Fleet management: the next steps

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Hi everyone,

With Monday’s patch we introduced big changes to fleet management that many players really didn’t like. So, we’ve spent the last couple of days going through the feedback and considering the next steps. All of which we’ll cover in this post.

Problems with the original system

Going back to the beginning for a minute, let’s look at the original problems related to fleet management that needed to be fixed:

  • Flagship levels were confusing for players
  • The flagship level may have been 5, but whether you could actually fit 5 ships in the fleet depended on their sizes (see image below)
  • The merge fleet command wasn’t always available (due to the limited fleet radius)
    • But it wasn’t clear to the player why it wasn’t possible to merge when the flagship level hadn’t been reached
  • Fleet formation presets were limited due to the constraints of the fleet radius
  • New players found fleet management generally frustrating (especially manually forming fleets)
    • The original system: the flagship level was 5 but it wasn’t possible to add another of the same ship
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    Dev Diary #16 – Automation

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    Hello everyone and welcome back!

    The next patch is just about ready, and we’re expecting to release it on Monday/Tuesday. One set of changes that will be included are related to fleet management (which we previewed in last week’s post).

    Another will be the first version of the (optional) planet management assistant, which we wanted to go over here, as well as automation in general and what we’re thinking.

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    Dev Diary #15 – Improving fleet management

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    Hello everyone! Welcome back to our developer diary!

    It’s been a busy week – yesterday we put out the new 0.887 patch which contained a number of player requested features such as research automation, new scout engines and a change to how max population is shown (at the moment this change is only visible on a colonized planet’s population screen, but it will be made available in other scenarios e.g. to planets not yet colonized).

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    Achievements: we want your suggestions!

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    Hello friends,

    We’re working on achievements at the moment as part of our work on player profiles and wanted to pick your brains!

    Achievements should be fun, bring mini-challenges to the game, and help illustrate a player’s progress (the image above is an early design mockup).

    To begin with, we want to finalize around 50 of them. Some will be progressive e.g. capture 5 enemy planets, successfully defend 3 invasions; and others will be one-off actions e.g. construct a dreadnought, take back a lost planet…

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    Dev Diary #13 – Space heist

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    Hello everyone and welcome back to our Developer Diary!

    With the new ‘Alpha 3’ galaxy knocking at the door and the current ‘Alpha 2’ galaxy entering an exciting phase this week – it’s been a long week for the team and it’s likely to continue on into the weekend… But it’s cold outside and dark early right now so – meh. We’ve got a game to make 🙂

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    Dev Diary #12 – Rebalance and newcomers

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    Hello everyone! Welcome back to our Developer Diary!

    The long-awaited update 0.84 came out this week which included features like merging/splitting fleets and attack and return. A lot of other features and changes the devs finished aren’t active yet – but they’re ready to go with the launch of the next galaxy!

    You can check up on the progress of the roadmap here. There are still things to do, ships to paint, balancing to get right and asteroids to shoot, but we are fast approaching the finish line and a lot of the tasks outstanding aren’t too intensive 🙂

    So let’s see what the team has been up to this week…

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    Dev Diary #11 – Stealth Wars

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    Hello everyone and welcome back.

    Last Sunday we announced that the game was changing its name to Outscape! We started on the changeover right away and managed to get the bulk of it done this week. There’s still a few bits to do, such as releasing the new patch with the new name/logo changes…

    Most of the team continued working on the game during the changeover. Which was lucky, because despite all of the team being excited about the new name, the actual process of changing names is many times less fun than actually working on the game 🙂

    As mentioned in last week’s dev diary, this week we have a few more details about the changes on the way to share with you – so let’s get to it!

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    Dev Diary #10 – Shipyards in Space

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    Greetings friends, and welcome back!

    In our last dev diary post we covered new core gameplay mechanics and features that will be implemented in the next galaxy. If you didn’t catch it, you can find it here. We had a lot of great feedback and ideas in relation to it so thanks to all of you for your contributions.

    This week we have a few more details for you related to those changes and a couple of new cool things that came up this week and we wanted to show.

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    Dev Diary #9 – New Gameplay for a New Galaxy

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    Hello everyone! Welcome back to our Developer Diary – a little later than usual, apologies for the delay 🙂

    We keep mentioning a new galaxy we’re getting ready to launch and the new gameplay to come with it (which won’t be implemented into the existing galaxy) but without going in to any details…

    Now seems like a good time to change that 🙂 We won’t go into the numbers just yet though as we’re still working on balance – but by the end of this post you should have a good idea of what’s on the way.

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