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iMaple
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« on: September 15, 2017, 03:31:08 AM »


Starborne is a 4X MMORTS with thousands of players competing for control over the galaxy. Our goal is to combine 4X elements from games like Civilization with the real time, multiplayer component of browsergame classics such as Travian.




We are currently conducting alpha tests (Final Round slated for late October) and hope to reach open beta in the second quarter of 2019. The game currently supports Windows only, but we plan to bring it to Mac, Linux and Mobile down the line.



Gameplay

Since nobody wants to wait for 2000 other players to complete their turn, actions are completed simultaneously in real time, with a single game taking about 6 months. As such, the gifs below are not representative of the actual game pace!



Currently, the alliance controlling the most strategic hexes (indicated by these very WIP spikes) at the end of a round is declared the winner. As this is the only victory condition at this point, it makes the game very territorial.



Empire Building

In Starborne, the main goal is to expand. This is done by constructing stations on the map to secure their surroundings. These space stations can support a limited amount of buildings, allowing players to specialize their stations by moving down the skilltree-esque building planner.


Then there are outposts, sort of an extension of stations, which are constructed directly on the map as well. Their placement is very important - a Mining Colony for example would ideally be placed next to a resource rich planet, while a Scanner would be placed close to a neighbor to track their progress. Below you can see a Navy Base, which protects all structures in a 2 Hex radius.




Diplomacy

Since Starborne is a multiplayer game, player interaction and teamwork is very important to progress in the game. Players can form alliances to navigate the delicate political landscape of the game, or stay neutral for a while before choosing to join one side. We're working on a number of features in this regard, namely to create more cooperative avenues to balance out all the war, as well as alliance-only gameplay to keep the endgame interesting.


While our story lines aren't quite on EVE Online's level yet, we've had our fair share of political shenanigans too. For example, one player imitated an opposing player to gain access to their Discord channel, gaining valuable intelligence which was then used to devastating effect. I will expand on this later, as I believe "the game outside the game" is a quite interesting aspect of game development.



Combat

As players and alliances grow, they will inevitably run out of space. Most of the time, they go to war. Combat is quite simple and resolved instantly once the attacking units reach the defender. Units en route are visible to other players if they have enough scan strength in the area. This makes for some very cool images.


There are many different unit types and counters, creating a rock-paper-scissors type balance. In the image below you can see a destroyer, which is very effective against Capital ships, but not as effective in destroying Light ships. There are also special units like the scout, which is used for reconnaissance and sabotage, the gunship, which is used to destroy enemy stations as well as the the industrial ship, which is used to build new stations and outposts.





Customization

Apart from the buildings which allow players to specialize their stations, the game also features a card system. These can be equipped on stations, fleets, players and even alliances, granting strong bonuses towards a particular play style. They differ in power as well as rarity, which is reflected by their drop rate and crafting price. Cards can be broken down to "prestige", which is similar to "stardust" from Hearthstone, which is then used to craft new ones.



Cards caches are gained from missions, which is sort of a mini game. Missions are spread out all over the map, and players have to scan their surroundings to find them. If they send the correct type of fleet to complete the mission before another player does, they get the spoils. They can also be purchased in the in game store, and we're currently testing how this affects the game balance. The monetization of Starborne is still very much a WIP.




About

We are Solid Clouds, a dev team of 11 based in Seltjarnarnes, Iceland. Starborne is our first game and has been in development for a little over 3 years now. We've come a long way since then, especially in the graphics department.




Community & Social Media

starborne.com

Forums

r/starbornegame

Discord

YouTube



Coffee Thank you for reading! I've never made a devlog before, so I'd love to get some tips/feedback about it.


« Last Edit: October 29, 2018, 05:56:46 PM by iMaple » Logged
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« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2017, 05:16:10 AM »

Alpha 7 is near, and our main focus lies on getting the release candidate up and running. I'll post a more in depth change log later, so I'll use the opportunity to showcase our new map.

It contains 379.141 hexes and can now support up to 2492 players, up from 1492. Spawn locations are divided into 7 arms, while high-value hexes and strategic points are located in neutral space.



We also added points of interest which indicate the strongest players, recent battles and destroyed stations. The goal here is to make the map feel more alive and active, even if the events are not happening near the player.




Another new addition is the ability to color other alliances, which has been a highly requested feature for the past two alphas.



There are also some balance tweaks in regards to unit speed to make late game conflicts more playable on the new map, as well as changes to the game speed in general to balance out the longer duration of this Alpha.

We also just announced the 2nd Starborne fan fest which will take place on the 24th of November at our office. Last year we had about 30 people show up, with 3 of them coming from abroad. Hopefully the party this year will be even better.

Bonus sneak peek of the new Mission illustrations:



Thank you for reading! Coffee

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« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2017, 06:53:28 AM »

Great to see another strategy game on here! This looks really cool. Eve always daunted me in it's complexity. I understand this is more on the RTS side but could this be said to be a simpler more approachable version of that type of game? That is definitely something I'd like to see. Also I'm curious if your team uses any specific strategy game forums/sites to market your game?
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« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2017, 11:27:12 AM »

Yo, this looks super ambitious. :O

Quote
Starborne is a 4X MMORTS

Now that's a mouthful. Smiley I'll be honest the idea of an MMO RTS has always appealed to me, but I've never been able to figure out the nitty-gritty of it. Mixing it with 4x has never crossed my mind, and the combo just might work.

Moreover, if you plan on making an MMO make sure it's accessible for people. Because lord knows that 4x is not the most newbie friendly genre. Striking that perfect balance, between difficulty and depth of mechanics, is going to be your biggest hurdle me thinks.

Anyways. I'm deffinetly curious as to where this goes. Good luck! Gentleman
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« Reply #4 on: October 05, 2017, 01:59:29 AM »

Great to see another strategy game on here! This looks really cool. Eve always daunted me in it's complexity. I understand this is more on the RTS side but could this be said to be a simpler more approachable version of that type of game? That is definitely something I'd like to see. Also I'm curious if your team uses any specific strategy game forums/sites to market your game?

It's funny you mention EVE, because a lot of our testers have an EVE background. While our mechanics differ quite a bit, I think there are similarities in the persistent universe, avenues for political shenanigans and time based progression, which may appeal to some of EVE's players. We definitely do want Starborne's learning curve to be a lot less steep, and while our game is geared towards 4X and Browser-MMORTS veterans, our end goal is to make Starborne accessible to players who may have never played a strategy game before.

Marketing to specific communities is still something we have to work on. Most of the strategy game forums/sites I've come across are specifically geared towards either single player 4X games, city builders or fast paced RTS games, and I'm still learning how to pitch our game to them while highlighting the things those specific communities are interested in the most.

Yo, this looks super ambitious. :O

Quote
Starborne is a 4X MMORTS

Now that's a mouthful. Smiley I'll be honest the idea of an MMO RTS has always appealed to me, but I've never been able to figure out the nitty-gritty of it. Mixing it with 4x has never crossed my mind, and the combo just might work.

Moreover, if you plan on making an MMO make sure it's accessible for people. Because lord knows that 4x is not the most newbie friendly genre. Striking that perfect balance, between difficulty and depth of mechanics, is going to be your biggest hurdle me thinks.

Anyways. I'm deffinetly curious as to where this goes. Good luck! Gentleman

Thank you for the kind words!

We definitely want to make Starborne as accessible as we can, and we are making a conscious effort to rework unintuitive features and eliminate potential "noob traps" based on the feedback from the community. We realize that we have a limited complexity budget, especially because we need casual players to sustain our game, so we always look for ways to streamline certain features without necessarily sacrificing depth.

 Coffee
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« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2017, 08:58:35 AM »

We're quite happy with the release candidate, and it looks like we can begin the test sometime next week, so I thought I'd take some time to go through the new features.



Mercenaries

Events are a PvE activity that awards components to upgrade outposts, and can be time consuming. Mercenaries will do these for you, and we're taking a look if they can be monetized as a convenience feature.

Brokers

We have consciously disabled resource trading between players to remove incentives for multi-accounting as well as gold farming. Brokers allow players to instantly exchange one type of resource to another at a favorable rate.

Accelerants

Accelerants are used to reduce construction times of buildings. Unlike the others, these cards directly affect progression speed, so I highly doubt we'll monetize them.



Strategic Points

As alluded to earlier, strategic points have been added to give the game a win condition. They can be captured by settling close to them, and each of them is protected by a powerful NPC that players must destroy first to gain access to it. This was done to prevent early land grabs having a massive influence on deciding the endgame.





Battle Spoils

To make the NPCs a little bit more interesting, we made them drop cards when a player wipes out its defenses. We also beefed up their ship count and increased their respawn timers, making this more of an event rather than a grind. NPCs can still be raided for resources, but it's risky as a respawned garrison will wipe out unsuspecting raiders.





Sabotage

Next up is the sabotage feature, which allows scouts to disable enemy outposts. Players can disable defensive structures right before a big battle, making the fight easier for their buddies. Or they could disable a ship assembly, putting enemy ship production to a grinding halt. Either way, this feature enables a new role for both offensive and defensive players, and we're excited to see what the change brings.





Profile Pictures

We added some profile pictures, all based on our friends and families. It's one of many things we want to expand on in the vanity department.





That's about it I think. There a lot of minor QoL- and bug fixes, but those don't make interesting log entries  Shrug

Next time I'll go into the marketing aspect of this test, hopefully with some data as to how we fared as well. Thank you for reading!  Coffee
« Last Edit: October 21, 2017, 09:25:07 AM by iMaple » Logged
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« Reply #6 on: October 21, 2017, 09:24:06 AM »

Hey guys, we've started our alpha test on Wednesday and I wanted to make a post about the marketing aspect this time around. This was the first time I did anything of the sort so I really didn't know what to expect.

Preparation

  • New Trailer (The one in the OP)
  • 80 mails in English and German directed to the press with slight variations in the keywords relevant to their readers. (F2P MMO/Strategy/4X etc.)
  • Game pages on Gamejolt and IndieDB
  • Press release on GamesPress
  • Reddit spam shortly before launch
  • Increased activity on social media with lots of visuals. Screenshots, concept art, gifs etc.



Results

Over 50+ websites covered Starborne's alpha test, with the following providing the most value:


Some stats:

Over 3000 players from over 40 different countries joined the game within 48 hours.

Starborne related material reached around 20'000 users across reddit.

The announcement on IndieDB gained traction, Gamejolt on the other hand did nothing for us.

About 700 new people joined the Discord Channel, and 100 people subscribed to our new subreddit.



Reception

The Good:

Players are positively surprised with the game, or rather, we've had very few people thinking it was a different type of game.

Our community doubled in size within 24 hours, and it's fantastic. We're already seeing growth from limited word of mouth referrals.

We've got the attention of our target audience, namely avid browser strategy game players.

It seems like EVE players really dig Starborne. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

The Bad:

First, we have "loot caches" in the game. They're booster packs that look like loot boxes. I completely underestimated the backlash and I did not deal with it well. Most of the comments below the news articles are very cynical, and that definitely turned some people away. It was particularly difficult when I posted an article myself and had to respond to the comments, which felt like digging my own grave. Check the reddit post out for yourself. The silver lining is the amount of traffic the post got and subsequently we've had a number of players checking out the game regardless.

Second, the





was meant as an investor pitch, not promotional material. We completely forgot about it and many websites used it to showcase our game, which did not help to create a good image in the eyes of players.

And lastly, we did not reach many casual players. Even if our game in its current state is absolutely not casual friendly, it seems that we failed to even get their attention.



Takeaways

We already had a small following before this public test, and it just grew quite a bit. If the trend continues, we will have a sizeable community before we actually launch the game, which helps in so many ways. We also have ample room to address our PR issues to avoid running into the same problems in the future.

-> Begin marketing your game early.

It does not matter if we have a fair and balanced game if it is not perceived that way. In more general terms, how your game looks is a lot more important than how your game is to a potential player.

-> Perception is key.

Some people are just looking for reasons to get upset. They don't read what you post, they interpret something out of context and will bash that. I will ignore them to the best of my abilities. Then there are the people on the fence. People who might give the game a shot but worry about the P2W aspect of it all. I was able to reach out to them and changed the tone of the discussion.

-> Learn to identify and ignore haters.

Despite the cynicism in a lot of places, the reception is phenomenal. The map filled up in less than 36 hours and we had to start deleting inactive players to make room for new ones. Even with server crashes, login issues and other alpha quirkiness, we're averaging 1200 DAU / 350 CCU three days into the test.

-> Voices don't matter, metrics do.

Discord blew up, and it's amazing. Starborne is a multiplayer game and the player interaction is extremely important, even outside the game. Players are forming alliances, posting propaganda and answering questions from new players.

-> Your community needs a home.

Our website is bad. There's little to no game information on there for both players and press, with the latter just grabbing whatever info they can to create content. Major overhaul needed.

-> Don't TL;DR your own website.

I've included lots of information about the game in the mails I've sent, but most of the attention was spent on a little footnote: We have former EVE Online developers in the team. I'm quite certain that had I not included that footnote, we wouldn't have had the same press coverage.

-> The press needs good headlines.



That's about it methinks. I'll go into retention rates and feedback about the game in general next time. Thank you for reading.  Coffee
« Last Edit: October 21, 2017, 10:02:52 AM by iMaple » Logged
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« Reply #7 on: October 21, 2017, 02:48:35 PM »

Wow this looks epic. Trailer was great. Following!  Beer!
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« Reply #8 on: November 14, 2017, 06:18:05 AM »

Hey everyone! We are one month into the alpha test, and I wanted to post an update while the data is still fresh. Gomez



Some numbers

Over 3500 Players* tried out the game, and we are recording 800 DAU 30 days into the test.

These players log in around 3 times a day and spend a little over 130 minutes playing the game.

Players from the US, UK and Poland make up the majority of the playerbase. Romania and Vietnam are the surprising runner-ups.

Over 40’000 messages were sent on our official Discord server in the past month, and our subreddit now contains posts from people other than myself.

Data collected through Unity Analytics and Splunk.



The good

Starborne is playable and very close to becoming a minimum viable product. Hurray.

We have a great metagame layer. Players are forming communities to talk diplomacy, plotting is at an all time high and we even got to see a few player-made excel sheets which calculate combat results. We want to capitalize on this and provide features so that this can be done within the game.

We are getting a lot of valuable feedback, and reports about obscure bugs which you only get to see if you have thousands of people testing your game. The sheer number of reports also helps us decide which fixes we should prioritize, not to mention all the data which allows us to tackle game balance.

We now have an actual community. While I believe this is important for any game, Starborne is a social experience, and having vibrant personalities in the playerbase is absolutely vital for us.

Players are spending money. Obviously not at the rate we wish to see, but it’s a very good start for a barely functional store in an alpha test. Some developers shy away from this topic, but we think it’s important to treat monetization as an integral part of the game and to try it out early. Whether or not our business model is fair, is perceived as being fair and performs well enough to put a roof over our head is not something we can or want to test in-house.



The bad

*Our map only has 2492 spawn locations, which was not enough to accommodate the high influx of players. We created some room by deleting inactive players from the map, but a large number of people were ultimately unable to join the game.

We are murdering casual players. Starborne is too demanding, the UI is often not intuitive, and the general lack of polished content drives many people away. We aren’t too worried about this since this is an alpha test, but it’s something we have to keep in mind moving forward, especially if we want to add more complexity.

We had problems with our patcher. A few AVs quarantined a .dll file causing the patching process to fail. The problem has since been fixed and a standalone build was provided as an alternative in the meantime, but we undoubtedly lost players from this issue.

Server stability wasn’t good. We had to take it down to hotfix some pretty nasty bugs, and the downtime messed up some ingame timers which caused quite a bit of additional frustration. We also have to address our loading times, which are currently around 30 seconds for 10’000 space stations and all the data associated with them.

Starborne does not make good Let’s Plays. Condensing a slow paced RTS into an appealing 10 minute video is difficult, and our nonexistent tutorial doesn’t make it any easier. The silver lining is that we can see what players instinctively do, and where they get confused. We’re also looking into adjustments for the UI so that people can somewhat follow the game even if they haven’t played it.

Some of the “Battlefront 2 hate” spilled over to Starborne. F2P, P2W, Microtransactions, Monetization, Loot Boxes are just some of the words that make some people very angry. And they let us know how angry it makes them. But as I stated in my previous post, you need to differentiate voices from metrics. Sometimes they correlate, sometimes they don’t. In our case, it’s the latter.

We had to permaban one individual. While an unavoidable part of any MMO, it’s really uncomfortable when you come across a person like this.



The weird

Space Pacifism. Unlike in previous alpha tests, players formed confederacies (alliances of alliances) to circumvent the hard cap of 20 players per alliance resulting in a very stale early game. This seriously worried us as it could set a precedent for future games, but fortunately the political machinations gave us the wars and drama that we wanted. (We may have helped accelerate this by announcing a prize for a single, victorious alliance. Noir)

We don’t really know what to call ourselves. Is Starborne a Strategy MMO? 4X RTS? Multiplayer Grand Strategy Game? Space Battle Simulator? While we want to worry about our label after we have a fun game in our hands, not knowing what the label will say at all is... quite an odd feeling. We tried asking our players, but they can’t seem to find a consensus either. Shrug



And I’ll end the post on that note of uncertainty. The fan fest is in a little over a week, so maybe I’ll write about that next time. Either way, thank you for reading! Coffee
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« Reply #9 on: November 14, 2017, 06:30:57 AM »

Looks like you got off to a really great start!

I'm afraid I won't play, my connection is just way too poor for online gaming...
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« Reply #10 on: December 01, 2017, 10:44:22 AM »

Sounds really interesting, I'll check it out when I get home.
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« Reply #11 on: December 06, 2017, 07:01:31 AM »

Hey everyone, I finally got some time to post something. Hurray! Smiley



Community Fanfest

We held our second annual fanfest on November 24th at our office in Seltjarnarnes, Iceland. All in all, we've had 60+ attendees with 7 people flying in from abroad. We also set up an impromptu livestream which was recorded here.

We teamed up with IGI (Icelandic Game Industry) and the Kards (WW2 Card Game) team for some great cross promotion. Iceland has a really vibrant and well connected dev community which benefits everyone in the industry here.



The evening began with an introduction from our Community Manager, which was followed up by a presentation from our Producer about what's to come for Starborne. I'll go into the specifics below.

We ended the presentation with a Q&A session, which we started off with questions from the internet / livestream*, and the audience was much less hesitant to ask questions of their own afterwards.

*Some of these questions were very technical and we skipped them for the Q&A as not everyone in the audience wished to go into that much detail. I answered those questions later on Discord.

The party wrapped up at about 1 AM, after which we went barhopping in downtown Reykjavik. Our community manager took the tourists to do some touristy stuff on Saturday, but I was too hungover to join them. Beer!

We probably could have done a better job with the livestream and announcing the fanfest earlier, but hey, we have people who are willing to fly to Iceland because they like our game. And that's what matters.

As a personal anecdote - I actually attended the fanfest last year as a player before I applied at Solid Clouds, so it was interesting to see such an event from the other side. But that's probably a story for another time.




The Grind

We read the community feedback and looked at the data: Starborne is too demanding. We want the game to be accessible even for those who only log in once a day, and that's currently not the case. The following changes are a first step towards reducing the grind in Starborne:

  • Build times will be increased across the board. We will reduce the level caps to compensate, and players should still be able to max out a station in around three weeks - just without having to queue up something every hour.
  • We will introduce a time based building queue, rather than a slot based one. This will significantly reduce the amount of time players have to spend on newly built stations.
  • Level 1 NPCs will be removed from the game. We wished to introduce players to raiding very early into the game, but the sheer quantity of movements we've seen from competitive players set unreasonable expectations.
  • Events will undergo a rework, and will require more time to complete. Drops will become more consistent to compensate.



Commander Levels

The three branches (Names TBD) contain bonuses and key abilities for Offense, Subterfuge and Support roles. Players can unlock points by leveling up their Commander and define their playstyle in Starborne as the game progresses, and is one of the features we want to strengthen the mid-game with.



Example abilities:

  • Launch attacks from allied stations (Offense)
  • Temporarily disable fleet movements on a station (Subterfuge)
  • Deploy from an allied station to another allied station (Support)


This should make non-combat roles much more viable and further reduce the load on competitive players, as tasks are now divided between alliance members and leads me to the second point: No one can do everything. Starborne did not incentivize teamplay as it was often much more efficient to do everything by yourself, causing non-hardcore players to become irrelevant very quickly. While we don't want to limit players too much, alliance and team play was and will be the meat of the game.



Companion App

We're launching the first iteration of our companion app this month. It will allow players to construct and upgrade buildings on the go, and will alert players via push notifications if they are under attack.



The iOS version and additional features will arrive in the next alpha.



I'd like to end the post with a parody song from our Community Manager. Thank you for reading!  Coffee




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« Reply #12 on: January 15, 2018, 03:26:25 AM »

Alpha 7 Concludes

After 12 weeks of fierce political shenanigans and meticulously timed bombing runs, our 7th Alpha test came to an end with Singularity securing the victory. We got a good bit of data which I’d like to go into below.





Feedback

  • UI is often confusing and critical information is not easily readable
  • Game feels dull if you don’t belong to a competitive Alliance
  • Game takes too much time to play and requires constant presence
  • New players feel like they have no chance to catch up
  • Players have a hard time gauging their progress / power level in the game
  • Players want access to the API and other things to create their own tools
  • Numerous balance quirks

Each of these points would warrant a paragraph of their own, so I’ll leave our design approach for a future post.



KPI / Retention

  • 7’000 Installs / 4’500 Players
  • 200 DAU @ 3 Months
  • Sticky Factor 0.15

Phase 1 - Mediocre (Week 1-4)

Our game is not newbie player friendly at all, so a lot of people just nope out of the game very quickly. On the flip-side, players who make it through the first hour or so tend to play for a while.

Phase 2 - Bad (Week 5-8)

There’s simply nothing to do. Rather, you’re doing more of the same. We’re losing a lot of players due to boredom / burnout here, and our top priority is to fix this part of the game.

Phase 3 - Good (Week 9-12)

The players who make it to the endgame will almost certainly see it through, despite a complete lack of endgame features.



Channels

IndieDB.com - Organic traffic was very low, but our articles got some traction and occasional coverage.

Gamejolt.com - While we got absolutely nothing out of this site when we first set up our page, we started to get very consistent traffic (60 views, 7 downloads per day) after November. No idea why, though. Shrug

Itch.io - We’re going to use the platform for the next test, as by the time we had set up our page the server was already full. Introducing a game that nobody could play seemed like a bad idea.

Steam - We’ve seen that the retention rate from Steam users is quite poor for games like ours, so we’ll likely wait until Starborne has been on the market for a while before putting it on there as the huge playerbase will likely skew our statistics.

Discord - Around 900 people joined our server during the test, bringing our total member count to 1’700. 52’000 messages were sent on the official channel, which is quite high considering most of the communication took place in private alliance channels. This was by far our most popular community hub and I recommend it to anyone who can benefit from having a community chat.

Reddit - We have around 200 subscribers now, and we’ll need one or two more tests until we grow a community large enough to sustain itself. I’m not convinced about using it to promote the game though, as the high amount of views didn’t really transition into anything other than fake internet points.



Monetization

  • 6% Conversion Rate
  • 5000 EUR spent in game
  • No Whales

We’re going to overhaul the store and the items we sell, to both address balance concerns and increase, well, revenue. The problem was that players would simply purchase card packs early on, and then never buy anything afterwards. Another issue was that many player felt being able to purchase cards gave paying players a significant advantage, and while the data did not support this claim, being perceived as P2W is never good. Last but not least, the cards came out of lootbox-esque containers, which is just not a good thing at this point in spacetime.

I’ll explain the changes and thought process about this issue in another post as it’s quite big.



Technical

The metagame incentivizes simultaneous attacks on one specific target, and this caused some casualties to not properly register as the server processed multiple battles with the same defending units simultaneously. We’re looking into a single-thread solution as an option to ensure combat takes places sequentially.

We’ve made some good progress in regards to optimization. Server startup now takes around 40 seconds, down from over 4 minutes. Initial loading times now range from 8 to 20 seconds depending on the stage of the game. We haven’t addressed the issue of degrading performance over time yet, so there’s still a lot of work to be done, but this is a good first step.



Other

We’ve secured additional money from a funding round and a government grant here in Iceland.
While we still have a deadline that is fast approaching, It feels really good to have a level of job security not normally found in startups.

We’re also moving to a new office soonish. I called dibs on the corner desk.



TL;DR - Got great data from test. Community is growing. MVP around 2 releases away.



Thank you for reading. Coffee
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« Reply #13 on: February 05, 2018, 05:34:02 AM »

Hey everyone, more of a visual post this time.

New HUD



The HUD received a facelift to both increase readability and make it more consistent with our other panels. In addition to making room for our new systems, It should also perform better when there is more information to display.

We’re particularly excited about the new time based construction queue, which will allow you to order a construction even if you don’t have the required resources yet. Items in the queue can also be rearranged if they haven’t begun construction.



Events



Events received a major overhaul following community feedback, and they no longer require you to send fleets to complete them. Instead, you can review their status in a new panel and complete them instantly as soon as they become available.

While Events still serve to gate progress and ensure power players don’t snowball out of control, the new system should feel significantly less cumbersome and allow you to focus on other parts of the game.



Daily Challenges



Continuing on the note of reducing time requirements, Starborne will see the introduction of daily challenges. These are objectives tailored to your playstyle, and will allow you to stay competitive with shorter, more focused play sessions.



Black Hole



We've been trying out some new effects for the black hole, and they're coming together nicely. While not tied to any specific game mechanic as of yet, we're planning to add various landmarks to the map to give it more life and make navigation easier.



Solar Flare



Another change to the map contains visual tweaks to celestial bodies. We've added a flare effect to the suns and adjusted their brightness levels when moving the camera up close. Screenshots should look much better now!



New Cards



Stealth Systems, Drone Swarm, Minefield and Antimatter Torpedo will make their first appearance in the next alpha test, which is slated to start in around 2 months. Stay tuned! Coffee
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iMaple
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« Reply #14 on: February 26, 2018, 03:33:25 AM »

Commander Levels



Note: This is a mockup of the layout and subject to change.

As alluded to earlier, Commander Levels are abilities you can unlock as you level up your Commander, and the primary way to specialize your role in Starborne. The panel consists of three mutually exclusive trees, each containing two distinct specializations.



Aggression



Vanguard

The Vanguard gains access to powerful upgrades for attack ships and enhances your empire's offensive operations. You can also construct the Carrier, a fast capital ship suited for large-scale attacks.

Bomber

The Bomber uses Gunship fleets to damage or outright destroy enemy stations, giving your alliance the opportunity to expand into enemy territory.



Subterfuge



Sentinel

Sentinels aid their alliance by conducting espionage, feeding false information to the enemy and launching fake attacks to divert defenders from the real target.

Saboteur

The Saboteur specializes in crippling enemy fortifications to disable defenses and prevent movement shortly before the combat fleets make contact. Thanks to the Recon ship's high movement speed, Saboteurs can also launch small-scale raids on vulnerable enemy targets.



Support



Guardian

Tasked with protecting the frontlines, the Guardian gains bonuses to defensive ships, deployment speed to allies as well as access to the Dreadnought, the most powerful capital ship in the game.

Magnate

As the industrial backbone your alliance, the Magnate supplies allies with ships and resources to fuel the gears of war. Their massive industrial fleets also enable them to construct superstructures and boost allied outposts to enhance their efficiency.



How balanced this feature is remains to be seen, but we're confident that this approach to specialization helps to reduce both player burden and increase teamwork across the board. Next time I'll go into the different ship unlocks. Thank you for reading! Coffee
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« Reply #15 on: March 16, 2018, 01:22:06 AM »

Weaponized Tin Cans

As alluded to in the last post, each ship in Starborne received two unique modifications which can be unlocked via the Commander Levels. These modifications change both the look and function of the ship and present and additional avenue for ship customization next to the cards.



Light Ships

Light Ships are cheap to build and available early. They form the bulk of a player's armada for the majority of the game before more specialized and expensive ships become available.

Corvette

The Corvette is a light attack ship ideal for raiding unsuspecting targets.



Patrol Ship

The Patrol Ship is a light defender used to combat both internal and external threats.



Scout

The Scout is a light utility craft specializing in the surveillance and sabotage of enemy installations.





Heavy Ships

Heavy ships, while more expensive to build, pack quite a punch and form the core in most mid-game armadas. Unlike the light ships which can be built in any shipyard, the heavy ships require a specialized assembly and careful planning to gain the most use out of them.

Destroyer

The Destroyer is a heavy attack ship designed to break up enemy formations.



Frigate

The Frigate is a formidable heavy defender and mobile enough to support distant allies.



Gunship

The Gunship can be described as an explosive tin can and will make short work of enemy stations.





Capital Ships

Capital ships are the pride of and joy of an armada and a well placed fleet can turn the tide of any battle. They are however prohibitively expensive and difficult to build - Commanders investing heavily into these ships will have difficulties recovering from a defeat.

Carrier

The Carrier is a capital ship used in large scale attacks where it can support smaller vessels around it.



Dreadnought

The Dreadnought is the single most powerful ship in the game and guarantees massive casualties for anyone foolish enough to attack it.





A New Challenger Appears!

In addition to the ship modifications shown above, Alpha 8 will also see the appearance of a new ship: The Recon. This is the heavy ship variant of the Scout and grants Subterfuge players a much needed boost on the tactical level.



We’re really happy to finally see the IR-2 in the game as it was one of the first ship concepts for Starborne. Thank you for reading! Coffee
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« Reply #16 on: March 16, 2018, 04:46:07 AM »

Thanks for sharing your results so far!
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« Reply #17 on: March 28, 2018, 08:13:37 AM »

We’ve updated all movements and you can now see ships physically flying around the map!



Resource Fields being harvested will now display mining activity as well. Mining Drones aren’t in yet so we’re using Patrol Ships as placeholders.





We also received a few questions regarding the size of the different ships, so we've put together this comprehensive ship size chart to serve as a wallpaper. Space banana for scale.


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« Reply #18 on: September 24, 2018, 08:35:20 AM »

Hi tigsource!

Haven't posted in a while as we've been deep in the trenches preparing for the next alpha test which is slated to start in late October. We've overhauled major aspects of the game, including combat, the tech tree, UI and more. But the most striking change happened to the map - it's now much more brighter and vibrant. Check it out!







Edit: Really now, images don't scale? Do I have to manually resize them to fit the tigsource container?
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« Reply #19 on: September 24, 2018, 08:40:27 AM »

Nice choice of language for testing chat Wink
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