After two weeks of focused work build 0.15.0 is finally out on Steam! It includes a new game mechanic called factions and several other improvements. This release concludes our work on core game mechanics. It’s time to focus on AI, balance, content, and polish.
Factions
Factions are special units that can be moved around the map and upgraded after they gain experience. They also add disproportionately high bonuses to locations they are currently at. Think of them as super units that have to be strategically positioned around your empire.
New factions can be added during turns 10, 20, and 30. Each player can only have up to three factions at a time.
Factions can be moved between different player locations as long as there is a hyperlane or a wormhole between them. The cost of movement depends on the distance to the destination and its mass.
Factions receive experience points from actions like attacks, construction, and some others. Each faction has three different traits that can be upgraded every time they level up.
There’re currently six different factions in the game, each focusing on a specific resource or mechanic that can lead to victory. Let’s take a look at all of them!
Builders Guild
Focuses on reducing all construction costs, construction time, and shield energy per turn cost. Add this faction if you want to build up new locations from the ground up quickly.
Energy Institute
Focuses on increasing energy collection rate, reducing all action energy costs, and reducing all weapon energy costs. Depending on your strategy this faction can be used for population attacks, cheaply firing weapons, or transferring resources around.
The Brotherhood of Might
The brotherhood focuses on increasing combat strength, reducing attack energy cost, and shield energy per turn cost. This is the only truly combat-focused faction that can be used for direct attacks.
Asteroid Rats
This faction of miners focuses on increasing mineral collection rate, reducing construction time, and reducing mineral transfer energy cost. Need to kick-start a new location? Use this faction!
Nomad Alliance
Focuses on increasing population growth rate, reducing population transfer energy cost, and race conversion energy cost.
Frontier Academy
This faction focuses on increasing research speed, research points per turn, and shield efficiency. Use Frontier Academy to try out various research-based strategies and to protect locations at the forefront of the battle more efficiently.
Other Changes
[UI] Add new structure icons in the construction panel.
[UI] Don’t show zero modifiers in tooltips.
[UI] Improve CPU performance for several UI elements.
[GRAPHICS] New hyperlane model.
[GRAPHICS] New energy sphere model.
Originally published on Vasinov Games.