We’ve got a banger today, folks!
I’ve updated the game with the first iteration of Endless Mode. The number one piece of feedback was that you wanted to keep playing after the game was "done". I hope this mode is a good first step in addressing that request. It's relatively small/simple but a good foundation.
Endless Mode is unlocked by either:
Beating the Campaign (the first run of the game).
Selecting it when starting a fresh save.
Entering it via the settings menu.
Choosing any of these options resets your progress to loop 0, but you can now keep growing forever. There is a new Mastery bar in your fleet command that progresses as you play. Each level-up grants a mastery point to spend in the new Mastery Matrix, which features 17 new incremental upgrades (some with multiple effects) that impact most parts of the game (including the stocks!) to create synergy between different systems.
For each Singularity, you gain a multiplier to your experience gain. You can stay in your current loop to build out your fleet, play the stock market, or watch your ships, or you can reset to start over. Each loop increases your XP gain rate, but also makes corruption slightly harder to cleanse. It’s simple for now, but provides a meaningful "numbers-go-up" feel. If you enjoy it and keep playing, we can build it out further together with more ideas!
There are also a bunch of other changes and fixes. See the changelog below:
ENDLESS MODE & GENERAL CHANGES
ENDLESS MODE: Note that some upgrades like ShipAGI and Wormholes are turned off/repurposed in this mode
You will now gain experience to a new mastery bar. Leveling up grants you a prestige point which you can spend on the new upgrades.
Level requirements scales, every time you trigger singularity you gain a multiplier which makes leveling easier. The idea is that you build fleets and when you feel like you want more experience you trigger and start over. Numbers go up!
Every prestige makes corruption and black holes slightly harder to cleanse. Black Holes spawn randomly now.
Fleet Fusion: A new upgrade that lets you merge 100 ships into 1 super ship to clear.. space.
New Achievement Handler: I’ve rewritten how achievements are stored and called. Hopefully, this resolves the previous issues (see note at the bottom).
Background Throttling: Added a backup system if the game is covered and the game gets throttled. Hopefully this makes background running more consistent. If you're still having issues let me know, as a workaround you can use the pin icon and shrink the window in the corner of your screen.
Campaign Completion: Finishing the game now preserves your settings instead of erasing everything.
Tutorial: Added an in-game tutorial for new players to guide them through their first purchases.
UI/UX: Upgrades now display the correct dollar signs.
Refinery: Nano Drones now feed the refinery correctly.
... Refineries don't have any buffer anymore. The meta had became to put it to 10% for a bit and back to zero, the abundance of ore made this redundant. Refineries will now work as long as you have ore in your fleet command or you can turn them off.
Trading: Humanity has grown; Signal Range 4 now features space stations for traders.
Boundaries: Space now has a boundary so you can’t scroll infinitely and lose your station.
Navigation: Clicking the zoom number now resets the camera position to your station.
Sorting: Void Cleansers are now sorted numerically, regardless of placement order.
Upgrades: Added a new upgrade for drones to generate metal instead of ore + Fleet Merge.
Balancing:
Ships' max speed is slightly slower.
Dyson Beam metal dump cost halved
Asteroids: Asteroids HP now scales with your fleet, this is to avoid every late-game ship one-shotting asteroids and the game creating thousands of asteroids instantly.
Performance: Various minor changes to make performance better such as scaling back static, station effects depending on zoom, culling and stars update rate
Regarding Achievements
I have rewritten how achievements are stored and triggered. On each boot, the game now queries Steam to fetch your unlocked achievements and compares them against your local files to ensure everything is in sync. Previously, the system assumed an achievement was already unlocked if it existed locally, which prevented retries if a previous trigger failed. Note that this data file may be wiped if you clear your save from the settings menu which should have prevented the bugs previously but who knows with Windows.
I’m so happy to see more of you enjoying the game! Your reviews and kind forum posts give me the motivation to keep working on it. Let me know what you think, hopefully this update didn't break anything important (and I’m sure you guys will find a bunch of bugs, haha).
Until next time, SEE YOU IN SPACE CAPTAINS!