Greetings captains,

It's time for the next Warlords update (what a surprise!) bringing it up to v0.620. This time we focused on adding new content, but also on some major changes which I'm sure you'll notice when you start playing the updated version. Let's go over the big things:

We have felt that players, including a lot uf us in the team, weren't using skills nearly as much as they should've been used. Our legacy skill system promoted building up only 1 individual skill to make the most use from it as all skills drained power from the same power core and shared its cooldown, along with the cloaking system. Cloaking is now more of a passive action and doesn't drain power anymore, we are planning to improve upon this design, but for now it has unlimited duration.

The Legacy skill-set was designed with limitations of power in mind so we had to change it entirely or else we would have ended up with a bunch of overpowered sub-skills. We have changed the system with a few design measures in mind. We felt that they had to be based around active skill usage. Our new skill designs are based upon a certain gameplay style that they promote. The first class will be based around close combat, being a Vanguard on the front lines of the combat and dealing more damage while near your opponents with both active skills and passive bonuses. Other classes, with different gameplay styles, are planned further in development.

The other change we had to accommodate is to bring the combat closer. The reasons for this were several, ranging from abnormal combat distances with smaller ships to the entire lack of visual fidelity due to the huge range. We managed to do this by tweaking weapon ranges and managing ship speeds and acceleration. You can still use longer range weapons, upgrade your range with enhancements and prefer hit and run combat. As a result of those changes we have also increased the precision of ranges/distances in combat to allow more control in the game. Game combat should feel more natural now, allowing for easier manual fire while, of course, still allowing fire at will as it was before and you will have a pleasure of exploring ship models in more detail from the closer perspective directly in combat.

All of this is our first iteration of those changes and we are looking forward to your feedback to improve upon those changes or change the direction entirely if needed. After playing for awhile with the new system please go to the discussion board and share your feedback and opinions, if you wish of course.

The affected areas of change are:

• skills
  
• NPC AI behaviour
  
• ship stats
  
• ship acceleration and speed
  
• Sublight speed
  
• power core, cloak and various other subsystem tweaks
  
• light and heavy weapons

We've purged the old skill system from the game and introduced a brand new one. You will retain all your skill points from your existing saves, but you'll have to distribute your skill points anew. Progression is still similar as in you gain a skill point each time you level-up and you can then use these points to upgrade skills. Each character class has four unique skills (the fourth is unlocked on higher levels), but also a special passive class-specific bonus.

The first Gladiatrix arena is in! It's nicely located in Phaehana, between Phaeneros and Concordia. If you've played Starpoint Gemini 1, then you more or less know what the deal is. Simply talk to the arena Quartermaster to get in on the action. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what does that mean for a video?

https://youtu.be/02VRJWeJRbw

Two new Outerlands ships are added to finalize their fleet. You can obtain these in several places, but to make things easier, we've greatly expanded on what ships are available for purchase both on Concordia and on Phaeneros. This is a temporary measure to make it possible for you fine ladies and gentlemen to give each ship a go. You still have to purchase them of course.

Scattered around Gemini are the so-called Artefact vaults. If you scan these, you'll get a nifty prize. Existing saves will work without a problem since the vaults are added in.

The amount of new things, but more than anything changes, is quite drastic, so please keep in mind that you could encounter problems in the game and with your existing save files. If that happens, please let us know so we can act accordingly!

OK. This might seem a little strange, but there's no harm in trying, right? On Thursday, 20th October, we'll be hovering over the Steam discussion board even more than usual, ready to answer any question you might have regarding the game. It's a little something we felt could work well to get even more creative discussions going. The event is "scheduled" to start at 16:00 UTC/GMT.

We're looking forward to your feedback so please don't hesitate and post your thoughts on the discussion board, be they positive or negative. We welcome constructive criticism!

You can find the entire change-list through this link

Safe travels, captains!

Greetings captains,

It's time for the next Warlords update (what a surprise!) bringing it up to v0.620. This time we focused on adding new content, but also on some major changes which I'm sure you'll notice when you start playing the updated version. Let's go over the big things:

We have felt that players, including a lot uf us in the team, weren't using skills nearly as much as they should've been used. Our legacy skill system promoted building up only 1 individual skill to make the most use from it as all skills drained power from the same power core and shared its cooldown, along with the cloaking system. Cloaking is now more of a passive action and doesn't drain power anymore, we are planning to improve upon this design, but for now it has unlimited duration.

The Legacy skill-set was designed with limitations of power in mind so we had to change it entirely or else we would have ended up with a bunch of overpowered sub-skills. We have changed the system with a few design measures in mind. We felt that they had to be based around active skill usage. Our new skill designs are based upon a certain gameplay style that they promote. The first class will be based around close combat, being a Vanguard on the front lines of the combat and dealing more damage while near your opponents with both active skills and passive bonuses. Other classes, with different gameplay styles, are planned further in development.

The other change we had to accommodate is to bring the combat closer. The reasons for this were several, ranging from abnormal combat distances with smaller ships to the entire lack of visual fidelity due to the huge range. We managed to do this by tweaking weapon ranges and managing ship speeds and acceleration. You can still use longer range weapons, upgrade your range with enhancements and prefer hit and run combat. As a result of those changes we have also increased the precision of ranges/distances in combat to allow more control in the game. Game combat should feel more natural now, allowing for easier manual fire while, of course, still allowing fire at will as it was before and you will have a pleasure of exploring ship models in more detail from the closer perspective directly in combat.

All of this is our first iteration of those changes and we are looking forward to your feedback to improve upon those changes or change the direction entirely if needed. After playing for awhile with the new system please go to the discussion board and share your feedback and opinions, if you wish of course.

The affected areas of change are:

• skills
  
• NPC AI behaviour
  
• ship stats
  
• ship acceleration and speed
  
• Sublight speed
  
• power core, cloak and various other subsystem tweaks
  
• light and heavy weapons

We've purged the old skill system from the game and introduced a brand new one. You will retain all your skill points from your existing saves, but you'll have to distribute your skill points anew. Progression is still similar as in you gain a skill point each time you level-up and you can then use these points to upgrade skills. Each character class has four unique skills (the fourth is unlocked on higher levels), but also a special passive class-specific bonus.

The first Gladiatrix arena is in! It's nicely located in Phaehana, between Phaeneros and Concordia. If you've played Starpoint Gemini 1, then you more or less know what the deal is. Simply talk to the arena Quartermaster to get in on the action. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what does that mean for a video?

https://youtu.be/02VRJWeJRbw

Two new Outerlands ships are added to finalize their fleet. You can obtain these in several places, but to make things easier, we've greatly expanded on what ships are available for purchase both on Concordia and on Phaeneros. This is a temporary measure to make it possible for you fine ladies and gentlemen to give each ship a go. You still have to purchase them of course.

Scattered around Gemini are the so-called Artefact vaults. If you scan these, you'll get a nifty prize. Existing saves will work without a problem since the vaults are added in.

The amount of new things, but more than anything changes, is quite drastic, so please keep in mind that you could encounter problems in the game and with your existing save files. If that happens, please let us know so we can act accordingly!

OK. This might seem a little strange, but there's no harm in trying, right? On Thursday, 20th October, we'll be hovering over the Steam discussion board even more than usual, ready to answer any question you might have regarding the game. It's a little something we felt could work well to get even more creative discussions going. The event is "scheduled" to start at 16:00 UTC/GMT.

We're looking forward to your feedback so please don't hesitate and post your thoughts on the discussion board, be they positive or negative. We welcome constructive criticism!

You can find the entire change-list through this link

Safe travels, captains!

All Starpoint Gemini games are now on discount of up to 82% as a part of the Iceberg Interactive publisher's weekend on Steam. If you haven't already, come grab what you like today!


http://store.steampowered.com/app/419480

http://store.steampowered.com/app/236150/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/345870/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/411420/

And let's not forget about the completely free Starpoint Gemini 2: Origins DLC!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/371060/

Or have a look at the Starpoint Gemini 2 Gold Pack instead.

Check out what else Iceberg Interactive has on sale today!

Safe travels captains!

All Starpoint Gemini games are now on discount of up to 82% as a part of the Iceberg Interactive publisher's weekend on Steam. If you haven't already, come grab what you like today!


http://store.steampowered.com/app/419480

http://store.steampowered.com/app/236150/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/345870/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/411420/

And let's not forget about the completely free Starpoint Gemini 2: Origins DLC!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/371060/

Or have a look at the Starpoint Gemini 2 Gold Pack instead.

Check out what else Iceberg Interactive has on sale today!

Safe travels captains!

Greetings captains,

I'll start this one off by apologizing for some things we did in the last update. We found and exterminated a few problematic bugs that we accidentally created when fixing other issues. We apologize for the inconvenience and, as always, thank you for your patience. You can find the tiny change-log below.

Moving on to the upcoming stuff! We've got some nice things coming in the next full update and here's just a snippet:

• Skill system overhaul - We planned to rework some skills and upgrade the system slightly, but in the end, guided by community suggestions and discussions, we decided to go for a complete re-work. The whole system is going out the window and we're building it from the ground up. What you'll see in the next update is the first character class, with more to come.
  
• Planetary hangar - Similar to the station hangars we introduced in 0.610, planets will also have hangars.
  
• Combat system - You wanted changes and we heard you loud and clear. The next update will bring combat to closer distance to make things more dynamic. It should be a blast.
  
• More ships - Two more to be precise to round up the Outerlands fleet
  
• Minefields - 'Nuff said
  
• Improved asteroid fields - Add a lot of dust and gas to asteroid fields and you get a nice claustrophobic ambience
  
• Skyscape - Time to start adding more of those new skyboxes
  
• Hangars - Expanding the current palette of station hangars
  
• And much much more...

And then we come to the what else are we working on section to give a sneek peek into what is looming over the horizon (meaning NOT in the next update):

• Workshop support - Yep. You might have noticed the Mods button in the game launcher in 0.610 update. We're continuing our work on fully implementing mod and Steam workshop support. It won't be ready for the next update, but we're getting there.
  
• Controller - We know a lot of questions were raised regarding controller support and we just want to emphasize that work on that is already underway.
  
• Gladiatrix - Our dilligent scripters are working on a number of features and the Gladiatrix is just one of them. The name implies what the Gladiatrix is and those who played Starpoint Gemini 1 are already familiar with it.
  
• VR support - I'm sure there's no need to explain this further.

QUICKFIX v0.612 CHANGELOG

• Fixed numerous errors we encountered in ship files that could cause different problems and even crash the game.
  
• Fixed a memory leak where some textures didn't get released from memory after multiple game loads
  
• Fixed a problem with saving global variables that would stop ships from spawning properly. This could potentially corrupt save files, but it should all be ok now.

Fly safe, captains!

Greetings captains,

I'll start this one off by apologizing for some things we did in the last update. We found and exterminated a few problematic bugs that we accidentally created when fixing other issues. We apologize for the inconvenience and, as always, thank you for your patience. You can find the tiny change-log below.

Moving on to the upcoming stuff! We've got some nice things coming in the next full update and here's just a snippet:

• Skill system overhaul - We planned to rework some skills and upgrade the system slightly, but in the end, guided by community suggestions and discussions, we decided to go for a complete re-work. The whole system is going out the window and we're building it from the ground up. What you'll see in the next update is the first character class, with more to come.
  
• Planetary hangar - Similar to the station hangars we introduced in 0.610, planets will also have hangars.
  
• Combat system - You wanted changes and we heard you loud and clear. The next update will bring combat to closer distance to make things more dynamic. It should be a blast.
  
• More ships - Two more to be precise to round up the Outerlands fleet
  
• Minefields - 'Nuff said
  
• Improved asteroid fields - Add a lot of dust and gas to asteroid fields and you get a nice claustrophobic ambience
  
• Skyscape - Time to start adding more of those new skyboxes
  
• Hangars - Expanding the current palette of station hangars
  
• And much much more...

And then we come to the what else are we working on section to give a sneek peek into what is looming over the horizon (meaning NOT in the next update):

• Workshop support - Yep. You might have noticed the Mods button in the game launcher in 0.610 update. We're continuing our work on fully implementing mod and Steam workshop support. It won't be ready for the next update, but we're getting there.
  
• Controller - We know a lot of questions were raised regarding controller support and we just want to emphasize that work on that is already underway.
  
• Gladiatrix - Our dilligent scripters are working on a number of features and the Gladiatrix is just one of them. The name implies what the Gladiatrix is and those who played Starpoint Gemini 1 are already familiar with it.
  
• VR support - I'm sure there's no need to explain this further.

QUICKFIX v0.612 CHANGELOG

• Fixed numerous errors we encountered in ship files that could cause different problems and even crash the game.
  
• Fixed a memory leak where some textures didn't get released from memory after multiple game loads
  
• Fixed a problem with saving global variables that would stop ships from spawning properly. This could potentially corrupt save files, but it should all be ok now.

Fly safe, captains!

Greetings captains!

Time for a new content-heavy update! As usual, we have a standard assortment of bug-fixes and tweaks, but wait! There's more! If you get the update now, you'll also unlock new ships, new station models, new GUI functionality, hangars and much much more! Well, you'll actually get all this in any case, whenever you get the update...

To make things easier, here's a very short list of the new stuff:

• Hangar interiors - see your ship in a different light. Literally...
  
• Paint your ship - get expressive and go nuts with colors... if that's your thing... You can always just leave it as-is and smack a sticker on the "hood".
  
• New ships - We can never have enough of those. Curtesy of the Outerlands this time.
  
• New station models - to round up the Outerlands, but there are also some additional new models.
  
• Hailing ships - In space, no-one can hear you scream... unless you hail them first.
  
• Steam trading cards - Some care, some don't, but the cards are here to stay. We hope you have fun collecting them!

I've got another important thing to mention, ladies and gents so let's talk about the updated EULA and Google Analytics. We've implemented this bit into the game. The Analytics monitors what you're doing in the game COMPLETELY ANONYMOUSLY and sends that data over. You can easily turn this feature off through the GameLauncher->Settings panel, but it's important that we emphasize that the feature is ON by default.

There's more new stuff, but I'll leave that in the full change-log which you can find on the discussion board or by simply clicking here.

We've got some major changes planned for the next couple of updates, but we'll share that info in a little while.

Stay tuned and safe travels, captains!

Greetings captains!

Time for a new content-heavy update! As usual, we have a standard assortment of bug-fixes and tweaks, but wait! There's more! If you get the update now, you'll also unlock new ships, new station models, new GUI functionality, hangars and much much more! Well, you'll actually get all this in any case, whenever you get the update...

To make things easier, here's a very short list of the new stuff:

• Hangar interiors - see your ship in a different light. Literally...
  
• Paint your ship - get expressive and go nuts with colors... if that's your thing... You can always just leave it as-is and smack a sticker on the "hood".
  
• New ships - We can never have enough of those. Curtesy of the Outerlands this time.
  
• New station models - to round up the Outerlands, but there are also some additional new models.
  
• Hailing ships - In space, no-one can hear you scream... unless you hail them first.
  
• Steam trading cards - Some care, some don't, but the cards are here to stay. We hope you have fun collecting them!

I've got another important thing to mention, ladies and gents so let's talk about the updated EULA and Google Analytics. We've implemented this bit into the game. The Analytics monitors what you're doing in the game COMPLETELY ANONYMOUSLY and sends that data over. You can easily turn this feature off through the GameLauncher->Settings panel, but it's important that we emphasize that the feature is ON by default.

There's more new stuff, but I'll leave that in the full change-log which you can find on the discussion board or by simply clicking here.

We've got some major changes planned for the next couple of updates, but we'll share that info in a little while.

Stay tuned and safe travels, captains!

Greetings captains,

Many of you expressed an interest about our future updates and we’d like to reveal some immediate plans.

The next scheduled update is planned for release in the first half of September. Highlight of that update will be new content. Allow me to mention just several most important parts:

• First batch of outlaw ships, Outlanders, with 5 new designs
  
• Implemented hangars for docking at space stations (yes, yes, I mean interiors, but don't expect to go all FPS-style with a rifle in your hands)
  
• Communication with NPC ships in space (hailing, obtaining information)
  
• Trading with other ships while engaged in communication in space
  
• Customization panel to modify visual appearance of player ship (“pimp your ship”)

These are only a few of the most important game elements to be added in this following update. We hope you’ll enjoy new options and you’ll offer continuous feedback that helps us determine our next priorities.

Lastly, this is the end of a small summer silence. The entire team is now gathered and ready for new challenges and updates. More details on the development after this patch will be revealed after it is released!

Safe travels captains!

Greetings captains,

Many of you expressed an interest about our future updates and we’d like to reveal some immediate plans.

The next scheduled update is planned for release in the first half of September. Highlight of that update will be new content. Allow me to mention just several most important parts:

• First batch of outlaw ships, Outlanders, with 5 new designs
  
• Implemented hangars for docking at space stations (yes, yes, I mean interiors, but don't expect to go all FPS-style with a rifle in your hands)
  
• Communication with NPC ships in space (hailing, obtaining information)
  
• Trading with other ships while engaged in communication in space
  
• Customization panel to modify visual appearance of player ship (“pimp your ship”)

These are only a few of the most important game elements to be added in this following update. We hope you’ll enjoy new options and you’ll offer continuous feedback that helps us determine our next priorities.

Lastly, this is the end of a small summer silence. The entire team is now gathered and ready for new challenges and updates. More details on the development after this patch will be revealed after it is released!

Safe travels captains!