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[Relampago]

And another small update is incoming
 

Key Bindings: Now you will be able to change key bindings the way you like it through the settings menu - for both quick matches and Discovery mode. To do it - simply click on the second column, press a key you want to assign and it's done.
 

Information boxes: To let you get around and understand surroundings better, we added an ability to see information about objects in hexes. By left-clicking on a hex in space you will get a small window with a picture and a short description of all objects inside of it.

Energy Core Module: Sometimes you don't have enough capacity to fit it the way you like. And this module will help you in resolving this issue - although it's huge enough (3x3), it still can work for you as a life-saving feature adding some capacity to your favourite ship.
 

At the moment this module is available only through fleet progression in a single copy.

[JShrum.Composer]

I'm surprised there aren't more posts in this thread telling you how great this game looks! Everything's super polished already, can't wait to see the full game.

[Relampago]

I'm surprised there aren't more posts in this thread telling you how great this game looks! Everything's super polished already, can't wait to see the full game.

Thank you! Well, we hope there will be more when we start another test - there are still tones of stuff to test & balance

[badbloodgames]

Very interesting concept and game also. Wish you best of luck with your game.

[Relampago]

We've already shown two faction planets - Earth and Ancora. But there is another one left, belonging to the Eclipse faction - and it's finally here:

Odysseus

Pirates, stations, depots, warpgates, colonized planets, Motherships, black markets, huge enemy fleets - and, most likely, this is not the full list of things you will be able to encounter while furrowing the vast of Starfall Tactics universe.

So, here are new structures you couldn't see during previous tests - Outpost and Supply Station.

• Supply Station - This is a basic structure you can build for capturing a system. This Station collects resources from all planets in its' system and provides it with necessary supplies e.g. food.
• Outpost - Upgraded Supply Station. Provides better supplies distribution, launches NPC guarding fleets into the system and gives vision in this system for all faction members (doesn't depend on whether you explored it or not). Outposts have better protection and it's harder to destroy them.
• Mothership - Structure of the highest grade, the most protected one. Does all things listed above in a better way and has other important functions: allows warping between Motherships, refueling and repairing all fleets, finishing Discovery session, taking all blueprints and modules to your account inventory and selling loot.

Cluster Missile is another useful thing to help you destroy swarms of smaller ships. As you could understand from its name, it's a missile which splits into several pieces and can do some area damage with smaller missiles. At the moment it is presented in the game as a special module, but there is a huge chance that it eventually will become a weapon.

[Relampago]

As we already said in our previous post, you can conquer faction systems by building Supply Stations there. Of course, system which belongs to your faction and where you can freely spend your time is a cool thing, but we definitely need something else to make the game more interesting, right? So, we added and will add many other things - we already have some in our roadmap, and this time we are telling about planet colonization.

At first, let's say a couple words about Сolonization. In Starfall Tactics you are able to establish a colony on each planet, spending a special item which you can acquire from your Mothership in exchange to reputation. There are two types of colonies:

• Supply Factory: provides resources like food and other necessary stuff, which spends on maintaining life in colonies. If there are not enough supplies, people on a planet start dying and colonies become less effective. If there are a lot of resources, population increases and colonies work better.
• Mining Complex: mines valuable resources like ore which can be spent on building Supply Stations and upgrading it to Outposts and Motherships.
• But since each planet has it's own parameters like Temperature, Atmosphere, Life probability and resource availability - some of them produce better, some - worse, and some can't have colonies of certain type at all. It still can be changed if you acquire a special item which terraforms chosen planet, making conditions better within reasonable limits.

Structures like Supply Stations, Outposts and Motherships help you distribute resources from colonies: if there is one on a system, from time to time planets send a certain amount of produced resources to the structure and it distributes to planets which have a need in it or to a building structure. If a planet in need is in other system, structure sends a caravan to it, but it must be connected through other structures, like a chain - otherwise it won't be able to deliver resources. And these caravans can be attacked and robbed, but take care - while players of other faction benefit from it in all ways, players of the same faction will lose reputation. You also can deliver resources manually, receiving reward in IGC and reputation.

We also continue adding new weapons and modules:

• Protonic Torpedo Launcher - Launches torpedoes with a great AOE effect.
  
• Melted Avalanche - Assault Rocket Launcher, launching a big amount of rockets at once. Deals sufficient damage, but has a relatively long cooldown.
  
• CQC Laser - Assault laser with average range, deals maximum damage only in near distances.
  
• Neutron mine is a very effective thing against crew. While having a 2000m explosion radius and an average damage, it allows you to destroy more crew on enemy ships then usual damage does.
  

We keep working on other features and hope to start Faction Wars test soon

[Relampago]

Wars for territories, planet colonization, faction houses (guilds), intense battles in quick matches and the whole Universe to conquer - all of this and even more is waiting for players in Starfall Tactics! We are running pre-Alpha Faction Wars test from 10th November 18:00 CET to 13th November 23:55 CET and everybody who signs up for the test receives a key.
 

During upcoming Faction Wars pre-Alpha test participants will be able to try the following features in their basic version:

• Wars for Faction territories - participate in galaxy conquest!
• Faction Guilds - create your own House and lead it into battle!
• Station building - build Supply Stations, Outposts and Motherships to protect faction territories.
• Planet Colonization - colonize planets to help your faction grow and upgrade structures to powerful defensive buildings!
• Freighters - Resource Distribution System, which helps you maintain all colonies and stuctures. Yes, you can rob "caravans" - some Russians will get the joke

Quick matches are also available to play with all changes we mentioned in previous articles. Full Patch Notes and infromation about Houses will be published later on our website.

Sign up for the test here and you will recive an acces to the upcoming event

[Relampago]

Faction Wars is a very interesting and complex system and sometimes it takes more time than we expect for our small team to implement features we'd love to present here. That's why we have to take an extra week - Pre-Alpha Faction Wars test postponed until 17th November 18:00 CET! We apologize for the inconvenience it might cause to everybody who is looking forward to play Starfall Tactics here.
 
We also published some infirmation about attacking and capturing enemy systems which is available here.

Here are a couple of related screenshots with short info - first one shows station attack, while second one - captured regions:

To start attack on enemy systems players in Starfall Tactics need to go to the system, fly close to enemy structure and push the "Attack" button - it starts an event for capturing a system.
This event is visible for both involved factions, and announced for all faction members - you definitely won't miss it. The third faction can not participate and influence it directly - they only can set ambushes near gates to the place of conflict which is also a very painful thing for both factions.


To successfully destroy enemy structure you need to get enough military intel (represented by Warp Points) from Key Positions (special instances) around the structure. To destroy a Supply Station you should capture 5 Positions, for an Outpost - 10, for a Mothership - 20. Key Positions count as captured once the attacking faction collects 100.000 WP in this instance (hex).

And Vanguard Supply Station, Outpost and Mothership - important structures for faction wars:

[Relampago]

Just a week past since we finished Starfall Tactics test - all the feedback was received and goals set! At the moment we are working hard on fixing issues and improving some already existing content, to let the game give more surprises

1. First of all, we started creating Mothership for NPC Pirate faction, which now will take more action in the war for the Galaxy - and that means a lot of new stuff to do in MMO part of Starfall Tactics

2. Slight cosmetic improvements are something to make the whole game look even better, than before - and, from time to time, we get just another one of them. This week we're changing ship trails to make it a little bit more sci-fi and closer to ones we had in the early demo version - and here is a work in progress shot:

3. During the test we found out that some ships, even though they have tons of armor (up to 10.000 and even more!) still have a very high speed in total, which was not intended according to our plans and definitely was not a good thing for Commanders attacked by ships of this kind. So now, all ships with armor and modules exceeding mass of their hulls are going to have an appropriate maximum ship speed, such as really heavy ships should have.

[sbeast]

Hey, the game looks pretty cool, will you be needing more music for it? If so I would love to help out, you can check out my portfolio here: www.sbeastmusic.com/portfolio

[Relampago]

Hey, the game looks pretty cool, will you be needing more music for it? If so I would love to help out, you can check out my portfolio here: www.sbeastmusic.com/portfolio

Hi, thanks a lot, but we already work with an audio studio

[Relampago]

We've just started 2nd pre-Alpha Faction Wars test and you can try Starfall Tactics now! During this test player will be able to capture territories, establish Houses (faction guilds), colonize planets, fight against NPC pirate faction, and check new solo PvE Survival - there are a lot of exciting things to do and test. Ther are still an ability to name planets and stars as some left without names

Don't forget to join one of existing Houses or create your own and reach the top of the leaderboard by helping your faction conquer the confines of known space! This time you have to fight not only against two other factions - pirates are also going to cause some troubles and establish their bases nearby.

This test lasts only until 18th December inclusive.

[Relampago]

This week we're having two events at a time: Starfall Tactics Winter Cup and a one-week pre-Alpha test!

First ever Starfall Tactics' test tournament is starting tomorrow on 27th January 20:00 CET for a Group Stage and continues on 28th January starting 20:00 CET for Play-offs. You can watch live streams with dev comments on our official Twitch channel - 16 chosen players will fight for the title of the best Commander!

And, to mark this important, event we decided to open servers until 29th January 23:59 CET!  Players can try New Ranked Mode which, only during this week, allows to check out for free almost every module in the game, including progression equipment! Discovery (MMO) mode and usual unranked PvP Conquest & PvE Survival quick matches are also available during this test.

To participate in this test simply send an application for the alpha here - and we will grant you an access once we see your request

Oh, and here is a new dreadnought for Deprived faction:

[Relampago]

Another stage in Starfall Tactics' development has just begun - so, it's time to add some awesome stuff: Carriers, gravity weapons and new stations for discovery. And that's only the beginning - we are about to implement other great features.

 

• Research Station is an extremely helpful feature for the House (guild): it allows to generate research points which players can spend on some useful stuff, making them protect bases with more diligence.
  
• Carriers are giant ships which can carry other small vessels - squads of bombers, fighters and other special ships. Too fast and small to be even targeted by large spaceship weapons, they can be a real problem, and that's without telling the Carrier itself is a huge well-protected construction.
  

Gravity stuff appeared to be not a very easy thing to add due to our in-game physics: one wrong impulse and it can become an ultimate weapon, crushing enemy ships in a second. So, we started it from one basic module, pushing enemy ships to the center of area of impact.

[Relampago]

Starfall Tactics development is going full speed ahead, and we are another step closer to the "it's more than awesome" state. This week we were busy with inner parts of the game and really great stuff which deserves a huge separate news post later - so, this time we continue showing Carriers.

Here is Carrier itself in 2D and 3D sketch along with additional important info:

Almace, the mighty red giant, is on it's way to Starfall Tactics. This ship is really huge: twice wider than, for example, Mjolnir, and 1200m in length, which is 200m more than any dreadnought in the game! Other Carriers will continue this trend, as they need a lot of space to carry a lot of smaller ships inside.

Of course, each Carrier has either platforms or hatchways to be able to launch squads of fighters and other small ships into space - that's where we would love to add some cool animations, but since it takes some time, we will concentrate on it someday later.


Let's come back to fighters, one of the smallest ship types you are able to have on-board of your Carrier. Fighters are a common strike squad, designed to perform quick assaults by dealing continuous damage to enemy ships, and  we've just finished programming the core mechanincs for them - so that's what they look like in action:

Fighters can't be targeted with normal weapons due to their size and speed, but can be taken away by AOE damage, just like other squads of smaller ships you will be able to see and use later. Make sure you check next WIP post - there might be more info about Carriers & ship squads they use

Faction portraits - That's the first thing you see once you enter the game, marking one of the most momentous steps in Starfall Tactics - choosing your first faction and starting fleet. That means that all the info and visuals you can see in the faction menu are really important as many of you stay with this choice, going with it through hell and high water.

So, recently we worked on new representations for faction portraits, which might replace existing ones or become a new acquaintance somewhere on your way through the Starfall Tactics Universe - we are currently on our way to decide where exactly we should place them. So check it out!

[InterGalactic]

This does indeed look awesome, and very ambitious but well executed. Do you want to chat and share ideas as a fellow space dev? If so add wemadefoxies on skype.

[nu_muso]

This is super high quality; very impressive! Glad to see you pushing yourselves

[Seaport]

This does look really good and just the sort of game I'd play too.
Really like the ship designs, one of my big problems with Stellaris was the terrible ship models, these look a heck of a lot better, looking forward to seeing more

[Relampago]

Thank you guys!

This does look really good and just the sort of game I'd play too.
Really like the ship designs, one of my big problems with Stellaris was the terrible ship models, these look a heck of a lot better, looking forward to seeing more

Well, you can see more models here: https://sketchfab.com/snowforged

[Jabberwocky]

Excellent artwork.

Lots of questions!

Are battles purely player vs. players, or are there AI controlled enemies as well?  How are PvP matches arranged?  Is it a lobby-style match selection, or do you just encounter other players as you traverse the galaxy?  Are destroyed ships gone forever, requiring you rebuild your fleet?  Or is it some kind of more forgiving setup?

What tech are you using for the client and server?