Greetings Star Commanders, Over the last week we have seen a GIANT influx of new players.

Thanks and Welcome

First, we wanted to first thank you for purchasing the game and supporting development. We know Early Access titles are a bit of a leap of faith and that they can be frustrating experiences at times. All we can say is that you have put your faith and money into a dedicated group here at Warballoon and we will do our best to make the game as great as we possibly can. Second, we wanted to send our appreciation for the feedback and activity on the forums. We read every single comment, idea, bug report and review and do our best to address and react while staying on point with our design schedule and goals. Third we wanted to outline the direction we are heading for Alpha 9!

Alpha 9

For Alpha 8 we were very focused on one thing: bugs. This meant a huge list of improvements but no real new content. That will change with the next update. For Alpha 9, we are focused firstly on AI. Our AI has been tweaked, twirled and bended since our first Alpha with very few holistic updates. We wanted to keep the system flexible and able to test new features and, as a result, it has become a jumbled unpredictable mess. With Alpha 9 we intend to remedy this. We will be totally gutting the current crew and enemy AI systems and replace it with something that is much more reflective of the current state of the game. A large portion of the bugs reported with Galaxies right now are AI related - enemies not attacking, crew not eating at regular times, things locking up, unclear objectives, enemy ships not returning fire or acting strange - these are all a result of a system that is desperate need of an update. To be frank you won't see a lot of new features, per se, but what you WILL see is exactly what you would expect to see: your crew behaving consistently, enemies making intelligent decisions, ships working in predictable ways and some surprises that should make sense logically but also challenge you and your crew. Secondly, we will be completely gutting the current mission system and rewriting it. Similar with behavior, our mission system is a remnant of lots of different ideas from lots of different Alphas and is in need of a large re-write in order to better fit where the game is going. This will include 4 major areas:

1. Encounters

These will be one-time events occurring at nodes across the galaxy. An example would be a derelict ship floating in space. You can decide to destroy it with your ship weapons, beam a crew over to explore it for loot (or zombies...) or just leave it and move on. This should keep the game flowing much better with a lot more for you to do as Captain.

2. Crew Missions

Crew will now have some needs that they would like to see met, giving you the Captain the opportunity to earn loyalty. Basic tasks would be "I want a bed" or "We need a shower" and, as your crew got higher in level and rank, would get more complex like "I want a piece of Antorian Art" or "I want to visit an Trilax strip club." The goal here is to both connect you with your crew and give you smaller tasks to accomplish while bringing peace (or death) to the galaxy.

3. Mini-Missions

These are events with existing NPC ships. This would include things like "Our ship is damaged, please bring your engineers over to repair it" or "We have a disease, can your doctors please help cure us!" These will be opportunities to earn or lose loyalty with individual characters and factions while also putting your resources and crew in jeopardy.

4. Major Missions

These will be faction changing events that help forge your allies and your enemies. Things like building a Nav Buoy in Trilax Space for the Antorian Empire or Killing 5 Midorian Freighters. These will be clear decision points for you on how the galaxy should be shaped and who you want to support. We will also be issuing patches and addressing as many bugs as we possibly can along the way. We always try and do both at the same time which is why we have picked the two systems most likely to cause bugs (AI and Missions) as our focus for new features. We hope you are all enjoying the game and we highly encourage you to engage with us in the forums, on facebook and on Twitter - whatever your social media leaning is. We love getting feedback from our community and truly do take as much into account as possible. So glad to have so many new Captains in our ranks! Lot's more to come! Cheers, Warballoon