Hello everyone and thank you for taking part in the Steam Early Access launch of Exogate Initiative!
This first week was a massive roller coaster for us! We were thrilled to see so many people playing and enjoying our game, only to realize that many of them felt frustrated at some point for legitimate reasons that we did not anticipate.
The game in its current state needs some heavy balancing work and we are committed to addressing those issues as fast as possible, so here is our short-term plan:
A first patch is now available (the complete changelog is below) it will improve the economy, the guard's AI, and solve some of the few remaining game-breaking bugs.
Our next plan is to take a bit more time to craft a beefier update that will address the following topics:
- Improvements to the economic balance throughout the game, including the patent revenue streams.
- Rework the starmap procedural generation to avoid players being stuck due to destinations with too high level of requirements.
- Adjust the difficulty of invasions to player performances.
- A LOT of bug fixing and improvements based on your feedback.
Now regarding that one feature that has been asked about a lot:
It will be possible at some point to revisit previously explored planets, we just don’t want to rush this feature yet as it was part of something we planned for later during Early Access. We just wanted you to know that we are aware this is something highly requested, but we also think that all the other things we plan to address first should reduce the need for it for now.
This is Early Access and the whole point is to involve you, the players so that you can help us to steer the game in the right direction. We are already extremely happy with all the feedback we have received on the Steam forums, discord, and through the game reporting tool. Though we are looking in the coming month to offer a dedicated platform for feedback, one that will allow you to easily submit and vote for features.
Finally, I just want to remind you that we are a very small team, and as you may have noticed this game has many, many things to offer, which means that we need to spend a long time testing it properly before releasing new updates. This is why we’d rather avoid releasing patches too often so that we can spend more time developing and bug fixing than testing that everything works as intended. With that being said, we are committed to keeping you updated on our progress.
Thank you,
Maxime Millet and the Xeno Bits team
0.8.1- change log
New
- You can now sell all types of materials (Asteril, Maglam, Exonium, Cobbium)
- Changelog visible in menu.
Changes
- Improved guards AI, they will go to their post 3 days before invasions start and won’t leave anymore to eat or sleep.
- Mental conditions impact on mental health have been reducedreduced and it will be easier and faster to treat them.
- Asteril price was increased.
- Unusual destination XP bonus was increased.
- Invasions will be a little bit less frequent.
- Sqarbs will now be able to destroy walls in front of the gate room. 👀
- Gaters can use treadmills to increase their mental health, not only for training their body.
- Increased scientific loot frequency (both samples and specimens).
- Increased objectives rewards in initiation mode.
- Collected artifacts have dedicated icons on the Aliens and Artifacts screen.
- Recruitment campaign parameters will use rounded values.
- The objective that requires encountering a geological contact is now retroactive.
Fixes
- Science points are now rounded to the lower integer value (if you have 399.8 points the game will display 399 instead of 400 previously).
- Fixed the tooltip in the tech tree for unlocked elements.
- Fixed a bug where the end of the financial period was triggered 2 times in the same month.
- Fixed a bug where a gater’s avatar was in underwear after loading.
- Fixed a bug where the trending class name was always Scientist.
- Fixed a bug where the committee granted funds for 11 months instead of 12.
- Fixed a bug where the game would be displayed over the main menu after some time.
- Reduced brightness on heavy armor helmet lights.
- Gater should not leave the shooting range with their rifle anymore.