Hi everyone,

There’s a new patch available through Steam and it includes a new playable civilization – The Snithereal! Read on for more details and to find out what else is new…

Snithereal unlocked

In the Six Community Goals to Victory post we announced that we would celebrate the community achieving five of the goals by launching the fifth playable civilization – the Snithereal.

Congratulations! We think the progress the community has made towards the six goals so far justifies unlocking the Snithereal TODAY.

Because, of the three goals already reached, two of the stretch goals were also reached, including the fantastic achievement of hitting and maintaining a ‘Very Positive’ review score (at the time of writing the score was 92% from 133 votes). A fourth goal looks certain to be reached, and of the two that haven’t been reached, we probably set the bar unrealistically high (and community feedback was that players would like to be able to create more video content, but feel that they need more tools, which we want to do something about).

So, the Snithereal…

The Snithereal

“The Snithereal are apex predators with warrior traditions deeply embedded in their society. Strength, composure, and cunning are qualities held in high-esteem. While fuel efficient, cost effective ships demonstrate a technologically advanced species, their primeval nature is entrenched. Only the blood of their victims can quench their Bloodthirst; only domination of the galaxy can satiate their hunger for power.” – In-Game Description

Check out the wiki page on the Snithereal for more details. The Sinthereal are in the game now, ready for you to play as when you start a new game.

Bloodthirst

‘Bloodthirst’ is a feature unique to the Snithereal. It enables them to eat an organic population living on a planet they control to boost their: troop power, growth rate, and happiness.

• Bloodthirst is managed from the Snithereal’s population management screen
• It’s only available if the planet is controlled by the Snithereal and there is a second organic population (the Syntis can’t be eaten)

Disabled

While disabled, the Snithereal population’s happiness is negatively affected because an edible food source is going to waste.

Disabled: Snithereal aren’t happy to see a good meal go to waste

 

Enabled

• The Snithereal will eat the other organic population relative to the Bloodthirst rate
• Troop power, growth rate, and happiness are all boosted while it’s enabled (a higher rate gives a stronger boost)
• The boost to growth rate can enable the Snithereal to survive in environments they are less suited to while Bloodthirst is enabled
• The other organic population’s happiness is negatively affected by being eaten (the higher the Bloodthirst rate, the higher their unhappiness)
• The other organic population’s growth rate may continue to be positive depending on the Bloodthirst rate set

Enabled: Snithereal are happy, yum yum

Enabled: the Organic population isn’t happy at being eaten

See the wiki for more details on the Snithereal, Bloodthirst and the Snithereal’s ship hulls.

Snithereal feedback

Once you’ve had a good run at playing as the Snithereal we really need your feedback to help us balance this new civilization. And please let us know if you run into any bugs even if they seem trivial.

Submit your Snithereal backstory

There isn’t a deeper backstory for the Snithereal yet, like there is for the other civs (available under the ‘Emergence’ section on each wiki page: Mankind, Ripchee, Syntis, People’s Realm). If you’re interested in submitting your own, check out this post on the forum.

The Snithereal have their own 12 new ship hulls (view)

Players quitting during an invasion

We’re pleased to include in this patch a fix for an incredibly frustrating bug for players. If the owner of a planet quit the game while the planet was being invaded, the invading player’s troops were deleted – along with the colony’s population and buildings.

We’ve changed it so if a player quits, and any of their planets are being invaded, those invasions will automatically succeed and all the troops, population and buildings will remain (we’re open to refining this e.g. applying the same damage rules applied to an invasion that completes, where some damage may be done depending on the size and strength of both forces involved).

Planets not being invaded

Another implication of a player quitting was that all of the populations on their colonies were being removed. This wasn’t intended, and so has been changed so that the populations remain on colonies owned by a player that quits. The buildings are still removed, but the effect is now like they were dismantled and the relative resources are deposited on the planet’s surface. The topic of what to do about a player’s colonies when they quit is ongoing, and you can find the discussion here.

Boosted warp range

To prepare for the Snithereal’s arrival we needed to tweak the controls in the ship designer to be able to handle the Snithereal’s tall, vertical hulls (while holding right-click you can now move the camera up and down the ship as well as around it).

While one of the devs was working on this they saw a suggestion in the community to display how far a ship being designed would be able to travel based on its current design e.g. hull, engines and fuel tanks. As it was a very quick change to make and they were already working on that area of the game, the dev added a ‘Boosted range’ property as can be seen in the above image taken from the ship designer. For example, the ‘Boosted range: 67LY (17.68t/LY)’ shows the ship could travel 67LY using boosted warp speed on full fuel tanks using 17.68t of Olzine per LY.

So even if we may not be active in a particular discussion, we do process them all, so keep the feedback coming 🙂

Lost connection issues

Over the last week a few players have had connection issues when trying to load the game. The devs have been investigating and decided to replace the existing code library that managed network connections between the game client and game servers with a new one.

We were able to reproduce the issue and believe this will resolve it. Please let us know if after upgrading to this patch you experience any change in connection performance – better or worse.

Thanks everyone, enjoy the new patch and have a great weekend!

– The Outscape dev team

Full patch notes

Features and changes

• A new playable civilization – The Snithereal – has been added
• Added ‘Boosted range’ field to ship designer and other stat displays. It shows the maximum distance the ship/fleet can travel using boosted warp speed on full fuel tanks e.g. Boosted range: 150LY (14t/LY), 150LY total, using 14t of Olzine per LY
• Switched to a new code library that should better manage the connections between the game client and game servers (some players were getting lost connection issues)

Bugs squashed

• A player quitting a game while an invasion was in progress caused the invading troops, and planet population and buildings to be deleted. We’ve changed it so if a player quits during the invasion, the invasion will automatically succeed and all the troops, population and buildings will remain (we’re open to refining this e.g. applying the same damage rules as a normal invasion, where some damage may be done depending on the size and strength of both forces involved).
• When a player quit a game the populations were removed from all of their colonies when they were supposed to remain (they now do). The buildings are still removed, but the effect is now like they were dismantled and the relative resources are deposited on the planet’s surface. The topic of what to do about a player’s colonies when they quit is ongoing, and you can find the discussion here.
• When launching an invasion the menu was sometimes displaying the wrong physical power
• The background image on planet management for cold planets wasn’t always displaying
• Transferring resources from battle wreckage was sometimes causing a crash
• The happiness bonus displayed on the civ selection screen when joining the game was displaying the wrong value (on the population screen it was displayed correctly)

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.