The first post-EA build is now ready for testing! Please switch to the pretest branch in the Steam game properties. See this post with instructions on how to change the game branch: https://steamcommunity.com/app/450700/discussions/0/1697169163416373010/ We are using a branch for now due to the nature of some of the changes, and because 3.13 breaks saves with 3.12. This way we get more time to test 3.13 and give more time for players to keep playing the default 3.12 branch. 3.13 still has some months of development left, stay tuned for more development updates and pretest builds.

Named enemies with progression and persistence

Enemies now always have an unique name, instead of the generic names in earlier versions. The main reason is that they are also persisting. This means a given named enemy will always have the same sprite, if they manage to survive. Survive? Yes. Just as you can install insurance cloners for your officers, enemies that reach certain notoriety fighting you will get a chance to be saved before you kill them. They will teleport out instead of dying. Notoriety? Yes. Since enemies are persisting, they now also have a simplified leveling system. There's 30 enemy rankings, and each ranking gives the enemy more hitpoints and more weapon power. The higher rankings make them truly formidable adversaries. Rankings are a bonus on top of their level. Ranked enemies which survive your encounters will be able to face you again in the future. Every time the game spawns a random enemy it will also consider spawning a persisted named enemy instead, allowing them to gain an even higher ranking. This also comes with a nerf to the loot drops from enemies. Lower ranked enemies will never drop wearable items, while higher ranked ones will, and for the first time they will also be able to roll items with rare/epic/legendary bonuses, depending on their rank.

New station raids

Station raids have been greatly enhanced in 3.13. They are now able to really scale up, to create an actual danger to your station, proportional to your development and your enemies hate. The size of the foot soldier group is now variable and can include more than 20 units. A proportional subset will always have higher rankings, even if the game has to generate fresh new higher ranked enemies. Siege objects are now introduced, and they will spawn in higher difficulty raids. Turrets are always spawned to protect them. Mortars are slow artillery, that fire a slow projectile, and can reach any point on the map. The explosion of the projectile is devastating, but the game will always tell you in advance where it is going to fall with a red circle area.
Docks are exactly that. Enemy shuttles will keep docking there unless you destroy them, and they will unload small enemy groups. They have a long cooldown, but more than one dock is possible.

Tombs

Fallen officers will now occupy a new object, tombs. If an officer dies the game will try first to occupy their assigned tomb, and if they have none, any non-assigned empty tomb. This happens even if the officer dies while exploring a planet. It's not mandatory to build tombs, officer corpses will still be spawned if there are no available tombs at the moment of death.

Lactians triggered by Mystery Milk

Lactians will turn into an hostile antagonist civ when you unlock the last tier of food & drinks. They will still visit you in peace (and in litter) before that .

Balance sheet

An often requested feature, now more important than ever.

Ancestral enemies for civs

Some of the civs in the galaxy now have an ancestral enemy. These enemies are other civs, and they are always paired to each other. When gain rep with the civ, you lose the same amount with their enemy, and viceversa. This applies to all possible rep changes, not just those from combat. This means you will now have to make some hard choices about which civs you will be friends with.

Player invasions with upkeep costs

Invading's not free anymore. When you invade an hostile planet so you can extract its resources in peace, you will have to pay an upkeep price per minute, which goes up the higher the planet level is. You can stop the invasion in the planet dialog:
Going bankrupt will stop the invasion automatically:
The combination of ancestral enemies and invasion upkeep will make mid to end game more interesting to play.

New ship skills: jumpdrive and insurance

Ships equipped with a jumpdrive skill can travel instantly between star systems, reducing travel time to the minimum possible amount. They still have 10 second approach time to any body inside the system. The jump drive is always available and the AI will also use it for autopilot. The ship insurance skill will save one officer downed in battle once every 3 minutes, while exploring a planet. Both ship skills are only available in some ships in the higher end tiers of research.

Officer demands for products

Graduate and master officers will now demand specific products for some vitals, and will refuse to consume anything else. These demands are balanced with the progression of research and planet resources in mind. They should be easy to satisfy for graduates and trickier for masters, and they are also predictable and standardized for all officers of the same spec. This change is the most speculative of the patch, so we will see if keep it or not.

3.13.1

• Add development option to re-enable the connectivity cache

[ 2018-08-06 16:54:52 CET ] [ Original post ]