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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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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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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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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