Hello! After more than two months of work, today we're proud to unveil Space Station Designer 0.5.35. This new update includes all the mechanics of Phase II, along with a plethora of Quality of Life (QoL) improvements and fixes that benefit the whole game experience. Please read on for the highlights and, if you're interested in the full changelog, you can review our live document here: [Public] Space Station Designer - Release Notes.
Phase II and new game mechanics
Our previous update stopped after the acquisition of the 'Expansion in LEO' research technology (i.e., after completing what we call 'Phase I').
In this latest update, we've included a new set of game mechanics, such as Modules Leasing, Commercial Services, and Space Tourism. These mechanics were available in one form or another in older versions of the game, but they have been fully revamped and balanced for this new update. This is especially true for the Space Tourism mechanic, which now includes spaceports and space tourism shuttles.
In addition to these mechanics, we've added a new set of 20 contracts, which are available both in the Campaign and Sandbox modes. These 20 contracts, along with the new gameplay features, comprise 'Phase II', and add another 8 to 12 hours of gameplay on top of the ~10 hours from Phase I. We hope you enjoy them and, if you have any feedback, please don't hesitate to contact us in the forums.
Gameplay Improvements and tweaks
We continue refining the game's mechanics based on the playtesting feedback we receive. Here are some of the improvements and tweaks that are now available in the latest version:
- Selected modules must be within a maximum distance when setting up space tourism groups.
- Propulsion modules now suffer a propulsion penalty if they aren't close enough to electricity/cooling modules.
- Astronauts can now be fired.
- Stronger dependencies for certain research technologies in the tech tree. For example, 'Storage Level III' now has a dependency on 'Storage Level II'.
- The acquisition costs of the various Earth Facilities and their Continuous Improvement Programs (CIPs) have been adjusted for a more balanced gameplay experience.
If you're interested in learning about other tweaks and improvements, please check our release notes document: [Public] Space Station Designer - Release Notes
Quality of Live (QoL) improvements
While conducting our own internal testing, we continue finding ways to make the game experience more streamlined and enjoyable. Some of the QoL improvements included in this latest update include:
- A button to sort out entries in the 'Contracts' screen chronologically, which is useful for finding out which contracts are getting close to their expiry date.
- A mechanism to display the 'modules information card' of all modules unlocked by a research technology in the tech tree.
- Important information in the 'active events' screen so that the players can know, for example, the number of months remaining for a given event.
- A mechanism to assign astronauts to 'groups' via a color palette. The size of the astronaut corps grows considerably throughout Phase II, and being able to assign them to groups significantly reduces the difficulty of managing them.
- Visual indicators so that the player can see the station's current storage space in the resupply spacecraft payload screen, which aids with planning.
- Information on which specific objective caused a contract to fail.
- The ability to pan around and zoom in/out in the research tech tree screen using the WASD/arrow keys and the plus and minus keys, respectively.
Is there a QoL improvement you'd like to see? Let us know in the Steam forums!
Fixes
Lastly, this update includes a series of fixes to issues we came across during playtesting. Some examples include:
- We addressed some minor glitches in the 'Above and below the LEO station' => 'Earth Facilities' tutorial, so that it's in line with the various changes we've applied to the game mechanics in the previous updates.
- We identified and resolved a runtime error triggered when attempting to install modules that had collisions during the initial installation phase. This one was also reported via email by a playtester from the Steam forums.
- We fixed the Campaign mode so that the 'Expansion in LEO' research technology can only be acquired if all the mandatory campaign objectives have been accomplished.
- We addressed various UI issues in the Earth Facilities screen so that they are capable of dealing with large numeric values.
- We modified the logic behind the Earth Facilities in order to ensure that they can only execute a CIP for a given module/resupply spacecraft once.
- We fixed some minor visual glitches in various modules.
We're aiming to make Space Station Designer a bug-free game. If you run into any problems, please get in contact with us so that we can investigate and fix them.
Closing thoughts
This latest update represents another big milestone for us. If you have any questions or feedback about the game, please don’t hesitate to contact us via the forums.
--Ignacio, Mauricio, and Nicolas (Polar Motion)