Hello. The second part of this post about the upcoming update will be focused not on what will be introduced, but rather on what will be temporarily removed.

Why remove something in the first place? Celestial Command is our first project, and like many other inexperienced developers, we fell into a common trap known as 'feature creep' – the desire to implement numerous cool features without proper consideration of whether they are truly necessary or feasible. This becomes even more problematic when previously added features are not properly completed yet.



As a result, over the years of development, the game has accumulated some mistakes, and in certain aspects, it appears as a collection of incomplete features, which could be frustrating.
To resolve this, we've decided to take a step back, carefully reevaluate every aspect of the game, and focus on its core elements that make it enjoyable.

Of course, no one likes when features are removed, but once the base game is stable and polished, we will gradually reintroduce features one by one, subjecting each to thorough testing to ensure that new features are both enjoyable and really enhance the gameplay experience.

So, what aspects are affected?


Any game is better with co-op multiplayer, and we are determined to include this feature in our game. However, despite listing multiplayer functionality on the store page for an extended period, it has never functioned as intended.
We were committed to fixing it and making it playable for this update, but due to time constraints, we decided to release the initial version without multiplayer to prevent further delays.



The multiplayer tag has been temporarily removed from the store page to prevent any potential confusion. However, once we are confident that the single-player game is stable and functioning correctly, we will make every effort to reintroduce multiplayer as swiftly as possible.


The crew system underwent significant changes. We made the decision to remove the regular crew and food as they didn't add much interest to the game and were, in fact, more of an annoyance.
However, keeping the concept of a ship captain with unique skills that affect ship performance seems like an interesting idea.

Nevertheless, although we've already started working on the skills system, we found that the current implementation lacked the depth and balance we desire. Therefore, the skill system has been temporarily removed and will be returned once the skills become more engaging and balanced.

Also, the skill system will work even better in co-op multiplayer, allowing each player to level up skills for their preferred play-style.


With the addition of 3D construction, the Steam Workshop now makes even more sense than before, as ships can be more complex.
However, we want to ensure that the new construction system is reliable and that your ship files will not break in the future. As a result, the workshop feature is temporarily removed and will be returned later when the game is properly tested.


This point will probably seem the most unpleasant to you, because unlike others, the trading system is removed not temporarily, but is completely replaced by another system of delivery tasks.
This may not sound good, but we have an explanation for this decision.

Of course, the idea that you can start with modest trade routes between stations, buy where it's cheap, sell where it's expensive, then buy more ships and send them out to trade, build your own trade stations and end up influence the living economy of an entire galaxy - all this certainly sounds very interesting. We used to think so too and wanted to implement it.



The problem is that all of this is essentially a completely different game of a completely different genre. It's a galaxy / empire builder built into the current ship construction game. Essentially two games in one.

This is a very difficult task even for developers who make a game exclusively about that and focus as much as possible on the economic simulation of the entire galaxy, with strong optimization of ship systems, where ships are a single, non-modular object in order to achieve better performance of large fleets, and even such games have many problems from an economic simulation, AI, performance and many other things.

For our game about ship construction, implementing such a system is a practically impossible task. Such a system will only burden the game and it will be impossible to bring it all into good condition.

This is still a great idea, and we likely will try to implement it in another game in the future which will be built from the ground up specially for this purpose. But here in Celestial Command, it is not a good decision.



However! We still want to have freighters in the game because cargo spaceships are cool, so we have decided to implement a cargo mission system.
That is, it will be something like a simulator of a space trucker and not a simulator of a galactic trading tycoon.

And by the way, such a system may work even better than a theoretical economic simulator, because cargo routes can be chosen in a more interesting way, with more clear rewards and events along the way, instead of hauling ore many times between the same stations.
This system is almost ready, however it is still raw and unbalanced, so we have decided to finish it first before releasing it in the game to be sure that it provides a great experience for our players.


The same situation applies to planets. They look cool, but a full implementation into the gameplay loop would require too many changes in the game's core and balance, especially when considering that ships are still flying on a 2D plane. Therefore, we have decided to completely remove planet surface locations. Perhaps later, they may be reintroduced as a background for the combat mode, but we're not certain about that just yet.


That's all for now. In the next post we will talk about some more features that will be introduced in the upcoming update.

Greetings!
After such a colossal delay in development, we are glad to announce that the upcoming update is nearing completion and is scheduled for release at the end of the month!

Our initial goal was to provide you with a perfectly polished version of the game, where everything would run smoothly. But unfortunately, at this moment, we haven't been able to achieve the desired level of quality, and there is still much work to be done.
However, the game is no longer in a semi-disassembled and broken state, and the core systems are functioning overall.

We've decided that further delays are unacceptable, so we want to release the update in its current state and enhance it through regular, often, and small updates, as we've done in the past before that three-year delay.



Furthermore, it's obvious that no update can fully justify such a long delay. Therefore, we've decided to release what we've managed to achieve and continue development with regular updates.
We still encounter some real-life difficulties related to situation in our countries, as mentioned in previous posts. But we more or less have managed to learn to work in such situation, that allowing us to continue with development.

So, what can you expect in the next update?

Basically, every aspect of the game has been impacted, and the change log is so extensive, filled with countless small details that it no longer makes much sense. So, we will focus on discussing the most significant aspects of the upcoming update. Many things have already been described in previous posts, but that was a long time ago, and some of them have changed, so we'll tell you about the most important features again.


These two are the most significant and noticeable features of the upcoming update.
Now you will be able to construct ships in 3 dimensions, so the ships no longer will look like a flat pancake, while the control of ships remains in a 2D plane, keeping its nice simplicity of control.



Moreover, every module is available in 3 or 4 sizes, which allows you to build capital ships with enclosed hangars to keep smaller ships inside.



You can place any module on any side with any angle for decoration purpose. As a result, you now have completely new possibilities for creativity, allowing you to easily construct absolutely impressive and unique ships.


(ships above were designed by the community member GNUSMAS)

We wanted to give you a lot of options for creative ship design, and we're glad to introduce these new features which seem to work well to make it possible.


The long-awaited engineering drones now act as the main tool for constructing ships and salvaging debris. They are much more comfortable to use than the previous short-range robotic arms, especially for construction of large ships.

We talked about it earlier in this post, but here is some images again
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/330460/view/3609103752592777973









And also, later we plan to add combat drones too, so it will be possible to build carrier ship.


Since ship building can now be more complex, we've developed a special isolated editor mode where, even while in survival mode, you can instantly place modules, experimenting as if you were in sandbox mode, and then press a button to order the designed ship to be built on top of your standard ship.




Having a huge ship which will act as a mobile base - it's a cool concept and it was our idea from the start of the development of Celestial Command. Now it is finally implemented in the game.



Now you will need to build your own large ship which will not be armed at first, but will be a base for warehouses, production modules and the warp drive, while on a small ship you will complete missions, returning to the base from time to time to replenish supplies.






There were significant changes in the game world. We realized that having multiple ships in various systems simultaneously was impractical, and let's be honest, this system never functioned properly, it had numerous bugs, caused several restrictions, and a significant load on the PC.







After the complete system redesign, locations became larger, planets appeared larger and realistic. In orbital mode, orbital mechanics gained more significance, and in aero mode, we added a large asteroids field to the environment to reduce the emptiness of space and make navigation more interesting.



The global map was also extensively overhauled to improve its appearance and usability.



That's all for now. in the following posts we will tell you more about upcoming changes and other new features.

Hello!
Yeah, you haven't heard from us for a long time and we are very ashamed of this. Basically, we found ourselves in a kind of moral trap. The update, or even a blog post was so inexcusable long time ago that it seemed that just posting a post would not be enough to justify the delay, and the longer there was no post, the more it seemed so.

Because of that, our plan was to not post anything about this update, and just release a good and high-quality update before the New Year. Probably it was a mistake and we are going to solve it.

But anyway, the problem is, that we can’t manage to complete it before the New Year, and it will be delayed again.

The reason for this is the war in Ukraine, namely, problems with the availability of electricity for Artaani who lives in Ukraine. Approximately half of the time electricity is not available in his house and since Artaani is responsible for many core systems of the game, availability of electricity in his house affects development speed directly. Not to mention how difficult it is to maintain normal morale in a country waging a defensive war. Romenics and Riya also has a lot of additional issues because they were forced to leave their home in Russia.

But anyway, we are currently in relatively secure places and despite such extreme conditions we will try to continue the development.

Currently, the main danger is mostly the threat of lack of money for basic needs. Therefore, we are glad that the game still has some sales, maybe small, but still, and we are very grateful to everyone who supports us on Patreon, despite the lack of updates and information from us.

We decided that from now on, we will try to publish info about development much more often.



Initially when we started developing of capital ships, we planned to spawn some “basic” capital ship and small ship right at the beginning of the game, because turned out that construction of your base from scratch is too complex and confusing task.

So, when you press “Start” button, you will see this



And this have a couple of problems:

1. It creates a lot of questions, everything is extremely confusing, a lot of individual modules, which for what? What is decoration and what is functional? All of these contraptions are way too complex for a new player who just launched the game. Also, it eliminates “feel of progression” because it seems like you already have everything on the start.
   
   
2. The game genre starts to feel more like RTS game when you have some “main building” and a worker which should gather resources, but that is not our goal.
   We want to keep game more like craft survival game when you start with bare minimum and gradually develop into something big.

So instead of giving capital ship right from the start, we focused on the task to make beginning of the game and construction of own capital ship more user friendly.

In result, all that you will have after start of the game is this



Yeah, that’s all. Storage, engines, and most importantly, engineering drones!

Of course, engineering robotic arms looks cool and we probably will use it somehow in the mid game, but its low range makes any kind of construction is extremely uncomfortable and tedious.

Drones, that is another matter, they can easily salvage debris from large radius around the ship and build anything in range, either own small ship or new capital ship.



Construction done, now back to salvaging



Landing pad



Yes, in earlier versions of the game, we already had similar drones, but now they are better than before. Earlier they were physically bound to the ship and was more like an animation effect, but now they acts like individual objects which may fly long away from its carrier ship, or could be destroyed, which is a good foundation for future combat drones.

Also, considering new 3D construction features, you can do something like this





Overall, we are happy with combinations of these 3D feature and drones on small starting ships, now it is easy and fun to extend starting ships into some interesting design just in a few clicks





New power generator, by the way



What about capital ship, earlier we had some problems with design some kind modules specially for large ships, with increased details and special visual design, but came out to the conclusion, that actually, it is not necessary, just a set of scaled up basic modules could work very well, and result could looks cool, especially considering 3D possibilities.



Possibility to place modules on different altitude or unusual rotation can be great tool to achieve interesting design, but player is not forced to do that, and even modules placed only on zero plane should looks well because such method of construction is very comfortable, especially for a new player.

Here is a preparation of all modules for capital size ships. Implementation of Tier 4 size still have some questions considering number of mounting points and game performance, but we will resolve it somehow.




Also, we are working on a lot of other aspects of the game, mostly it is countless usability improvements, but another main task it is overall game design, answer on questions “what to do in the game?” which is always was a problem but should be solved to make it a proper game, not just construction sandbox.



We also completely redesigned tutorial, now it is not a separated buttons in the main menu, but a quest-based system which starts at the beginning and guide you through the start of the game.

Such type of tutorials is the best tutorials, because they don’t force you to learn everything, quit, start the new game, and implement what you managed to remember. Instead, you can just start a normal game, slowly learn the game step by step and continue when tutorial will be completed.

Also during implementation of tutorial, we, as developers more clearly see where the game has usability and game design issues which should be solved with high priority.

We will try to post info about development more often and keep your informed.
Thanks.

Hello, everyone.

To tell the truth, I’ve never thought that I will post this on Steam. As you know, Russia has invaded Ukraine. Our team is located in both of these countries, and the events happening now are absolutely terrible. When this war started, we froze our work, and now our Ukrainian colleague must evacuate, leaving everything behind.

We really want to continue the work on our game, and we really hope that we will make our dream project, but for now, work is fully frozen for an unexpected time.
We know that it is disappointing, in fact, we worked on this update for such a long time, but we can't do anything. We are scared, we are against this war. All money from steam sales and patrons will go to our Ukrainian friend for survival and new equipment. We absolutely understand if you unsubscribe from our Patreon.
Thanks for your support.
NO WAR!

We told that update going to be released in January, but unfortunately, there is still a lot of work to do so we need more time and the update will be delayed, sorry for that.

Another question, when it will be done?

Of course, we may say "delayed for 1 month" again, but honestly, we don't know, and we don't want to announce a date only to delay it again for another month in the future.

Generally speaking, we think it is almost impossible to specify the release date of any game unless the developer made a lot of similar games before, or the game is almost ready and only minor aspects should be tweaked before release.
Both conditions are not true for this case, so the update was delayed for an unknown time.

However, we will try to avoid long periods without posts and will inform you about progress until release, so you will be able to keep track of it.


Also some news about development.


Since construction will be possible in 3D, we have more freedom in the placement of command modules. So command modules are redesigned and now they have the standardized size and mounting points, which allow creating more various combinations of decorative modules around.









Now there are decorative asteroids located below zero planes.
We thought about more dense and visually interesting asteroids fields a long time ago, but considering the top-down view of the game, it had an unexpected problem - it was unclear, "is asteroids is a real obstacle, or is it located much below the trajectory of the ship"?



But we solved it by simply making decorative asteroids darker. It looks a bit weird but seems fine, and overall looks much better than without it. Also, it performs another important task, it indicated the velocity of the ship due to its shifting on the background during movement.

Here is a list of some of the changes that will be done for the next update.


Imagine how battles of flagships look in various sci-fi movies. Until a certain point, projectiles do not cause any significant damage. When a ship takes enough damage, there are explosions in different places, causing it to fall apart.

In CC, it does not look nearly as epic. Currently, projectiles are literally digging their way through the ship, immediately destroying its modules. As a result, even if the ship survives the battle, it looks like a gnawed apple, devoid of its original shape.

Of course, shields can solve this problem. However, we would be forced to make them account for 90% of the ship's durability, which would reduce the visual variety of battleships. We would like the hull to also seem like strong armor, as it’s often portrayed in sci-fi movies.

In addition, different modules may have very different HP values. For example, if you want to place a lot of small decor on the surface of some large module, then all of it will be blown away by the explosion of the first rocket.

Now ships will have a single HP pool, calculated from their size. Any hit will reduce this pool. When the value reaches zero, the modules themselves will start receiving damage directly, just as it is currently implemented. However, modules will have much less HP of their own, so they can be destroyed very quickly. You can think of this new system as structural integrity of sorts.



Thus, the problem described above is solved. At the same time, we have maintained the effect of ships physically losing their modules during combat.

Additionally, repairing a ship after each battle will no longer be an annoyance. That is because the HP pool can be replenished at the shipyard. Also, keeping track of the current status of any ship will now be more straightforward.



At first, it seemed that individual storage in each container was a good idea. Over time, it turned out to be annoying, especially for a ship with many containers.

Of course, it would be an interesting concept for some kind of first-person survival game where you would walk between different chests and sort everything. But in a game like CC, it just does not work.

Now, each ship will have only one inventory window, the maximum size of which is determined by the number of containers on the craft.



Simple and convenient.



Currently, you can build something like this:



Such ships are very effective in combat, but they are cheesy, and so are the battles between them.

Remember the various ships from sci-fi movies. Usually, their weapons occupy only 10-20% of the hull.
In real battleships, it is similar. Below each turret, there is a large and complex system for servicing and controlling the weapon.

There are no simulations of internal logistics in CC, so we will achieve that more easily.
Now, each weapon will require a specific amount of "weapon points.” The larger the ship, the more will be available.



Such a system will encourage building sophisticated ships instead of "a cube with cannons on each side."

3D construction in 2D space

We will start a series of posts about core changes introduced in the next update.

One of those changes is 3D physics, which is more akin to 2.5D.

Earlier, we mentioned that we would turn the game physics from 2D into fully 3D. We've already released a preview version of that new system. 3D is fantastic and delivers some great new possibilities. However, it also brings some disadvantages.

• The possibility to rotate and place any module in 3D provides freedom in spaceship construction. In 3D, even a few modules make it possible to create a large number of various ship designs. Also, the ships no longer look flat, and large cannons stand out when placed at the top.

• Navigation could be challenging. In space, there are very few landmarks that allow you to understand your ship's position. Especially if we are talking about altitude in a top-down view.
  It turned out very hard to comprehend whether an object sits above or below the ship. Is it an obstacle or not? It theoretically can be solved with good navigation tools, plus putting all the asteroids on one plane, but that leads to another problem.
  
  
• Navigation would become less fun. If all asteroids are in one plane, you can fly above or below them. As a result, the space will become empty and boring.
  
  
• Implementation of AI navigation in 3D is excessively complex. It's a technical issue, but still.
  
  
• Manual control of weapons would become redundant. Most likely, the enemy ship will be at a different altitude, so all projectiles could miss the target when trying to aim from a top-down view. Of course, there is an auto-targeting mode, but manual control still can be fun.
  
  
• Placement of engines would become finicky. Several additional engines will be required on the top and bottom of the ship to stabilize its rotation. Having to place them will be more annoying than fun.

As you can see, there is only one advantage but numerous disadvantages. Even though all these shortcomings are solvable, careless implementation of some solutions could turn Celestial Command into a completely different game. Something like a flight sim with a first or third-person view. Such a game will have very little in common with the original concept and resemble hundreds of similar games on the market. A solution like this is undesirable.

Therefore, we've come to the 2.5D solution that keeps the benefits of 3D while avoiding all the problems.


The game will have a fully 3D construction system. All modules will be placeable on the top and bottom and rotatable. Turrets will rotate not only left and right, but also up and down.
However, all in-game objects will lie on a 2D plane. Ships won't have up and down controls. Only the yaw axis will be steerable.

Such a system will have some odd issues, but they are all easy to solve:

• If part of a ship falls off, it will be pulled slowly towards zero altitude.
  
  
  
  
• If a ship is tall and its center of mass shifts up or down, the craft will move vertically to keep its center of mass at zero altitude.
  
  
• A ship's pitch and roll axes can misalign due to external forces, but they will stabilize automatically.
  
  
• If docking ports are at different altitudes, ships will move up or down to align for docking.

Those plans may sound a bit weird, but the test outcomes were positive, both in orbital and planetary game modes.

In the end, we will have 3D ships with the pleasant simplicity of 2D navigation and control.

Hello!
Yes, we are know you expected an update at the end of the year, but amount of changes in the game core is so huge, so unfortunately the game is not ready for release, and we are forced to move release of update to the end of January. Sorry for that.

For now, here is some report about progress. This is not everything what will be added, because most improvements related to game-design which is better to show in the game itself, but here is the most visually noticeable changes.


We completely changed how galaxy map and regions works, so now playable regions is 5 times larger.
Here is comparison:





This is especially important for orbital game mode, because now there is much more space around the planet, tidal forces is weaker and even small burn of maneuvering engines does not changes trajectory so much as it was before, in result orbital mechanics feels more like it should be.




Added rapid fire missile defense system, and considering that rockets now may fly in 3D space, we are like how result is looks like. However it will require some more improvements for accuracy.




Rockets with nuclear warhead as advanced weapon




Several new Sci-Fi looking engines. With possibility of 3D building and free rotation, even a few new parts allows to build quite an interesting design.










Also we started to perform large changes in missions system, since it will be a core of a new game loop, and one from the new types of missions is "delivery mission" which will require a ship with specific amount of cargo holders to ferry cargo containers from one location to another, with possible ambush on the way.

With such cargo freighters this type of "space trucker" activity should be more enjoyable than standard cargo transportation inside a ship.






We are really sorry that updated turned out so extremely delayed, but will try to complete it as soon as possible, and from this point we will try to report you about a progress more often.

And happy New Year! : )

Hello!
Despite the fact that there is no news from us for a really long time, the game actually is not abandoned as it may seems and in a very active development.

This may will be a biggest update in the history of game development, but since it not finished we are really sorry that we are forcing you to wait for so long.

We realized that there is huge amount of issues in the game which makes it unplayable at some point and we want to resolve all of these issues at once in order to provide really good gameplay experience for you.

We realize that such a long update cycle is not good, and we will return back to "update each 1-2 month" cycle after this huge update.
For now we just can't release it because many systems is completely reworked and currently in half disassembled state.
What about planned release date, unfortunately we don't know yet because there is still a lot of work.

Also the reason why there is not too many posts from us, is because there is so many changes in the game so it became hard to describe in words, while also we want to keep most info about most improvements hidden before release in order to achieve better "feeling of new content" for you after it will be released.

Still, we will show something about upcoming improvements:


Main user interface much more clean and no longer cluttered with useless elements which only distracts you, now it will display only information which can be useful right now.


User interface of editor screen is improved the same way. Also overall usability of editor screen is greatly improved because ship constructor is a key feature of the game and players will spent significant amount of time here so it should be intuitive and comfortable.


Inventory window and its usability improved too. Usage of inventory no longer fill the screen with a bunch of icons which is hard to read and use. It should be much more comfortable now.


Currently color dots above asteroids performs its purpose (display contained resource) not very well, so we made a new indicators which visible only when any asteroids selected and does not distracts when you don't need this information.


We like the idea that cargo transfer requires a docking, but docking process itself could be very uncomfortable and overall it much harder than expected, so now all docking ports have convenient and reliable "magnetic docking" feature.


Same thing happens with shipyard. Requirement of shipyard is nice feature but proper positioning of ship inside shipyard can be frustrating, so now the ship will be positioned in the center of shipyard automatically.

Hello! Sorry for no news from us for a long time. The game is not abandoned but in active development, as usual. We just reconsidering a lot of core features, game design elements and going to solve all of these issues which should be solved long time ago.

The biggest changes will be related to base building aspect and attempts to make learning curve much smoother.

We like base building, especially if base is moveable, because mobile base is cool.
So when we started development of Celestial Command we planned that at some point of gameplay, the player will be able to build huge ship which will act like mobile base, but this feature still not implemented and we are going to solve that with the next update.



Previously we had the next plan:

1. You start with simple small ships
   
2. You should build own space station within first hours of the gameplay
   
3. Somewhere after 10 hours of gameplay you will be able to build a capital ship and continue journey using it as a mobile base.

But turned out that such approach has a few problems:

1.
Construction of space station it is a complex task, it is not just a bunch of walls and door like in classic survival games. It is a large amount of different modules which should be built in specific combination and even positions.
When player starts the game first time he almost immediately encounter with such a complex task which is extremely unfriendly and should be changed. Also it just does not have sense because initial station always looks almost the same.

2.
Transition from station to moveable base is very unobvious. It is hard to understand when exactly it is possible or necessary and how gameplay will be changed. Also it means that previous station will be leaved behind or reconstructed? That sounds not too pleasant considering that station was a home for a long time.



So in order to solve these issues we decided to do the next thing:

• It will be unnecessary to build starting base manually, you will receive the base almost instantly within first hour of the game, and later you can upgrade or rebuild it as you wish.
  
• This will be not a station, but flagship, huge mobile base with its own role, so "build static space station phase" will be completely skipped and mobile base will be achieved much earlier, so new player will dive immediately into combat and mission tasks instead of complex attempts to build a station.

Let's think about, what is a "base" in survival game?

1. This is a place where you can store various items, so flagship will have large and cheap cargo storage
   
2. This is a place where located most "workbenches", so flagship will be the only place where production modules can be placed and used
   
3. This is just a protected place where you can go inside, close the "door" behind and be protected against dangerous environment outside, so we decided that flagship should be large enough to fit smaller ships inside its hangar bays. Another benefit from such approach - if you have several various ships of different design and colors, flagship itself will looks beautiful from outside view, since colorful small ships will be hidden inside its hangars.
   
4. Also the base is not a weapon itself, it should be protected. So it will be impossible to place weapons on the flagship at the beginning. However, at late game flagship can be upgraded and act not only like a carrier, but a battleship.

Also, since it will be not just a base, but mobile base, we want to implement another purpose for flagship - it will be the only way to travel on large distance, simply saying, warp drive can be installed only on flagship and it will move only a things which located inside its hangar bays.



Here is a simple analogy, flagship can be considered as large sail ship, locations in space - islands, smaller ships - individual characters. So characters is unable to move between islands without a sail ship.



All of these things should make an interesting difference between large flagship which acts like a mobile base and smaller frigates which purposes to perform combat, gathering and logistic operations.
We want to improve base building aspect long time ago and seems like this is exactly want we want to achieve.





Another aspect which will be heavy redesigned it is a crew system. Currently the system is quite overcomplicated, unobvious and sometimes tedious.

Micromanagement of different types of regular crew between different modules turned out an unnecessary feature, so instead, there will be only 1 type of regular crew, and it will be automatically distributed across entire ship.

The only purpose of crew system is to make ships "alive", and single type of regular crew will be enough to achieve that.



Instead of micromanagement of regular crew we want to focus on improvements in ships to ships combat aspect which is much more interesting and visually enjoyable.

Officers also will be redesigned. Currently there is an option to assign several officers to the same command module, but there is no point to assign "not a full stack of officers", so instead we decided to allow only one officer (captain) per ship, instead its skill tree will be much larger, so different captain may have different skills and specializations.

Each ship will be considered as single character, with its own portrait, name and specialization. Such approach should be especially good for co-op multiplayer.



We noticed an interesting thing - usually it is more fun to fight against enemies who are not similar to you. Who looks different and uses different tactics. That could be especially noticeable in various zombie games or similar games where you need to fight not against humans, but against some kind of creatures.

So, additionally to standard modular enemy ships, you also sometimes will encounter something very unusual.



But more details about that will be revealed later.



Since flagship with its warp drive will become the main method to travel between planets and systems, the role of warp gates will be changed.

Warp gates no longer provides a route trough entire galaxy, instead, it will provide transportation within the same system, it also will be a part of some missions where frigates (smaller ships) should perform some tasks in location where flagship can't arrive (because it can't fit inside a warp gate)




We plan to do that somewhere at January but not sure when exactly. We will keep you informed about progress and try to avoid such a long delays between news.

And also, Happy New Year! : )