No Reset for Skirmish or Main Galaxies yet – but Pre-beta Galaxy Ends Feb 5th

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Hi everyone,

We’ve been asked if we’re going to reset the Skirmish and Main galaxies because of the exploits that were introduced with Play with Friends. After analysing the data we’ve concluded it’s better to keep Skirmish and Main running and don’t plan to reset them at this time.

Across the playerbase the exploit was used to a relatively low degree, whereas a reset would affect everyone and likely cause much more frustration. Of the players that did use the exploit only a handful used it to a significant degree while others used it only once or twice. We do appreciate that if you are next to one of these players it will be dissapointing and we apologize to you for this. But for most of you it should have little to no affect on your game.

At some point we may well add a new game slot but that won’t happen before more new features are added – in particular those that make sense to be introduced with a new galaxy – or when a new game type is ready…

More Play with Friends Fixes on the Way

In the last patch we added some fixes to address how Play with Friends can be exploited. In the next patch we’re adding a couple more:

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Release: Patch v105 – Newbie Home Planet Protection

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Hi everyone,

The first patch of 2020 is here and it contains a round of fixes for Play with Friends, some new player protection, and the invisible fleet icon bug has been fixed. Apologies that we couldn’t get this patch to you any sooner!

Play with Friends Fixes

Since Play with Friends was released in patch v104 there’s been an ongoing discussion on what to do to prevent the feature from being exploited. We proposed some options in a blog and have since made refinements to those options following the feedback we received. The following changes were the ones players agreed with and that we were able to do in time for this patch:

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Play with Friends: the Next Steps

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Hi everyone,

First off, we want to apologize again for the issues that most of you experienced after the v104 patch was released. Usually when there’s an issue with a patch, the devs are able to quickly push out a hotfix. But in this instance, the nature of the issue went much deeper and as such we were unable to ready a fix quickly enough. In the future we’ll exercise greater caution with the timing of a patch release and limit the number of risky features in a single patch.

Patch v104 Bugs

On Friday we applied a hotfix to the servers which appears to have fixed the issues with teleporting and invisible fleets. There is one side-effect though: fleets will probably remain affected by the issue until they are moved and the client is then restarted. So we recommend moving all of your fleets a bit and then restarting the client. If you have done this and still have problems with teleporting or invisible fleets, please let us know on the forum.

We are working right now on a followup patch that will address other bugs and changes to the Play with Friends which we’ll go over now.

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Release: Patch v104 – Play with Friends

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Hi everyone,

Want to play alongside a friend? With this new patch – you can! A friend can join the same galaxy as you by spawning on to one of your planets. You just need to give them that planet’s unique spawn code. We’ve also got auto-mining of asteroid fields in this patch. Read on for full details and to find out what else is included.

Steam Winter Sale Now On

Before we begin, a quick reminder that the Steam Winter Sale kicked off yesterday. Get 25% off Outscape until January 2nd. If you or a friend is yet to buy a copy, now is a great time to do so! You can play alongside each other with the new Play with Friends feature.

Get Outscape on Steam

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Softening Expansion Limits

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TL;DR
We will be softening the current expansion limitations by adding new features ‘Independent Colonies’ and ‘Space Docks’. Independent Colonies will enable you to continue colonizing and capturing planets without increasing the number of colonies you have to manage at one time (Leaders are appointed to run the colony on your behalf). Space Docks will enable you to continue producing ships and fleets without having them count against your fleet limits. Fleets can be docked and undocked as needed (fleet space permitting).

Hi everyone,

In this post we’re going to preview the features planned for softening expansion limits. The current expansion limitation mechanics have been a hot topic in the community since they were introduced a year ago in the ‘Alpha 3’ galaxy.

These features are heavily influenced by the many great player discussions and ideas we’ve seen. But before we get to them, let’s take a quick look at the background of expansion in Outscape.

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Release: Patch v103 – Exploration History

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Hi everyone,

Patch v103 has just been released and should be available the next time you launch Outscape from Steam. The highlight of this patch is the addition of exploration history which we’ll go over in this post. Plus, an in-game Russian language option was added and several other changes worth checking out. Read on for details.

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UFO: Friend or Foe + Patch Preview

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Hi everyone,

There’s a new patch coming early next week. The highlight of this patch is the addition of exploration history – previously explored star systems and planets will remain visible when they’re no longer in scanner range!

While implementing exploration history, we saw a suggestion in the community related to visibility. That it should be possible to see the owner of a UFO if you have a treaty with the UFO’s owner. We think it’s a great idea and want to do it, but thought about taking it a step further and wanted to run it by you first:

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Sales & Community Goals Update

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Hi everyone, we’ve been super busy supporting all the new players which have come to Outscape over the past two and a half weeks (we launched on Steam Early Access on October 22nd). Thanks for all of your help onboarding those new players!

One thing we did not anticipate was scoring a ‘Very Positive’ on Steam so early. It actually feels like ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ (the highest possible score) is within reach. At least 500 reviews are needed plus at least somewhere between 90% and 95% positive reviews. We are incredibly thankful to all the community members that purchased Outscape and also left kind and useful reviews for other players. At the time of writing, there are 98 reviews and 90% are positive. In fact, around half of the negative reviews came from China where connectivity is challenging. We’ve made some changes which seems to have helped this problem.

Here is our sales chart. As you can see we launched with a pop, but then things slowed.

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Release: Patch v101

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Happy Halloween!

We’ve just released a new patch. It doesn’t include a new pumpkin-headed civ but it does introduce a change that enables those of you that wanted to quit and rejoin a galaxy to be able to do so without having to wait.

Patch notes

  • Less restriction on restarting: you can now restart in a galaxy without having to wait 7 days. But if you do restart, you then won’t be able to restart again within the next 5 days. Please note: even if you choose the same civ when restarting, your previous progress won’t be carried over in that galaxy and you will be rejoining it like a new player (we’d like to make changes to this in the future).
  • Improved construction cancelling: previously, if three Beron mines were added to the construction queue at the same time and one of them was already 50% built, trying to cancel construction of one of the other two that hadn’t started yet would instead cancel construction of the Beron mine already 50% built. Now, construction of the Beron mines not yet started would be cancelled instead.
  • Account creation: we made a couple of tweaks to the create account form as a small number of players had issues with it.
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