer give XP to players in lower level regions. This would allow players to play at their own pace - it's probably the most important change. 4) Reduce the number of mission completions needed to clear the region. For players who like to clear regions, this makes the game slower than I intended. 5) Remove pylons and nodes from drops until they are reworked to be useful again. Pylons and nodes would still be obtainable from vendors. 6) Make generic parts better. I think this would make the game more fun overall. 7) Remove region level XP bonus and instead double the amount of XP minions give. Right now I'm implementing these changes and also trying to fix the save file corruption problem. Patch is coming soon.

Important: Backup your save files before loading – the save system have been changed, there could be errors. Changes and fixes:

• Fixed: Game still mentions decompression modules.
• Fixed: It's not possible to receive instance clearing rewards.
• Fixed: Minor save issue.
• Fixed: Restoration War: Starts at Deep Path even if it's secured.
• Fixed: Restoration War: [spoiler]It's not possible to secure regions destroyed during mission 12.[/spoiler]
• Fixed: [spoiler]The Machines have less than 9 armor extensions in the endgame.[/spoiler]
• Fixed: Mission 12 and Restoration War dialogue glitches.
• Fixed: [spoiler]The Machines are repeating their mission 14 dialogues.[/spoiler]
• Fixed: Item highlight hides spaceship during the mission.
• Fixed: Shield abilities are not sharing cooldowns properly.
• Fixed: Siege cannon collisions with the player
• Fixed: Mission 1 carrier collisions with the player.
• Fixed: Siege mission controller problem.
• Fixed: Save files only work on the device that created it.
• Fixed: Map legend clashes with instance information.
• Fixed: Damage animation of the Machines is off.
• Fixed: Concentrated Fire counter goes into negative.
• Fixed: Apex's lasers disappear, when they collide with an obelisk.
• Fixed: Wrong restock prices.
• Item highlighting is now off as a default.
• Objective hiding is now off as a default.
• Legionvault and Arcane Arsenal relics now generate parts on all level regions.
• The Core region now works the same as the other regions.
• Improved instance boss mission objective reminder.
• Made scions and other minions with similar AI easier to destroy.
• Sell all button in shops is now locked until the player reaches level 5.
• Rearranged region selection.
• Added shop hint.
• Made advanced access more difficult to enable accidentally.
• Reduced ether costs of Era's End, Guardian of a Thousand Worlds, Awakening of Inner Power, and Piercing Laser abilities.
• Reduced cooldowns of Piercing Laser, Shards of Chaos, and Rapid Fire Mode abilities.

Just fixing the recent problems: Increased the amount of experience gained from mission experience reward. Part upgrade chance and wave chances are now capped at 100%. Fixed: Minor problems with mission experience rewards. Fixed: Compressed nodes are not properly uninstalled. Fixed: Can start a mission in the area destroyed during mission 12. Fixed: Can move away from the Machine during beacon attachment. Fixed: Ether gained by destroying seeker's pylons is not rounded up. Fixed: Map update animation is above map tooltips.

After 3 years of development, 2 years of Early Access, hundreds of changes, fixes, reworks, and additions - Sector Six is finally complete!

Watch the trailer:

For those who don't know what Sector Six is:

For those who know what Sector Six is, but didn't play version 0.9.9:

For those who played version 0.9.9, here's a list of changes:

• Fixed: The apostrophe symbol is missing and a black box is displayed instead.
• Fixed: It's impossible to choose Ourend's black option.
• Fixed: Time Vortex description wording mistake.
• Fixed: Aggression ability mentions "Maximum damage" instead of "Weapon damage".
• Fixed: Shield destroys ruins even while inactive.
• Fixed: Channel ability doesn't have a cooldown.
• Fixed: Impossible to close the mission reward screen after reaching maximum level.
• Fixed: Black Rain deals damage based on cooling rate instead of weapon damage.
• Fixed: Crash caused by getting armor above maximum with armor generation.
• Fixed: It's possible to access missions 11 and above from Sector Five.
• Fixed: Upgrading and uninstalling ability uses the same controller button.
• Made minor changes to Channel ability sounds and particle effects.
• Improved Channel ability level scaling.
• Made minions drop more units.
• Improved main interface and settings page buttons.
• Made beacon stop repairing after a repairing a certain amount of armor.
• Reduced minion shield durations.
• Returned "Gain XP" toggle button.
• Added button to toggle mission objective hiding.
• Made elimination mission objective show remaining minions again.
• Improved killer's seeking missile attack.
• Made new achievements flash when seen.
• Changed Concentrated Fire to need reloading every 50 uses, instead of 25.
• Compressed parts no longer drop: Instead, use compression modules to get them.
• Replaced decompression modules with compression modules.
• Made beacons spawn only in level 6+ regions.
• Made parts give more part upgrade chance and removed "Part upgraded" message.

The future:

Have fun!

Important: Your saves will not be deleted from now on. Version 0.9.9 highlights: Full story The story campaign is finished! Will you stop the Machines? Relics The most powerful parts ever! Each relic comes with unique skin and game-changing effects. Weapon rework Modify your ability ether costs and cooldowns by installing reworked nodes and pylons! Includes new part properties. Ability rework Abilities now unlock with level and they are no longer bound to classes. More possibilities and better progression! Ether rework Ether properties now scale with level! Everything that relates to ether has improved. Loot rework Loot quality is now affected by minion strength and difficulty level! Plus, tons of improvements to all sources of rewards. Compressed part rework Compressed parts are now obtainable from drops and region rewards! Manual compression has been removed to make super compressed - 4 in 1! - parts possible. Endgame: Infinity Instances Fight in forever changing, procedurally generated instances of Broken Infinity! Made for experienced players: Higher chance of rare mission types, harsher failure penalties, and a huge boost to loot quality! Endgame: Restoration War Secure every area in Sector Six to get Ultra Aegis, Ascension Catalyst! Random regions get scaled to your level: Return to low-level regions with a high-level spaceship for the final battle against the Machine minions. And more! Avatar customization, Arcane Arsenal, new save system, improved side missions, evolved modification rework, 70 new achievements... Full list of version 0.9.9 changes >> Sector Six will come out of Early Access on September 7th and I need your help to spot problems - more than ever! I can't guarantee that there are no crashes/balancing issues left, but most of the content should work as intended. Have fun!

About 3 years and 8 months ago, I have started working on Sector Six. And now it's finished. When I started working on Sector Six, I thought that I'll complete it in 3 months. It was supposed to be a small sequel to Sector Seven. I wanted to make it just because I promised I'll have a sequel to Sector Seven. It was 2015 January or February when I have released an alpha version of Sector Six. I didn't expect anything and I was surprised to get positive feedback. It was enough for me to thinking about making Sector Six into a bigger game than I initially planned. I said to myself: "People like this, and I can do much better so why not do it?" So I started working harder. Hundreds of times I decided to rework something because it wasn't as good as I could do, and I'm very glad I did. Sector Six is not perfect, but it is about 10 times better than I imagined it in the beginning. And it is like that because of feedback. Every "Great game, but X could be better" made Sector Six better. I always wanted to be a game developer and make games like Sector Six and I'm incredibly happy and grateful that it happened. I hope that this is not the end of Sector Six. I hope I'll be able to continue working on it and make it even better. Sector Six was finished on 21st August. 22nd August was a bad day - I had problems with a monitor, so I had to spend an entire day fixing them. This day I was testing Sector Six. I have already spent like 8 hours testing the game, and I have only completed half of the story. Tomorrow I hope to finish testing and with luck, Sector Six version 0.9.9 will become available for everyone to play in the weekend. Here's a full list of what changed since the last Sector Six update: Completed:

• New save system.
• Compressed part rework: Parts received from drops, removed manual compression, added super compressed parts.
• Added 70 new achievements.
• Arcane Arsenal: Endgame activity.
• Infinity Instances: Endgame activity.
• Restoration War: Endgame activity.
• Added mission 14.
• The Machines.
• Loot rework: Bigger enemies now drop better parts, difficulty level makes enemies drop better parts.
• Ether rework: Ether properties now scale with level, ability ether costs increase with ability levels.
• Weapon rework: Nodes now reduce ability ether costs and pylons reduce ability cooldowns.
• Ability rework: Abilities now use same damage type and are unlocked as spaceship level increases.
• Added 12 relics.
• Added mission 13.
• Rebalanced ability points: 1 ability point per level.
• Added mission 12.
• Added mission 11.

• Mission 6 boss fights now end earlier.
• Improved controller support.
• Added new particle settings: Now you can tone down particles, instead of turning them off completely.
• Improved optimization: Game will now run better.
• Moved tips to separate interface.
• Added evolving minion tutorial.
• Reworked evolving mechanic: Now minions evolve while attack abilities are not on cooldown.
• It’s no longer possible to use weapon amplifiers on engines.
• It’s no longer possible to sell items that have no value.
• Now it’s possible to use anodes on compressed parts.
• Rearranged achievements in the achievement interface.
• Improved Ionize ability: Now adds extra 2 alloy per ionized enemy, glitch free.
• Awakening of Inner Power ability now supports all mission types.
• You can no longer install alloy containers if their level is higher than your spaceship level.
• Now locked until spaceship level is higher than 4: Difficulty system, set interface, item management, new missions button.
• Improved/replaced certain sound effects.
• Secured region changes: Removed manual compression from secured region interface, added highlight toggle button.
• Improved shield particles, sounds, and animations.
• Shields now destroy ruins.
• Spaceship collisions with certain objects are now better.
• Improved cooldown and effect timer text: Now shows second fractions.
• Improved number conversion.
• Improved damage text.
• Reduced amount of units dropped.
• Improved region rewards: Now includes uncommon and rare rewards, such as five fractal parts, +200% experience, etc.
• Replaced gauntlet missions with new retrieval missions.
• Changed music system: Now tracks in side missions play regardless of area status.
• Changed time vortex: Improved dialogue, can only reset story, made it more accessible.
• Changed contribution system: No longer saved between missions, must be claimed immediately.
• Improved region destruction.
• Expanded dialogue box.
• Improved cathodes.
• Improved loot box: Up to 170 looted items visible, glitch free.
• Updated boss mission.
• Improved arena mission: Better loop, supports The Assault of the Modified and The Rain of Fire modifiers.
• Improved siege mission: New blocks, minor graphical improvements.
• Expanded credits.
• Graphically improved loot.
• Added region select screen and map key.
• Improved mission overview interface.
• Improved mission 1.
• Improved mission 3.
• Improved text input.
• Reworked tutorial.
• Reworked introduction.
• Added avatar customization: Name your character and choose how it looks in dialogues.
• Improved spaceship building interface.
• Reworked Super Shield ability: Shield lasts 8 seconds and increases armor generated on kill while active.
• Fixed inventory leak.
• Adapted backgrounds to screen shaking.
• Improved dialogue avatars.
• Improved settings interface.
• Added button that resets settings to default.
• Added button that resets controls to default.
• Modular difficulty system changes: Flow Stagnation maximum level changed to 1, rebalanced rewards, removed diodes.
• Reworked Creation of Energy and Channel abilities.
• Improved achievement interface.
• Repositioned mission interface.
• Fixed weapon amplifying.
• Improved ability bar.
• Made better ability icons.
• Heavy Shield rework: Now called Power Shield, no longer slows down spaceship.
• Improved ability and effect icons.
• Improved Kithalia’s Blight set penalty
• Improved barrager.
• Toggle XP gain feature has been removed.
• Improved Sector transition cutscene.
• Improved pausing.
• Improved HUD.
• Improved ability level scaling.
• Improved item management and filtering.
• Repositioned item management buttons.
• Stat page improvements.
• Virtual and physical weapon clarification and stats.
• New part properties.
• Improved part names.
• Higher grade parts are now more common.
• Relic dismantling rewards.
• Parts give less damage reduction and reflect chance.
• Parts give fewer wave chances.
• Improved item generator: Now produces more random items.
• Item changes: Changed diode cost, changed certain item sprites, improved item use error messages, improved tooltips.
• Fixed story mission X glitch.
• Reworked phase break mechanic: Gain additional damage after taking a certain amount of damage.
• Channel ability’s ether cost reducing effect now lasts 3 seconds, making Channel much easier to use.
• Cataclysm ability has been replaced with passive anti-shield ability: Breach.
• Renamed Phase to Phasse, to differentiate it from phase mechanic.
• Improved Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity: More powerful, more interesting, and consistent with other abilities.
• Decreased starter part limit to 6.
• Decreased starter maximum ether to 50.
• Starter engine now gives less maximum armor.
• Increased starter ability points to 10.
• While Guardian of a Thousand Worlds ability is active, Concentrated Fire recharges instantly.
• Improved alloy containers: New property, increased sell and buy price, reduced city stock.
• Removed filled alloy containers.
• Corrected W. warning button tooltip.
• Fixed engine glitch.
• Improved missiles that appear when player's spaceship leaves the enemy range.
• Guardian is now more mobile.
• Potentially fixed Black Rain projectile problem.
• Region update flashes are now brighter.
• Veteran's and revenant factory’s ballistic attacks are now slower.
• Improved dialogue system graphics.
• Oesa's Radiance set effect changed, now base maximum armor is equal maximum ether.
• Damage bonuses now are applied to damage while Lodeon's Ultimatum set is active.
• Fixed and improved certain set descriptions.
• Fixed many glitches.

Here are my plans for the end of Early Access, pre-release beta, and post-release updates:
Release preparations Testing, uploading new achievements, etc. Pre-release beta IMPORTANT: Saves will not be erased after pre-release beta. IMPORTANT: In pre-release beta, the game is essentially complete. The beta is just in case, I expect Sector Six to be without any major flaws at this point. During the beta, I'll ask everyone to play the game to find as many problems as possible! There's a lot of new features and it's too much for me to test on my own. During this period I'll also be making a new, final Sector Six trailer and updating the store page. End of Early Access The big release! Post-release During September, I'll be releasing updates to fix glitches and balance things, if needed. After September, I'll either start working on a new game or continue developing Sector Six. This depends on the number of sales. If the game will sell much more copies than it sells now, on average, I'll continue working on Sector Six. I doubt that it will happen, but it's not impossible. If the game will not sell much more than during Early Access, I'll move on to the next game. I'll still update Sector Six annually to add the content that is currently missing. Perfection Project updates If the game will sell enough copies, some or most of this will be implemented: - Full scaling support - Maze mission - Boss craft mission - Boss siege mission - Tomb capture mission - Tomb purge mission - Perfected time attack mission - Perfected arena mission - Two more bosses for boss missions. - Improved armored colony seeker. - Improved mission entering and leaving times. - Massive parts. - Intellect Encryption Template activity. - Lost Regions activity. - Level 30-90 content. - Full background overhaul. - New modes. - New enemies and ruins. - 100+ relics. Minimum Project updates Otherwise, only this will be implemented: - Tomb capture mission - Tomb purge mission - Perfected time attack mission - Perfected arena mission - Two more bosses for boss missions. - Improved armored colony seeker. - Improved mission entering and leaving times. - 30+ relics. IMPORTANT: Everything between minimum and perfection is possible =] Like always, I will do everything based on feedback and analysis, so these lists will probably change. Prepare for the beta!

Sector Six endgame content batch 1 is done! I have added three endgame activities: Infinity Instances Complete areas in procedurally generated regions that are in Broken Infinity to gain loot quality bonus. Includes instance boss missions and increased chance of spawning uncommon mission types. Restoration War In the endgame, random regions get scaled to your level, so you can complete missions in low-level regions and secure areas you haven't secured yet. Securing all 144 areas in Sector Six will reward you with a very powerful relic. Arcane Arsenal Obtain all relics in the game to get a special relic that will appear in all your saves. If there will be a demand for more content, I'll add more endgame activities. Now I will be working on new achievements, the new save system, a few minor things and... Well, that is all! The new ETA is 13 days. I have added extra few days to ETA just in case =] Normally I'd put task list and screenshots here, but that takes a lot of time and soon it will be possible to experience changes directly, so I won't bother this time =] I am going to make another post about my plans for the future of Sector Six, pre-release beta, and out of Early Access release, so until then! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1471820178 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1471820169

Sector Six story is completed! I admit that I wanted too much from it. 14 different missions, 8 bosses, choices, all those dialogues - it was too much for me to do it flawlessly. But the most important thing for me was to make a story campaign that is more than just... More than just a bunch of "go there" goals so that player would know what to do. So I think I have accomplished that and I'm happy. Other cool things that I did: The story is now literally bigger because I increased dialogue font size! Loot box now shows up to 170 items! I have updated boss missions to use all minions, instead of just scions, sentinels, and gatherers. It also supports Manifestations of Destruction and doesn't support The Decision modifiers now, so it's, well, better. I have added more bulwark blocks for siege missions, now there are explosive blocks that destroy blocks diagonally when hit and blocks that contain loot! Finally, the arena missions have been improved significantly. Now they support The Assault of the Modified and The Rain of Fire modifiers, and you no longer need to keep going back to summon new minions. And now I'm going to work on endgame content! The current plan is to make the procedurally generated region with objectives and rising loot quality, war to secure all areas, new mission type, and more relics! The new estimated time of arrival for Sector Six is 24 days: Completed:

• Mission XIV.
• The Machines.
• Loot rework: Bigger enemies now drop better parts, difficulty level makes enemies drop better parts.
• Ether rework: Ether properties now scale with level, ability ether costs increase with ability levels.
• Weapon rework: Nodes now reduce ability ether costs and pylons reduce ability cooldowns.
• Ability rework: Abilities now use same damage type and are unlocked as spaceship level increases.
• Relics.
• Mission XIII.
• Rebalanced ability points: 1 ability point per level.
• Mission XII.
• Mission XI.

• Broken Infinity endgame activity.
• Restoration War endgame activity.
• New save system.
• New achievements.
• Compressed part rework.

• Expanded dialogue box.
• Improved cathodes.
• Improved loot box: Up to 170 looted items visible, glitch free.
• Updated boss mission.
• Improved arena mission: Better loop, supports The Assault of the Modified and The Rain of Fire modifiers.
• Improved siege mission: New blocks, minor graphical improvements.
• Expanded credits.
• Graphically improved loot.
• Added region select screen and map key.
• Improved mission overview interface.
• Improved mission I.
• Improved mission III.
• Improved text input.
• Reworked tutorial.
• Reworked introduction.
• Added avatar customization: Name your character and choose how it looks in dialogues.
• Improved spaceship building interface.
• Reworked Super Shield ability: Shield lasts 8 seconds and increases armor generated on kill while active.
• Fixed inventory leak.
• Adapted backgrounds to screen shaking.
• Improved dialogue avatars.
• Improved settings interface.
• Added button that resets settings to default.
• Added button that resets controls to default.
• Modular difficulty system changes: Flow Stagnation maximum level changed to 1, rebalanced rewards, removed diodes.
• Reworked Creation of Energy and Channel abilities.
• Improved achievement interface.
• Repositioned mission interface.
• Fixed weapon amplifying.
• Improved ability bar.
• Made better ability icons.
• Heavy Shield rework: Now called Power Shield, no longer slows down spaceship.
• Improved ability and effect icons.
• Improved Kithalia’s Blight set penalty
• Improved barrager.
• Toggle XP gain feature has been removed.
• Improved Sector transition cutscene.
• Improved pausing.
• Improved HUD.
• Improved ability level scaling.
• Improved item management and filtering.
• Repositioned item management buttons.
• Stat page improvements.
• Virtual and physical weapon clarification and stats.
• New part properties.
• Improved part names.
• Higher grade parts are now more common.
• Relic dismantling rewards.
• Parts give less damage reduction and reflect chance.
• Parts give fewer wave chances.
• Improved item generator: Now produces more random items.
• Item changes: Changed diode cost, changed certain item sprites, improved item use error messages, improved tooltips.
• Fixed story mission X glitch.
• Reworked phase break mechanic: Gain additional damage after taking a certain amount of damage.
• Channel ability’s ether cost reducing effect now lasts 3 seconds, making Channel much easier to use.
• Cataclysm ability has been replaced with passive anti-shield ability: Breach.
• Renamed Phase to Phasse, to differentiate it from phase mechanic.
• Improved Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity: More powerful, more interesting, and consistent with other abilities.
• Decreased starter part limit to 6.
• Decreased starter maximum ether to 50.
• Starter engine now gives less maximum armor.
• Increased starter ability points to 10.
• While Guardian of a Thousand Worlds ability is active, Concentrated Fire recharges instantly.
• Improved alloy containers: New property, increased sell and buy price, reduced city stock.
• Removed filled alloy containers.
• Corrected W. warning button tooltip.
• Fixed engine glitch.
• Improved missiles that appear when player's spaceship leaves the enemy range.
• Guardian is now more mobile.
• Potentially fixed Black Rain projectile problem.
• Region update flashes are now brighter.
• Veteran's and revenant factory’s ballistic attacks are now slower.
• Improved dialogue system graphics.
• Oesa's Radiance set effect changed, now base maximum armor is equal maximum ether.
• Damage bonuses now are applied to damage while Lodeon's Ultimatum set is active.
• Fixed and improved certain set descriptions.

• Rework certain achievements.
• Rearrange achievements in the achievement interface.
• Lock advanced features if the player level is lower than 5.
• Holding shift button to dismantle and sell just one item from the stack.
• Improve Techamer's cell.
• Improve shield particles and animations.
• Intro logo skipping inconsistency.
• Make Awakening of Inner Power support all missions.
• Improve damage text.
• Improve controller support.
• Optimize.
• Improve secured regions.
• Rework evolving mechanic.
• Replace gauntlet missions.
• Improve collision system.
• Add help pages.
• Improve background system.

• 24 days.

• 80% of the tasks completed.
• I’ll post again when the percentage will reach 90%.

Hi all, I've been thinking about how to make compressed parts easier to get and make it possible to have super compressed parts. I have an idea to remove the option to manually make compressed parts and instead make them drop from enemies. Currently to get compressed parts you need to first get parts you want to compress, then go to the shop, then go to compress mode, then press X on the parts you want to compress and for 5 alloy they will be compressed. It's overly complicated and causes a lot of problems: 1) It's a lot easier to build big ships than small ones - so players who like smaller hitbox for dodging projectiles are disadvantaged, which is not fair. 2) It costs alloy and currently, it's not possible to dismantle parts in shops, so players get punished for forgetting to bring alloy. 3) The whole compression system lacks tutorial. It means that new players have no idea about compression system and when they find out that it exists, they don't know how it works. 4) Manual compression creates very strange parts! For example, if the player selects generic part first when compressing it with a fractal part, the game will create a compressed generic part. Confusing, inconsistent, etc. 5) Manual compression allows players to create parts with 16 properties, and parts with 16 properties fill the screen with their giant tooltips! It's the main obstacle to making "super compressed" parts, which would allow players to create parts with 32 properties! I could make improvements to this system - allow players to dismantle parts in shops, add a tutorial for compressing, improve compression interface, rework tooltip system to allow parts with two grades - a lot of work. The other solution is to make compressed parts appear with the normal parts. How would that work? Instead of putting stats of two parts into one part, the game will use the item generator to create compressed parts as they are dropped by enemies. First, the generator will create a normal, not compressed part. Then, there will be a 50% chance to turn that part into a compressed part. If the generator will choose to create a compressed part, the stats of the base part will be multiplied by 2. E.g.: Relay Level 1 optimized weapon 0 / 1 amplifier slots Uses 1 part slot 100 damage relay Generates 1 ether on kill V Relay Level 1 compressed optimized weapon 0 / 2 amplifier slots Uses 2 part slots 200 damage relay Generates 2 ether on kill V Relay Level 1 super compressed optimized weapon 0 / 4 amplifier slots Uses 4 part slots 400 damage relay Generates 4 ether on kill That's right, if I want to, I can allow the generator to multiply part stats by 4, 5, 6, 32, creating ultra compressed parts, ultimate compressed parts, deluxe parts, deluxe enhanced parts, pro parts, and so on! No limits. Because base part cannot have more than a set amount of properties, having compressed etalon with 16 properties will become impossible and tooltips will be tamed. Plus, I won't need to make a tutorial, the whole compress mode mess in shops would cease to exist, new players could instantly start building small ships, and the variety of parts dropped would increase, so it's great. Obviously, this new system comes with its own problems. 1) Doubled the number of trash parts! If a player wants to build a big spaceship, all the compressed parts player will get from drops will be useless and current plans are to make 50% of parts compressed/super compressed. 2) Players would not be able to make compressed parts manually - goodbye to perfect compressed etalons with +80% damage. 3) The compressed parts would make the game more confusing for new players. With manual compression, new players would only get confused in shops. With all that compression mode mess. And I think that is all. I think that's a small price to pay. Besides, I can implement relic or something that makes only compressed/only normal parts spawn, and don't spawn compressed parts for the new players, so it's just one problem. I would implement it right away if it were just for me, but I admit that I have no clue what crazy things are you guys doing with the compression system, so before I do any changes, I want to hear what you think. In other news: I'm still working on story mission XIV, I'm expecting it to be done within this week. Hopefully, the Release Countdown: 3! is also near.

Since the last time I have posted, I have made a new introduction and tutorial, loot rework, region select screen, another MDS reward rework, character customization, and... And something else probably. The most important of those is, of course, loot rework! It's very simple - making missions more difficult will make enemies drop more and better parts. Additionally, drop quality is now influenced by minion power and whether it is modified or not. For example, modified dreadnought will drop better parts than the normal dreadnought and normal dreadnought will drop better parts than a tank. There are still a lot of random chances involved, so don't expect this to be true all the time. Introduction cutscene has been removed, because it was too long and, well, not that good. Instead of it, there are several dialogue boxes that appear before and after the tutorial. The tutorial has been shortened as well, so it takes a lot less time to get to the real game. Region select screen allows to quickly jump from one region to the other, without using arrow buttons. This is useful to higher level players and it will be even more useful when the Restoration War activity will be added. Finally, now it's possible to create a custom character for dialogues. You can change character's name and dialogue appearance. I'm really happy with the improvements, but not that happy with how fast I've been working. Unfortunately, ETA has not moved forward much. Now it's at 45 days. This is because there were several delays and because loot rework was not included in the previous ETA. Two steps forward, one step back. This weekend I won't be at home, so that's another delay, but when I'm back, I'll be working on the final story mission and the Machines. My current estimate is that it'll take 3 weeks, but if I can do it faster, this will bring the release much closer. Currently, story mission XIV and the Machines are the biggest tasks on the list. Completed:

• Loot rework: Bigger enemies now drop better parts, difficulty level makes enemies drop better parts.
• Ether rework: Ether properties now scale with level, ability ether costs increase with ability levels.
• Weapon rework: Nodes now reduce ability ether costs and pylons reduce ability cooldowns.
• Ability rework: Abilities now use same damage type and are unlocked as spaceship level increases.
• Relics.
• Mission XIII.
• Rebalanced ability points: 1 ability point per level.
• Mission XII.
• Mission XI.

• Mission XIV.
• Broken Infinity endgame activity.
• Restoration War endgame activity.
• Shared stash in Deep Path to transfer items between player characters.
• The Machines.
• New save system.
• 49 new achievements.

• Graphically improved loot.
• Added region select screen and map key.
• Improved mission overview interface.
• Improved mission I.
• Improved mission III.
• Improved text input.
• Reworked tutorial.
• Reworked introduction.
• Added avatar customization: Name your character and choose how it looks in dialogues.
• Improved spaceship building interface.
• Reworked Super Shield ability: Shield lasts 8 seconds and increases armor generated on kill while active.
• Fixed inventory leak.
• Adapted backgrounds to screen shaking.
• Improved dialogue avatars.
• Improved settings interface.
• Added button that resets settings to default.
• Added button that resets controls to default.
• Modular difficulty system changes: Flow Stagnation maximum level changed to 1, rebalanced rewards, removed diodes.
• Reworked Creation of Energy and Channel abilities.
• Improved achievement interface.
• Repositioned mission interface.
• Fixed weapon amplifying.
• Improved ability bar.
• Made better ability icons.
• Heavy Shield rework: Now called Power Shield, no longer slows down spaceship.
• Improved ability and effect icons.
• Improved Kithalia’s Blight set penalty
• Improved barrager.
• Toggle XP gain feature has been removed.
• Improved Sector transition cutscene.
• Improved pausing.
• Improved HUD.
• Improved ability level scaling.
• Improved item management and filtering.
• Repositioned item management buttons.
• Stat page improvements.
• Virtual and physical weapon clarification and stats.
• New part properties.
• Improved part names.
• Higher grade parts are now more common.
• Relic dismantling rewards.
• Parts give less damage reduction and reflect chance.
• Parts give fewer wave chances.
• Improved item generator: Now produces more random items.
• Item changes: Changed diode cost, changed certain item sprites, improved item use error messages, improved tooltips.
• Fixed story mission X glitch.
• Reworked phase break mechanic: Gain additional damage after taking a certain amount of damage.
• Channel ability’s ether cost reducing effect now lasts 3 seconds, making Channel much easier to use.
• Cataclysm ability has been replaced with passive anti-shield ability: Breach.
• Renamed Phase to Phasse, to differentiate it from phase mechanic.
• Improved Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity: More powerful, more interesting, and consistent with other abilities.
• Decreased starter part limit to 6.
• Decreased starter maximum ether to 50.
• Starter engine now gives less maximum armor.
• Increased starter ability points to 10.
• While Guardian of a Thousand Worlds ability is active, Concentrated Fire recharges instantly.
• Improved alloy containers: New property, increased sell and buy price, reduced city stock.
• Removed filled alloy containers.
• Corrected W. warning button tooltip.
• Ability to decrease the level of MDS modifiers even while they are disabled.
• Fixed engine glitch.
• Improved missiles that appear when player's spaceship leaves the enemy range.
• Guardian is now more mobile.
• Potentially fixed Black Rain projectile problem.
• Region update flashes are now brighter.
• Veteran's ballistic attack is now slower.
• Improved dialogue system graphics.
• Oesa's Radiance set effect changed, now base maximum armor is equal maximum ether.
• Damage bonuses now are applied to damage while Lodeon's Ultimatum set is active.
• Fixed and improved certain set descriptions.

• Improve the implemented Machines.
• Rework certain achievements.
• Rearrange achievements in the achievement interface.
• Better default controls.
• Fix stack buying glitch.
• Lock modular difficulty system if the player level is lower than 3.
• Holding shift button to dismantle and sell just one item from the stack.
• Improve Techamer's cell.
• Rework loot box.
• Fix loot box stackable item glitch.
• Improve siege mission.
• Improve arena mission.
• Fix dialogue clash with HUD glitch.
• Expand dialogue box.
• Improve shield particles and animations.
• Intro logo skipping inconsistency.
• Make Awakening of Inner Power support all missions.
• Rework contribution system.
• Improve damage text.
• Cathode rework.
• Improve controller support.
• Optimize.
• Improve secured regions.
• Rework evolving mechanic.
• Replace gauntlet missions.
• Improve collision system.
• Add help pages.

• 45 days.

• 70% of the tasks completed.
• I’ll post again when the percentage will reach 80%.

Since the last time I posted, I have finished weapon and ether reworks! Weapons now modify ability stats and ability ether costs increase with level. These changes have significantly improved quality of loot and variety of possible spaceships. There are three weapon stats now: Weapon damage, cooling rate, and ether efficiency. Relays increase weapon damage, which increases ability damage. Pylons increase cooling rate, which reduces ability cooldowns. Nodes increase ether efficiency, which reduces ability ether costs. It's possible to focus on one weapon stat to make spaceship deal a lot of damage or have low ability ether costs or have low ability cooldowns. Or anything in between! For example, during testing, I have built myself a spaceship that reduced cooldowns of its abilities by 94%! While it dealt very low damage, powerful abilities like Shards of Chaos, Swarm Control, and Entropic Missile had really low cooldowns, so I was able to spam them and it compensated the lack of damage. It was really fun, and I can't wait to see what you guys can do with this new system. As for ether rework, it made each ability point spent increase ether costs of all abilities by 10%. This allowed me to make part ether properties scale with level, so now parts that increase ether are more rewarding than ever! Now I will be working on making tutorial and introduction shorter and better, which should take about a week. After that, I will work on story mission XIV. ETA is back to 50 days, because I have added new things to the list and because there were all those reworks that created a huge delay. Let's hope my calculations will be wrong again, but this time to our favor! Completed:

• Ether rework: Ether properties now scale with level, ability ether costs increase with ability levels.
• Weapon rework: Nodes now reduce ability ether costs and pylons reduce ability cooldowns.
• Ability rework: Abilities now use same damage type and are unlocked as spaceship level increases.
• Relics.
• Mission XIII.
• Rebalanced ability points: 1 ability point per level.
• Mission XII.
• Mission XI.

• Mission XIV.
• Broken Infinity endgame activity.
• Restoration War endgame activity.
• Shared stash in Deep Path to transfer items between player characters.
• The Machines.
• New save system.
• 49 new achievements.

• Fixed inventory leak.
• Adapted backgrounds to screen shaking.
• Improved dialogue avatars.
• Improved settings interface.
• Added button that resets settings to default.
• Added button that resets controls to default.
• Modular difficulty system changes: Flow Stagnation maximum level changed to 1, rebalanced rewards.
• Reworked Creation of Energy and Channel abilities.
• Improved achievement interface.
• Repositioned mission interface.
• Fixed weapon amplifying.
• Improved ability bar.
• Made better ability icons.
• Heavy Shield rework: Now called Power Shield, no longer slows down spaceship.
• Improved ability and effect icons.
• Improved Kithalia’s Blight set penalty
• Improved barrager.
• Toggle XP gain feature has been removed.
• Improved Sector transition cutscene.
• Improved pausing.
• Improved HUD.
• Improved ability level scaling.
• Improved item management and filtering.
• Repositioned item management buttons.
• Stat page improvements.
• Virtual and physical weapon clarification and stats.
• New part properties.
• Improved part names.
• Higher grade parts are now more common.
• Relic dismantling rewards.
• Parts give less damage reduction and reflect chance.
• Parts give less wave chances.
• Improved item generator: Now produces more random items.
• Item changes: Changed diode cost, changed certain item sprites, improved item use error messages, improved tooltips.
• Fixed story mission X glitch.
• Reworked phase break mechanic: Gain additional damage after taking certain amount of damage.
• Channel ability’s ether cost reducing effect now lasts 3 seconds, making Channel much easier to use.
• Cataclysm ability has been replaced with passive anti-shield ability: Breach.
• Renamed Phase to Phasse, to differentiate it from phase mechanic.
• Improved Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity: More powerful, more interesting, and consistent with other abilities.
• Decreased starter part limit to 6.
• Decreased starter maximum ether to 50.
• Starter engine now gives less maximum armor.
• Increased starter ability points to 10.
• While Guardian of a Thousand Worlds ability is active, Concentrated Fire recharges instantly.
• Improved alloy containers: New property, increased sell and buy price, reduced city stock.
• Removed filled alloy containers.
• Corrected W. warning button tooltip.
• Ability to decrease the level of MDS modifiers even while they are disabled.
• Fixed engine glitch.
• Improved missiles that appear when player's spaceship leaves enemy range.
• Guardian is now more mobile.
• Potentially fixed Black Rain projectile problem.
• Region update flashes are now brighter.
• Veteran's ballistic attack is now slower.
• Improved dialogue system graphics.
• Oesa's Radiance set effect changed, now base maximum armor is equal maximum ether.
• Damage bonuses now are applied to damage while Lodeon's Ultimatum set is active.
• Fixed and improved certain set descriptions.

• Sector map interface and map key.
• Improve the implemented Machines.
• Rework certain achievements.
• Rearrange achievements in the achievement interface.
• Level cap changes and game options.
• Side mission dialogues.
• Better default controls.
• Ability to toggle side mission dialogues.
• Fix stack buying glitch.
• Lock modular difficulty system if the player level is lower than 3.
• Holding shift button to dismantle and sell just one item from the stack.
• Looting improvements.
• Improve Techamer's cell.
• Rework loot box.
• Fix loot box stackable item glitch.
• Improve artifact carrier.
• Rework mission III. Again.
• Improve siege mission.
• Improve arena mission.
• Fix dialogue clash with HUD glitch.
• Expand dialogue box.
• Improve shield particles and animations.
• Improve MDS decorative map in mission select screen.
• Fix Lodeon's ship glitch when skipping intro cutscene.
• Intro logo skipping inconsistency.
• Improve mission I.
• Make Awakening of Inner Power support all missions.
• Rework contribution system.
• Improve text input.
• Character customization: Rename character and change avatar icon.
• Improve damage text.
• Cathode rework.
• Improve controller support.
• Rework tutorial and class select.
• Rework introduction.
• Optimize.
• Improve secured region interfaces.

• 50 days.

• 60% of the tasks completed.
• I’ll post again when the percentage will reach 70%.

It's been a week since I made the last post, so here's an update on what I'm working on. Two days ago I have successfully merged classes and made abilities unlock when leveling up. Yesterday I have started working on weapon rework. Since abilities use the same damage type now, all weapons are the same and that is not good. To combat this, I have made weapons reduce ether and cooldown of abilities. I have doubled ether costs and cooldowns of most abilities. Installing right weapons would reduce ether costs and cooldowns to their normal values. It did make weapons more interesting than ever, but it was a little too messy. Just replacing one installed ability with other, would require the player to hunt for a different set of weapons. Plus, it didn't create any interesting decisions. It feels like punishment for not installing right weapons and it's not what I want. So, I am going revert all yesterday's progress and start working on the new idea. The new idea is to make weapons work in a way that allows the player to build three different spaceships. - Powerful spaceships that have higher damage, longer cooldowns, and burn more ether. - Fast spaceships that have shorter cooldowns, lower damage, and burn more ether. - Efficient spaceships that have longer cooldowns, lower damage, but burn less ether. To make it happen, weapons will get two new properties - ability ether cost reduction and ability cooldown reduction. To stop these properties from making abilities too fast or not expensive enough, they will not interact with ability ether costs and cooldowns directly. Instead, the player will need to install a certain amount of weapons to reduce ether costs or cooldowns of abilities by 25%. If requirements are not met, abilities will have base stats or even become 25% more expensive and/or slower. Requirements will rise with the number of parts installed. Basically, there will be three types of weapons and by focusing on one weapon type will allow the player to make spaceship powerful or fast or efficient. What's also good about this system is that it doesn't really end with three spaceship types. It will be possible to build balanced ships that are not bad or good at anything It will also be possible to make spaceship excel at more than one field - maybe even at all three with enough rare, amplified weapons. As for the final Early Access update, I'm still over a month away from releasing it. This rework created a huge delay, but I think that it's worth it because the game will become a lot better. Next week I'm hoping to continue the release countdown, so until then!

In "Sector Six Release Countdown: 6!" I have said that I was considering to do some big changes to Sector Six. Now I have decided to do them, and this is an update on that, as promised. What are the changes? First, spaceship classes are not going to be a thing anymore. All abilities will use the same damage type. Secondly, abilities will be unlocked with level. You'll start with three basic abilities and unlock other abilities on level up until you reach level 30. Finally, because weapon damage is now universal to all abilities, weapons will now reduce cooldown and maybe even ether cost of certain abilities. Why am I doing these changes? Because they will make the game much better both for low-level and high-level players. New players won't have to deal with 36 abilities, weapons will be more interesting, leveling up will be more impactful than ever, there will be more important decisions to make, and so on! What's the catch? The catch is that it will take a week or more to do all those changes so the final Early Access update will be slightly delayed. Hope this sounds good, I will post again when I'll catch up to countdown or when there will be more changes in plans.

Since the last time I posted, I've been working on inventory improvements, mission XIV, ability scaling, new HUD, and other things. Long story short, mission XIV is getting closer to being finished, meanwhile many parts of the game have become easier and better to use. Now I would be directing all my attention to mission XIV, but this week I have received a lot of new feedback and now I have to make a few important decisions. I might choose to do some really big changes to the game, which would delay the release by a month. If that happens, I will make another post explaining the situation. Anyway, to the task list! Completed:

• Relics.
• Mission XIII.
• Rebalanced ability points: +1 ability point per level.
• Mission XII.
• Mission XI.

• Mission XIV.
• Broken Infinity endgame activity.
• Restoration War endgame activity.
• Shared stash in Deep Path to transfer items between player characters.
• The Machines.
• New save system.
• 49 new achievements.

• Improved Kithalia’s Blight set penalty
• Improved barrager.
• Toggle XP gain feature has been removed.
• Improved Sector transition cutscene.
• Improved pausing.
• Improved HUD.
• Improved ability level scaling.
• Improved item management and filtering.
• Repositioned item management buttons.
• Stat page improvements.
• Virtual and physical weapon clarification and stats.
• New part properties.
• Improved part names.
• Higher grade parts are now more common.
• Relic dismantling rewards.
• Parts give less damage reduction and reflect chance.
• Parts give less wave chances.
• Improved item generator: Now produces more random items.
• Item changes: Changed diode cost, changed certain item sprites, improved item use error messages, improved tooltips.
• Fixed story mission X glitch.
• Reworked phase break mechanic: Gain additional damage after taking certain amount of damage.
• Channel ability’s ether cost reducing effect now lasts 3 seconds, making Channel much easier to use.
• Cataclysm ability has been replaced with passive anti-shield ability: Breach.
• Renamed Phase to Phasse, to differentiate it from phase mechanic.
• Improved Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity: More powerful, more interesting, and consistent with other abilities.
• Decreased starter part limit to 6.
• Decreased starter maximum ether to 50.
• Starter engine now gives less maximum armor.
• Increased starter ability points to 10.
• While Guardian of a Thousand Worlds ability is active, Concentrated Fire recharges instantly.
• Improved alloy containers: New property, increased sell and buy price, reduced city stock.
• Removed filled alloy containers.
• Corrected W. warning button tooltip.
• Ability to decrease the level of MDS modifiers even while they are disabled.
• Fixed engine glitch.
• Improved missiles that appear when player's spaceship leaves enemy range.
• Guardian is now more mobile.
• Potentially fixed Black Rain projectile problem.
• Region update flashes are now brighter.
• Veteran's ballistic attack is now slower.
• Improved dialogue system graphics.
• Oesa's Radiance set effect changed, now base maximum armor is equal maximum ether.
• Damage bonuses now are applied to damage while Lodeon's Ultimatum set is active.
• Fixed and improved certain set descriptions.

• Sector map interface and map tutorial.
• Improve the implemented Machines.
• Rework certain achievements.
• Rearrange achievements in the achievement interface.
• Level cap changes and game options.
• Side mission dialogues.
• Better default controls.
• Ability to reset controls to default.
• Ability to reset settings to default.
• Ability to toggle side mission dialogues.
• Settings interface improvements.
• Fix stack buying glitch.
• Reposition mission interface.
• Rework achievement interface.
• Lock modular difficulty system if the player level is lower than 3.
• Connection strength near avatar picture.
• Adapt backgrounds to screen shaking.
• Holding shift button to dismantle and sell just one item from the stack.
• Looting improvements.
• Improve Techamer's cell.
• Rework loot box.
• Fix loot box stackable item glitch.
• Improve artifact carrier.
• Rework mission III. Again.
• Improve siege mission.
• Improve arena mission.
• Fix dialogue clash with HUD glitch.
• Expand dialogue box.
• Improve shield particles and animations.
• Improve MDS decorative map in mission select screen.
• Fix Lodeon's ship glitch when skipping intro cutscene.
• Intro logo skipping inconsistency.
• Improve mission I.
• Make Awakening of Inner Power support all missions.
• Improve ability bar.
• Rework contribution system.
• Improve text input.
• Character customization: Rename character and change avatar icon.
• Improve damage text.
• Cathode rework.
• Improve controller support.
• Improve tutorial and class select.

• 35 days.

• 50% of the tasks completed.
• I'll post again when the percentage will reach 60%.

On this day, 2 years ago, Sector Six was released on Steam and I'm giving away a few keys on SteamGifts and Steam group! Go to group >> Go to SteamGifts >> I would do something bigger for this special day, but I'm really busy preparing the game for the final release. Luckily there will be many more anniversaries and many opportunities to do something cooler =] Happy birthday, Sector Six!

This and previous week, I've been improving Sector Six loot. I have made many changes to random part generation system, made higher grade parts more common, added 22 part properties, gave parts more interesting names, but most importantly – I have implemented relic system and first 7 relics! Relics not only are the rarest and the most powerful items in the game - they also have unique effects, skins, and even animations! I would have made a video about relics, but I didn't have enough time for that, so instead scroll down for screenshots. With relics implemented, now I will work on the last story mission and several small changes. Relic facts:

• After rarity changes, relics are now rarest items in the game, their drop chance is 1 in 500.
• Relics can be sold for 2 relic fragments. 8 relic fragments turn into a relic.
• Relics give reliquary items instead of alloy when dismantled.
• Reliquary items re-roll and transform relics.
• Relics can have up to 7 properties, but cannot be amplified.
• Relics are always level 1 and have properties that are useful no matter what level you are.
• You cannot install more than 3 relics. Yet.
• You cannot install relic duplicates. E.g.: You can't have two Quasar Domes installed.
• 7 relics are implemented, I will implement at least 10 more before game launches

• Relics.
• Mission XIII.
• Rebalanced ability points: +1 ability point per level.
• Mission XII.
• Mission XI.

• New part properties.
• Improved part names.
• Higher grade parts are now more common.
• Relic dismantling rewards.
• Parts give less damage reduction and reflect chance.
• Parts give fewer wave chances.
• Improved item generator: Now produces more random items.
• Item changes: Changed diode cost, changed certain item sprites, improved item use error messages, improved tooltips.
• Fixed story mission X glitch.
• Reworked phase break mechanic: Gain additional damage after taking a certain amount of damage.
• Channel ability’s ether cost reducing effect now lasts 3 seconds, making Channel much easier to use.
• Cataclysm ability has been replaced with passive anti-shield ability: Breach.
• Renamed Phase to Phasse, to differentiate it from phase mechanic.
• Improved Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity: More powerful, interesting, and consistent with other abilities.
• Decreased starter part limit to 6.
• Decreased starter maximum ether to 50.
• Starter engine now gives less maximum armor.
• Increased starter ability points to 10.
• While Guardian of a Thousand Worlds ability is active, Concentrated Fire recharges instantly.
• Improved alloy containers: New property, increased sell and buy price, reduced city stock.
• Removed filled alloy containers.
• Corrected W. warning button tooltip.
• Ability to decrease the level of MDS modifiers even while they are disabled.
• Fixed engine glitch.
• Improved missiles that appear when player's spaceship leaves the enemy range.
• Guardian is now more mobile.
• Potentially fixed Black Rain projectile problem.
• Region update flashes are now brighter.
• Veteran's ballistic attack is now slower.
• Improved dialogue system graphics.
• Oesa's Radiance set effect changed, now base maximum armor is equal maximum ether.
• Damage bonuses now are applied to damage while Lodeon's Ultimatum set is active.
• Fixed and improved certain set descriptions.

• Mission XIV.
• Broken Infinity endgame activity.
• Restoration War endgame activity.
• Shared stash in secured regions.
• The Machines.
• New save system.
• New achievements.

• Sector map interface.
• Improve the implemented Machines.
• Rework certain achievements.
• Rearrange achievements in the achievement interface.
• Level cap changes and game options.
• Side mission dialogues.
• Better default controls.
• Ability to reset controls to default.
• Ability to reset settings to default.
• Ability to toggle side mission dialogues.
• Settings interface improvements.
• Fix stack buying glitch.
• Reposition mission interface.
• Rework achievement interface.
• Reset difficulty level button.
• Lock modular difficulty system if the player level is lower than 3.
• Virtual and physical weapon clarification and stats.
• Stat page improvements.
• Connection strength near avatar picture.
• Adapt backgrounds to screen shaking.
• Dismantle all and uninstall all buttons should have a tooltip.
• Holding shift button to dismantle and sell just one item from the stack.
• Looting improvements.
• Improve Techamer's cell.
• Rework loot box.
• Fix loot box stackable item glitch.
• Improve artifact carrier.
• Rework mission III. Again.
• Improve siege mission.
• Improve arena mission.
• Reposition item management buttons.
• Fix dialogue clash with HUD glitch.
• Expand dialogue box.
• Improve shield particles and animations.
• Improve MDS decorative map in mission select screen.
• Fix Lodeon's ship glitch when skipping intro cutscene.
• Intro logo skipping inconsistency.
• Improve mission I.
• Make Awakening of Inner Power support all missions.
• Improve ability bar.
• Add map decorations.
• Improve Sector transition cutscene.
• Rework contribution system.
• Improve barrager.
• Improve text input.
• Character customization: Rename character and change avatar icon.
• Improve ability interface.
• Improve ability level scaling.
• Improve damage text.
• Cathode rework.
• Improve controller support.

• 41 days.

• 40% of the tasks completed.
• I'll post again when the percentage will reach 50%.

Since the last time I have posted, Sector Six has become a much better game! In a chain of small changes, I have made ability points more rewarding, ability scaling more important, six least useful abilities more useful, leveling more consistent, and phase mechanic more effective! Phase mechanic now used to turn enemy damage into player damage. After X amount of damage taken, player's spaceship will enter phase which will increase damage by Y% for 5 seconds. I have also added mission XIII. It's more or less a big cutscene, but with it done, I can focus on the main features of the final Early Access update. So, yeah, tomorrow I'm starting to work on relics! The arrival of relics will finally end the dark ages for Sector Six and it will become a true loot game! Completed:

I'll post again when the percentage will reach 40%. Until then!

I have finished making mission XII! That's a pretty big achievement because mission XII was one of the larger chunks of content I needed to make and I did it in time. Now I will be working on ability and level cap update This update will make ability points more valuable by reducing the amount of ability points gained from level up to 1. It will also improve Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity abilities and replace Cataclysm with Breach - passive anti-shield ability! It will bring Sector Six much closer to perfection. Completed:

• Mission XII.
• Mission XI.

• While Guardian Of A Thousand Worlds ability is active, Concentrated Fire recharges instantly.
• Improved alloy containers: New property, increased sell and buy price, reduced city stock.
• Removed filled alloy containers.
• Corrected W. warning button tooltip.
• Ability to decrease the level of MDS modifiers even while they are disabled.
• Fixed engine glitch.
• Improved missiles that appear when player's spaceship leaves the enemy range.
• Guardian is now more mobile.
• Potentially fixed Black Rain projectile + reflect chance problem.
• Region update flashes are now brighter.
• Veteran's ballistic attack is now slower.
• Improved dialogue system graphics.
• Oesa's Radiance set effect changed, now base maximum armor is equal maximum ether.
• Damage bonuses now are applied to damage while Lodeon's Ultimatum set is active.
• Fixed and improved certain set descriptions.

• Mission XIII.
• Mission XIV.
• Broken Infinity endgame activity.
• Restoration War endgame activity.
• Relics.
• Shared stash in Deep Path to transfer items between player characters.
• The Machines.
• New save system.
• 49 new achievements.
• Rebalance ability point distribution.

• Relic dismantling rewards.
• Sector map interface.
• Improve the implemented Machines.
• Rework certain achievements.
• Rearrange achievements in the achievement interface.
• Level cap changes.
• Increase starter ability points to 10.
• Increase starter part limit to 10.
• Decrease starter maximum ether to 50.
• Rework Phase Recognition system and phase properties.
• Rework Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity.
• Rework starter equipment.
• Rework Cataclysm ability into Breach ability.
• Improve Rapid Fire Mode ability.
• Improve Channel ability.
• New part properties.
• Better part names.
• Side mission dialogues.
• Better default controls.
• Ability to reset controls to default.
• Ability to reset settings to default.
• Ability to toggle side mission dialogues.
• Settings interface improvements.
• Fix stack buying glitch.
• Reposition mission interface.
• Rework achievement interface.
• Reset difficulty level button.
• Lock modular difficulty system if the player level is lower than 3.
• Virtual / physical weapon clarification / stats.
• Stat page improvements.
• Connection strength near avatar picture.
• Adapt backgrounds to screen shaking.
• Dismantle all / Uninstall all buttons should have a tooltip.
• Holding shift button to dismantle / sell just one item from the stack.
• Looting improvements.
• Improve Techamer's cell.
• Rework loot box.
• Fix loot box stackable item glitch.
• Improve artifact carrier.
• Rework mission III. Again.
• Improve siege mission.
• Improve arena mission.
• Reposition item management buttons.
• Fix dialogue clash with HUD glitch.
• Expand dialogue box.
• Improve shield particles and animations.
• Improve MDS decorative map in mission select screen.
• Fix Lodeon's ship glitch when skipping intro cutscene.
• Intro logo skipping inconsistency.
• Improve mission I.
• Make Awakening Of Inner Power support all missions.
• Improve ability bar.
• Add map decorations.
• Improve Sector transition cutscene.
• Rework contribution system.
• Improve barrager.
• Improve text input.
• Character customization: Rename character and change avatar icon.

• 60 days.

• 20% of the tasks completed.
• I'll post again when the percentage will reach 30%.

Sector Six has entered the final stage of development! I was planning to release two more story missions and then work on the last Early Access update, but decided that it will better to release them with that last update. Instead of posting traditional echoes weekly, now I will post short summaries of what I've done and update to-do list whenever I reach the next development milestone. Let the countdown begin! 10! Done:

• Mission XI.
• Veteran's ballistic attack is now slower.
• Improved dialogue system graphics.
• Oesa's Radiance set effect changed, now base maximum armor is equal maximum ether.
• Damage bonuses now are applied to damage while Lodeon's Ultimatum set is active.
• Fixed and improved certain set descriptions.

• Mission XII.
• Mission XIII.
• Mission XIV.
• Broken Infinity endgame activity.
• Restoration War endgame activity.
• Relics.
• Relic dismantling rewards.
• Shared stash in Deep Path to transfer items between player characters.
• Five of the Eight Machines.
• Improve the implemented Machines.
• New save system.
• 49 new achievements.
• Full Sector Six map.
• Rework certain achievements.
• Rearrange achievements in the achievement interface.
• Rebalance ability point distribution.
• Cap ability points.
• Increase starter ability points to 10.
• Increase starter part limit to 10.
• Decrease starter maximum ether to 50.
• Rework Phase Recognition system and phase properties.
• Rework Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity.
• Rework starter equipment.
• Rework Cataclysm ability.
• New part properties.
• Better part names.
• Side mission dialogues.
• Better default controls.
• Ability to reset controls to default.
• Ability to reset settings to default.
• Ability to toggle side mission dialogues.
• Settings interface improvements.
• Fix stack buying glitch.
• Reposition mission interface.
• Rework achievement interface.
• Reset difficulty level.
• Lock modular difficulty system if the player level is lower than 3.
• Fix W. warning button tooltip.
• Virtual / physical weapon clarification / stats.
• Stat page improvements.
• Connection strength near avatar picture.
• Adapt backgrounds to screen shaking.
• Dismantle all/Uninstall all buttons should have a tooltip.
• Holding shift button to dismantle / sell just one item from the stack.
• Looting improvements.
• Improve Techamer's cell.
• Rework loot box.
• Fix loot box stackable item glitch.
• Improve artifact carrier.
• Rework mission III. Again.
• Improve siege mission.
• Improve arena mission.
• Reposition item management buttons.
• Fix dialogue clash with HUD glitch.
• Expand dialogue box.
• Improve shield particles and animations.
• Improve MDS decorative map in mission select screen.
• Fix Lodeon's ship glitch when skipping intro cutscene.
• Intro logo skipping inconsistency.
• Improve mission I.
• Improve alloy containers.
• Remove filled alloy containers.
• Make Awakening Of Inner Power support all missions.
• Fix Guardian Of A Thousand worlds + Concentrated Fire effect timer graphical glitch.
• Ability to reduce the power of MDS modifiers while they are disabled.
• Improve ability bar.
• Add map decorations.

• 70 days.

• 8% of the tasks completed.
• I'll post again when the percentage will reach 20%.

This week I was working on story mission XI.
One of my favorite shows is Legion. I love it for its madness. Mission XI is an attempt to create my own madness in Sector Six. During this mission you will encounter:

• Replication anomalies
• Black spheres
• Vertical fractures
• Fused and stagnant minions
• Temporal loops

100th echo! I was thinking about what to do for the first triple-digit echo and I asked myself: What do my players want from me? And I think my players want me to make good games. So, instead of spending a day making a fancy article, I spend an hour and used the rest of the day to work on Sector Six =] It's still going to be a special echo because I'm going to use it to write about very important things. First, about monetization of Sector Six and future games. I've been following gaming news and they have been pretty depressing lately. Lootboxes, malevolent patents, multiple billion dollar companies whining about how they don't make enough money, and so on. This is the first time I officially state that my games will never have microtransactions, DLC's, and pre-order bonuses. What they will have is a single price tag. Pay the price and get the game. All of the game, including updates. My plan is to learn to make really good games and create a reputation of a really good developer. I hope I will manage to do at least some of that and it will pay off. Right now I don't make enough money from selling Sector Six. And by that, I mean that I'm not safe, if something goes wrong in my life I won't be able to continue making games. Good news is that this is the worst it can get and it's not that bad. A year or two and I'll be making enough to ensure that I can make games for as long as I want. And I don't plan to ever stop making games. In conclusion, support me and I'll make some cool stuff =] Speaking of cool stuff, it's time for second part of 100th echo: Endgame! After weeks of thinking, I think I got a solid plan for Sector Six endgame. The center of endgame is Broken Infinity, a region that you will create during the story. Broken Infinity will be a procedurally generated region, with varying amount of areas, randomly chosen enemies, background, secured region cities and so on. Once you secure all areas in Broken Infinity, it will generate a new, different region to clear. Well, just clearing all areas won't be enough! You will also need to defeat a boss! But I can't write about bosses because it's a minor story spoiler. Another possible feature of Broken Infinity is mission chains. Let's say current Broken Infinity instance has 3 areas. Area A, area B, and area C. Area C has a boss you need to kill to close this Broken Infinity instance and generate a new one. But you can't get to area C immediately because it's locked! How to unlock it? Beat mission in area B. Which is also locked and you have to complete the mission in area A to unlock it. In conclusion, A -> B -> C and you can generate new Broken Infinity instance, a new mission chain to complete. Oh, and you cannot generate new missions in Broken Infinity. You have to deal with what you get. Let's back up a little bit. Why would you want to close Broken Infinity instance? That's the best part: Rewards! When you close instance, you get to reward screen. On the screen, you see 10 open cases. There's a fractal part in each. Then you see your instance statistics. How many areas you secured, average mission difficulty level, optional objectives completed, etc. Then system calculates reward upgrade chance based on these statistics. +20% upgrade chance for average 20 difficulty level. +50% upgrade chance for 5 areas secured. +10% upgrade chance for 2 optional objectives completed. Total: 80% upgrade chance. THEN system attempts to upgrade part in each case. If you have 80% upgrade chance, you will probably get 8 out of 10 part cases upgraded. Upgraded to what? Relic! Unless you've been avoiding my weekly text walls, you already know about relics - parts that have unique and incredibly powerful effects. So, let's say that now you have 8 cases with relics and 2 cases with fractal parts. Then cases get closed - you can't see what inside them anymore - and are shuffled. All you need to do now is pick one of the cases. If you're lucky, you'll get a case with the relic in it. If not, you will get a fractal part and will have to close another instance for another chance to get a relic. Obviously, fractal part is a weak reward for clearing 5 areas and defeating a gigantic boss, so in reality, non-relic rewards will be better. So, the main part of endgame is clearing ever-changing Broken Infinity instances and fighting brutal bosses for OP relics. Relics will make you even more powerful which means higher difficulty levels, faster instance clears and even more relics! But wait, there's more! You're not meant to secure all areas in all regions, just those that you really need. These leftover occupied, besieged, and destroyed regions are the focus of second part of endgame! After the story is completed, the Restoration War begins! The goal of the Restoration War is to restore Sector Six to what it was before the Machine invasion. During the Restoration War, every time you complete a mission, one of the regions becomes highlighted. That region is now your level region, no matter what region it is or what level you are! E.g.: Highlighted Deep Path region is level 35 and contains level 35 minions, items, and secured regions because you are level 35. If you will secure all - currently 154 - areas in Sector Six, you will get an unbelievably powerful relic that cannot be obtained any other way! The Restoration War and Broken Infinity will hopefully create that so-called satisfying endgame grind =] There's third endgame activity - Infinity Invasions, but I'll keep it for another time. There are only two things left to say. 1) Mission XI is about 50% complete. 2) A little gift from me: Go to settings, mute sounds, and type ETALON to get etalon part. So, that's the end of 100th echo! There won't be many echoes after this one because the game will be finished soon. In a month. Or two. Or three. Soon! ... Like always, if you have any questions, I'm ready to answer them. Until next time!

This update adds a lot of new stuff!
Story mission X High Path is active, it's time to travel to a dimension beyond the light of Sector Six. You need to go there to meet a scientist, imprisoned for his work in the forbidden branch of science. One more step towards victory. One more step towards the unknown. If the Almadi knew what you did and what you're planning to do, you would be imprisoned too. Tips and part rotation Spaceship building has a received a small update. Now it's possible to rotate almost every part. Building a cool-looking ship has never been so easy! With the new functionality, comes new controls, and because there is no way I could stuff explanation for part rotating into an already long tutorial, I have added tips! Now every time you will open spaceship interface, below inventory you will see one of several tips. One of them will tell you how to rotate parts. Balancing I've been playing Sector Six a lot recently and I noticed that I have too many units. To fix that, I made amplifiers, cathodes, and anodes as expensive as fractal parts. This also makes difficulty level rewards even more rewarding. The other thing that I have noticed was how powerful Searing Beam is. So, here is what I did:

• Searing Beam now deals less damage - from 150% pylon damage to 80% pylon damage at level 10.
• Searing Beam now deals 40% at level 1, instead of 15%.
• Spending points on Searing Beam now increase Searing Beam damage by 4%.

• The region that sells empty parts
• Three new minions unique to Sector Five
• Arena mission in which you can fight these unique minions
• Story mission X

• Map tooltips now show up at the correct height.
• "Collect" button now shows a tooltip that explains what it does.
• Corrected Creation Of Energy ability description.
• Corrected Searing Beam ability description.
• Corrected shield removal tutorial.
• Player spaceship now has the same damage and collision graphical effects as the enemies.
• Eolutch is now level 19 region.
• Charred Link is now level 20 region.
• Made new background for High Path region.
• You will no longer get Through Broken Infinity achievement for completing Time Vortex mission. Hopefully.
• Black Rain now deals less damage to the spaceship.

Last week wasn't any better than previous ones. I was having weird post-flu paracetamol poisoning induced depression and I had to do a lot of work on the farm. Because of that, very little progress was made with story mission X, so I don't really have anything to write about. Instead, here are screenshots from upcoming version:




Until next time!

As I expected, mission X got delayed. It was because I caught the flu and couldn't work on Sector Six for a whole week. But before I got sick, I managed to do some good stuff. Part rotating https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfT3moNSkvU It will be possible to rotate almost every part! Added empty parts
Parts with no stats and a lot of amplifier slots have been added. They will be sold in one of the areas of Sector Five. Amplifier cost increased Amplifiers, anodes, and cathodes now cost as much as fractal parts when you buy them from secured regions. This is to make empty parts even more expensive and amplifier rewards even more valuable. Searing Beam changes Searing Beam now deals less damage - from 150% pylon damage to 80% pylon damage at level 10. Searing Beam now deals 40% pylon damage at level 1, instead of 15% pylon damage. Spending points on Searing Beam now increase Searing Beam damage by 4%. Player hit effects Player ship will show the same effects as enemies when hit. Mission X https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXK10nnAI0Y I have written the script for mission X and done most of the work for Sector Five. There's not so much work left to finish it, so hopefully, it will be finished next week. So that's what I did. Until next time!

Last week I didn't do much, unfortunately. Reasons why: 1) I tried to make more interesting names for parts. Which failed. 2) I updated one of my side projects. For the last time. No more side projects until Sector Six is complete. 3) There were a few farm interruptions. But this week was not a complete loss. One of the biggest things that happened this week was a small part update. In near future, it will be possible to rotate most parts by clicking the right mouse button on a part. Or left trigger, if using a controller. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1288993932 I've also started making Sector Five for story mission X. Story mission X will take place on Sector Five, which means new areas, new area backgrounds, new enemies, and new cities! Sector Five will be different in a way that it's not under attack by the Machines. That means no occupied regions and no minions of the Machines. I need to make at least three new enemies for Sector Five missions. Well, just two missions - story mission X and arena mission. Since there's no war, the only fights are in the arenas. Sector Five will have two areas. One area will be for story mission X, while the other will have a city that sells empty parts and the arena. Empty parts will expand the spaceship customization further. Empty parts are parts with amplifier slots instead of part properties. For example, empty fractal parts will have 5 amplifier slots and no properties. All of the empty parts will be level 1. This week I hope to do most of the things required for mission X and finish making it next week. It will probably get delayed like always, but that's how it works. So, yeah, until next time!

This update adds another story mission. Mission IX Open a forgotten way to the other Universe beyond time and light! Story mission IX chains alternative versions of siege, boss and time attack missions. Features decision making and decision consequences.
Other Now it's easier to set the volume in settings. Have fun! Next update: Mission X, Sector Five, new enemies, and new items.

Last week I was working on story mission IX. I was planning to add new side mission and wasted a lot of time trying to make it work. Due to various limitations, I couldn't make maze missions work well, so I decided to put them away for a while. Now I'm working on mission IX, which is a few days away from completion. Like always, I can't write about story missions. Instead, I thought that maybe it would be interesting for you guys to know how I develop Sector Six. So, here's a day of my life: I wake up late, 10-11 AM, then go to do my daily chores - cleaning, cooking, taking care of cats, etc. My father and brother work outside on our farm, my mom usually busy with something inside and I'm the only one who can do those chores. After chores are out of the way, it's 1-2 PM. This is when development starts. My main tools to develop Sector Six are GameMaker: Studio 1.4, Audacity, and Notepad. That covers programming, graphics, writing and sound editing.
Home sweet home. On a good day, I would code, write, make sprites and do whatever current update requires until 7-9 PM. While the game is being compiled I check Steam community hub and other Sector Six places if there are new comments. That's why I can respond to them so quickly =P On a bad day, I would try to do what I need to do, fail to do it and quit for the day. If I could, I would work 8 hours every day but it is not how it works. I need cool names and new attacks for enemies, interesting sequences for story missions, ways to add new content, ideas to fix game design problems and sometimes I just don't find them in my head. So I go do something relaxing and wait until my brain finds the right way to do things. I'm slowly learning how this all works and results are getting better. In 2016, there used to be not only bad days - there were bad weeks. Now bad days are much less common and even on the worst day, I force myself to work on something easy at least for one hour. That's from where the small fixes and improvements come. After 7-9 PM on a good day, I end development for that day and go rest. I watch shows, YouTube and play games. Or sometimes I go to work on side projects. Most of them are abandoned after a one day, so it's a waste of time, but I can't help it. Sector Six development is going slowly and I just need to try all those ideas that I get and that cannot be applied to Sector Six. Sometimes I go manage my so-called network - Twitter, Facebook, Zuurix.com, Steam groups, Discord. I don't do that often because I don't get much from that. The network will be useful, once I become more popular as a developer. Sometimes I have no game I want to play, so instead, I make games. Sometimes I do everything - play, watch and work on side projects until 1 AM night. That's why I wake up at 11 AM. There are only three things I want to improve in my life: 1) Get more money for my hard work. 2) See more player feedback - comments, videos, screenshots. That'll improve naturally over time. 3) Get a bit of social life going. Not too much, because I'm introvert =] Anyway, right now I am kind of stuck on mission IX. But I've already had a bad day on this, so I'm hoping to do some good progress soon. With every story mission it's becoming harder to come up with new ideas and if I had more time, I'd spend it to polish dialogs and other things. For example, defense system core boss would be much better if I had more time. Technically I have an unlimited amount of time but I decided that this is it - I need to finish Sector Six, 3 years of development is enough. I need to start making a new game, that is not limited by old decisions, so I'm going to cut some corners. Going to cut a corner here and end this echo just like that. Until next time!

This update adds a new story mission and many small, but important improvements. Mission VIII You are desperate. After all those failures, you are willing to steal darkest secrets of the Almadi civilization. The knowledge of those secrets will change you, maybe even kill you, but without it, you have nothing. At this point, you will do anything for another chance to Sector Six. Improvements

• Compression grade and level limitations have been removed.
• Changed the way opened region is saved and fixed several region saving issues.
• Deep Path, Negati, and Labyrinth regions now have weaker minions.
• Time rift is now called time vortex.
• Now it’s possible to enter secure regions even if your inventory has more than 3 pages of items.
• Region level bonus is now applied even if you fail the mission.
• Part upgrade chance now can upgrade parts to mythical and etalon parts.
• Parts dropped by modified enemies are upgraded - e.g.: Optimized part becomes an advanced part.
• Added part upgrade chance amplifier.
• Added infested defense nodes to Silaar region missions.
• Improved part generator, less useful part properties are now less common.

• Fixed: It was possible to use diodes on etalons.
• Fixed: Minion long-lasting shield problem.
• Fixed: Using anode on part upgraded with diode used to allow to apply diode again.
• Fixed: Lodeon's Ultimatum set effect used to deal damage to your spaceship in secure regions.
• Fixed: Obelisk used to block Swarm Control missiles.
• Fixed: Map used to reset to Deep Path during the first play session.
• Fixed: Alloy containers in inventory used to show wrong alloy percentage in secured regions.
• Fixed: Leaking alloy container used to lose alloy after visiting secure regions.
• Fixed: Minor modular difficulty system saving issue.
• Fixed: Mission V on Niss glitch.
• Fixed: Region level bonus was not displayed correctly.
• Fixed: New game+ crash.
• Fixed: Unit rewards in new game+ used to give the wrong amount of units.
• Fixed: Small graphical Phase Recognition System description glitch.

Steam Winter Sale has brought in new players and new glitch reports, so I spent most of the week fixing those glitches. I have made a major new game+ test run and managed to fix several new game+ problems. Fixed: Using anode on part upgraded with diode used to allow to apply diode again. Fixed: It was possible to use diodes on etalons. Fixed: Minion long-lasting shield problem. Fixed: Lodeon's Ultimatum set effect used to deal damage to your spaceship in secure regions. Fixed: Obelisk used to block Swarm Control missiles. Fixed: Map used to reset to Deep Path during the first play session. Fixed: Alloy containers in inventory used to show wrong alloy percentage in secured regions. Fixed: Leaking alloy container used to lose alloy after visiting secure regions. Fixed: Minor modular difficulty system saving issue. Fixed: Mission V on Niss glitch. Fixed: Region level bonus was not displayed correctly. Fixed: New game+ crash. Fixed: Unit rewards in new game+ used to give the wrong amount of units. Fixed: Small graphical Phase Recognition System description glitch. I have also made a bunch of miscellaneous improvements, some of them are quite important: Mythical parts no longer have can have wave chances. Instead, they can increase certain ability levels. I have decided that wave chances are too good to be on mythical parts, so now they can only be on etalons. Compression grade and level limitations have been removed. Now you can fuse [any part] with [any part]! Part upgrade chance now can upgrade parts to mythical parts and etalons. Buff! Parts dropped by modified enemies are upgraded once automatically. The same part can be upgraded again by part upgrade chance! Region level XP bonus is now applied even if you fail the mission. Consistency! Deep Path, Negati, and Labyrinth regions now have weaker minions. New player experience! Now it's possible to enter secure regions even if your inventory has more than 3 pages of items. You will no longer have to dismantle parts in inventory page 4 just to enter the secure region and sell the rest of the parts. Basic game functionality! Trash stats. Less useful stats will appear on part less often! Before trash stats, all part properties were considered equally useful by the part generator. That will end with the next update. Trash stats: Initial ether Maximum ether +% ether Phase break damage Phase break cooldown reduction +% experience +% part upgrade chance After all that, the game will become more stable and pleasant when the new version will be uploaded. And that should happen in a few days, so get ready =] Until next time!

2017 was a year of difficult advancement! There were many tough phases both in my life and Sector Six development, but I have pushed through and now I'm feeling stronger than before. Sector Six has been under harsh criticism several times this year - both direct and indirect. I have used that criticism to take a better look at my game and improve it further. After region rework, a new tutorial, better loot and graphical combat improvements, Sector Six is a much better game than it was at the beginning of the year and I am really proud of that. Another thing that I am proud of is how much hours I've invested in Sector Six this year. I've never developed this hard before. Here's what updates hit Sector Six in 2017: January 18 Controller support beta, and miscellaneous fixes February 20 Secure regions, trading, and alloy container rework March 19 New abilities and enemies, city improvements, new game+ and full controller support May 23 New side missions and achievements June 27 Part sets and the item update July 8 New tutorial August 12 Titan class September 26 Final combat update November 18 Region rework December 19 New story missions After all these big updates, Sector Six is 88% complete! In 2018 Sector Six will be completed and will leave Early Access! This is what I need to do to finish Sector Six: Remaining 6 story missions I'm not counting story mission VIII because it needs few more hours of work until it is ready to be released =] Relics Unique, build-defining parts that Sector Six always needed! Broken Infinity The ultimate endgame area! It will feature chained missions with the Machine boss to defeat at the end of each chain! Mission chain rewards include relics! Save system rework You will have more save slots and will no longer need to manually save! This update will allow me to add permanent death mode! Relics, Broken Infinity, save system rework and story mission XIV will come in one, final Early Access update. After Sector Six will be released, I will continue updating it to fix glitches and add more content. Although I will only add additional content if there will be a demand for it. Possible post-release content: Tombworld of Hate raid Raids in Sector Six will be like long story missions, similar to story mission V. They will have bosses and will give relics as a reward. They will also be non-linear and difficult as hell =] Nomad class The most complex and powerful class! Two new bosses for boss missions Comes with new minions! Omni amplifiers Amplifiers that double the power of a part! Obtained by collecting fragments from side mission rewards. Variety packs These small updates will add new minions, new side missions, new relics, new achievements and new ruin types. So, yeah, 2018 will be pretty epic =] Have a good year everyone!

This week I've done many small things. I have started 75% discount on Steam, updated store page, fixed several glitches, expanded mission interface for new missions and finished writing for story mission VII. It was a busy week, but what I did is not very interesting to write about, so this post is perfect to officially reveal Sector Six sequel, ENTER and other games!
Yes, I already have plans for multiple games =] If you have any questions about them, I ready to answer them. Happy holidays and until next echo =]

This update adds two new story missions! Fight new minions and bosses, meet a new character, endure despair and end the first chapter of the story! From here the story will get even darker. Other changes: Fixed: It was possible to reflect apex's red lasers. Fixed: Dozan Vel area glitch. Fixed: "You can use more weapons" message used to appear on level up screen even after maxing out weapon limit. Fixed: City trade link was above item tooltips. Siege missions now take less time to complete. Replaced "Cannot be refilled" alloy container flaw with "Loses 20 alloy after every mission". Added backgrounds for Silaar, Charred Link, Nebula, Rift and Broken Infinity. Improved backgrounds. Removed fog.
Have fun! PS.: Claim mythical part on my website >>

The wait is nearly over! This week I have finished making story mission VI, with all its bosses and encounters! Now I need to make story mission VII, but it's more a cutscene than a mission, so it won't take me longer than a day to make it. Then there's the mandatory polishing/minor bug fixing phase and I can release the update! This should happen this week, so keep an eye on announcements! PS.: Go to my site to enter Sector Six giveaway >>

This week I was working on the new story mission. I'm about 60% done, I have added all required enemies, finished writing and finished 1 out of 3 boss fights. Mission VI is divided into three parts and at the end of each part, there's a small boss fight. When I say small I mean that it's smaller than boss fight in mission V. Anyway, here's havoc and scythe, the new enemies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPM4MaCin0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXbn6Fp53qY
Scythe is the first minion that is able to destroy player shields. It releases slow moving bladed mines that aren't hard to dodge, but if you will activate a shield, it will be gone instantly. Havoc does the opposite - you will have to shield yourself or you'll take massive damage! So, that's all news for now. Until next time! PS.: Secret Sector Six achievement revealed on my site >> PPS.: Join my Discord server to enter Sector Six giveaway >>

Last week I have returned to working on Sector Six story! But first, here's the new update schedule: Mission VI and mission VII update This update will add mission VI and mission VII. ETA: 2017 December. Mission VIII and background update This update will improve backgrounds and add mission VIII ETA: 2017 December. Mission IX and item update This update will add mission IX and will improve items + add the first batch of relics. ETA: 2018 Q1 Mission X update This update will add mission X. ETA: 2018 Q1 Mission XI update This update will add mission XI. ETA: 2018 Q1 Mission XII update This update will add mission XII. ETA: 2018 Q1 Mission XIII update This update will add mission XIII. ETA: 2018 Q1 Mission XIV and last game update This update will add mission XIV, some endgame content and all remaining achievements, new save system and avatar customization. With this update, game will leave Early Access ETA: 2018 Q1 I really wanted to finish Sector Six in 2017, but it's not going to happen. The new plan is to release the game before the second quarter of 2018. It should be possible because all that's left is content and story. Speaking of story, the mission that I am working on - mission VI - will take place in Tridenkor, Colowis, and Mzenim. This mission will have unique events and enemies like mission IV and a boss fight like mission V! It's a very important and ambitious mission - it's going to change the direction of the story and it will be very intense. Mission VI will add three new enemies: Havoc, scythe, and barrier. Scythe will immobilize, havoc will fire so many missiles that you will need to hide under the special shield to survive and the barrier is similar to barricades from mission IV, just capable of attacking, nothing special. And that's all I can write about mission VI without spoiling it. Until next time! PS.: Go to my website to get a mythical part >>

This update completely changes regions! Sector Six has been split into 30 different level regions. Regions have different areas, cities, and enemies. Part compression Now you can combine two same level and grade parts into one to make your spaceship smaller! You can compress parts in all cities. Arena missions Secure areas with arenas and enter them to fight! In the arena, you can choose which enemies to fight. You need to kill 10 minions to complete arena mission. Completing arena mission will reward you with units. The number of units you will get is based on enemies you destroyed during the mission. Siege missions Use siege cannon to destroy the Machine bulwark! Siege cannon requires ammo to be used and it can be obtained by killing enemies. Cannon keeps running out of ammo and minions keep coming, making it the most complex side mission! New enemies The Machines have released barragers and orbital platforms to wreak havoc in Sector Six. Barragers have a weapon that rapidly fires missiles - don't get in front of them or you'll be destroyed! Orbital platforms are not a big threat if you can remove their shields and don't get hit by their unpredictable mines! New secured area types New types of secured areas have been added:

• Areas that sell generic weapons and amplifiers
• Areas that sell parts and amplifiers
• Areas that sell parts and alloy containers
• Areas that sell optimized parts
• Areas that sell advanced parts
• Areas that contribute generic part after every successful mission.
• Areas that contribute generic weapon after every successful mission.
• Areas that contribute amplifier after every successful mission.
• Areas that contribute optimized part after every successful mission.
• Areas that contribute advanced part after every successful mission.
• Areas that contribute fractal part after every successful mission.

Just posting to inform that the massive update that will introduce two new mission types, improved gameplay, new features and completely changed regions is still under development. I was trying to release it last weekend, but I have found a lot of new glitches during the final test run, so I had to spend extra time fixing them. The new plan is to release it before the end of the week, so the wait is not going to be long! Here's a bit of what you'll get with the next update: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1201309792 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1201309794 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1201309788 I hope this looks good!

This week I have added siege missions, improved new game+ and began polishing new map system. It seems that I'll need an extra week to finish map rework because the list of minor improvements I have to make has become really big. Anyway, it's been a while since I have written about future updates. As you probably know, after map rework I will finally be making story missions. There are 9 missions left to go, a lot of them will be difficult to make, especially the ones close to the end. There will be a journey to Sector Five, 7 fights against the Machines, important reveals, new characters and heaps of new content. This might take me months to make, but these months will be very interesting! I'm planning to sneak in smaller stuff with story missions on each update. There are several things I want to add to take game closer to perfection. One of those things is relics. Item update back in June really helped to make higher tier items more interesting, but they aren't as good as legendary items in other loot games. I always thought that random items are what makes a loot game, but I have to admit that I was wrong. Hand-coded items with unique are just better than procedural items. At least not with my item generator. I think that lack of interesting items is the final gameplay flaw of Sector Six. And I am going to fix it by adding relics! I came up with the idea of relics by watching some video about Destiny 2. Destiny 2 has legendary items and I was inspired to write a description of a legendary item for Sector Six. I wrote one, then another one... And now I have a whole bunch of relics! It's surprisingly easy, there's a lot of design space that I was not aware of. Here are some of the relics: Breakcharm Of Mara Removes 40% of armour from first 10 minions in mission Only works if Manifestations Of Destruction is active Avadys, Atomic Collector Increases damage by 2% on kill Generates 1% armour on kill Etherion's Fusion Reactor +5 levels to Missile Strike ability +5 levels to Concentrated Fire ability +5 levels to Detonate ability Mortal Core +200% damage if you have transient container equipped Generates 1 alloy on kill Darkwork -80% armour Alloy containers will restore 10% of armour per alloy Rifted Lure +5 levels to Phase Recognition System +300% phase break damage Reduces phase break cooldown by 80 seconds Only works if Risk For Reward is active Ultranid's Hope Damage you deal to your spaceship will not destroy it Plasma's Link Reduces Piercing Lasers cooldown by 30 seconds Metasphere, Secondary Main Core Your spaceship will not be destroyed for 5 seconds after armour drops to 0 Fractal Repository Generates fractal part after every successful mission Eternal Nodeno Transforms Nine Bladed Mines into Thousand Bladed Mines +30% node damage Weaver's Song Transforms Swarm Control into Spectral Barrage +100% damage Calm Of Vanadian, Mental Reactor Azimar's Killframe set effect will not remove ether Sets ether on kill to 0 Transforms Creation Of Energy into Glory Of Vanadian Relarei To Burn Worlds Reduces Death From Above cooldown to 0.5 seconds Increases Missile Strike cooldown to 5 seconds Removes 1% ether every second +30% relay damage I was planning to add some of those effects as small part sets, but this works much better! I would like write more about relics but it's time for me to deal with a huge list of not-so-huge improvements and glitches. Until next time!

This week I have added remaining 15 regions, improved secure regions, implemented part compression system and began working on siege missions. The most interesting of these is part compression.
Part compression allows you to combine two parts into one! Compressed parts are easier to manage and allow to built smaller spaceships. Things you need know about compressed parts: Compressed parts use 2 slots like two uncompressed items would. Compressed weapons use 2 weapon slots. You cannot compress different grade and different level parts. Compressed parts cannot be compressed further. Parts can be compressed in all cities and it costs 5 alloy. Also, compressed part is two parts stat-wise, but physically it is one part. Using compressed parts will make Awakening Of Inner Power and Creation Of Energy abilities weaker. I am planning to adjust few more abilities to work like that and keep uncompressed parts viable. So yeah, now you choose how big your spaceship will be! To make part compression, I had to add few things to cities in secure regions. One thing led to another and I have made several improvements to secure regions. Most noticeable of them are graphical improvements. Cities still don't look as good as I want them to look, but it's a step forward. I have also made city entering and leaving faster and automatic, you no longer need to manually move your ship to the city. Anyway, as I have planned, this week I have added remaining 15 regions. Now Sector Six has 145 areas and it should take about 300 missions or 15 hours to secure all of them! It's unnecessary and I don't recommend doing that, but it still feels good to have so much content. With all of that done, only four things remain in to-do list: Add siege mission. Add endgame area and improve new game+. Add a few minions. Fix various minor problems. I can probably do all of that in a week, so the update is close! Hang in there!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1185253064

Map rework continues! Last week I have added more regions, added contribution system, improved map interface further, relocated certain regions and changed story mission 5. I would have done more, but I have burned out in the middle of the week and had to spend a whole day recovering. Also, I had to help my parents to harvest beets, so didn't have much time to work on the game. Coincidentally, I added a reward system that allows you to harvest free items! To do that, you need to secure region that contributes parts, then complete mission in the other area of the region and hit the new "Collect" button in map interface to collect contributions. There are 15 regions now out of planned 30. I expect to have all regions added to the game next week. I should have more time and remaining regions have no story missions, so I can add regions faster. Here's the updated to do list from the previous echo: Add 15 regions. Add siege mission. Add endgame area and improve new game+. Add a few minions. Add part compression. Improve secure regions further. Fix various minor problems. Adding one region takes about 10-20 minutes, including adding decorations and naming the areas, so it should be done quickly. And yes, now I give a unique name to each area. The interesting thing about area names is that they aren't gibberish. If you will pay attention to them, you may find out a lot about Sector Six. For example, Archmist region area names: Colowa, Phasia, Kor, Negatar and Mzenor. They are archaic names of Negati, Phase, Colowis, Tridenkor and Mzenim. That's because sentient life in Sector Six began in Archmist asteroids. People from Phasia colonized region now known as Phase, it was the centre of Phasian civilization. People from Kor later have conquered Phase and created Empire of Kor. Which later shattered and turned into three smaller empires of Tri, Den and Kor. Even later those empires were conquered by nations from Colowa, Mzenor and Negatar. People of Tri, Den and Kor fled to a distant region that they have called Tridenkor. Tridenkor region is going to have only one area called Innexis. And in the Almadi language "Innex" means "Unity". From the word "In" - "One". A lot of area names mean something in Almadi language, they will start making more sense as I will develop the Almadi language and reveal more of its words. I rarely write about this, but a lot of names and features in Sector Six have stories behind them. Anyway, I have relocated certain regions and added new regions. Here's a new list of regions: (And names of upcoming story missions for hype!) Region level / Region name / Region mission Level 1 / Deep Path / The Beginning Level 2 / Negati / To Negati Level 3 / Labyrinth / The Almadi Knowledge Level 4 / The Core / The Core Level 5 / Aspil / The Eight Keys Level 6 / Pylon / The Eight Keys Level 7 / Niss / The Eight Keys Level 8 / Archmist / The Eight Keys Level 9 / Sailemar / The Eight Keys Level 10 / Ityl / The Eight Keys Level 11 / Paradise / The Eight Keys Level 12 / Tarion / The Eight Keys Level 13 / Tridenkor / The Wrath Of The Machines Level 14 / Colowis / The Wrath Of The Machines Level 15 / Mzenim / The Wrath Of The Machines Level 16 / Broken Labyrinth / The Origin Level 17 / High Path / Path Beyond Level 18 / Gallamar / Beyond Light Level 19 / White Grid / Beyond Light Level 20 / Eolutch / The Edge Level 21 / Pulsar Vector / Broken Worlds Level 22 / Bloom / Broken Worlds Level 23 / Lumer Pass / Broken Worlds Level 24 / Wacar / Broken Worlds Level 25 / Venerion / Broken Worlds Level 26 / Phase / Broken Worlds Level 27 / Nebula / Broken Worlds Level 28 / Spiral / Broken Worlds Level 29 / Rift / The Birth Of Infinity Level 30 / Broken Infinity / The Eight Machines As you can see story mission 5 - The Eight Keys - is spread through 8 regions. It used to work better with old map system because it's not designed to be linear, but I can't do anything about it now. Besides that, the new map system works well and I can continue developing it =] It should be finished in two more weeks. Next week I am planning to work on secure regions, I'm going to make cities look better and add part compression. That's all I have for this echo, so until next time!

Last week I have done a huge part of map rework and added arena mission. Arena mission works just like I have described it in the previous echo and map rework is going really well! I have already changed most of the things to work with the new map system. Left to do:

• Change story mission 5 to work with the new map system.
• Relocate and rename several regions.
• Add 27 remaining regions.
• Add contribution system.
• Add siege mission.
• Add endgame area and improve new game+.
• Add a few minions.
• Add part compression.
• Improve secure regions further.
• Fix various minor problems.

Last week I spent a lot of time trying to improve HUD. Unfortunately, none of the changes did anything good to it, I had to revert them and now I'm working on map rework. My plan is to add 3 zones and see how that changes the game. The first zone is Deep Path. Deep Path will have 7 areas: Aon Way Initially secured Sells level 1 generic weapons when secured Berel Way Initially destroyed Has an arena Cyr Way Initially occupied Contributes level 1 optimized part when secured Story mission: The Beginning Dask Way Initially besieged Contributes level 1 generic weapon when secured Ewe Way Initially besieged Contributes units when secured Fion Way Initially besieged Sells level 1 parts when secured Galis Way Initially besieged Sells level 1 alloy containers when secured Aon Way, Berel Way, Cyr Way... It just means area A, area B, area C... Giving all the areas in 30 regions unique names would take too much time. I will eventually give certain areas more meaningful names, but for now, it will be like that. So, map rework will not only change the way player progresses through Sector, it will also add new features. Instead of having shops, some regions contribute items and resources to help you fight the Machines. Contributions will be given out after every successful mission in the region. For example, if you have secured Ewe Way and then complete mission in Irre Way, Ewe Way will give you some units. Another new feature is arena missions. Because the Machines will not occupy regions anymore, you would run out of missions after you have secured all areas in the region. Arena missions will prevent that. Securing all areas in the region will be enough to level up and move to the next region, but I'll add arena missions just to be safe. So, how will arena missions work? Arena missions will be similar to good old kill missions. During arena missions, you will never fight more than one minion at once in the arena. Also, after every minion destroyed, you will need to choose one of two randomly chosen opponents. E.g.: Heavy or tank, veteran or acolyte, modified collector or probe. To complete arena mission, you will have to destroy 10 minions. Arena mission reward is always units and amount of units is based on which minions you have defeated. Bigger minions will give more units. There's also an option to continue fighting indefinitely after required 10 fights. To be able to do arena missions, you will have to secure the areas that have arenas. Anyway, right now I'm working on making map more eye pleasing. I'm going to make map squares bigger, mission icons more visible and add decorative map squares. And that's all of the news. Until next time!

This week I've been trying to improve combat HUD and graphics. I've changed HUD to cover less of the screen and made collisions more impactful. Next week I will be preparing for one of biggest Sector Six updates ever - complete map rework! Map rework is a solution to levelling problem. Because enemy level scales with player level, levelling up is not that beneficial to a player. Sometimes even harmful. I want to change that. There are 3 ways I can do it: 1) Allow the player to change a level of enemies manually in the map screen. Player levels up > Returns to map screen > Increases the enemy level > Player starts another mission. It would be effective, but it's a very lazy way to do it. And possibly exploitable. 2) Scale enemy level with player level whenever the Machines move. I liked this idea, but it's way too easy to exploit it. With a simple strategy, the player could easily become 10 levels higher than enemies. I could make it impossible to exploit, but those fixes would hinder the game even more. I can do better than this. 3) Get rid of the dynamic map and create different level zones. Sector Six had so-called dynamic map since the early versions of the game. In other games, wars and invasions don't really affect the game. I wanted to be original and make the world into a battlefield, where player actions affect the course of the war. Currently, every 10 missions player starts - either wins or loses - the Machines moves, occupying other regions. Because there's 8 of the Machines, it's possible to recover regions faster than the Machines destroy them. Secure regions are where shops are located and the Machines are able to block access to them, by invading secure regions. It's an interesting system, I really like how it works. However, it only works with enemies scaling to the player. Similar games to Sector Six like Torchlight or Path of Exile have completely different map system. There are connected zones with different level enemies. The player plays in level 1 zone, then reaches level 2 and moves to level 2 zone. And so on. I want to this with Sector Six. I will have to create a zone for every player level. Every zone will have 3-12 regions, a story mission and a different set of enemies. E.g.: Deep Path Level 1 area Minions: Collector, drone, demolisher, probe, tank, swarmling Mission: The Beginning The Core Level 10 area Minions: Heavy, anode, dagger, revenant factory, veteran, swarmling Mission: The Core Tarion Link Level 11 area Minions: Veteran, dreadnought, probe, killer, gatherer, scion Mission: The Eight Keys Enemies, item rewards and cities will be the same level as the region. E.g.: Deep Path cities will sell level 1 parts, enemies in Deep Path will be level 1 and drop level 1 parts. Players will still be able to secure/destroy regions. I might make some missions more punishing than before - failing them will damage status of multiple regions in the zone. This seems like the best solution - it will permanently fix problems with levelling, create a strong feeling of progression and increase variety. By dropping that Machine invasion minigame, Sector Six should become into a much better game. The only problem is that between every part of the story, players will be required to level up, which might feel grindy. But if it will end up being a problem, I'm confident that I can fix it as well. So, that's the news! Hopefully, I'll be able to include screenshots or even a video of the new map system the next time I post. Until then! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1152457313

Sector Six combat is now complete! This update adds new enemy, abilities and modifications, removes all of the combat exploits, improves armoured colony seeker, finishes modular difficulty system and more! New abilities




Passive ability effects Every non-passive ability has received a passive effect. Apocalypse class abilities increase damage by 2% per level. Titan class abilities increase armour by 2% per level. Carrier class abilities increase armour and damage by 1% per level. New enemy modifications

• Has an armour extension
• Mine launcher
• Evolves

• Entropic Arc ability has been replaced with Entropic Fracture.
• Reflect chance is now capped at 80%.
• Fixed several mistakes in ability descriptions.
• Temporarily removed avatar customization panel from settings.
• Corrected wrong ability interface tooltips.
• All regions have cities now.
• Improved writing.
• Improved story mission V.
• Fixed Titan class tutorial skipping bug.
• Reverted Death From Above, now it works like it used to work before 0.8.4 update.
• Increased range of Shatter, Swarm Control and EMP Grenade.
• Reworked Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity passive abilities.
• Parts now give less damage boost, to make other damage boosts more important.
• Parts no longer increase levels of Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity.
• Instead, parts increase ether and armour by a percentage.
• Minion armour cores have been renamed to armour extensions.
• Fixed apparition graphical glitches.
• Beacon can now be modified.
• Improved Concentrated Fire.
• Part sets now require only 6 components to be completed.
• Added new shield sounds.
• Added new buying and selling sounds.
• Fixed glitch that occurred when the ship was destroyed during region resurrection.

Last week I have implemented the last Apocalypse class ability, added new modifications and finally fixed enemy exploits. Since the very beginning, Sector Six combat was riddled with exploits. It was possible to regenerate armour outside combat, which encouraged idling. I removed that. It was possible to get in and out of the enemy range to avoid getting hit. I have added missiles to prevent staying out of enemy range. It was possible to damage enemies by standing at the edge of their range. Few more adjustments and that became impossible. It was possible to separate enemies from their groups and never fight more than one enemy at once. Not anymore! Enemies now warn each other and will attack you, even if they are outside the screen. Enemy projectiles no longer disappear outside the screen, so there's no escape! That should be the last of exploits! One step closer to perfecting the combat. Another step is the 36th ability - Cataclysm. With Cataclysm added, all classes have 12 abilities now! And that is all abilities I have planned for Early Access. The ability itself is very basic: It increases damage minions take by 100% for 10 seconds. Still, it's an effect that no other abilities have, so it will probably find its place. Anyway, last week I have also implemented 3 new enemy modifications! 'Teleports' - Minions with this modification will teleport to a different place every second. 'Has an armour expansion' - This modification adds 1 extra armour bar! 'Mine launcher' - And this one turns enemies into demolishers! I have also added evolving minions. The system is still rough around the edges, needs few more hours to be finished. So, that's all the news, the next update should be very soon. Until then!

It's been two weeks since the last echo. I skipped one because there was no news - I just finished preparing the game for translation and that alone is not enough for the echo. But now I have a lot of news! First of, Carrier class is now complete! I've added last two abilities - Ionize and Awakening Of Inner Power. This is what Ionize does:
The passive effect is a thing, that solved the ability point problem! All abilities except already passive abilities, now have a passive effect. Apocalypse abilities give +2% damage per ability level. Titan abilities give +2% armour per ability level. Carrier abilities give +1% damage and +1% armour per ability level. I have also changed Aggression, Resistance and Capacity passive abilities. Aggression now gives +1% damage and +1% ether per level. Resistance now gives +1% armour and +1% phase break damage per level. Capacity now gives +1% damage and +1% armour per level. The Capacity effect is identical to Carrier class passive effect, so I might change it later. Another change to passive abilities is that parts no longer increase Aggression, Resistance and Capacity levels. Instead, parts may come with "+5% ether" and "+5% armour". It should be a lot easier to understand than, for example, "+5 levels to Capacity ability". To mitigate extra damage your spaceship gets from passive effects, parts now give less damage. E.g.: Generic part will now have "+5% damage" instead of "+10% damage". Anyway, with Carrier class complete, I only need to make one more ability for Apocalypse class to finish it. I have already added Rapid Fire Mode, so now it's time for Cataclysm. And new modifications. And exploit fixing. And other stuff! Should be fun, the update might be ready by the weekend! Until next time. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1130642035 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1127813754

Preparation for translations should be finished within this week. To keep myself enthusiastic about what's to come while I bore myself by moving pieces of text from point A to point B, I want to write about the final combat update. Here are things I have to do with combat before I can release the game:

• Add last four abilities, 2 for Apocalypse class and 2 for Carrier class.
• Solve ability point problem.
• Fix enemy group approaching exploits.
• Make armoured colony seeker more interesting.
• Improve certain Titan class abilities.

• 'Has a core' modification. Enemies with this modification will have armour core.
• 'Mine launcher' modification. It's similar to 'Sniper' modification, but releases mines instead of accurate missiles.
• 'Evolves' modification.

This week I was preparing the game for translation. A large part of it is done, but there's still a lot to go. What I am doing is putting chunks of text out of the game into one external file. While doing that, I did a few improvements to the game. All regions will have shops now, so every region will be worthy of securing. The highlight is two new amplifier shops in Archmist and Pulsar Vector if I remember right. I have also improved ability tooltips and corrected few errors in ability descriptions. Finally, the reflect chance will now be capped at 80%, reduced from 90%. Anyway, it's been a while since I have asked big questions. I've got some feedback since, so I feel ready to reveal my decisions. 1) Should I decrease maximum part limit from 80 to 70? I have decided to decrease it just before game leaves Early Access. 2) Should I nerf The Decision difficulty modifier? If yes, how much? Players didn't seem to like very long missions, so I have left just 1 level of The Decision that doubles mission length. 3) Should I delete all saves and reset leaderboards when the game will leave Early Access? Saves from Early Access will not work in post-Early Access game version, but everyone will have access to a game version where the old saves will still work. I think that's a good compromise between erasing hours of playing and having to support saves from all game versions. Not having to worry about old saves is a big relief to me. 4) Should I release all story missions in one update, or should I release a mission, whenever I'm done with it? I will try to release a story mission every 1-2 weeks - it seems that it's what my players want. 5) How is the part sets? I have decided to reduce the number of parts required to activate part set to 6. There's still time to give your answer to big questions, so if you have any thoughts, let me know! Until next time! PS.: Here's a screenshot of Sector Six ability interface translated to * language:

I have updated the spaceship building guide! I have added new part properties to list of properties, listed alloy container properties and revealed damage formula. Guide also no longer mentions Mastery unleash chance Please upvote the guide if you haven't already - it will make the guide visible and helpful to more people =] http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=838548916

The wait is over! Titan class is now available! Class power distribution Offense: 1 Defense: 3 Complexity: 2
Class description Titan class spaceships are resilient destroyers of the Machine minions. They aren't very good damage dealers, but their defensive abilities allow them to outlast even the deadliest of the Machine minions. Titan class offensive abilities deal damage based on pylons. It's quite complex class, with unique ability effects and disadvantages. Some of the class abilities are compatible with other class spaceships. Class abilities











Other changes

• Rebalanced Lethal Weapons and Aberrant Armour difficulty modifiers.
• Manifestations of Destruction modifier now can be increased to level 2.
• Manifestations of Destruction level 2 makes minions always spawn in groups of 3.
• Difficulty modifier levels are now saved between different missions and play sessions.
• Fixed message glitch.
• Added Almadi diodes.
• Almadi diodes increase the grade of parts.
• Now difficulty level increases a chance to get Almadi diode drop from minions.
• Amplifiers, cathodes, anodes and diodes now have consistent levels and sell/buy costs.
• Sustained Barrage ability now requires at least 5 ether to activate.
• Shards Of Chaos ability projectiles now destroy enemy armour pieces.
• Carrier class mines no longer bounce off shields.
• Reworked Piercing Lasers ability.
• Armoured colony seeker will no longer hit player spaceship when appearing.
• Added Channel ability for carrier class.
• Added new part sprites.

Titan class will be released soon. It was meant to be released a few days ago, but there is a problem with the server I am using, so the new class won't be released for another few days. Sorry! Anyway, it's a good time to write about the upcoming updates. 8th month of the year has just started and that means I have less than 4 months to finish Sector Six in 2017. It probably won't happen, but I'll try to make it true. Which means that I'll need to move some more stuff to post-release. My old plan was to make titan class, complete combat, make region boss 2, add additional region missions and enemies, make region boss 3, make remaining 9 story missions and release the game. Now I have decided to put optional stuff away and focus on getting to story missions. Extra region missions and bosses would be nice, but they are quite time-consuming and I don't hear feedback about wanting more of that. And I do know that there's a lot of people waiting for story missions. So yeah, region content has been officially dumped to post-release! There's new obstacle through - map rework! The Sector Six map/level/area system will be completely reworked. Currently, enemies scale with player level and that makes levelling up useless and I really need to fix that. So, what's going to happen? Currently, there are 25 regions that scale to player level. After rework, there will be a region for every player level. For example, Deep Path will be a level 1 region. Everything - items, enemies, cities - in Deep Path region will be level 1. Negati will be level 2 region, Labyrinth will be level 3 region and so on! It's a big change and it will be very good for the game - it will create a strong feeling of progression and a lot of content just because of how regions are going to work. I'll write more about it once I'll start working on it, which will happen after I'll complete combat. And it won't take long to complete combat. It will be a relatively small update - I'll add remaining abilities for carrier and apocalypse classes, fix last small issues with combat and give each ability a passive effect. For example, Shards Of Chaos ability will increase all damage by 2% per level of ability - even if Shards Of Chaos is not equipped. That means it all unequipped abilities will turn into passive abilities, which is big because every ability point will matter now! That's all good, but... But Sector Six remains unpopular. This is what I'm going to do about it: 1) Sector Six is going to get bigger discounts on sales. 2) Sector Six is finally going to be translated into different languages. 3) Sector Six is going to be included in bundles. To sum it up, my new development plan is to release titan class, prepare the game for translation, rework map, finish the story and release the game. So, that's all for this post! Until next time.

Week two of Titan class development! Two abilities to go! Last week I have implemented two more abilities: Entropic Missile It's a very simple ability. It creates a single missile that deals really a lot of damage. It breaks through minion armour. And that's it. Channel This one is also very simple but this one has a very interesting effect. Activating this ability will reduce ether cost of the next ability. It's not just a nice discount - it allows to use more expensive abilities with Flow Stagnation difficulty modifier enabled. It's also the only way to use abilities that cost ether while Azimar's Killframe set effect is active. So many possibilities! Channel decreases ether cost by 20 at a maximum level. With 10 Titan class abilities implemented, I only need to implement 2 more! Here are they: Black Rain This ability will cause black rain, which is when shards of metal are falling from the sky! Well, when you're in that weird, cloudy outer space of Sector Six, it's a bit different, but the result is the same - lots of damage! Falling metal shards will deal a certain amount of pylon damage. To minions AND your spaceship, because rain is rain, it doesn't choose targets. Black rain will fill the screen with damaging shards for 8 seconds, so only way to prevent damage to your spaceship is to put a Super Shield on your ship. That's how Stable Shield is called now. So ideally you'll be safely staying under the shield while everything else will be obliterated by the black rain! Guardian Of A Thousand Worlds It's the ultimate Titan class ability! It turns your spaceship into Guardian, that regenerates armour at a ridiculous rate, deals increased damage and has 1000 ether. Unconditionally. Must be exploiting some glitch. But I'm not brave enough to question Guardian's ways! Anyway, I wasn't only just adding new abilities, I have also done some changes to old abilities. Projectiles created by Shards Of Chaos ability now break through enemy armour pieces, so this ability is guaranteed to deal damage now. Death From Above now releases missiles after a short delay. During the delay you can see where the missiles will go, so you have time to aim. Carrier class mines no longer bounce off shields and ruins. They also deal damage even if they weren't detonated. There are few more changes, but I'm not going to write about them because you will be able to see them in the game soon! Until then!

Last week I have started working on Titan class! 5 abilities implemented, 4 abilities to go! Titan class is a class that is not very good at dealing damage and removing shields but has powerful defensive abilities. Titan class spaceships evolved from heavy support spaceships. When the Machine invasion began, support spaceships were keeping shields up while Apocalypse and Carrier class spaceships were dealing damage. After support spaceships won several battles because of their superior survivability, they were given even more powerful shields and weapons to become Titan class spaceships. I've been saving up ideas for Titan abilities, so it's going really well, I expect for Titan class to be out in two weeks. It would be possible to release Titan class next weekend, but I want to have extra time for testing and various combat improvements, such as Death From Above ability rework. I will also need to make starter ship for Titan class and adapt tutorial to it. Anyway, this and previous week I have added these Titan class abilities: Concentrated Fire This is main attack ability. It's the fastest ability in the game, it's cooldown can be as low as 0.2 seconds, because every activation of ability decreases cooldown. It has a downside - every 100 times this ability is activated, the ability has a long 15-second cooldown. This gap will be a time for other abilities (including those from other classes) to shine. Swarm Control This ability is unique to the game, there was nothing like it before. It creates a seeking missile for every minion seen on screen and those missiles go through shields, armour and even other minions until they reach their target. It has a 4-second cooldown, so it's basically Titan class Death From Above. Searing Beam This ability creates a piercing beam that lashes minions. It has a low cooldown and 15 ether cost, so if your ship generates ether quickly, it can be repeated often, unlike laser abilities of Apocalypse class. Stable Shield It's the strongest shielding ability in the game. It's duration increases with ability level and at maximum ability level, it reaches 8 seconds! With 14 second cooldown, it covers your spaceship more often and longer than other shielding abilities. Creation of Energy The ability that generates ether is finally here! Break fundamentals of the Universe by downright creating ether out of nothing! This is the first of many abilities that will encourage the use of giant spaceships. When upgraded to max level, Creation of Energy creates 1 ether per part attached to your spaceship. It has a 30-second cooldown, so you won't be able to completely rely on it to get ether. Unless your spaceship is like, really big. Creation of Energy is immune to Flow Stagnation. You can check out full ability descriptions and testing video below. I hope you're as hyped as I am about Titan class! Until next time! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1079767468

The game should be less confusing for new players because the tutorial has been extended to include explanations for spaceship building, ability equipping, alloy container maintaining, and mission map. There are also new options for map screen. It is now possible to skip a turn - which generates new missions - and to check in how many turns the Machines will move. The big thing is the option to set level cap. That can be done on the class select screen before starting a new game. Level cap be set to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 and unlimited. Level cap only works for that save and it cannot be changed. Other changes:

• Improved class select interface.
• Fixed Almadi anode glitch.
• Demolisher achievement can now be achieved again.
• Shield generators now release mines.
• Shield generators can now be encountered outside tutorial.
• Fixed various phase break glitches.
• EMP Grenade now costs 5 ether to activate.
• Now it's possible to pause tutorial.
• Possibly fixed invisible shield glitch.

If you don't have time to read the whole post, scroll down to BIG QUESTIONS. The new tutorial is nearly finished! I'm almost done with one of the hardest development phases. Here's the list of previous tough phases: 1. Tutorial 1 2. Interface rework 3. Tutorial 2 4. Graphical update 5. Controller support 6. Tutorial 5? There were many tutorials. Too many =P These things aren't that hard, but they are very boring. Reworking entire combat was a much more difficult task, but it was fun. When I have to work on boring stuff, I have to force myself and I don't always succeed, and then the boring thing takes even longer to make. Vicious cycle! But I've dealt with this tutorial pretty well. I'm going to polish it a bit, adapt it to controller/carrier class and then I'll update the game with the new tutorial. That should happen in 2-3 days. And yes, I need to have different tutorial versions for each starter spaceship and then different versions of those for controller users. With the upcoming update, I'll also make mission 1, 2 and 3 shorter. I'll just reduce filler space between things happening. After the tutorial update, I'm going to adjust level systems and... This needs a dramatic pause. ... And I'll add Titan class! Titan class will be absolutely amazing - except at removing shields - but more about it in next post. Now, the new level systems... When I get player feedback about things, I still don't do anything, until I start seeing patterns in feedback. For example, when I start seeing more comments about level up system. So yeah, I've got enough feedback about level up system to consider changing it. First, I'll make sure that it takes more kills to level up in higher levels. To be more proportional to how many parts the spaceship needs in higher levels. Then I'll change the way enemies level up. Every 10 missions completed, the Machines move. It is when enemies will scale to player level, instead of automatically leveling up when the player does. This will make leveling up very advantageous to the player, even if temporary. To make this work, I'm going to need to change several things about leveling. I think I'll nerf The Decision modifier and make it impossible to level up quickly by killing low-level enemies. I don't want players to be more than 4 levels higher than enemies. THE BIG QUESTIONS: There are a few very important questions I want to ask my small community: 1) Should I decrease maximum part limit from 80 to 70? 80 parts are difficult to stuff into building field. It feels limiting, so I thought maybe I could reduce a size of spaceship a little. Fewer parts also mean less time spent managing ship. The better solution would be to increase building field, but I can't do that. 2) Should I nerf The Decision difficulty modifier? If yes, how much? The safest option would be just let it have 1 level, that increase mission length just by 100%. When I implemented it, I thought it was a good, heh, decision to make modifier that modifies mission length. Now I'm not so sure. I still want to keep it, but I don't want to force players to spend so much time on just one mission. It would also allow exploiting enemy leveling after the upcoming changes. Although new enemy leveling might not come. 3) Should I delete all saves and reset leaderboards when the game will leave Early Access? Ships built in old version are a constant headache. Update button helps a little, but with upcoming changes, old ships will become completely alien to the game. Possibly different maximum part limit, part sets, new part properties, new experience formula - and old spaceships are build with different rules. I'm NOT GOING TO DELETE PLAYER SAVES WITHOUT MAJORITY OF PLAYERS ACCEPTING IT, so I'm just asking to consider it. I know many of you spent really a lot of hours playing Early Access versions, so if a fresh start doesn't sound good, I will respect that. The question could be rephrased to: When the game will leave Early Access, will you continue playing with an old spaceship OR will you start the new game? Another thing, there will be some serious changes to save system. It would be a lot easier for me to make these changes if I didn't have to port old saves to new save system. 4) Should I release all story missions in one update, or should I release a mission, whenever I'm done with it? Once I'm done with everything else, I'll be working on new story missions. There will be 9-10 more missions. Finishing story might take several months and I don't know if anyone wants to wait that long. The good thing about the mass release: I might pull the game out of Early Access with the same update, so you can complete story in final game version. 5) How is the part sets? How difficult is to obtain and maintain them? Are there problems with them? That's something to think about, eh? I will add those questions on Feedback discussion, so you can also answer them here. So, that's all for this echo. Until next time!

This update implements the last item and spaceship building features! Part sets Now you will have a chance to find parts that belong to a set. If you will equip 12 parts of the same set, you will be able to activate a powerful set effect! There are 7 part sets:

• Etherion's Clash:

• Cor's Voidshape:

• Ultranid's Torment:

• Oesa's Radiance:

• Kithalia's Blight:

• Azimar's Killframe:

• Lodeon's Ultimatum:

• +x% chance to upgrade part
• +x% chance to cause white wave
• +x% chance to cause red wave
• +x% chance to cause black wave
• +x levels to EMP Grenade ability
• +x levels to Assemble Obelisk ability
• +x levels to Resurrect Armour ability
• +x levels to Shards of Chaos ability
• Reduces phase break cooldown by x seconds
• +x phase break damage

• Low-level parts.
• Parts that have not been upgraded with amplifiers.
• Amplifiers.
• Alloy containers.
• Relays.
• Nodes.
• Pylons.
• Non-weapon parts.
• Engines

• Etalons and mythicals can now be upgraded twice.
• Returned cannons to game.
• Renamed cannons to pylons.
• Nerfed Sustained Barrage.
• Abilities cannot be unleashed anymore.
• Removed nomad abilities.
• Improved enemy explosions.
• Improved missile impacts.
• Improved toggle buttons.
• Improved backgrounds.
• The Elder Mechanism now has a tooltip.
• You can now use controller buttons to manage parts.
• Changed Eternal Obelisk and Full Potential achievements.
• Achievement lore and lore buttons removed.

'Ello all! I've just watched a streamer play Sector Six. I didn't watch the whole stream, but I got the important message. Sector Six is too hard! What happened during the stream probably happened a lot of times before. I've got comments and reviews saying that Sector Six is challenging, but that is good and so I didn't do anything about it. If you played Sector Six and it seemed too hard/grindy/slow, I am very sorry! BECAUSE SECTOR SIX IS NOT CHALLENGING. It was never meant to be grindy or challenging unless the player really wanted it to be. On the surface, it's a very easy and basic game. THEN WHAT IS HAPPENING?! ... What happens when players get Sector Six and start playing it? They build an imbalanced ship, that doesn't have enough weapons and go to destroy some minions. It's not that bad at first. But they eventually level up, enemies get stronger. Players add more parts that don't really help them. Spaceship building mistakes start stacking up and turn fast, explosion filled combat into a slow nightmare. Enemies take minutes to kill, the player loses several times, loses an alloy container, not even an easy mode helps at this point. If I had to guess, this happens most of the time. I've put a lot of warnings, there are ability descriptions and item tooltips. And yet it keeps happening. Players seem to understand how combat works. They are able - even if not that well - to use shields, dodge bullets, activate abilities, repair armour with alloy container. Why? Players handle combat pretty well. There's a combat tutorial that quickly explains how to fight. Players don't understand how to build a good spaceship. There's spaceship building tutorial- Oh, right. There's no spaceship building tutorial. I mean, why would there be a tutorial, if to build a basic, good spaceship player just needs to add a lot of weapons to it? Right? Apparently, I was wrong and Sector Six needs an extended tutorial to also cover spaceship building. I believe that right now Sector Six scares away most of the players and they never get the awesome experience that I spent years to create. That needs to be fixed as soon as possible! The UX team will have to work overtime to- Oh. ... Anyway, since I'm already writing the echo... The last item update is almost here! New properties and their effects have been implemented, advanced part management is working perfectly, set effect are ready to change gameplay forever... The new spaceship building tutorial will be the next update, right after the item update. Until next time! PS.: New Sector Six trailer! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=953066823

Last week I have implemented wave part properties, started working on advanced part management and did few graphical improvements. Item update is almost done. I only need to finish part management which will take 1 or 2 days, add the last part properties and fix all those glitches that have crawled into the game with recent changes. After that is done, I'll make few graphical changes and then update will be released. The update should happen on the next weekend! I've already written about white, red and black waves, so now I want to write a bit about phase chance and phase damage properties. Phase chance will dictate how often your spaceship will enter the phase of increased power. During the phase, you will deal more damage. The phase will last 5 seconds. Phase damage will increase damage dealt during the phase. For example, if your phase damage is equal to 200%, all of your abilities will deal 200% more damage during the phase. Simple and effective! Phase chance should replace unleash chance, which I have removed two weeks ago. Anyway, next week I will also continue working on graphics. I wasn't planning on doing that, but I've got some feedback and... started working graphics =P Check video bellow to see what's improved. So, that's all for this echo, I hope next time I'll have more news! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=944816455

It's 6th day of the 6th month and I'm streaming Sector Six on my Twitch channel! Go to Twitch >>

This was another great week for Sector Six! I've done a lot of progress and made few important decisions. Seven part sets have been implemented and are ready for release! But first, about the big decisions! Right now Sector Six is unpopular. I don't make many sales and that makes my life and game development rather difficult, so I need to increase sales. Sector Six is in Early Access and that scares away a large part of buyers, so I need to get the game out of Early Access as soon as possible. That means I have to finish Sector Six faster. To do that I need to cancel some of the planned features. Or even better - put some features aside and implement them after the game is finished and out of Early Access. Postponed: The Router and unlinked regions It would be a nice addition to the game but is not necessary for the game to be finished. Postponed: Nomad class Sector Six will leave Early Access with 3 classes instead of 4. Postponing nomad class will make Sector Six release earlier by a good few weeks. Postponed: Endgame update Permanent death modes, creative mode, new game+ expansion, loot options, boss replaying... All these features would take a lot of time to make and they would be used only by a few players, because of how unpopular Sector Six is, so I will wait until I have more players who can access these features before working on them. Canceled: Part crafting Part crafting was a feature I've always wanted to see in the game, but after adding cities, I have realized that there is no place for item crafting in Sector Six. Item management in Sector Six is already very time consuming and crafting would make it even worse, so in a way, it's even better to have no crafting. Canceled: Ability unleashing I have really tried to make ability unleashing work well, but it's just impossible. Without ability unleashing, I will be able to make abilities better because I no longer need two versions of the same ability - normal and unleashed. With these questionable features out of the way, here's what I need to do before I can say that the game is completed: The last item update Part compression update The boss update The last combat expansion The last boss update The remaining story missions The list has become nice, thin and doable! Now I will be able to finish Sector Six in a few months and finished game will be polished to perfection! Anyway, enough about the future. As I have mentioned, I have implemented all part sets I wanted. In the previous echo, I wrote about adding five part sets, but I added two more, so now there are unique 7 ways to build your spaceship! Implementing sets was rather easy, except for Cor's Voidshape. I had to find a way to merge parts of the spaceship into one image to make spaceship transparent. That took me about 5 hours! Next week I will implement new part properties: +x levels to EMP Grenade ability +x levels to Shards of Chaos ability +x levels to Resurrect Armour ability +x levels to Assemble Obelisk ability +x% chance to cause white wave +x% chance to cause red wave +x% chance to cause black wave Waves will be caused on an enemy kill. The white wave will jam enemies. The red wave will cause damage over time. The black wave will destroy enemy segments and deal some damage to them. Waves will help to defeat enemy groups because one destroyed enemy might cause a wave that will jam or damage other enemies. Only mythical and etalon parts will have wave chance properties and only etalon parts will add levels to abilities. That should make high-grade parts even more interesting! After new properties are implemented, I will work on part filtering, the last thing on my list. Then I'll just need to fix few new glitches, run few tests and the new version will be ready for an update! So, that's the news. Until next time!

Last week I've been working on item update. I've done really a lot! First of, now mythical and etalon parts are better! They can be upgraded with amplifiers two times, unlike lower grade parts. Speaking of lower grade parts, I have added a new part property that adds a chance to upgrade parts to a higher grade. If you have at least one of parts with this properly, there's a chance that a lower grade part you've just picked up will turn to higher grade part. For example, a generic part will turn into optimized and advanced part will turn into extant. And after item update, you'll want to get as many extant parts as possible! Extant, mythical and etalon parts will have a chance to be a component of a part set! Part sets are simple: Add a certain amount of parts that are set components and you will get a special effect of that set. For example, adding 10 Ultranid's parts will unlock Ultranid's Corruption set effect. I'm planning to add 5 part sets with the upcoming update, while other part sets will be added in future, maybe even after the full release of the game. Here's current set effects: Cor's Voidshape Enemy projectiles go through your spaceship Enemy projectiles damage your spaceship only if they hit the Elder Mechanism Shield duration is reduced to 2 seconds Maximum armour is reduced by 90% Etherion's Clash +400% damage Damage boost is applied only if your spaceship has equal amount of relays, pylons, elements and nodes Ultranid's Corruption Cooldowns of all abilities are reduced to 0 seconds Activating an ability deals damage to your spaceship Damage dealt is equal to 10% of maximum armour Kithalia's Blight Your spaceship has +4% damage for every 1% of missing ether Your spaceship is destroyed if ether reaches 100% Oesa's Radiance Your spaceship has +1% damage for every 10 ether Base maximum armour of your spaceship is equal to maximum ether multiplied by 50 Cor's Voidshape is probably my favorite part set, because of how game changing it is! It basically enables classic shoot 'em up gameplay by reducing hitbox size and maximum armour. Dodge or die! I'm very proud of Etherion's Clash set. It's perfect for people who like to use abilities from all available classes, because it covers the loss of damage, that you get for using multiple weapon types. Ultranid's Corruption set effect is a mini Overload after you use an ability! Extremely risky, but rewarding! High-level players usually keep a lot of unused ether. Kithalia's Blight should change that, by rewarding for NOT having ether and severely punishing if you don't dump ether! I've also noticed that maximum ether property is not very useful. Oesa's Radiance will make it more than useful! I think it is possible to get up to +5000% damage through Oesa's Radiance effect. You'll regret dismantling all those ether parts =] Anyway, I've spent most of the time last week preparing for part sets. I improved procedural item generator, part tooltips, added an interface for checking the status of part sets and so on. Next week I will start implementing set effects. I have also unlocked mortars and cannons because they will be required for Etherion's Clash set. I promise to add abilities for those weapons soon! There's one more thing. I am going to remove ability unleashing. Unleashing just simply didn't work out. Without unleashed effects, I'll have more design space and I will be able to make more interesting abilities. Considering how quickly I am progressing with this update, I think it will come out in the first half of June, so get ready! Well, that's all for this echo. Until next time!

Download new version now to test your spaceship in new region missions and unlock new achievements! This update also includes many graphical and gameplay improvements. Gauntlet Gauntlet is just like kill mission, except that during gauntlet your alloy container, repairing abilities and parts will not work! If you will survive gauntlet, you will get an extant part! Time siege During time siege, you will have to defeat all Sector Six enemies from weakest to strongest! The faster you'll do it, the better reward you will get. New achievements 25 achievements for exploring Sector Six, 5 achievements for completing missions, 10 miscellaneous achievements, and 5 secret achievements! These new achievements will encourage you to try new things. New combat options Now you can disable XP gain and enable easy mode! Easy mode halves enemy damage, armor, XP reward and disables modular difficulty system. Inventory glitch fixed You will no longer end up with -5785 inventory slots! Lethal Weapons and Aberrant Armour nerfed +200% armor and damage per level were way too much! Now Lethal Weapons and Aberrant Armour will only increase enemy armor and damage by 100%. Graphical changes

• Improved backgrounds.
• Added weapon warning.
• Improved main menu.
• Improved death animation.
• Improved loot box.
• Improved level up screen.
• Improved modular difficulty system map.
• Improved achievement notifications.
• Game now remembers more notifications.
• Fixed annoying claim screen glitch.
• Added achievement icons.

• Added movement sound.
• Fixed passive ability description graphical glitch.
• Fixed inventory page button graphical glitch.
• Detonated mines are now slightly less effective against enemy segments.
• Fixed mosaic seeking projectile glitch.
• EMP Grenade now deals damage based on node damage, like it is supposed to.

I'm getting close to finishing Sector Six graphics! This week I have improved loot box, level up screen and added a box that shows difficulty rewards. I've wanted to make these changes for a long time. Besides that, I have added the last achievement, made icons for Steam achievements and now Sector Six is ready for the achievement update! I have also tried making changes to the art style. I couldn't make it work, so I decided to revert all the changes. Next week I will be dealing with last graphical changes I want to make - some sort of movement animations, background spaceships, inventory animations. I am also hoping to finally update the game in a few days, so keep an eye on new posts about that! Until next time!

This echo is slightly different - it's a list of all updates that are left to do until Sector Six is completed! Next update Update that will come out next is an achievement and graphic update. 45 new achievements! Various graphical improvements. This is the last graphical update! Sector Six will no longer change graphically. The last item update New part designs. New part properties. High-grade part improvements. Part sets. New filtering options. Alternative weapons. The last crafting update Part crafting. Part compression. The Router update Concealed regions with epic rewards, unlocked by completing achievements. The boss update #1 New boss. Armored colony seeker improvements. The boss update #2 The last boss. Combat expansion #1 Titan class. New side missions. Combat expansion #2 Nomad class. New side missions. The remaining story missions Story mission VI Story mission VII Story mission VIII Story mission IX Story mission X Story mission XI Story mission XII Story mission XIII Story mission XIV Endgame update Permanent death and hardcore modes. Ability to set maximum level, enable and disable sources of loot and experience. Ability to replay the Machine boss fights. Creative mode. Last batch of achievements. Full release After I will do all of that, the game will be completed! This list might not mean a lot to you, but to me, it's amazing to finally know for sure what I'll have to do to finish Sector Six! Amazing. And terrifying! That's so much to do! I'll go work on it right away!

To celebrate Sector Six 1 year in Steam anniversary, I'm giving away 50 keys! How to join: Click here >>

One year ago, Sector Six was released on Steam! I am going to stream Sector Six all day! Click here to go to Twitch >> I will be playing latest Sector Six version - it's a great way to see what's coming with next update! I will also show how I develop Sector Six with GameMaker: Studio There will be giveaways too! I am planning to give away 50 Sector Six keys on SteamGifts and in my Steam groups, don't miss announcements!

Due to technical difficulties, the next update is postponed. I can't say for how long, could be a day, could be weeks. That gives me plenty of time to add more stuff! Right now I am working on new achievements and achievement icons. There will be 30+ new achievements! This number is inflated because I will add an achievement for completing a mission in each region. Aside from standard achievements for completing missions, reaching a certain level, and activating abilities, I will also add five secret achievements. And that's the only thing you'll hear from me about them! Every achievement will get a unique icon. Current Steam achievement icons will be updated as well. Once I'm done with achievements, I will start working on a graphical update. I will try to improve projectile impacts again, make better death animations, improve interfaces and maybe even add some sort of movement animations. And then there's this:
Since the very beginning of the development, I've been hearing that Sector Six art style is great, but it has one problem. It makes everything look similar. I wasn't worrying too much about it because there was no solution to this problem and I had bigger problems to deal with. But after making the image above, I think I finally know how to increase variety without sacrificing enigmatic silhouettes. There's a lot of things to figure out about this. What colour should the lights be? What to do with spaceship parts that are tiny and don't allow big lights? What changes do I need to do player spaceship and enemy graphics to ensure that it will look clean? Do I need to add lights to region background images? If I'll manage to find solutions to all of those problems, then I will make this change. All of this gives me enough work for a month! So, that's all for this echo, hopefully, next one will come after a week, like it is supposed to. Until next time!

Last two weeks I've lost a lot of development time because my PC broke down few times. But now my PC is back to being a functioning game development device and I'm happy to announce that Sector Six is going to be updated next week! Next update features few neat graphical improvements, a possible fix to dreadful inventory glitch, and a good dose of new content! After hearing few complaints about the lack of content, I have put everything aside and made two new region missions - time siege and gauntlet! Time siege is about destroying a siege unit as fast as possible! This mission is the first Sector Six mission that has a performance-based reward. The faster you will destroy a siege unit, the better reward you will get at the end of the mission. Getting to a siege unit is not easy - you will have to defeat each of current Sector Six enemies - from swarming to an apparition. Time siege mission will always generate the same enemies in the same order, so the outcome of the mission is completely based on your skill and spaceship. Gauntlet is similar to good old kill mission in a way that during it, you'll get to kill a certain amount of enemies. The catch is that during a gauntlet mission, you will not be able to repair your spaceship! All damage received is permanent. The reward is proportional to the challenge - you will receive extant part if you will manage to survive! I was also meant to do a heroic gauntlet mission, but because my PC broke, I decided to add that with some other update. I want to keep the gaps between updates as small as possible. There's not much to say about the graphical changes - backgrounds, region entering/leaving and the main menu are simply better now! So, that's all for this echo, I hope you guys are excited about the update as much as I am! Until next time!

'Ello all! For few days I had no access to my PC, so there's not a lot of news. Last week I was working on the graphical update. I've been trying to improve Sector Six backgrounds again. The good news is that the background and clouds are moving in interfaces - like in old Sector Six versions. The bad news is that right now I'm struggling with region entering and leaving. For some reason, backgrounds jump forward when entering regions. It seems that I will have to spend more time fixing that than I would like to. Anyway, this week I will work on new options for combat and new side missions. I am going to add an option to make the game really easy. It will reduce enemy armour and damage by 50%. With easy mode enabled, you will also gain more XP from enemy kills. You will also be able to entirely turn off XP gaining. Recently I have received some complaints about a lack of mission variety, so I have decided to throw in some unique side missions! There will three of them: Gauntlet, heroic gauntlet and speed run. Gauntlet: You will have to destroy a certain amount of enemies. During this mission, alloy containers, armour on kill and repairing abilities will not work! Heroic gauntlet: Just like the regular gauntlet, except that it will last as long as you can survive and every kill will award glory. The more glory you have, the greater is the reward! Big enemies will give more glory. During heroic gauntlet, you will also encounter dark pillars. Dark pillars will allow you to summon big enemies for additional glory. Speed run: During speed run, you will have to destroy one of every enemy. One swarmling, one mosaic, one veteran, etc. The faster you will destroy enemies, the better reward you will get. That's all I have for this echo, time to do some heavy coding =] Until next time!

'Ello all! I have just released an alpha version of The Cursed Legion - my 5th game! The Cursed Legion is a free single-player collectible card game that is currently in early alpha. Today is also the day when my new website and Patreon page launches! Links: My new website Patreon page The Cursed Legion

Sector Six has been updated! This update adds a lot of new content and improves various parts of the game. Five new abilities! Era's End, apocalypse class ability: The most powerful damage dealing ability in Sector Six! Overload, apocalypse class ability: Overload removes armour and in exchange sets all ability cooldowns to 0. Nine Bladed Mines, carrier class ability: Releases nine bladed mines, that deal damage and remove shields. Attract Mines, carrier class ability: Attracts mines that appear above, bellow and behind enemies and deal damage when detonated. EMP Grenade, carrier class ability: Launches grenade that explodes and jams enemies! Jammed enemies cannot move or attack. Three new enemies! Collectors: Large, powerful enemies with unique attack abilities. Destroy collector's emitters to prevent them from using their most powerful attack. Mosaics: Medium sized enemies that are composed of fragile parts. Mosaics launch mines that are difficult to dodge. Drones: Small enemies similar to demolishers. New game+ If you have completed all story missions, you can now go to settings and reset them. This allows you do them all over again! This feature has not been properly tested, due to the amount of time it would take to do that. If you encounter any issues related to it, please report them immediately. Cities have been improved. Now they offer more items and have fewer glitches! Also, spaceship now moves faster in secure regions. Other changes:

• Ability removed: Mine Mayhem.
• Fixed Detonate sound effect glitch.
• Added elimination mission.
• Acolyte seeking shards are now slower.
• Ether on hit removed.
• Possibly fixed broken inventory slot amount.
• Shards of Chaos ability now deals more damage.
• Shatter ability now deals more damage.
• Fixed shield depth glitch.
• Fixed tutorial glitch.
• Side missions now have better rewards.
• Side missions now may give units as a reward.
• New missions will no longer be generated after entering the secure region.
• Sniper weapon projectiles are now slower and bigger.
• The Rain of Fire missiles are now easier to dodge.
• Sector Six now officially has a full controller support.

Since the last time I posted, I have added collectors, an ability to reset story missions and made a bunch of small, but awesome improvements! An ability to reset story missions is a first step towards having a new game+ feature! Personally, I'm not a fan of new game+ in other games, but I'm sure that it's a great feature for Sector Six. Resetting story missions is completely optional, there are no changes to missions. You will able to reset missions soon because with collectors added, there's not much left to do until I can release the new version! Collectors are new the minions that are as powerful as veterans. In my initial plans, collectors were supposed to collect parts and repair themselves. It was impossible to make that work, so instead, collectors were given an armour core, two unique attack abilities, and a shielding ability. As I mentioned, I have made some cool improvements to various parts of Sector Six. Here's few of them:

• It is no longer possible to get parts that generate ether when the spaceship is hit by enemy projectiles.
• Now spaceship moves faster in secure regions.
• Now cities offer more items. This should increase a chance of getting a good offer.
• Visiting secure region no longer generates new missions.
• Fixed tutorial glitch.
• Side missions now have better rewards.
• Side missions now may give units as a reward.

This week I was working on mosaics and the new apocalypse class ability - Era's End! There's not much to say about that besides that mosaics are fun to destroy and Era's End is fun to destroy enemies with. I could also say that making Era's End was extremely challenging! Not the effects of the ability, but its animation. I've spent about 10 hours tweaking Era's End animation. It's the most powerful apocalypse class ability, so I had to come up with something that looks really powerful. Because I'm not that good at animation, it took me a while to that. You can see the final animation in the video bellow. Anyway, next week I will probably work on the collectors, ability points and ether on hit changes. Until next time! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=878427423 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=876992314

The next update is a combat update! With every update, I make a few changes that positively affect the game. It doesn't mean it's easy to do those changes because often it requires removing or aggravating something. So, with the next update gaining ether through getting spaceship hit by enemy projectiles will no longer be possible. I am hoping that this change will make ether much more valuable because it will be harder to get ether. The other heavy change is ability point rebalance. This is a very old problem that I have never addressed. Right now it is possible to upgrade 9 abilities to a maximum level at level 20. Because only 9 abilities can be equipped, leveling up after level 20 becomes a lot less rewarding. I have few solutions: 1) Make leveling up give fewer ability points. From currently 4 to 3 or 2. 2) Make ability upgrading cost more than 1 point. 3) Increase maximum ability level to 20. I like the last most. It will increase the maximum level to 40 and something about having higher ability level feels good. Of course, this doesn't mean that the abilities will become more powerful. If right now each ability upgrade makes ability deal 10% more damage after I increase cap each ability upgrade will make ability deal just 5% more damage. But enough about that. Sector Six haven't seen new enemies for a while and I am going to fix that! I am planning to make new enemies - mosaics and collectors. To those who do not remember mosaics, they are enemies made entirely out of fragile segments. About collectors, well, they are completely new enemies, that will have a special ability to create parts and fully repair themselves if they collect those parts. Players will be able to steal parts they will create and prevent them from collecting them. Combat update is not a combat update if I don't add new abilities! Right now I am planning to add four abilities - two for apocalypse class and two for carrier class, but I might add more. I have already added an ability for carrier class, called Nine Bladed Mines. This ability is a hellish combination of Sustained Barrage and Bladed Mine abilities! Nine Bladed Mines will replace rather disappointing Mine Mayhem. For more details, check screenshot bellow. Finally, with this update, I am planning to add new side missions - elimination and gauntlet. Elimination mission is a variation of kill mission. The difference is that instead of killing set amount of minions, players will have to kill ALL minions in the region. Elimination missions will appear only on besieged missions. Gauntlet mission will be really tough, because, during gauntlet, you won't be able to repair armour! I have noticed that Sector Six feels best when armour is about to hit zero. Then combat is an intense and satisfying struggle for survival. Hopefully gauntlet push player into such struggle. Gauntlet missions will appear in all regions, but they will be rare because they are both challenging and very rewarding. As you can see, I am going to be pretty busy for next few weeks! If you have thoughts about these changes, please let me know in comments. Until next time!

Secure regions can now be entered! Complete the missions to make regions secure, then enter them and get in the cities to buy and sell items! There are:

• Cities that sell generic weapons.
• Cities that sell random parts.
• Cities that sell high-grade parts.
• Cities that sell alloy containers.
• Cities that sell extant parts.
• Cities that sell amplifiers.
• Cities that sell random grade parts and amplifiers.

• Changed the way alloy containers repair armour, now each container charge repairs 1% armour.
• Container refill cost is now based on alloy in the container.
• Rebalanced amount of alloy received when dismantling items.
• New container property: Filled.
• New container property: Gains 65 alloy every 50 kills.
• New container property: Generates 1 ether on kill.
• New container property: Generates armour on kill.
• New container property: Gains 10 alloy every 15 kills.
• New container property: Eternal.
• New container property: Ancient.
• New container property: Sacrificial.
• New container flaw: Corrupted.
• New container flaw: Cannot be refilled.
• New container flaw: Transient.
• New container flaw: Unstable.
• Removed property: Gains charges on kill.
• Removed property: Reduced refill cost.
• Removed flaw: Increased refill cost.
• Added 3 new container skins.
• Now it's possible to swap alloy containers.

• Upgraded parts now have a higher value.
• Added 5 achievements for triggering new container abilities.
• Improved amplifier sprites.
• Amplifiers now amplify part properties based on amplified part level, not on amplifier level.
• You can no longer apply Almadi cathodes and anodes to parts attached to your spaceship.
• Applying cathodes and anodes no longer erase their names.
• Alpha Pulsar region renamed to Bloom.
• Beta Pulsar region renamed to Pulsar Vector.
• Added HUD hiding.
• Improved item tooltip placement.
• Recolored few regions.
• Shielding abilities now share cooldowns.
• Fixed apparition and seeking projectile glitch.
• Dock part now looks better.
• Story mission V will now take less time to complete.
• Now it's possible to dismantle (and sell items) by pressing X button on the controller.

In my previous echo, that I have posted two weeks ago, I've said that I'll be working on alloy containers and secure regions. And I did that. Alloy containers are finally the best way to repair armour! Each charge in alloy container now repairs 1% armour instead of just 1 armour. Container refilling cost is now based on how much alloy is in alloy container. That means you can refill containers that are not empty and not lose any alloy! I have also added a bunch of new container properties and flaws:

• Filled: Containers with "Filled" are found containing the maximum amount of alloy.
• Generates x armour on kill: Amount of armour repaired on kill is based on container level.
• Eternal: Containers with "Eternal" are indestructible and gain 50 alloy if you fail the mission.
• Ancient: Containers with "Ancient" gain 30 alloy when you pass dust cloud.
• Sacrificial: Containers with "Sacrificial" destroy themselves and restores armour to 50% if armour drops to 0.
• Corrupted: Containers with "Corrupted" give no alloy when dismantled.
• Transient: Containers with "Transient" are destroyed when you complete mission.
• Unstable: Containers with "Unstable" burn alloy when you use repairing abilities.
• Gains 65 alloy every 50 kills.
• Generates 1 ether on kill.
• Gains 10 alloy every 15 kills.
• Cannot be refilled.

• There are 5 new achievements for triggering unstable, transient, eternal, ancient and sacrificial alloy container abilities.
• I have added three new container skins.
• Item dismantling value is no longer based on item level.
• Amplifiers now give alloy when dismantled.
• Upgrading part now increases its dismantling value.
• Alloy container dismantling value is now based on the amount of the alloy in the container.
• After reworking alloy containers, I have been decorating secure regions.
• Because there are so many regions, I am going to leave most of the regions for future.

I got some exciting news! Trading has been added, it is fully functional and impactful! As I mentioned in previous echoes, my design philosophy is simple - every game element must have its place. Since the day one of Sector Six development I am working to ensure that. Trading and upcoming changes to alloy containers should make every item feel rewarding. Before trading items that were not good enough to add to spaceship were useless. Now there's no such thing as useless items because useless items can be exchanged for useful ones! This week I have added cities to 19 regions of Sector Six and cities buy and sell items. Right now there are 7 types of cities:

• Cities that sell generic weapons.
• Cities that sell random weapons and parts.
• Cities that sell high-grade weapons and parts.
• Cities that sell alloy containers.
• Cities that sell extant parts.
• Cities that sell amplifiers.
• Cities that sell random grade weapons, parts and amplifiers.

This week I have started working on secure regions and item trading! It's really exciting to work on such impactful features, even if there's a lot of problems I'll have to solve. Making item trading is rather easy - I have made trading systems several times in my other games, so I know what to do. I just need to make interfaces, slightly adjust inventory code and it's done! The hard part is making secure regions where item trading places - cities - will be located. It wouldn't be hard if I just removed enemies from a normal region and call it secure region, but that's not what I want! Cities hanging in interplanetary clouds, heavy traffic, lights, stations, statues, advertisement boards - that's what I want to see in secure regions. That means a lot of objects, a lot of collisions and collisions is Sector Six weakness. I'll have to figure out how to place objects in secure regions, how to approach movement, how will player access city interfaces and so on. Right now I have almost finished making item trading and made a city sprite for the trading interface. That's how trading works: 1) The player completes several missions in a region and it becomes secure. 2) The player enters the secure region from the map - the same way region missions are started. 3) The player goes to a city in a secure region. Not all regions will have them. 4) As the player approaches the city, the trading interface appears, which contains player's and city's inventories. 5) Dragging and dropping the part from the player's inventory to city's will sell that part for a certain amount of currency. 6) Dragging and dropping the part from the city's inventory to player's inventory, will buy that part if the player has enough currency. Should be pleasantly simple! That's all news I got for now, so until next time!

Sector Six can now be played with a controller! There&amp;#039;s still few things I would like to polish, so expect to see various controller support improvements coming with future updates! The controller support has been tested with Xbox 360 controller. If encounter any problems with other controllers, please notify me. I am also looking for any ideas on improving controller support. Along with controller support, I have fixed few old glitches and made important changes:

• Fixed pause graphical glitch.
• Fixed wrong default music volume glitch.
• Fixed a minor graphical glitch in the results screen.
• Fixed weapon amplifier glitch.
• Fixed several spelling errors.
• Now if controls are changed, tutorial explanations and ability tags also change accordingly.
• The mouse cursor is no longer visible when it is not needed.
• Improved story mission III.
  • Databases now have less armour, they no longer deal damage and destroy nearby enemies when the player enters their range.
• Improved ability bar in combat HUD.
• Now it is impossible to be outside the enemy range and not trigger the missile barrage.
• Added visual hint to warn players that their armour is low.
• Improved armoured colony seeker.
  • Now has only 1 core, but its repairing pylons repair more armour than before.
• Aberrant Armour challenge now reduces the power of The Decision challenge.
  • Maxed The Decision increase mission length by 100% instead of 1000% when Aberrant Armour is also maxed.
• Slightly improved introduction cutscene.

I need to know if controller support is good or at least acceptable, so I have just uploaded demo version in which you can play Sector Six with a controller. I am asking you all to play it a bit with a controller and then tell me what you think about controller controls. Maybe there's some big overlooked flaw that I can fix! I am planning to release controller support very soon, so there's not much time to test controller. I'll be waiting for your feedback.

Download demo (via Dropbox): Click here!

'Ello alll! I just wanted to tell that I have just released spaceship building guide. I have noticed that players have trouble understanding what spaceship parts do and what parts should be added to the spaceship, so I have made this guide to help them: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=838548916 I hope it will be useful in one way or another. This guide is not completed yet - I will continue polishing/updating it as the game progresses. If you feel like this guide needs certain improvements - let me know in the comments here or in the guide.

For me, 2016 was a very exciting year. Sector Six was released on Steam and I have become a real game developer. Not very successful, but real. That means a lot to me. I have quit school and so far it feels like the right decision. It's great to finally spend time meaningfully. I finally have seen my game flourish. After many updates and tweaks, Sector Six's mechanics finally began to work together. I have never managed to make game work this well before. I can finally say without any doubt that I made a good game. I have saw players playing my game for massive amounts of time. There are several people who spent 60+ hours playing Sector Six! After all that happened in 2016, I have become very confident to continue making games after Sector Six is finished. Now let's look at what updates I have managed to release in 2016! January 24 New combat system test I have started working on new combat in the beginning of January and by the end of it, I had a prototype of the new system. March 30 New combat system release It took me another two months to turn combat system prototype into something that works. May 2 Steam release Sector Six got released on Steam! May 5 Minor changes Several small changes based on Steam user feedback. May 20 Mission IV, new rewards and new leaderboards Many improvements to story mission system and mission that I am really proud of. Looking forward to making more similar missions. June 10 New enemies, new abilities and combat improvements This update added Sustained Barrage ability and infamous dreadnoughts. August 19 Massive graphical update This update has vastly improved the look and feel of the game! There were hundreds of smaller changes. With this update, Sector Six has entered beta! October 6 Modular difficulty system, improved inventory and modified enemies A monster update, that added a new layer of depth to Sector Six. I could write the whole page about how much this update have influenced the game! October 28 Modular difficulty system improvements, new enemy and new starter spaceship Modular difficulty system was too easy, so I had to make another update to rebalance it. This update has also added apparition enemy. December 15 Mission V Mission V was really hard to make! But I have introduced many new things with this mission. Decisions, non-linear story mission, first real story boss, multiple armor bars mechanic and so on! 2016 was the year of massive growth for me and Sector Six. After so much has been done, I believe I can finish Sector Six in 2017! In 2017, after I will finish working on controller support I'll begin working on three secure region based updates - shops, crafting system and the Router! Between those updates, I will work on new story missions and combat expansions. Shops Located in secured regions, they will allow players to buy and sell parts! Different regions will have different shops. For example, to get access to the generic weapon shop, you will have to secure Niss region. Crafting system Yes, you will be able to craft parts! This will be a completely new way to obtain parts! Unlike getting parts from drops, you will be able to craft exact parts you need. Want a part that is a relay, increases maximum armor and generates ether when your ship is hit? Get materials by mining asteroids, get armor carcass, relay blueprint and ether mirror by dismantling parts, secure a region with the matter fusion facility and that part is yours! The Router This massive portal device located in Pylon will take you to hidden regions! Every hidden region will be different. Exploring hidden regions will reward you with unique parts! New story missions New characters, new boss fights, new reveals, [classified], plot twists, the journey to the other Sector and more! Combat expansions New enemies, new abilities, new region bosses, new classes, new region missions and more! Other planned updates: Achievements Many new achievements! Permanent death mode The Elder Mechanism will not resurrect your ship if it will get destroyed! Hardcore permanent death mode Because just permanent death is not hardcore enough. Your spaceships parts will be destroyed on hit. Lose all parts and game is permanently over! Resetting story missions After completing the last available story mission, you will be able to do them all over again! Part sets Add a certain amount of parts from the same part set and you will be rewarded for unique set effects. For example, 10 Lodeon's Parts will increase damage dealt based on how many secure regions there are. Graphical update Even better backgrounds, new animations, and particle effects! 2017 will be epic. Until next time!
Before graphical update
After graphical update
Modular difficulty system
Mission IV
Mission V
Epic player built spaceships

I hope you all had good Christmas! Last week I didn’t work much on Sector Six. I was playing games, eating candy, working on my side projects. But even with that, I have managed to make spaceship building and inventory management possible with a controller! There are two ways to approach using interfaces with the controller. The good way: Put clickable interface elements into some sort of grid and allow the player to select them in that grid using D-pad. The easy way: Keep all elements as they are and instead make mouse cursor respond to D-pad and other buttons on the controller. Instead of moving the cursor with the mouse, you use D-pad to move it. Instead of clicking on buttons with the mouse, you press buttons on the controller. Because I don’t know how to put buttons and slots into the grid, I had to go with the easy way. It’s not very comfortable, but it works, so I guess it’s okay, at least for now. When I started working on Sector Six, I didn’t even know what controller is, so it could be worse. Anyway, before I can say that Sector Six fully supports controllers, I still need to address several issues pause menu, game exit menu, tooltips and tutorial hints. I believe I can resolve those issues within one day and then start fixing glitches that have piled up over time. I’m talking about minor graphical glitches in mission results interface, pause graphical glitch, several Light Eater Eashor’s glitches, and others. Because I got really tired while making story mission V and because implementing controller support is very boring, next game update will be in January. Mission V was really challenging to make and I worked so much, that it got me dangerously close to serious burnout. I want to slow down development a bit to catch my breath before massive updates that I am going to work on in 2017! I’m planning to write more about my plans for the next year in next echo. Until then!

This week I have begun working on controller support! Going pretty well so far, although Sector Six is not a very good game for a controller. It uses so many buttons! Now it's possible to do these things with a controller:

• Browse and interact with most of the game's interfaces.
• Move, activate abilities from 1 to 8 and use alloy container during combat.

• Inventory and alloy container management.
• Spaceship building.
• Pause, mission end and level up interface browsing.
• Using 9th ability.

Mission V: The Eight Keys is now available! Mission V is longest story mission so far and the first mission that is composed of smaller missions. It features many reveals, decision making, and a tough boss fight! With the new missions comes few important changes. The first change is updated enemy grouping system. Now enemies can often be encountered in groups, composed out of 2 or 3 random enemies. This creates many interesting combat situations. Second change is the new inventory management options. I have added two buttons to make inventory management easier. One button dismantles all items of the same grade, for example, all generic parts and the other moves all parts from the building field to inventory. Finally, I have added beacons back to the game. Beacons are the special enemies that instead of fighting the player, repairs other damaged enemies. Beacons were removed during combat overhaul. Minor changes and fixes:

• Fixed equipped part upgrading.
• Fixed maximum inventory crash.
• Fixed minor graphical glitch.
• Piercing Lasers ability no longer deals damage to enemies outside of the screen.
• Fixed region glitch, now region missions are generated and saved correctly.
• Heavy no longer reflects seeking missiles.
• The Core can now be entered only during mission IV.
• Now you can only do resurrection missions if you obtain the Resurrection Key during mission V.
• Starter alloy container is now indestructible.
• Armoured colony seeker now has more armour.
• Lurkers have been renamed to demolishers.
• Tutorial now explains how to detonate mines with carrier class spaceship.
• Acolytes now have an additional attack.

Okay, guys, I know the game was not updated for longer than the month, but give me one more week! All this time since the last echo I was working on [classified]. Right now it’s almost done, but I need to add 8 more [classified] until it’s finished. Like I said before, no spoilers. But it’s safe to say that next update will be awesome! Anyway, when [classified] will be finished, the polishing phase will begin. New item management buttons and new enemy grouping has few problems that I have to fix before updating the game. Besides that, with the mission V comes two changes to Sector Six missions. You will no longer be able to enter the Core region, only during mission IV, future story missions, and endgame. You will also no longer be able to do resurrection missions without [classified], that can be obtained during mission V. These changes are necessary for the story to make sense. They should not affect gameplay much. I should manage to do all this new week and update game on weekend. Wish me luck!

'Ello all! The Steam Awards is the thing now and if you like Sector Six, you can nominate it! People sometimes ask me "Can I help you with something?", well, here's your chance =]

Last week I have done several things that I should have done months ago! Thing 1: Enemy grouping I have improved enemy spawning code to occasionally spawn enemies in wildly random groups! Two lurkers and heavy / acolyte and probe / tank, veteran and swarmling / etc. Everything is possible. Thing 2: Quick part dismantling and unequipping I have added two buttons to speed up part management. First button allows to dismantle all parts of the selected grade. For example, dismantle all generic parts in inventory. Second button moves all parts from building field to inventory. Thing 3: Beacons I have added beacons, that were removed during combat overhaul. Beacons are unique enemies, that instead of fighting you, repair other damaged enemies. Beacons and new enemy grouping create many new combat situations. This week I will continue working on mission V. Update is getting close! Until next time! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=802702150 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=802702154

Last two weeks I was working on story mission V! I have set up the structure of the mission, now all I need to do is to write last two dialogues, create new enemy and boss. Story mission V contains more dialogues than the rest of game combined and it took me really a lot of time to write them. But it was really fun! The further story goes, the easier it becomes to write and I can get to reveal some interesting things. Every story mission brings something new to the game. This mission brings ability for player to make choices. In mission V and other future missions, sometimes you will have to make decisions that will slightly change the course of the story. Next week, besides working on mission V, I am planning to work on things that aren’t related to story mission V. I will add part management screen, that will significantly speed up the management of parts. I will improve enemy spawning system to create interesting enemy groups. I am also planing to bring back beacons, that were temporarily removed from game during the combat overhaul. Beacons are special enemies that possess the ability to repair other minions. If it will be possible I will also implement new modifications: “Evolves” and “Regenerates armour”. It sounds big, but these things will do a lot good to the game and won’t delay the release of mission V much. Until next time!

This week I have started working on story mission V! Because it's a story mission, I don't have much to write about in this echo, because I don't want to spoil it. So, about mission V: It's massive, it's about four times longer than mission IV. It will feature first real story boss! It has different structure than other missions, it's first non-linear story mission. That's all I can say about it! I can't even post screenshots. But wait! I have few questions for those who played Sector Six recently: 1. What do you think about modular difficulty system? Does it need to be improved? 2. Next two updates are mission V and controller support. What would you like for me to work on after they are released? 3. What is your favorite story mission? 4. What do you find most irritating in Sector Six? This is the end of this short echo. Normally I post echoes on Sundays or Mondays, but since I can't write about story missions, I will probably won't write new echoes until I'm done with mission V.

Modular difficulty system has been adjusted. Now it will be a lot harder to get high grade parts!

• Aberrant Armour challenge now increases enemy armour by 200% per level.
• Lethal Weapons challenge now increases enemy damage by 200% per level.
• The Decision challenge now increases mission length by 200% per level.
• The Manifestations of Destruction challenge now also adds chance to encounter apparitions.
• Added apparition, new enemy for The Manifestations of Destruction challenge.
• Flow Stagnation challenge now also increases ether cost of abilities that have base ether cost of 0.
• Re-balanced difficulty rewards.

• Now you can upgrade parts that are on your spaceship.
• Graphically improved dreadnought.
• Bombardment stations now have armour.

Sector Six has been updated! Unfortunately, currently uploaded version has a glitch - every enemy group in boss, raid and kill missions spawns with additional heavy! This glitch should be fixed soon, sorry for inconvenience.

This week I didn't had much time to work on Sector Six. I didn't do much, but now it's possible to start game with carrier class spaceship! Starter carrier class spaceship comes with carrier class weapons and abilities.

Next week I am going try to fix modular difficulty system. Apparently modular difficulty system doesn't make game that hard and it gives too good rewards! If I'll fix modular difficulty system in time, I will release new Sector Six version next weekend. When modular difficulty system will be fixed, I will make story mission V, that will be at least 4 times longer than story mission IV! It will also feature boss fight, that will change based on your actions during mission. In other news, I have finally bought controller! I will start working on controller support after story mission V. Future is bright. Until next time!

Modular difficulty system is now live! You can now increase difficulty of the missions and earn rewards for beating them! Before starting the mission, now you're taken to mission overview screen. There you can enable different challenges that make mission harder. You can:

• Increase damage enemies deal.
• Increase enemy armour.
• Add chance to encounter dreadnoughts.
• Increase chance to encounter modified enemies.
• Choose to be bombarded by bombardment stations.
• Choose to lose all earned parts and experience if you fail to complete the mission.
• Increase mission length.
• Increase ether cost of abilities.

• Replaced +x weapon damage part property with +x% damage property.
• Now there's one unleash chance part property instead of 4.
• Added Amplifier XV that gives part +3% ability unleash chance.
• Added Amplifier XVI that gives part +5 aggression.
• Added Amplifier XVII that gives part +5 resistance.
• Added Amplifier XVIII that gives part +5 mastery.
• Added Amplifier XIX that gives part +5 capacity.
• Removed laser ink, because it wasn't useful and wasn't working properly.
• Improved part and item tooltips.
• Rebalanced alloy container refill prices.
• Improved region tooltips.
• Added ability tooltips.
• Acolytes can now drop parts.
• Lurkers can now drop parts.
• Reduced Spread Mines ability cooldown from 2 to 1.5 seconds.
• Increased damage of Missile Strike ability.
• Reworked Destabilize ability, now it's called Bladed Mine.
• Added Bladed Mine ability unleashed effect.
• Reflected missiles are now slower.
• Fixed mission 1 music bug.
• Reworked dreadnoughts.

This week I was shaping modular difficulty system! ​ It took me many hours, but have managed to make mission overview into something I can tolerate. ​Eight icons are modular difficulty system modules or challenges. Enabling them changes image between challenges and mission description. That image is difficulty map, it's a visual representation of modular difficulty system.
The (almost finished) mission overview Enabling challenges is actually your hero deciding to take more dangerous paths, with anomalies and powerful enemies. Difficulty map shows those dangerous paths. Here's the updated list of challenges: Lethal Weapons Minions will deal 50% more damage Aberrant Armour Minions will have 100% more armour The Manifestations of Destruction You will encounter dreadnoughts The Assault of the Modified You will encounter more modified minions The Rain of Fire You will be bombarded every 10 seconds until you will destroy bombardment station Risk for Reward Earned parts and experience will be lost if you will fail the mission The Decision Mission objective count will be increased by 100% Flow Stagnation Abilities will cost 100% more ether during this mission Some of these challenges can be used more than once. For example, you can use Aberrant Armour to make enemies have 500% more armour! ​After making mission overview, I implemented rewards and began implementing challenges. I have implemented four of the challenges already, four more to go. When they will be implemented, I will be testing and balancing modular difficulty system to make sure it can't be exploited too much. I will also increase power of some abilities! I can now decrease difficulty of base game, those players who will want difficulty will be able to get more than enough of it through modular difficulty system. I don't think anyone will ever will beat mission with 34 difficulty: +500% base enemy damage, +1000% base enemy armour, objective to kill 150 modified dreadnoughts, when abilities cost 500% more ether and missiles keeps falling from the sky randomly. I did good! Until next time!

This week I have began working modular difficulty system. First thing I have to do is to make mission overview screen and I have spent this week trying to make it. Yes, whole week for one interface. In my defense, it's really hard to make interface that's both informative and looks cool. That is exactly what I want from mission overview. Modular difficulty system is big, complex, awesome thing and I need to show that in mission overview screen. I need something cool to represent it, hopefully I'll get that next week. I'm about a week away from being able to update game with one of the most ambitious features, so I figured I'll write shorter echo this week and work longer on the game! ​Until next week! Or game update!

When I began working on Sector Six, I didn't knew that it would become this big. ​I didn't knew that Sector Six is going to be in Steam, I didn't knew that it will get so much positive feedback, I didn't knew that one day I will write 50th development blog a.k.a. echo about it. But it all happened and it's amazing! So, how did it began? In 2014, after finishing my first game, I immediately began working on Sector Seven. I had the idea of allowing player to build spaceships out of destructible blocks. Two months later Sector Seven was finished. It was weird, clunky, pretentious shoot 'em up with light RPG elements and many, many problems. But I glad I made it, because without out it, there would be no Sector Six. I promised myself that I would make Sector Seven sequel. Later I have decided not to, but then... One quiet summer morning I woke up with weird images in my mind. It was epic black spaceship silhouettes and I knew they were built out many blocks. I created new project file, called Shadow Sector the same day. Later I decided to call it Sector Six. In the beginning, I didn't worked on Sector Six much, I was focusing on my other game, Lur. Just like Sector Seven, it wasn't a good game, but while making it, I got experience, that I needed to make Sector Six. I have finished Lur on January 2015, redirected my focus on Sector Six and intense development began. Back then Sector Six was similar to Sector Seven. There was no inventory, blocks were simply bought for currency. Those blocks didn't had any stats and they were destroyed on hit. Lose all blocks and game is over. Back then I was playing Path of Exile and Torchlight. So another idea hit me. What if blocks had random stats and you could get them by killing enemies? I already knew how to make inventory and generate random loot from Lur, so I decided to give it a try. And it worked!
Oldest Sector Six screenshot I have When I finally made Sector Six playable, I have uploaded first alpha version. After Sector Seven and Lur I didn't expect anything, so I was surprised when Sector Six received good comments and ratings. I knew that I can improve the game, so positive feedback about the alpha version made me really excited about the future of Sector Six. And I began working on Sector Six like crazy! Months started flying by. Interface overhaul, combat overhaul, Steam release, graphical overhaul... It was awesome and I think it will continue being awesome! I said this before, but again, thanks for playing and supporting my game! And for reading this echo! For those who are interested in seeing what was Sector Six like in the very beginning, I have uploaded old Sector Six version on https://zuurix.itch.io/sector-six-007 ​Sector Seven can also be found there. Now a bit about future! Last week I have successfully implemented modified enemies!
Modifications There's just four modifications yet, but there should be more in future. Modification 1: Fires missiles at your location Modification 2: Double armour Modification 3: Drops swarmlings when destroyed Modification 4: Drains ether With modified enemies in, I can work on modular difficulty system! It should take me one, maybe two weeks to finish and then I'll update the game, hopefully it will happen this month! After modular difficulty system... Well, there was massive interface update, massive combat update, massive graphical update... Now it's time for massive story update! After modular difficulty system I will be working on story missions. A lot of them! So, that was the 50th echo, until next time!
Modified scion swarm
​Modified tank
Modified veteran
Old Colowis background
Pink screen of death
Combat overhaul in development
Invasion core and the glitch of the thousand suns

Last week I have improved amplifiers, improved part and map tooltips, changed several part properties and fixed problems with the holy thunder. Amplifiers are items, that are used to upgrade spaceship parts. Currently they can be found if hard mode is enabled. When modular difficulty system will be added, amplifiers will be rewarded in large numbers, so I made them stack. Now that Sector Six inventory allows stack-able items, making crafting system will be a lot easier! I have also added new amplifiers: Amplifier XV: Gives part +3% ability unleash chance. Amplifier XVI: Gives part +5 aggression. Amplifier XVII: Gives part +5 resistance. Amplifier XVIII: Gives part +5 mastery. Amplifier XIX: Gives part +5 capacity. As the amplifier XV hints, now instead of four unleash chances, there's just one for all abilities. This should highly reduce chance of getting useless parts! The +x weapon damage property on parts have changed as well. It has been replaced with less confusing +x% damage. Add part with +10% damage property to your ship and you'll deal 10% more damage. Since the beta launch, several players had trouble with what I call holy thunder, that's those missiles that fall when you get away from the enemies. I have made them more user friendly, now when you leave enemy range, you have half second to return to the enemy range, this should help to not get punished by the holy thunder. Also it's no longer possible to trigger next enemy group to barrage you by getting very close to enemy you're currently fighting. The last thing I worked on was the tooltips. Just a few minor improvements! This week I am going to work on modified enemies! The idea is to take currently existing enemies and modify them by adding destructible parts. Tanks with repairing pylons, dreadnoughts with regeneration hubs, acolytes with sniper weapons, heavies with armour strengtheners... This will be fun*! Until next time! *At least for me >=]

This week I have improved inventory! Now when you fill the inventory, it becomes bigger, that means items will never be lost because there’s not enough space in the inventory! Filling inventory creates new inventory page. Removing all items from last inventory page, deletes that inventory page. And there’s a limitation – if you want to start new mission, you cannot have more than 3 inventory pages. The inventory is infinite, but your computer’s power is not! After more than 10 pages created, FPS severely drops when adding the new item to the inventory, this should be even worse for the slower computers. I could probably optimize inventory system to allow having 100 and more pages without any lag, but I would need to completely rewrite inventory system and I don’t want to do that. It would take a lot of time and 3 inventory pages – that’s 198 slots! – is more than enough, for now. I wanted to make inventory kind-of-infinite, because the modular difficulty system will reward player with a lot of items at the end of the mission. Here is the challenges that the modular difficulty system will offer: Armoured Minions Minions will have 50% more armour. Deadly Minions Minions will deal 25% more damage. Deadly Encounters ​You will have a chance to encounter dreadnoughts. The Assault of the Modified There will be more modified minions. The Rain of Fire ​Every 10 seconds the missile will be fired at you from the bombardment station. Find and destroy bombardment station to stop this. Risk for Reward XP and parts earned in this mission will be lost, if your spaceship will be destroyed. Suicide Mission Doubles required kill count for kill missions, doubles escort distance for the escort missions, doubles ruin data required for resurrection missions, doubles guardian kill count for the boss missions. Only the Strongest Swarmlings will only spawn with the big enemies, probes or scions will not spawn. Every challenge/difficulty system module that you will accept will increase reward that you will get if you will complete mission with increased difficulty. 1 Module used 1 amplifier, 1 optimized part 2 Modules used 2 amplifiers, 3 optimized parts 3 Modules used 4 amplifiers, 6 optimized parts 4 Modules used 6 amplifiers, 3 advanced parts, 3 optimized parts 5 Modules used 8 amplifiers, 6 advanced parts, 3 optimized parts 6 Modules used 10 amplifiers, 6 extant parts, 6 advanced parts 7 Modules used 12 amplifiers, 12 extant parts, 6 advanced parts 8 Modules used 14 amplifiers, 12 extant parts, 12 advanced parts, 6 optimized parts If you have never enabled hard mode - amplifiers are the items that you can use to upgrade spaceship parts. Upgrading makes the part as powerful as the part from the next tier. E,g,: upgraded generic part is like normal optimized part. Of course, this is just a plan, just a bunch of ideas, so I don’t really know how will this look in the end! But I hope as cool as I imagine it now! Next week I will continue improving inventory and items. I will make amplifiers stack-able, I will make amplifiers for properties that don’t have amplifiers yet, I will merge apocalypse/carrier/goliath/nomad ability unleash chances into universal ability unleash chance, I will improve tooltips and maybe I will even start working on the modified enemies. (Does anyone remember sniper veterans?) After all that, I will be ready to work on the modular difficulty system! Until next week!

Graphical update is here! I proudly present one of the most game changing updates in Sector Six history! It is also the last alpha update - with it Sector Six enters beta! New backgrounds Sector Six backgrounds have received many improvements – now they behave more realistically, give better illusion of depth and look more interesting because of the color layer. New backgrounds have been added for every region and existing ones were improved. New animations New animations has been added for actions that previously had no animations. This includes part installing, region entering and ability upgrading animations. Combat improvements Combat is now more fun! Projectiles have better particles, Missile Strike, Spread Mines and Death From Above abilities are faster, dreadnoughts attack only higher level players and are encountered less often, escort missions are less annoying, retreat exploit is fixed and so on! Interface improvements I have cleaned up ability interface, moved combat HUD armour, alloy and ether bars closer to the center of the screen, added loot box to the mission results interface, updated floating text system and improved part placing code, now placing parts in the building field is easier. Beta Now that alpha is finally over, there will be a lot more content updates! This should be the most interesting development phase, First beta update will be modular difficulty system and infinite inventory. Modular difficulty system will allow players to make game harder for rewards, that will allow them to make game ever harder! Have fun!

• Read full list of changes.
• Like always, if you find something broken/bad in game, report it here or in the discussions.
• Don’t forget to visit Sector Six Roadmap on Trello to vote on things you want to see in the next update!

One of the most game changing updates in Sector Six history is coming in two days featuring:

• New, better backgrounds.
• New animations for actions that previously had no animations.
• Combat improvements: Faster basic attack abilities, better combat animations.
• Interface improvements: Better spaceship building, better ability interface, loot box.
• Hundreds of minor improvements!

This week I was working on stuff that is not interesting to write about, so instead I'm going to evaluate current status of the game. I am almost done with the graphical update and that means Sector Six is going to enter beta soon! And this is with what the game will enter it... Music: 95% Left to do: Implement two tracks. Sound effects: 80% Left to do: Some sound effects could be replaced with better ones. Graphics: 90% Left to do: I'll think of something. Interfaces: 85% Left to do: Map interface rework, avatar customization. Combat: 40% Left to do: Chaos mechanic, 12 abilities per class, 4 classes, unleashed ability effects, passive abilities, modified enemies. Spaceship building: 70% Left to do: Part set effects, more part properties, calibrating, item stacking, part filtering. Region missions: 20% Left to do: More mission types. Region bosses: 25% Left to do: More bosses. Region enemies: 40% Left to do: More enemies. Story missions: 10% Left to do: 30 story missions? Story bosses: 0% Left to do: The Machines: Astrail, Numinor, Hivind, Ourend, ???, ???, Ligwitch, Malasmor. Achievements: 20% Left to do: More achievements Features: 40% Left to do: Shops, secure regions, modular difficulty system, crafting system, the Router, endgame, controller support, local co-op mode. Total: 48% Beta: 2016 August Full release: 2017? Core of the game is done, Sector Six will no longer drastically change. Almost all upcoming updates will be content updates! Get ready to fight the Machines, get ready to make game ten times harder, get ready to craft quad weapons, get ready to master goliath and nomad classes, get ready to enter mysterious regions outside borders through the Router... Get ready for beta!

This week I was polishing various parts of the game! One thing that I learnt about making games is that nothing in game should disappear. So now missiles that go off-screen explodes. Enemy missile didn't hit you, but it hit something off-screen, instead of vanishing without a trace. That makes combat 0.1% more enjoyable. Also, now when enemy is destroyed, the explosion destroys nearby projectiles. Like it would happen in real world. Missile #1, missile #2 and missile #3 is released. Missile #1 hits enemy and destroys it. What happens next? In Sector Six 0.5.9, missiles #2 and #3 will go through the space where enemy existed few milliseconds ago. In Sector Six 0.6.5 and real world, missiles #2 and #3 will explode together with destroyed enemy. That's another 0.1%! The next 0.1% comes from improved Death From Above ability, now its missiles are much faster and it feels more powerful and aggressive. ​In Sector Six 0.5.9, if your spaceship is destroyed, you are told that the Elder Mechanism will recreate it. In Sector Six 0.6.5, if your spaceship is destroyed, the spaceship is actually recreated. It's not much but... 0.1%? This week I have also made few changes to escort missions. Defending carrier was awkward and barely possible with minions like veteran and dreadnought, so now you no longer need to defend it. That makes escort missions into same boring destroy X minions mission with a cosmetic carrier above your ship, but hey, at least it works. And I can always make carrier more interesting by making it blow up minions! Oh, and about dreadnoughts... Now they start appearing when you reach level 15. ​What else? I added sounds for selecting/deselecting abilities, tweaked region entering/leaving animations, moved upgrade/downgrade buttons slightly... And that's pretty much it. I made Sector Six like 1% more fun and it makes this week good! Until next week! PS.: I decided to postpone update for a week or two, since update is not going to be released on July anyway.

This week was quite productive! First of all, I have made unleashed Missile Strike ability effect. Old unleashed Missile Strike was shooting one big slow missile instead of many small ones and in some cases unleashed Missile Strike was weaker than regular one. Now unleashed Missile Strike simply summons additional missile, that deals 100% of total relay damage, if Missile Strike is maxed. It's not very powerful effect, because I couldn't make it any more powerful for balance - Missile Strike has really low cooldown and so it has much higher unleash chance than other abilities. But that additional missile, summoned by the unleashed Missile Strike, makes pretty explosions, so despite the fact that it deals little damage, I really like new unleashed effect and I hope you guys will like it too. After making pretty explosions, I have improved spaceship building. I have made a simple part installing/uninstalling animation. I imagine that the weapons, processors, engines and other parts of futuristic, modifiable, city-sized military spaceship should have pretty complex programs in them, so I think that installation animation is a must be! Changes to the spaceship building weren't just cosmetic. When building spaceship, parts used to fail to be placed in the building field and that made spaceship building slower and slightly irritating, especially when building large spaceship. That's fixed now! I have also fixed other old problem. Players had been telling me about armour and ether bars being in wrong place for long time. I have finally relocated them, now bars are closer to screen center. Lastly, I have began working on better ability interface. I have made upgrading/downgrading animations and cleaned up ability description screen. It still needs some polishing and I hope to have it done next week. Next week I'll work on many different things, because I'll try to make the update ready by the end of the week and I have a lot of things on my list! Until next time!

I have confession to make guys. I didn’t do anything with Sector Six this week, except for one thing. Most of the time I wasn’t at home or I was working on other game for competition. But the good news is that I am done with competition game, so now I will work as much as always and hopefully update will be out by the beginning of next month! Anyway, that one thing, that I did this week, is actually pretty big. It took me like 20-30 minutes to make, but it will have large impact on gameplay. It is not possible to move back away from enemy to avoid getting hit anymore. Attacking enemies from safe long range is also a history! I have attempted to fix retreating many times, but all previous methods didn’t worked. This one works. Whenever player moves spaceship out of enemy range, the enemy uses its long range weapon system to purge the area. Basically screen is filled with missiles and player spaceship is destroyed, if it isn’t moved back to enemy range. So, evil laugh, works great! Until next week! Next week’s echo is going to be nice, I promise.

This week have made several improvements to backgrounds, added new region leaving/entering animations and implemented loot box. Loot box is in results interface, that appears at the end of every mission. Its purpose is to show parts player got during mission or as a mission reward. Currently loot box doesn’t show more than 17 parts, it should be enough for now, but later I am going to make loot box show more parts, because in future there will be very long missions with a lot of kills and a lot of drops. Another change is that the parts received for completing region missions are now displayed in a same way as the armoured colony seeker rewards. These changes has been made to make part looting more noticeable, more real. That’s the same reason why I made region entering and leaving animations. Entering region with unleashed engines is more badass than just appearing in the region. Next week I am going to finish updating backgrounds and after that I’ll continue working on new interfaces. I’m planning to make main menu and credits more interesting, clean up ability interface, improve spaceship building and maybe make few changes to tooltips. That’s about all I need to do to be able to release the update! Until next week!

This week I have added backgrounds for Ityl and Nebula. Now all regions in Sector Six have their backgrounds! Ityl background buildings - see screenshot below - are actually from the old Sector Six. During Shatterer war, Sector Six was completely destroyed. But after winning the war, the Almadi have resurrected it. Normally resurrection would recreate everything perfectly, but it wasn't regular resurrection. All regions in the Sector were properly recreated, except Ityl. Resurrection process has restored Ityl to time not before it was destroyed, like with other regions, but to a moment before Sector Six has collapsed, after Shatterers ruined it. Ityl has been untouched since the resurrection, it is a sacred place for the people of Sector Six. They go there to remind themselves about the final war in Sector Six history... Nebula's background is unique - it has animated elements, check GIF below! It was pretty challenging to do it, but I think it was worth the effort. Over time other backgrounds might also get their animated elements. Objects in Nebula's background are particle procession plants. Nebula's particle procession plants, also known as nemezium plants, accumulate nemezium particles that circulate in Nebula's atmosphere. Nemezium comes to Nebula from Ityl, from the decaying remains of the Shatterer spaceships. It is the only source of nemezium in Sector Six, besides the Machines and their minions, as it is Sector Seven element. I am putting these lore fragments here because of two reasons. Reason one is that some weeks I just don't have anything to write about, sometimes my progress can be described with one line. Reason two is that I am going to make 25 new achievements, one achievement for every region on Sector Six. And these lore bits are going to be the reward for completing region achievements. So I'm getting both additional content for the echo and lore for the achievements! Anyway, this week I have also began working on new region entering and leaving animations. Next week I'm planning to finish these animations, polish backgrounds and maybe start working on something I call loot box. Loot box is going to show all parts player has found during the mission. So, I guess this is the end of this echo! Until next week!

Since this is last echo of June, I am going to write a bit about my plans for next month! But first about this week. I have did a lot of progress with graphic update! I have updated projectiles and added Sailemar background. Only 1 background to go! Projectile flares now look... better. Check screenshots below. I have also improved floating damage text, since I have noticed that it's quite popular feature. Floating text now should be easier to see and look better. Plus, damage numbers now merge, showing how much damage in total was dealt. Text merging can be turned off in settings. These and other changes should come out in one massive update on July! For graphical update I still need to tweak backgrounds, update interfaces, main menu and add few animations. After graphical update, I'm going to work on modular difficulty system! The idea of modular difficulty system is to allow players to make Sector Six harder for great rewards, that will allow to further rise difficulty, to get even better rewards and so on! It will be vast expansion to hard mode that should heavily change gameplay. It's also going to be first beta update and largest content update ever! But for now, I need to finish graphical update! Until next week!

This week I was updating graphics as planned! I have made few pretty large changes to backgrounds. It's not visible from screenshots, but illusion of depth is a lot stronger now. Backgrounds now only move when player moves, so it's more realistic now. I have made backgrounds for Eolutch, Venerion, Spiral and Tridenkor regions. Two more backgrounds and all 25 regions will have backgrounds! Also, to make backgrounds more varied and interesting, I have given them slight tint. Last three months didn't changed game as much as this week did! Hopefully next week will be as good!

Next update is dedicated to make game look and feel better! It's going to be large update, that I was planning to do for long time. In this echo I will write about things planned for this update. Better backgrounds Players wanted better backgrounds ever since I released alpha version of the game. New backgrounds will have parallax effect, they will be more colorful, more detailed and will have special effects like distant explosion flashes, slowly moving comets and other cool things. Better animations Existing animations will be improved and there will be new animations for building ship, upgrading abilities and entering/leaving regions. Interface improvements Some interfaces will be improved to look better or provide more information. Huge changes to main menu, level up interface and credits. Impulse Impulse will be Sector Six newspaper/space Twitter! For example, when player will complete mission and secure Colowis region, during next mission Impulse will broadcast: Victory in Colowis: The Mechanism Bearer secures another region Impulse will react to various player actions and events that are supposedly happening in the regions: Crisis in Mzenim New ruler of Eolutch: I will do everything to preserve the peace Tridenkor will aid the Negati Armada in Wacar campaign Commander Lodeion: This war is not lost yet Dreadnoughts spotted in Scrambler Belt End of alpha This update will take me at least month to make, but after it, game will no longer be alpha! If you have suggestions how to make game feel better, I am ready to hear them. Until next time!

The war in Sector Six continues! The Machines have assembled new powerful minions to speed up the occupation of the Sector Six. ​ Here's the information about them:
 Name: Dreadnought Armour and damage: Class 10 (Comparison: Veteran armour and damage class is 7) Ability 1: Smart mine (Also used by gatherers and armoured colony seekers) Ability 2: Missile rain (Also used by veterans) Ability 3: Light slayer laser (Also used by the Machines) Segment 1: Class 0.25 weak armour plate Segment 2: Class 1 light dread cannon (Releases small missile every second) Segment 3: Class 1 heavy dread cannon (Releases large missile every 3 seconds) Encountered: By players with level 5 or higher spaceships
 Name: Kite Armour and damage: Class 1 Ability 1: Inaccurate missile Segment 1: Class 0 horizontal junction Segment 2: Class 0 horizontal junction Encountered: In swarms of 3-5​ To counter these enemies, new spaceship abilities were added:



Other changes:

• ​Improved killer.
• ​Improved lurker.
• ​Improved obelisk AI.
• ​Improved main menu.
• ​Nerfed Mastery.
• ​Relocated effect timers.
• ​Made gatherer and scion warp attack less annoying.
• ​Slightly increased chance of releasing swarmlings from ruins.
• ​Renamed Cry Point region to Ityl.
• ​Renamed Blighted Remains region to Wacar.
• ​Renamed Spin Zone to Eolutch.
• ​Renamed Unleash Weapons ability to Piercing Lasers.
• ​Made probes stronger.
• ​Revenants new deal a lot more damage.
• ​Tanks are now encountered less often.
• ​Lurkers are now encountered more often.
• ​Changed armoured colony seeker mine attack.
• ​Assemble Obelisk ability can now be unleashed.

New enemy has appeared in the Sector Six! Say hello to the newest Machine minion – dreadnought! Name: Dreadnought Armour and damage: Class 10 (Comparison: Veteran armour and damage class is 7) Ability 1: Smart mine (Also used by gatherers and armoured colony seekers) Ability 2: Missile rain (Also used by veterans) Ability 3: Light slayer laser (Also used by the Machines) Segment 1: Class 0.25 weak armour plate Segment 2: Class 1 light dread cannon (Releases small missile every second) Segment 3: Class 1 heavy dread cannon (Releases large missile every 3 seconds) This week I have also:

• Improved obelisk AI.
• Made gatherer and scion warp attack less annoying.
• Slightly increased chance of releasing swarmlings from ruins.
• Renamed Cry Point region to Ityl.
• Renamed Blighted Remains region to Warscar.
• Improved lurker.

This week I couldn’t work on the game as much as I wanted, but I still managed to do some of the things planned for the combat update. I have added Sustained Barrage, Mine Mayhem and Heavy Shield abilities. Sustained Barrage was inspired by Hearthstone's forbidden spells. I really liked how they work, so I wanted to have something like that in Sector Six. For every 5 ether player has, Sustained Barrage releases seeking missile. If Sustained Barrage is unleashed, player spaceship will start releasing one seeking missile every three seconds, for no ether cost and that will last until the end of the mission. I'm really proud of Sustained Barrage and I hope players will like to use it. Mine Mayhem instantly fills screen with mines! While Mine Mayhem is active, detonated mines will release from one to three smaller mines, that doesn't need to be detonated. Heavy Shield is second shielding ability in game, I'm planning to make two more in future. Heavy Shield stays 3 seconds longer, but has slightly higher cooldown than Unstable Shield. Heavy Shield also doesn't deal damage to enemies. Instead, Heavy Shield increases ether gained on kill while active. The only downside is that Heavy Shield reduces spaceship movement speed. Besides new abilities, I have done few smaller things. I have relocated effect timers, increased damage of Unstable Shield ability, decreased Assemble Obelisk ability ether cost to 10, improved ability descriptions and nerfed armour gained on kill. From now on parts will give 50% less armour on kill. This was done so I can add effective repairing abilities. That's all I've done this week, hopefully I'll have more time to work on Sector Six next week.

Try game before buying! Progress done in demo will carry on to full version. Demo version restrictions:

• 3 story missions. (4 in full version, more will be added)
• 10 level cap. (unlimited in full version)
• No boss missions.

Mission IV has been released and now I am preparing to work on the next update. Next update is focused on combat! Currently there are several problems with combat that I want to fix. 1st problem. There's not enough abilities. 2nd problem. Ether is still barely useful. Currently it's only used for three abilities. 3rd problem. Most abilities does not do anything when unleashed. 4th problem. Mastery attribute gives too big boost to unleash chances. 5th problem. Parts that increase maximum ether are useless. 6th problem. New enemies aren't as good as older ones. 7th problem. There could be more enemies. 8th problem. Scion and gatherer teleport attacks are frustrating. 9th problem. It's possible to avoid all enemy attacks by going back. I'm planning to fix some of these problems by adding new strong abilities with high ether cost and long cooldowns, that become even more powerful when unleashed. Apocalypse class will get Sustained Barrage ability, which will continue launching seeking missiles at enemies as long as you have ether. Unleashed Sustained Barrage will turn into Infinite Barrage, which will keep launching seeking missiles every 3 seconds until the end of mission. Carrier will have Mine Mayhem, which will make your spaceship launch mines for 15 seconds. Unleashed Mine Mayhem will also release release mines from destroyed enemies. Mine Mayhem mines will detonate automatically when near enemies. There will be more abilities like that! Strong abilities demand strong enemies, so I will add new veteran level enemies and new weaker enemies, that will appear in groups of 2-4. Currently veteran is the strongest enemy in game, but that is going to change, because I'll add dreadnought! So, yeah, I got a lot of work! Until next week! PS.: If you have ability/enemy suggestions, I'm ready to hear them. PPS.: Next update is all about new enemies and abilities because several people voted for new abilities and enemies on Trello.

Mission IV: The Core is now available! It is longest and hardest story mission so far! Delve into the devastated Core, encounter various dangers and activate the Elder Mechanism! Other changes: • Missions can now be started from mission log. • Optimized parts are now more common. • Hard mode reward items are now more common. • Story missions now have rewards! • Two new leaderboards added. • Parts can now be dismantled by moving mouse over them and pressing X. • Mortars and cannons has been temporarily removed. Have fun! PS.: Leaderboards has been reset. To get back on leaderboard, load saved game.

I have spend this week making story mission IV! It's largest mission so far and it's full of surprises! Story mission IV: The Core will be released next week! Mission IV took me a lot of time to make, so I have decided to release it without story mission V. I don't want large gaps between updates. It will take me about few days to finish making mission IV and do planned mission changes. Since I don't want to make mission IV spoilers, that's all for this echo. Until next week! PS.: Don't forget to vote on upcoming updates. Click here to vote!

Like Sector Six music? Now you can listen to it outside the game! http://store.steampowered.com/app/469520/

Echoes are articles about Sector Six that I post on Sundays. Read other echoes... This week was very exciting! Seven days ago I have released my first game on Steam and many things happened after that! Steam cards, achievements, leaderboards, screenshots, reviews, minor key scams... Since all Steam features has been implemented, now I can work on new content. Right now I’m making story mission IV. Story mission IV takes place in the devastated Core. During the mission player will encounter anomalies and enemies never seen before in Sector Six! After mission IV, I'll immediately start making mission V. It will be special mission because it will made out of 8 smaller missions! It should take me a week or so to do this. Meanwhile go vote on upcoming Sector Six features on Trello. Vote for Mac support, the more votes, the faster Mac support will become available! Link… Until next week or next update!

Play to claim 3 cards! Happy collecting! Vote here on future updates content

Hello all, new update is up! • Large missile hitboxes adjusted. • Few problems with spaceship movement fixed. • Now player starts with stronger weapons. • Status of the Machine occupied regions cannot be improved anymore. • Swarmlings are encountered less often now. • Now part tooltips show how much alloy can be gained by dismantling part. • Descriptions of attributes now state that they don’t need to be equipped. • Weapon limit can now be seen in stats. • Now players always get 1 ether on kill. • Resurrection mission improved. Next update: Story missions IV and V!

Let the competition begin! Leaderboards for level and secured region amount has been added. Also, players can now share screenshots of awesome Sector Six moments! Have fun!

Steam achievements were unobtainable, but we fixed it! Phew! All achievements unlocked in-game should unlock Steam achievements when loading the game.

Sector Six is now available to buy! I need your feedback to make game better, so if you got something to say about Sector Six, go to discussions and tell me all about! Currently I am polishing game and preparing to work on next game update. Click here to view possible Sector Six updates! Vote on things you would like to see added to Sector Six on the next update. Have fun playing! PS.: Steam cards should be added in a few days.

Sector Six will finally be on Steam! Getting the game on Steam was my biggest goal for a long time and I can't believe it's finally going to happen! With the game on Steam I should get more feedback than ever and that will allow me to make it perfect! Sector Six deserves to be good game!