Hey everybody!
I'd like to give you a short update on what we've got planned for the future. First off: We're currently busy working on the Alliances Update, and we want to make sure to get it right and not release a rushed version. This means that it'll take a little longer than you (and we as well) may have anticipated, but we'll make sure that the wait is going to be worth it. We'll take a few more weeks until it's finished, and you shouldn't expect any big updates for the time being. Of course we'll still address critical problems, such as performance problems, exploits or crashes immediately if we can. Until then: No ETA, except for: We hope to release it in a few weeks, and we'll keep you posted on how it's going.
On another note, we're currently looking to make the visuals of the game a little more cohesive, so that the ships, shots, asteroids, background, planets and effects all work together really well.
Alliances Update?
For those not knowing about the Alliances update: It will allow players to form alliances, that will count as their own factions, very similar to guilds or clans in other games. We'll add a lot of content and features to make sure that you can actually experience Avorion on a bigger scale - for example performance improvements so we can actually hold all the sectors with alliance or player ships in memory and update them. You won't have to stay around to have your factory or miner gain money. Time to finally build your empires!
Here's a rough outline for the features that we have planned for Alliances:
Alliances Update Features
- Alliances that will be formed by players
- Co-op ship piloting
- Sectors staying in memory while a player is online
- Improved building mode for easier editing (scaling, moving, transforming) of whole ships
- Player backups so your progress is not lost on server failure of any kind
- Custom fighter plans and Steam workshop support for ship and station plans, and entire faction sets
- Better inventory and map navigation
Further down the road
After the Alliances we're looking to make a Combat & Stealth Update, where we'll add more and more meaningful weapons and warfare features, so that combat isn't just standing-still-and-waiting-for-your-enemy-to-die. We'll give you more details on that later on, so stay tuned!
Have fun!