Hi Everyone,

It has been a busy month since the big synergy update. Richard and I both took a staggered week off before the end of summer to get some much needed rest/family time. It was great to recharge, and we are right back at it full force now. It has already been 4 months since our initial Early Access release and there have been huge improvements thanks to your suggestions and support.

The latest patch was all about tuning and fixing high priority quality of life issues. Thanks very much for your understanding on letting us prioritize this vs new features for this push. That being said, a couple of fairly major improvements happened so we decided to call them out.


There was a great discussion thread about the problems with fighters and some good solutions to make them better, so we implemented them. Fighters are now a LOT more potent, but also are on a leash. This means that though their range is that of a long range weapon, and you need to be in range to use them. So more boring picking a ship apart for 30 minutes at massive long range with no threat. Get fighters in range, and they go to work, get out of range, and then return home to defend, rearm, rebuild. Bombers do quick heavy damage and then need to return to the ship to rearm, Fighters stay and fight a lot longer, but do less damage. More detail in the notes below.


Another hot topic has been ramming. It was fun but overpowered. We didn't want to lose the fun, but we wanted to add a little more realistic risk to the ram. So since ramming is hull to hull impact, we wanted both hulls to take appropriate damage. This means that you as the rammer will now need to be a little more careful what you ram and with what part of your ship. Think of a part's armor as its hardness for the sake of a ram. If a hard nose, hits a soft wing, the wing takes a lot of damage and the nose not much at all. So the ramming is more part based now. Ram with your most armored parts into their least armored parts to do the most damage to them and the least to yourself.


-Fighters now have limited range to prevent boring ultra long range kiting over long periods of time to take down almost any target. Instead, we want you to now fly near max weapon range and be in some danger while using the fighters, in return, fighters can now do much damage, much more in tune with other large size weapons.

-Bombers and Ion Bombers shoot twice as fast and their bombs do 4x as much damage. They have to reload more often now. Bombers now complete fast/heavy strikes, and then return to the hangar to reload.

-Bomber and Ion Bomber hangars now support 6 fighters instead of 4.

-Shooter Fighters now have 8 per hangar instead of 6.

-Shooter Fighters can now shoot 20 times before reloading (vs 10 before)

-Zapper Fighters can now shoot 25 times before reloading (vs 16 before)

-Shooters now do 3x more damage

-Zappers now do 2.5x more damage

-Decreased fighter build time from 10 seconds to 6 seconds

-Fighters much more careful about damaging parent ship.

-Fighter incidental friendly fire vs allied ships greatly reduced.

-Fighters much better at docking on fast moving ships.

-Bandit hives have 1 fewer strike craft defenders to offset the stronger fighters they now have.

-Fighters don't launch in ship building level

-Fighter bay controls don't clutter ship building level tac pan

-Ramming damages Station cores and Bandit Hives armor AND health now.

-Ramming damage lowered.

-Ramming with high armor parts now does much more damage vs low armor parts

-Ramming damage now reflected back on the rammer as well, but at a lower rate
For most effective ramming, outfit a high armor nose and hit at high speed on low armor parts like engines or wings.

-Fixed round off issue in surrender cargo menu

-Fix for a goon rounding case where it seems you have enough goons but are an arm and a nose short and thus your ship takes slight damage over time.

-If player's current faction destroyed, player now starts their own faction with their existing starbases.

-Zombie respawn pods travel 50% faster

-Fixed respawn pods moving at top speed when game loaded.

-Turned off part size rarity as a rarity factor in trading prices. (was pointless + confusing)

-Fixed fleet training mission if had broken strike craft.

-Missiles prevented from firing in ship building level

-Fixed bug where number of bounties on a captain was dictating the number of chasers.

-Max bounty chasers at any given time is 1 for easy, 2 for normal, 3 for expert.

-Added 15 second safety time after winning a battle where you wont get ganked.

-When not defending their territory, Very large ships won't bother with much smaller ships anymore.

-Removed tactics panel buttons for Fighters/Krule. Not needed anymore with fighter changes and need room for future strike craft updates.

-Save game name length limited to 30 characters to prevent loading failures.

-Captain's friends will not steal from their resource nodes

-Captain's faction members will not steal from their resource nodes.

-Resource nodes become attractive for ransack at variable richness now, not just at 50% full.

-Battles will block any resource nodes underneath them so AI captains can't swipe the contents while you are battling to protect them.

-When the player defeats a captain, they will be afraid of the player for a while so they won't just respawn and come running right back after the player anymore. They take time to build up a bit first.

-Dropping junk parts into space does not create a junk field anymore since they have no value.

-Zombie ships don't take infector ball damage anymore. They are already infected :)

-AI captains, including wingmen, know how to evade area hazards now. Infection clouds, toxic clouds, ion clouds, mass bomb gravity wells.

-Zombies can level up like other captains to keep them competitive.

-AI Captains with positive relations with the player won't run from the player anymore.

-Increased Minigun damage

-Fixed current/reserve strike craft meter on the hud, was misreporting in some cases.

-Fixed rogue menu sometimes appearing when a courier made a delivery.

-7 Star part icon added for the lottery winners

-New battle ring icon for battles involving starbases to better differentiate them. Also visible from high zoom to find trouble spots more quickly.

-Fixed broken off parts being lost forever in all Bandit Hive attacks, including “The Signal.”

-Fixed player strike craft being invincible in the final story mission

-Scavenging bonus defaults to 10% of node total now from 0% so very large nodes don't take forever to scavenge if no one has the scavenging boosting perk.

-Texture optimizations (less memory use)

-Less button lock delay on Faction Members menu (allows faster switching between screens)

-Faster, more subtle menu sweep effect.

-Adjusted game complete text to be more generic, in case you are already playing a sandbox game.

-Added toggle for automatic map target focus in gameplay options.

-Super interesting spelling fixes.

-Custom portrait system for your mothership. Here's how it works.


-- File Path --
C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\MinMax Games\SPAZ 2\CustomPortrait\ MugShot.jpg

-add a folder called CustomPortrait if it doesn't exist
-texture must be called MugShot.jpg
-texture must be jpg format
-texture must be a power of 2 texture (512x512, 1024x1024)
-best texture size 512x512


For our next update we will be conducting a major rework of the Strike Craft system. This will include implementing a blue print collection system similar to what we had in SPAZ 1. The mothership will now construct strike craft on its own using Scrap. We will also be adding an all new set of large strike craft as well as new unlockable configurations for the existing strike craft as their stars increase. This will be a pretty major change that will require rewriting some of the game flow and dialogue as well, so it will take some time, but we think the end result will be a really exciting addition to SPAZ 2.

Hi Everyone,

It has been a busy month since the big synergy update. Richard and I both took a staggered week off before the end of summer to get some much needed rest/family time. It was great to recharge, and we are right back at it full force now. It has already been 4 months since our initial Early Access release and there have been huge improvements thanks to your suggestions and support.

The latest patch was all about tuning and fixing high priority quality of life issues. Thanks very much for your understanding on letting us prioritize this vs new features for this push. That being said, a couple of fairly major improvements happened so we decided to call them out.


There was a great discussion thread about the problems with fighters and some good solutions to make them better, so we implemented them. Fighters are now a LOT more potent, but also are on a leash. This means that though their range is that of a long range weapon, and you need to be in range to use them. So more boring picking a ship apart for 30 minutes at massive long range with no threat. Get fighters in range, and they go to work, get out of range, and then return home to defend, rearm, rebuild. Bombers do quick heavy damage and then need to return to the ship to rearm, Fighters stay and fight a lot longer, but do less damage. More detail in the notes below.


Another hot topic has been ramming. It was fun but overpowered. We didn't want to lose the fun, but we wanted to add a little more realistic risk to the ram. So since ramming is hull to hull impact, we wanted both hulls to take appropriate damage. This means that you as the rammer will now need to be a little more careful what you ram and with what part of your ship. Think of a part's armor as its hardness for the sake of a ram. If a hard nose, hits a soft wing, the wing takes a lot of damage and the nose not much at all. So the ramming is more part based now. Ram with your most armored parts into their least armored parts to do the most damage to them and the least to yourself.


-Fighters now have limited range to prevent boring ultra long range kiting over long periods of time to take down almost any target. Instead, we want you to now fly near max weapon range and be in some danger while using the fighters, in return, fighters can now do much damage, much more in tune with other large size weapons.

-Bombers and Ion Bombers shoot twice as fast and their bombs do 4x as much damage. They have to reload more often now. Bombers now complete fast/heavy strikes, and then return to the hangar to reload.

-Bomber and Ion Bomber hangars now support 6 fighters instead of 4.

-Shooter Fighters now have 8 per hangar instead of 6.

-Shooter Fighters can now shoot 20 times before reloading (vs 10 before)

-Zapper Fighters can now shoot 25 times before reloading (vs 16 before)

-Shooters now do 3x more damage

-Zappers now do 2.5x more damage

-Decreased fighter build time from 10 seconds to 6 seconds

-Fighters much more careful about damaging parent ship.

-Fighter incidental friendly fire vs allied ships greatly reduced.

-Fighters much better at docking on fast moving ships.

-Bandit hives have 1 fewer strike craft defenders to offset the stronger fighters they now have.

-Fighters don't launch in ship building level

-Fighter bay controls don't clutter ship building level tac pan

-Ramming damages Station cores and Bandit Hives armor AND health now.

-Ramming damage lowered.

-Ramming with high armor parts now does much more damage vs low armor parts

-Ramming damage now reflected back on the rammer as well, but at a lower rate
For most effective ramming, outfit a high armor nose and hit at high speed on low armor parts like engines or wings.

-Fixed round off issue in surrender cargo menu

-Fix for a goon rounding case where it seems you have enough goons but are an arm and a nose short and thus your ship takes slight damage over time.

-If player's current faction destroyed, player now starts their own faction with their existing starbases.

-Zombie respawn pods travel 50% faster

-Fixed respawn pods moving at top speed when game loaded.

-Turned off part size rarity as a rarity factor in trading prices. (was pointless + confusing)

-Fixed fleet training mission if had broken strike craft.

-Missiles prevented from firing in ship building level

-Fixed bug where number of bounties on a captain was dictating the number of chasers.

-Max bounty chasers at any given time is 1 for easy, 2 for normal, 3 for expert.

-Added 15 second safety time after winning a battle where you wont get ganked.

-When not defending their territory, Very large ships won't bother with much smaller ships anymore.

-Removed tactics panel buttons for Fighters/Krule. Not needed anymore with fighter changes and need room for future strike craft updates.

-Save game name length limited to 30 characters to prevent loading failures.

-Captain's friends will not steal from their resource nodes

-Captain's faction members will not steal from their resource nodes.

-Resource nodes become attractive for ransack at variable richness now, not just at 50% full.

-Battles will block any resource nodes underneath them so AI captains can't swipe the contents while you are battling to protect them.

-When the player defeats a captain, they will be afraid of the player for a while so they won't just respawn and come running right back after the player anymore. They take time to build up a bit first.

-Dropping junk parts into space does not create a junk field anymore since they have no value.

-Zombie ships don't take infector ball damage anymore. They are already infected :)

-AI captains, including wingmen, know how to evade area hazards now. Infection clouds, toxic clouds, ion clouds, mass bomb gravity wells.

-Zombies can level up like other captains to keep them competitive.

-AI Captains with positive relations with the player won't run from the player anymore.

-Increased Minigun damage

-Fixed current/reserve strike craft meter on the hud, was misreporting in some cases.

-Fixed rogue menu sometimes appearing when a courier made a delivery.

-7 Star part icon added for the lottery winners

-New battle ring icon for battles involving starbases to better differentiate them. Also visible from high zoom to find trouble spots more quickly.

-Fixed broken off parts being lost forever in all Bandit Hive attacks, including “The Signal.”

-Fixed player strike craft being invincible in the final story mission

-Scavenging bonus defaults to 10% of node total now from 0% so very large nodes don't take forever to scavenge if no one has the scavenging boosting perk.

-Texture optimizations (less memory use)

-Less button lock delay on Faction Members menu (allows faster switching between screens)

-Faster, more subtle menu sweep effect.

-Adjusted game complete text to be more generic, in case you are already playing a sandbox game.

-Added toggle for automatic map target focus in gameplay options.

-Super interesting spelling fixes.

-Custom portrait system for your mothership. Here's how it works.


-- File Path --
C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\MinMax Games\SPAZ 2\CustomPortrait\ MugShot.jpg

-add a folder called CustomPortrait if it doesn't exist
-texture must be called MugShot.jpg
-texture must be jpg format
-texture must be a power of 2 texture (512x512, 1024x1024)
-best texture size 512x512


For our next update we will be conducting a major rework of the Strike Craft system. This will include implementing a blue print collection system similar to what we had in SPAZ 1. The mothership will now construct strike craft on its own using Scrap. We will also be adding an all new set of large strike craft as well as new unlockable configurations for the existing strike craft as their stars increase. This will be a pretty major change that will require rewriting some of the game flow and dialogue as well, so it will take some time, but we think the end result will be a really exciting addition to SPAZ 2.

Hi All,

We have been tinkering with Synergies due to your feedback since their initial launch last week. The main issue really came down to, why bother using them they don't do much. Well I think we fixed that. Here we go...

First off, we put together a video explaining the system and its new bits and pieces. Please give it a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHNuypZnEBY

The biggest change is that synergies now spread to attached wings, noses and engines. The peripheral parts do not add to the synergy, but they do feed off the synergies of the cores that they are attached to.

An additional bonus is now weapon damage is effected by synergies. So if you have a well synergized mass driver for example, it can do up to 80% more damage on top of any subsystem bonuses in the part itself. Synergies can add a lot of punch to a part.

Now this is a really big change and some things will be out of tune. Engines will be faster, turning will be faster etc because everything has been sort of turned up to 11 right now due to the bonuses. That will all be tuned, but we wanted to get this change into your hands for feedback and fun.

Now you have a real decision to make. Create an L with 4 wings that are synergized to 10% or create a well synergized ship with 2 wings, but those two wings are 80% more powerful. When the synergy bonuses of the cores are taken into consideration, there should be a lot of thought involved with making your perfect ship.

- Rewrote the ship engine sound effects system to finally kill the sound freeze forever and ever and always. If you get a freeze after v0.6.1, please report it to us. We really want to know. We will cry, but we want to know.

- Added a strike craft readout to the hud. Active/Reserve
- Fixed set bounty side objective happening before you can boutny
- Level 1 bandits get fewer strike craft so less overwhelming early on
- Mining Ops are richer in Rez rocks. More/Bigger rocks with more in em.
- Added the Hive Level to the mouse over info on the starmap
- Boosted 3 way synergy 30->40%
- Boosted 4 way synergy 60->100%
- +/- in trade screen no longer reversed
- speleen -> spleen
- Strike craft counts now show up yellow on the map if not in your faction since they are bad things
- Tutorial text and image updates
- Assign starbase menu shows distance in light years from captain to base.
- Fixed brake/reverse hint in into when in screen relative control mode
- Province name shown on scan viewer for starbase comms screen and mouse over.
- The usual spelling fix-o-rama
- Pushing "Back" in controller mode won't change the camera in addition to displaying the icon legend while in the tactical menu.

We hope you all enjoy the Expanded Synergies!

Andrew(Blorf) and Richard(Narlak)

Hi All,

We have been tinkering with Synergies due to your feedback since their initial launch last week. The main issue really came down to, why bother using them they don't do much. Well I think we fixed that. Here we go...

First off, we put together a video explaining the system and its new bits and pieces. Please give it a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHNuypZnEBY

The biggest change is that synergies now spread to attached wings, noses and engines. The peripheral parts do not add to the synergy, but they do feed off the synergies of the cores that they are attached to.

An additional bonus is now weapon damage is effected by synergies. So if you have a well synergized mass driver for example, it can do up to 80% more damage on top of any subsystem bonuses in the part itself. Synergies can add a lot of punch to a part.

Now this is a really big change and some things will be out of tune. Engines will be faster, turning will be faster etc because everything has been sort of turned up to 11 right now due to the bonuses. That will all be tuned, but we wanted to get this change into your hands for feedback and fun.

Now you have a real decision to make. Create an L with 4 wings that are synergized to 10% or create a well synergized ship with 2 wings, but those two wings are 80% more powerful. When the synergy bonuses of the cores are taken into consideration, there should be a lot of thought involved with making your perfect ship.

- Rewrote the ship engine sound effects system to finally kill the sound freeze forever and ever and always. If you get a freeze after v0.6.1, please report it to us. We really want to know. We will cry, but we want to know.

- Added a strike craft readout to the hud. Active/Reserve
- Fixed set bounty side objective happening before you can boutny
- Level 1 bandits get fewer strike craft so less overwhelming early on
- Mining Ops are richer in Rez rocks. More/Bigger rocks with more in em.
- Added the Hive Level to the mouse over info on the starmap
- Boosted 3 way synergy 30->40%
- Boosted 4 way synergy 60->100%
- +/- in trade screen no longer reversed
- speleen -> spleen
- Strike craft counts now show up yellow on the map if not in your faction since they are bad things
- Tutorial text and image updates
- Assign starbase menu shows distance in light years from captain to base.
- Fixed brake/reverse hint in into when in screen relative control mode
- Province name shown on scan viewer for starbase comms screen and mouse over.
- The usual spelling fix-o-rama
- Pushing "Back" in controller mode won't change the camera in addition to displaying the icon legend while in the tactical menu.

We hope you all enjoy the Expanded Synergies!

Andrew(Blorf) and Richard(Narlak)

We have been hard at work over the last couple weeks and we are hoping this patch will be a real crowd pleaser for all you veteran players out there. We have heard your suggestions and here is what we have come up with to address them.



One huge request has been to keep the bandits viable into mid and late game, so hunting them is not just an early game thing anymore. We have given the whole bandit system a major overhaul to support this. Here's what's new.

New Bandit Parts:
First off, the bandits got bigger, so they needed a part size upgrade to match. We have added medium and large noses, wings, and engines for the bandits (8 new parts) which are also available in the junkyard. They are also pretty darned cool looking.

New Bandit Brains:
Bandits can now level up just like the other captains on the map. This means they now get perks just like other captains as well. Bandit's will become much stronger as they level up and utilize their perks. This means damage, shield, power bonuses etc... Just like you.

New Bandit Ship Building:
Bandits can now upgrade their ships on the fly, just like other captains. They also build them BIG. While bandit parts tend to have less punch, they will now make up for that by fitting more cores. The highest level Bandit Chief can field 21 core monstrosities.

Bandits also now USE their salvage. This means a bandit who wins a battle doesn't just break down the parts for scrap, but instead fits the new part on their junk ship nightmare to make it even stronger. You can spot the toughest bandits toting around parts from their victims.

New Bandit Types:
We now have the Bandit Enforcer and the Bandit Chief. Bandit Enforcers will only spawn out of hives of level two or three. They have a bonus of 3 cores on their ships as well as a level bonus on spawn. Level 3 hives will spawn Bandit Chiefs. They get the 6 core bonus as well as a larger level bonus, making them incredibly dangerous.

If you see a bandit hive in your space, the smart move is to kill it before it hits level 3.

Nastier Hive Combat:
With the increase in the strength of the bandits, we needed to make the hives a little more difficult to uproot (more on that in a sec) So hives now have a defending mothership to augment the defending strike craft.

The Swarm:
We have been calling bandit hives, “hives,” for a while, but now have taken it to heart. They work like beehives now. So you kill a hive, and it now swarms and leaves the territory that it was in (avoiding the faction of whoever killed it) This initial swarm state is “dispersed” meaning the bandits have been thrown to the wind for the most part and are looking for a new home, but over time, the swarm reforms into something you can attack.

Once the swarm comes together, you can attack it. This is a very difficult strike craft battle, but like bees, the swarm is carrying honey. If you attack the swarm, the crates of resources that they are taking to their new destination are up for grabs.

When you mouse over a swarm, you see where it is headed as well. Perhaps you want to let a swarm land at its intended destination if it is in enemy territory, but you can also attack it and divert the swarm to a new territory, if you win.

We hope you all enjoy these new bandit mechanics. Keep in mind that we finished this new tech yesterday so there may be tuning issues, but we will get on top of those as well.



Another big issue has been the ideal ship shape problem. It turns out making a ship and L or a T shape would give you the most bang for your buck (pun intended.) To add depth to the decision making, not only for spine shape but even for core placement, we have added the Synergy system.

How synergies work is that they provide bonuses for two way connections between cores. A core with one core connected (end of the line) gets no bonus. Two cores connected, 10%. Three cores connected 30%. Four cores connected 60%. Since cores are mainly responsible for power generation, health, and a portion of shields on your ship, you need to decide if that extra wing the L or T shape will get you is worth more than the power to shoot your guns more, have more health and have your shields last a bit longer.

Right now, the numbers for the bonuses of synergies are a best guess as is the tuning of the weapon power consumption which is still using the old non synergy power consumption model. Tuning will come over time as we find a new balance of firepower vs reactor power, but for now we just wanted Synergies in your hands, so have fun.

Synergies are visualized through core to core connections that pulse with increasing speed as the synergy bonuses progress. If you look at your ship in the assembly screen, you should notice more meat in the connections between parts. These are the synergy “pipes” that are there to show synergy progress. You can also see the synergy progress by mousing over a connected part. It is the new green icon at the bottom.

In combination with the new part swapping ship building system, you should now place your best cores in the positions with the highest synergy bonuses on your ship. So we don't want to see any 6 star cores at the end of an L anymore, get that thing synergized. :)



We introduced starmap cloaking in the last patch, but it was a bit over powered. We have adjusted it so that cloaking now has a longer recharge time (90 vs 60 seconds) takes a bit more rez to maintain (3x vs 2x consume) and also now has an activation time (15 seconds)



For our next update, we will likely be working on tuning and doing a large bugfixing round. It isn't glamorous, but we have been so busy adding features to SPAZ 2 for almost 3 months now that we have had little to no time to play the game and tune all these new features. We also have very large bug lists that need to be dealt with. Most of it is quality of life stuff thankfully, but it is important.

Other things we are looking at, though probably in the update after the big tuning pass will be a whole new Strike Craft System, Killing of Captains, and Faction Death.

Thanks very much for your continued suggestions and support. They really do help to make SPAZ 2 the best game it can be. We really appreciate you all sticking with us!

We have been hard at work over the last couple weeks and we are hoping this patch will be a real crowd pleaser for all you veteran players out there. We have heard your suggestions and here is what we have come up with to address them.



One huge request has been to keep the bandits viable into mid and late game, so hunting them is not just an early game thing anymore. We have given the whole bandit system a major overhaul to support this. Here's what's new.

New Bandit Parts:
First off, the bandits got bigger, so they needed a part size upgrade to match. We have added medium and large noses, wings, and engines for the bandits (8 new parts) which are also available in the junkyard. They are also pretty darned cool looking.

New Bandit Brains:
Bandits can now level up just like the other captains on the map. This means they now get perks just like other captains as well. Bandit's will become much stronger as they level up and utilize their perks. This means damage, shield, power bonuses etc... Just like you.

New Bandit Ship Building:
Bandits can now upgrade their ships on the fly, just like other captains. They also build them BIG. While bandit parts tend to have less punch, they will now make up for that by fitting more cores. The highest level Bandit Chief can field 21 core monstrosities.

Bandits also now USE their salvage. This means a bandit who wins a battle doesn't just break down the parts for scrap, but instead fits the new part on their junk ship nightmare to make it even stronger. You can spot the toughest bandits toting around parts from their victims.

New Bandit Types:
We now have the Bandit Enforcer and the Bandit Chief. Bandit Enforcers will only spawn out of hives of level two or three. They have a bonus of 3 cores on their ships as well as a level bonus on spawn. Level 3 hives will spawn Bandit Chiefs. They get the 6 core bonus as well as a larger level bonus, making them incredibly dangerous.

If you see a bandit hive in your space, the smart move is to kill it before it hits level 3.

Nastier Hive Combat:
With the increase in the strength of the bandits, we needed to make the hives a little more difficult to uproot (more on that in a sec) So hives now have a defending mothership to augment the defending strike craft.

The Swarm:
We have been calling bandit hives, “hives,” for a while, but now have taken it to heart. They work like beehives now. So you kill a hive, and it now swarms and leaves the territory that it was in (avoiding the faction of whoever killed it) This initial swarm state is “dispersed” meaning the bandits have been thrown to the wind for the most part and are looking for a new home, but over time, the swarm reforms into something you can attack.

Once the swarm comes together, you can attack it. This is a very difficult strike craft battle, but like bees, the swarm is carrying honey. If you attack the swarm, the crates of resources that they are taking to their new destination are up for grabs.

When you mouse over a swarm, you see where it is headed as well. Perhaps you want to let a swarm land at its intended destination if it is in enemy territory, but you can also attack it and divert the swarm to a new territory, if you win.

We hope you all enjoy these new bandit mechanics. Keep in mind that we finished this new tech yesterday so there may be tuning issues, but we will get on top of those as well.



Another big issue has been the ideal ship shape problem. It turns out making a ship and L or a T shape would give you the most bang for your buck (pun intended.) To add depth to the decision making, not only for spine shape but even for core placement, we have added the Synergy system.

How synergies work is that they provide bonuses for two way connections between cores. A core with one core connected (end of the line) gets no bonus. Two cores connected, 10%. Three cores connected 30%. Four cores connected 60%. Since cores are mainly responsible for power generation, health, and a portion of shields on your ship, you need to decide if that extra wing the L or T shape will get you is worth more than the power to shoot your guns more, have more health and have your shields last a bit longer.

Right now, the numbers for the bonuses of synergies are a best guess as is the tuning of the weapon power consumption which is still using the old non synergy power consumption model. Tuning will come over time as we find a new balance of firepower vs reactor power, but for now we just wanted Synergies in your hands, so have fun.

Synergies are visualized through core to core connections that pulse with increasing speed as the synergy bonuses progress. If you look at your ship in the assembly screen, you should notice more meat in the connections between parts. These are the synergy “pipes” that are there to show synergy progress. You can also see the synergy progress by mousing over a connected part. It is the new green icon at the bottom.

In combination with the new part swapping ship building system, you should now place your best cores in the positions with the highest synergy bonuses on your ship. So we don't want to see any 6 star cores at the end of an L anymore, get that thing synergized. :)



We introduced starmap cloaking in the last patch, but it was a bit over powered. We have adjusted it so that cloaking now has a longer recharge time (90 vs 60 seconds) takes a bit more rez to maintain (3x vs 2x consume) and also now has an activation time (15 seconds)



For our next update, we will likely be working on tuning and doing a large bugfixing round. It isn't glamorous, but we have been so busy adding features to SPAZ 2 for almost 3 months now that we have had little to no time to play the game and tune all these new features. We also have very large bug lists that need to be dealt with. Most of it is quality of life stuff thankfully, but it is important.

Other things we are looking at, though probably in the update after the big tuning pass will be a whole new Strike Craft System, Killing of Captains, and Faction Death.

Thanks very much for your continued suggestions and support. They really do help to make SPAZ 2 the best game it can be. We really appreciate you all sticking with us!

Players have been having problems with getting overwhelmed with attack bounties on their mothership. This is usually a result of making some enemies early on and that tends to snowball, so we wanted to give you all a way to get out of a sticky spot, but without undermining the consequences for making enemies. To solve this, Carl has invented something new, the Starmap Cloak.

Starmap Cloaking automatically unlocks at level 6. Normally you will get a perk at this level, but we also made it so that old saves with a level six or higher will also be able to cloak.

When you cloak, anyone chasing you will lose targeting on you and will re-evaluate their goals and move on to some other target.

Cloaking costs quite a bit of extra rez to use, about twice the cost of normal flight (on top of your current flight mode.)

You can stay cloaked as long as you want if you have enough rez to maintain the cloak.

If you start combat or any action that takes time on the starmap, like Collecting goons at a resource node, or repairing, or joining a fight, you will become visible.

Once your cloak is down, it takes time to regenerate (currently 60 starmap seconds) and you will not be able to recloak while the field is regenerating, so use cloak wisely.



Cheat Engine has been pretty popular for people to modify their game, and we wanted to make that a little easier and less error prone than twiddling random memory :) So we have added a cheat menu to the game just like we had in SPAZ 1.

If you use cheats, your achievements will be disabled for that game moving forward, but if you load any save game without cheats active, then achievements will be back online.

Current Cheats:
Level Up
Add 100 Goons
Add 1000 Rez
Add 10000 Scrap

Cheats can be used over and over so if you hammer the buttons, you will get pretty rich pretty fast.

The Cheat button is Alt-F7 as in SPAZ 1 for old time's sake :)


So this marks the end of our first task list here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/252470/discussions/0/364042262889515926/

We will be posting shorter tasks list moving forward so that we are better able to jump on good ideas as they come in vs. completing a long list before being able to act. We already know what the next two items will be as well and here they are.



Core Synergies:
One big request has been to move ship designs away from the ideal L or T shapes that have emerged, and we couldn't agree more. We want to add a lot more thought to balancing ship systems power vs. raw firepower, and to that end, we are adding Core Synergies.

A Core Synergy is a stats bonus for connecting multiple cores together. So now not only will the shape of your spine matter, but also which core you put where in the spine, because you want the biggest bonuses on the best cores with the most active connections. The better ship construction update v0.3.0 will help a lot to keep this process streamlined.

The more cores connected to a core, the higher the bonus. It will require some tuning, but we are thinking along the lines of 3 connections is about equal to the current cores' output as of today. This means a ship that is a lone line or an L is going to have diminished systems power vs lots and lots of firepower as it has now, so it will be a balance. We also don't want the most viable ship to become a solid 3x3 brick, the downside of the brick of course will be the lack of weapons available.

We are really excited to see what the core synergies bring, and they will be the next task we work on.


Bigger Better Bandits:
Another huge request has been to make the bandits viable into mid to late game. In their current incarnation, their purpose is to be feeder fish that bridge the early gap into fighting other captains, but as we have learned, some people don't want to be the pirate and we hear you. All too often we have read stories of players battling bandits well into the double digit levels and that is just not fun, so we want to fix that!

Keep in mind, this is Space PIRATES and Zombies and fighting the 200 Captains needs to remain the most lucrative experience because it plugs into the whole faction reputation system that is the backbone of the living universe, but we do want to provide extra options.

The new bandits design is still in its infancy but there are some things that we do know.

Bandits are going to level up.
Bandits are going to be able to equip some of the parts they steal for nastier designs.
There will be medium and large scrap parts added for the bigger bandit ships (player can use too)
The word Bandit Chief has been uttered.

Thanks to everyone for their great suggestions and sticking with us!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard(Narlak)

Players have been having problems with getting overwhelmed with attack bounties on their mothership. This is usually a result of making some enemies early on and that tends to snowball, so we wanted to give you all a way to get out of a sticky spot, but without undermining the consequences for making enemies. To solve this, Carl has invented something new, the Starmap Cloak.

Starmap Cloaking automatically unlocks at level 6. Normally you will get a perk at this level, but we also made it so that old saves with a level six or higher will also be able to cloak.

When you cloak, anyone chasing you will lose targeting on you and will re-evaluate their goals and move on to some other target.

Cloaking costs quite a bit of extra rez to use, about twice the cost of normal flight (on top of your current flight mode.)

You can stay cloaked as long as you want if you have enough rez to maintain the cloak.

If you start combat or any action that takes time on the starmap, like Collecting goons at a resource node, or repairing, or joining a fight, you will become visible.

Once your cloak is down, it takes time to regenerate (currently 60 starmap seconds) and you will not be able to recloak while the field is regenerating, so use cloak wisely.



Cheat Engine has been pretty popular for people to modify their game, and we wanted to make that a little easier and less error prone than twiddling random memory :) So we have added a cheat menu to the game just like we had in SPAZ 1.

If you use cheats, your achievements will be disabled for that game moving forward, but if you load any save game without cheats active, then achievements will be back online.

Current Cheats:
Level Up
Add 100 Goons
Add 1000 Rez
Add 10000 Scrap

Cheats can be used over and over so if you hammer the buttons, you will get pretty rich pretty fast.

The Cheat button is Alt-F7 as in SPAZ 1 for old time's sake :)


So this marks the end of our first task list here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/252470/discussions/0/364042262889515926/

We will be posting shorter tasks list moving forward so that we are better able to jump on good ideas as they come in vs. completing a long list before being able to act. We already know what the next two items will be as well and here they are.



Core Synergies:
One big request has been to move ship designs away from the ideal L or T shapes that have emerged, and we couldn't agree more. We want to add a lot more thought to balancing ship systems power vs. raw firepower, and to that end, we are adding Core Synergies.

A Core Synergy is a stats bonus for connecting multiple cores together. So now not only will the shape of your spine matter, but also which core you put where in the spine, because you want the biggest bonuses on the best cores with the most active connections. The better ship construction update v0.3.0 will help a lot to keep this process streamlined.

The more cores connected to a core, the higher the bonus. It will require some tuning, but we are thinking along the lines of 3 connections is about equal to the current cores' output as of today. This means a ship that is a lone line or an L is going to have diminished systems power vs lots and lots of firepower as it has now, so it will be a balance. We also don't want the most viable ship to become a solid 3x3 brick, the downside of the brick of course will be the lack of weapons available.

We are really excited to see what the core synergies bring, and they will be the next task we work on.


Bigger Better Bandits:
Another huge request has been to make the bandits viable into mid to late game. In their current incarnation, their purpose is to be feeder fish that bridge the early gap into fighting other captains, but as we have learned, some people don't want to be the pirate and we hear you. All too often we have read stories of players battling bandits well into the double digit levels and that is just not fun, so we want to fix that!

Keep in mind, this is Space PIRATES and Zombies and fighting the 200 Captains needs to remain the most lucrative experience because it plugs into the whole faction reputation system that is the backbone of the living universe, but we do want to provide extra options.

The new bandits design is still in its infancy but there are some things that we do know.

Bandits are going to level up.
Bandits are going to be able to equip some of the parts they steal for nastier designs.
There will be medium and large scrap parts added for the bigger bandit ships (player can use too)
The word Bandit Chief has been uttered.

Thanks to everyone for their great suggestions and sticking with us!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard(Narlak)

The Rogue Mining Op:

There have been quite a few requests to get some SPAZ 1 style rock picking into SPAZ 2. We spent some time and think we have come up with a good way to handle this. We now have Rogue Mining Ops.

They appear over time on the Starmap and will also expire. This expiry and limited nature is meant to make them feel special when you find one, since it is a free source of a limited supply of Rez. You also cannot grind them endlessly, which was a big problem in SPAZ 1. We want people to use all of the tools we created to survive in the Galaxy, and not to grind one event, so Mining Ops will expire over time.

So here's how they work. You will find a pretty dense asteroid field filled with a new asteroid type. They are purplish and veiny and have little bits of Rez inside them. Blow them up, and you can go collect the Rez. You are free to do this and none of the miners in the level will care.

But...

There are also crates littered around the asteroid field (they are hard to find on purpose) These crates have large amounts of Rez inside them. If you steal from these crates, then the miners will get very angry. They will then call their friends and maintain a certain population that will pummel your ship until all their reinforcements are used up. If you survive, you can simply warp out as normal (if things get too tense, there is a warp gate too)

If you decide to keep pushing it, stealing from more crates, the alert level will rise and a larger fleet will warp in. If you survive that, then you can warp out. If you are really nuts, you can go for the last few crates and an even larger fleet will warp in. It is up to you to only steal as much as you feel comfortable with and pay the price if you are too greedy.


Side Objectives (Little Blue Missions)

We have added a side objective system to help teach players the intricacies of the game. Each objective has a little brain that runs and evaluates if it is a good time to teach a certain game mechanic. Some preconditions are simple, like being level 12 or having zombies in the galaxy, while others are more unusual like having 3 loose junk parts triggering a quest to get rid of the garbage weighing you down. The real goal here is to provide the kind of advice that you would get if one of us was standing next to you providing hints on different ways to tackle problems and pointing out less used systems.

Some objectives will come and go as the brain detects and then undetects good situations for completing that objective. Objectives can also be postponed if you don't want to complete them right now and want to free up another slot for a different objective to become active. Not to worry, postponed objectives will come back after a while.

Here is a list of the objectives we have now:
Bounty a Captain
Bounty a Starbase
Bounty a Zombie Starbase
Collect your Stockpile
Extort a Captain
Fund a Starbase Expansion
Hire a Wingman
Attack a Captain
Destroy a Starbase
Attack a Zombie
Do a Mining Op
Pay a Tribute
Start a Raid
Try the Arena
Pay Reparations
Duel a captain
Recruit a Captain to your Faction
Use a build Incentive
Join a Fight
Jettison unused Junk

We are hoping the objectives help to get people to try all of these things at least once to see how they poke the simulation in new ways.

Additionally: (Better building tutorials)

We have revised the intro building tutorial to make it hopefully more bullet proof when it comes to learning how to add and remove parts on ships. We still teach the old tractor beam method here since you need to know how to use this if you are ever in battle. The tractor beam method is the basic fallback construction method.

We also added a tutorial for the new method that will trigger the first time that you enter the inventory level from the Starmap on your own.


So this update was mainly about getting people playing the game a little better/deeper with a little extra ambient mining op flavor for those who already know how to play :)

We hope you enjoy!

Andrew(Blorf) and Richard(Narlak)

The Rogue Mining Op:

There have been quite a few requests to get some SPAZ 1 style rock picking into SPAZ 2. We spent some time and think we have come up with a good way to handle this. We now have Rogue Mining Ops.

They appear over time on the Starmap and will also expire. This expiry and limited nature is meant to make them feel special when you find one, since it is a free source of a limited supply of Rez. You also cannot grind them endlessly, which was a big problem in SPAZ 1. We want people to use all of the tools we created to survive in the Galaxy, and not to grind one event, so Mining Ops will expire over time.

So here's how they work. You will find a pretty dense asteroid field filled with a new asteroid type. They are purplish and veiny and have little bits of Rez inside them. Blow them up, and you can go collect the Rez. You are free to do this and none of the miners in the level will care.

But...

There are also crates littered around the asteroid field (they are hard to find on purpose) These crates have large amounts of Rez inside them. If you steal from these crates, then the miners will get very angry. They will then call their friends and maintain a certain population that will pummel your ship until all their reinforcements are used up. If you survive, you can simply warp out as normal (if things get too tense, there is a warp gate too)

If you decide to keep pushing it, stealing from more crates, the alert level will rise and a larger fleet will warp in. If you survive that, then you can warp out. If you are really nuts, you can go for the last few crates and an even larger fleet will warp in. It is up to you to only steal as much as you feel comfortable with and pay the price if you are too greedy.


Side Objectives (Little Blue Missions)

We have added a side objective system to help teach players the intricacies of the game. Each objective has a little brain that runs and evaluates if it is a good time to teach a certain game mechanic. Some preconditions are simple, like being level 12 or having zombies in the galaxy, while others are more unusual like having 3 loose junk parts triggering a quest to get rid of the garbage weighing you down. The real goal here is to provide the kind of advice that you would get if one of us was standing next to you providing hints on different ways to tackle problems and pointing out less used systems.

Some objectives will come and go as the brain detects and then undetects good situations for completing that objective. Objectives can also be postponed if you don't want to complete them right now and want to free up another slot for a different objective to become active. Not to worry, postponed objectives will come back after a while.

Here is a list of the objectives we have now:
Bounty a Captain
Bounty a Starbase
Bounty a Zombie Starbase
Collect your Stockpile
Extort a Captain
Fund a Starbase Expansion
Hire a Wingman
Attack a Captain
Destroy a Starbase
Attack a Zombie
Do a Mining Op
Pay a Tribute
Start a Raid
Try the Arena
Pay Reparations
Duel a captain
Recruit a Captain to your Faction
Use a build Incentive
Join a Fight
Jettison unused Junk

We are hoping the objectives help to get people to try all of these things at least once to see how they poke the simulation in new ways.

Additionally: (Better building tutorials)

We have revised the intro building tutorial to make it hopefully more bullet proof when it comes to learning how to add and remove parts on ships. We still teach the old tractor beam method here since you need to know how to use this if you are ever in battle. The tractor beam method is the basic fallback construction method.

We also added a tutorial for the new method that will trigger the first time that you enter the inventory level from the Starmap on your own.


So this update was mainly about getting people playing the game a little better/deeper with a little extra ambient mining op flavor for those who already know how to play :)

We hope you enjoy!

Andrew(Blorf) and Richard(Narlak)