Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It is the thunderous roar from a spaceship turret. Space Haven Alpha 6 is the biggest update to date and brings ship-to-ship battles with it, along with a bunch of smaller feature additions, improvements and bug fixes.
Developing support for ship-to-ship battles was challenging design wise, but we're really happy with how it turned out and how it further supports the core of the game. The new additions enables you to build a proper bridge for your spaceship consisting of many console modules.
Note! There's only one turret at the moment, but our focus was to implement the base and make ship-to-ship battles fully functional. We will be adding more with time.
The Spaceship Bridge
It's now possible to build a proper bridge for your spaceship, with 3 new console modules introduced making the total amount of console modules 4. Each console is specialized in controlling a certain aspect of the defense and attack systems. The consoles are:
The Operations Console
The operations console is used to hail other spaceships and communicate with their crew. It is also used to control scanner modules. Needs crew member to operate.
The Weapons Console
The weapons console is used to control the various turrets of the spaceship. One console is capable of controlling all turrets in the spaceship, as long as a crew member is stationed at the console.
The Shields Console
Shield modules form a continually regenerating protective energy shield around the ship, and use power to recharge. Shield generators are controlled by the shields console seen above.
The Navigations Console
This navigation console combined with a hyperdrive enables the spaceship to hyperjump between solar system areas. Needs a crew member to operate.
Ship-to-Ship Battle Mechanics
A ship's overall health is divided into hull stability and shield strength, which can be strengthened with hull stabilizers and shield modules respectively. Power will also play a part, as attack and defense systems will be more prone to consume larger amounts of power.
Various turrets will have their own specifications regarding hull stability damage and shield damage, in addition to these special properties can be added. Examples of special properties could be a turret with projectiles causing internal fires, another turret may act much like an EMP turret shutting down power within an area.
A Hull Stabilizer reinforces the spaceship's frame, strengthening it and generally improving structural integrity. Multiple Stabilizers can work in unison to bolster the hull far beyond its normal limits.
A ship's hull is not generally penetrated until the hull stability is lost, at which point the hull stabilizers will be overloaded and explode, along with other hull integrated elements like turrets, shield modules, hangars and more inevitably causing the whole ship to explode to a good degree. It's still possible to save the crew and the ship after this, but generally a scenario like this is devastating. Roof elements, like turrets shields and scanners, can be targeted and destroyed individually.
All so called system modules reserve system points when built, if you want to build a ship with more hull stability you will have to sacrifice on some other front, like fire power or shield strength. Larger ships will have more system points to spend on system modules. There will not be a wide selection of turrets in the beginning, but with time more turrets will be added to the game.
Scanning
Feeling curious and want to see what's going on in other faction spaceships currently in the sector? Build a scanner and you're able to peek in. The scanner will come in handy when trying to determine whether this is a crew you want to mess with, or where to direct your more powerful special turrets.
"Seems Jemima and Lisette are playing Fatman Returns in co-operative mode. Others are probably sleeping. This is our chance to do a sneak attack and steal their space food."
New Music
We've kept Paul very busy and had him produce 4 new music tracks for the game for this update. The soundtrack has come a long way, now with 12 in-game main tracks plus some additional tracks for things like exploring derelict ships and crew combat. That's well over 30 minutes of excellent music!
Space Haven Official Wiki
We've been working on a wiki/guide for Space Haven, filling it up with information and tips. We hope it will be of help for new players to get answers if something is unclear. We will keep adding information with time as we find out which things are hard to understand. You can check out the wiki below:
http://bugbyte.fi/spacehaven/wiki
We have a goal to release Space Haven as Early Access here on Steam this year. Stay tuned!
You can find more information on Space Haven and the Alpha at:
http://bugbyte.fi/spacehaven/
Discord: https://discord.gg/zx2AN4F
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceHaven/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpaceHavenGame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BugbyteGames/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spacehavengame/
We also have our mailing list which is great for keeping up to date with important news: http://bugbyte.fi/register
Until next time. Thanks for reading! =)