Welcome back, Space Pirates.
Welcome to our second Dev Blog! We’ve got lots to show you, so let’s take a look at what’s coming soon, and what you’ve got to look forward to in the near future! Bare in mind, that while many of these planned changes will be coming in the Red Baron Update, there is a chance that not all of them will be included.
Too much of a good thing…
Overall, we felt our first patch landed as we had hoped – with a focus on addressing major issues. We knew a large patch straight out the gate was the best way to show our intention and determination to support the game and our community for the long-term.
We have, however, heard you loud and clear! We’ve read concerns regarding “too much change, too fast” – especially when it comes to balancing around weaponry and armour. Moving forward, we’ll be looking at more tweaks at a more manageable pace, so we can let things marinate and see what everyone thinks!
Raid Fever
In the upcoming update, Red Baron, we will be introducing an extension to our raid location mechanic, so we can have more raids per instance. There will now be a chance to have multiple locations to breach and dock, creating a more dynamic and exciting experience – as you can see below.
The big difference, however, is that we’ve increased the number of crews per match to 10! This means some raids could see up to 40 space pirates duking it out! But not to worry, we are also increasing the size of each battleground to accommodate this, but not by too much!
Big Boss: Red Baron
Red Baron will introduce our first fully-fledged boss! And yes, some of you may have guessed it: the new boss is indeed an expert pilot with their own custom ship! (seen next slide with our new jump gate asset). We are particularly excited about this because now, not only will you need to contend in C.Q.B, but space combat! So get honing those aeronautic skills!
Below, you can also see some of our initial explorations for the boss’s cosmetics and armour. But you’ll have to wait until the update’s out in the wild to see where we “landed”.
THE RED DEATH COMETH
Red Baron is the Central Empire’s best recruit, the ship reflects this with an imperious aesthetic – a darkly lit, expansive, yet claustrophobic environment. This is a state-of-the-art strike frigate built for one purpose: destruction. Taking control and commanding the helm is not going to be easy in the presence of this death trap!
Contract Refactor
Another exciting change is a restructuring to daily contracts. We’ll be looking to divide this into two systems:
Raid Contracts - Will provide three contracts (one from each faction) at the beginning of the raid that are context-sensitive to the raid locations that have appeared in the match.
This is to allow an easier track to levelling up factions, a new competitive dynamic between crews (that share the same goal) and to make sure the objective can be achieved without the mishaps of “RNG”.
Daily Market - This is in the main menu, where daily contracts previously existed. It’s a more passive way to earn rare loot and provides opportunities to trade items for something desirable.
This will remain limited, but similar to the current daily contracts system, with up to six per day.
To incorporate these features we will have a wipe.
We’re gonna need a bigger gun…
More weapons and attachments are being added with every update. In Red Baron, we have a few, but let's talk about… the L1A1 Battle Rifle!
Our variant within the game is chambered in .300 magnum and comes with a few attachments making it the strongest automatic rifle in the game! Dealing a whopping 38 damage, its default capacity of 20 will make the extended mag option very tempting, so make sure to keep a look out for supply crates.
Mini-Mine
During our prototype/pre-production days we quickly built a test level to demonstrate the features we were trying to achieve, this was actually the first iteration of the asteroid mine; some of our backers will remember it clearly! Last week, we thought it should make a return with a new lick of paint!
Throughout production, we want to keep a balance of new raids that are both dockable and breachable. This old asteroid mine map will be returning as a breach only map (much like the merchant ship) codenamed: “Mini-Mine” – a large mining ship that has coupled with a valuable space rock. Our new implementation will give players the experience of a ship breach segment, before exploring downwards to the depths of its organic, gritty location.
And to clarify, this will not be in the Red Baron Update, it will come in a future update in the new year!
Here is it’s newly finalised concept art in all its glory:
That’s all, folks!
That’s it for today’s Dev Blog, thanks for catching up with us! Stay tuned in Discord and on Twitter for more news on the upcoming Update!
- SIG Team