Hi everyone,
The new faster ‘Awakening of the Dark’ galaxy is NOW OPEN and ready for you to play!
And the v116 Alliances patch has also been released – a huge event in its own right!
Play in the ‘Awakening of the Dark’ Galaxy NOW!
The new ‘Awakening of the Dark’ galaxy is unlike any galaxy we’ve launched before. And you can join it from the game lobby right now.
You can experience in a couple of days what takes weeks in the other galaxies (e.g. ‘Main’ and ‘Skirmish’).
It’s perfect for those of you that prefer an all-action pace. And if you’re at home with the more casual pace of the other galaxies, it’s somewhere to try out another civ or experiment with a new strategy. We recommend all new players try the ‘Awakening of the Dark’ galaxy before the ‘Main 2’ galaxy.
Hyperspeed
- 10x faster fleet travel, growth and construction (more details)
- The regular 1x speed ‘Main 2’ galaxy remains open if you prefer a more casual pace (you can play in both galaxies at the same time if you like)
New Galaxy Generation and Player Spawning
- This galaxy is dynamically generated – unlike previous galaxies which were pre-generated before any players joined
- A cluster of new stars is added for each new player that spawns in with their home system in the middle. Note: no new cluster is generated if a spawn code is used.
Newbie Protection
- Newbie protected zone: the area around your home system and the systems closest to it is aggressively defended by three very fast and powerful NPC guard fleets – any non-friendly fleet entering will be attacked!
- Home planet protection: your home planet can’t be invaded or bombed
- Newbie protection lasts for 5 days (with the speed of this galaxy by the time newbie protection ends your empire should be in a strong position)
Wiki: Newbie Protected Zone Wiki: Home Planet Protection
Technology Research Reworked
- Technology unlocks in minutes if you have enough science points
- Science power determines how many science points you gain per hour
Wiki: Research and Technology V2
Please note: the changes above apply to the new ‘Awakening of the Dark’ galaxy only – not Skirmish 2 and Main 2 (in these galaxies newbie protection is 28 days home planet protection from invasions only). New games can only be started in the ‘Awakening of the Dark’ (x10 speed) and ‘Main 2’ (x1 speed) galaxies from the game lobby (‘Skirmish 2’ is still running but closed to new joiners).
Alliances
Alliances have been the No.1 player requested feature for a very long time. It’s been a long time coming, but they’re finally here!
Alliances take the one-to-one treaties players can already form to the group level:
- Alliances exist on a per-galaxy basis
- Each alliance can have up to 50 members for now – but a player can only be a member of one alliance at a time
- Members can be assigned different roles and permissions
- Non-aggression pact treaties automatically exist between all alliance members
- Each alliance has its own private chat room for its members
- The alliance’s tag is displayed next to alliance member’s names and fleet names in the game
- If a player belongs to an alliance its tag is displayed next to their name on the leaderboards (dedicated leaderboards for alliances will follow – they weren’t included in this first version)
Please remember that this is only the first version of alliances and we’ll need your help to iron out any bugs. Once the current version is stable and we have your feedback on it, we’ll propose the next round of changes for alliances.
More Changes to Follow
There are a lot of new features in this patch! But unfortunately we weren’t able to finish in time all of the changes we wanted to make.
We’re aware that improving the situation with minefields is a priority for many of you. And we’re doing what we can to get the changes we posted earlier this week finished and pushed out to you quickly.
Enjoy the new galaxy and patch. We’ll see you again next week 🙂
– The Outscape dev team
Full patch notes v116
Features and changes
- The new faster ‘Awakening of the Dark’ galaxy:
- Hyperspeed: 10x faster travel, growth and construction (see wiki)
- New galaxy generation and player spawning: the ‘Awakening of the Dark’ galaxy is dynamically generated unlike previous galaxies which were generated before any players joined. A cluster of new stars is added for each new player that spawns in with the player’s home system in the middle of this cluster. See wiki for details. Note: no new cluster is generated if a spawn code is used.
- Newbie protection: lasts for 5 days and includes the newbie protected zone with three NPC guard fleets, home planet protection has been extended to include protection from bombing. Note: these changes don’t affect previous galaxies e.g. Skirmish 2, Main 2 (in these galaxies newbie protection is 28 days home planet protection from invasions only).
- Technology research reworked: in the ‘Awakening of the Dark’ galaxy a reworked version of technology research was added that will likely be used for all future galaxies. V2 is more player friendly, science points accumulate constantly and any technology can be researched in minutes if you have enough science points for it. V1 will continue to be used in Skirmish 2, Main 2 etc. galaxies.
- For more details on the differences between the new ‘Awakening of the Dark’ galaxy and previously launched galaxies please see this wiki page
- Alliances have been added to all galaxies and are ready for you to use now! Alliance membership is managed via the diplomacy window. See the wiki for full details.
Bugs fixed
- Important notifications for events that happened while a player was offline weren’t received when the player came online e.g. for battles and invasions. This bug has caused a lot of frustration for players so we’re pleased to have finally been able to pin down the cause and get it fixed.
- The notification for detecting a populated planet was popping up multiple times
- Battles were sometimes crashing when trying to watch a replay
- Exploration history wasn’t correctly remembering surface deposit levels for a planet after leaving orbit
- Invasion result panel was displaying the wrong troop strength (it was a display issue only – the result was correctly calculated). As well as fixing this issue, the formatting of the message has been improved to make it clearer to see the total strength of both sides and the breakdown
- The promo popup was causing the game to crash for some players
Updating the game client: the game should be automatically updated via Steam. Please check here if the download doesn’t automatically start when you launch Steam.