Hey everyone. I am Fernando from Atomic Kaiser. Its been a couple of weeks since the release of Astra Exodus now and we felt it was a good time to go over the launch, what went wrong and what went right, and talk about the future of the game, the updates we have released so far and a small hindsight over what we have in mind for the the future of the game, based on the feedback we have got since then.
Launch Summary
Sadly we didnt have the best of launches for the game, as not only a couple of nasty bugs slipped by us, but on top of it all many people at launch were expecting something quite different to what Astra Exodus actually is. All of this showed on the reviews we got to the game and of course it was a major concern for us.
As I mentioned then in our first status post in the Steam forums, bugs can and were squashed. We did the same with improvements and features added / implemented as they were reported / suggested by the community. But please bear in mind that fundamental parts of the game like the art, graphics and aesthetics of the game are something we are not changing even if we could. This would go against the 90's theme we are going for with the game, something we have shown with pride in all marketing material.
On the expectations front, which were as per the reviews totally different in some cases to what the game actually is, we frankly dont know what we could have done differently as pretty much all marketing material was quite upfront with how the game looked, felt and played as.
Updates so far
Ever since release we have been updating the game with bug fixes, improvements and even new features, responding to the concerns to the community as fast as possible. At the time of writing this post, with version 04 out to everyone now, we have no known bugs left and the following improvements and features added to the game since release:
Improvements
- Enable colonization of planets which were previously used for one of the player outposts
- The game now remembers the position and zoom level the camera was, when going from and to the galactic view
- Added info on starship's health (hull / armour) on it's tooltip and improved the related UI object
- Reduced the RNG factor in auto-combat battles to make them more predictable
- Reduced the frequency of AI offers through diplomacy to make it less annoying
- Changed auto-retreat of fleets to not have any punishment at all
- Added an additional speed setting to space battles in order to speed them up
- Now space battles start out paused instead of in a slow time setting
- Decreased the base turns required to achieve victory conditions to speed up games
- Removed advice to lower/increase taxes when you cant do so
- Enabled faction customization in modded games
Features
- Added a Visual Styles setting to the game, which adjust the color / contrast / brightness and several effects options for the starmap and battles
- Added an autosaves option to the game with several settings
- Added an option to disable edge panning of the camera
- Added a new ship attack stance for long range attack called Siege
- Added an option to use hardware cursor instead of software

You can compare the looks of the old Colourful visual style with the new Darkened visual style
Future Plans
We dont have like a year long road map with specific dates or anything like that, as not only longer we dont think its necessary, but also we find that in many cases its impossible to live by it. What we do have is some big features on the horizon that we will be working towards, in parallel to smaller patches and updates.
We dont want to reveal anything at this stage as we are defining how to implement certain major features and new content that we have in mind, but be assured: Astra Exodus will expand, and will keep improving. As mentioned, we have plans for the game, and we are sure that many of you will find what is coming rather intriguing.
In the meantime, if you are enjoying the game (or not!), why not leave a review telling us what you like and dont like about the game? We certainly would appreciate it, as would the rest of the community. Until next time!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/880750/Astra_Exodus/
[ 2020-02-19 20:26:19 CET ] [ Original post ]