Alpha 11 - The Slaver's Guild, the Military Alliance and More
Greetings, Spacefarer! We've been working on a big update for a few months now, which will expand on your interactions with factions and also introduces slaves as a mechanic related to the Slaver's Guild faction.
There's lots of new interesting features added. All of these should make your space adventures more interesting and open up some new possibilities.
The Slaver's Guild and Slaves
Mark and Cooper are slaves, not amused by their Algae Dispenser as their only nutrition.
You will be able to enslave crew members you capture from other factions, but you can also choose to be a force of good and seek out to rid the universe of slavery. The choice is yours.
The Enslavement Facility
A poor prisoner being turned into a slave in the Enslavement Facility
The Slaver's Guild use enslavement facilities to enslave people. The enslavement facility is used both for inserting a slave collar on a slave, but also for recharging the slave collar.
You can also be a slaver yourself, by researching the enslavement facility and turning prisoners into slaves using the enslave button located next to the recruit button in the character information window. Slaves can work as normal crew members, and their schedules can be changed. However, slaves cannot operate the system related jobs, like navigation, gunner, shield and operations. They cannot be drafted and manually controlled either.
The slave collar gives electric shocks to the wearer, if it is touched or otherwise tampered with. This prevents the wearer from trying to escape, at least to some degree. Escaping can happen though, and how frequently escapes are tried is tied to the character surrender rate. A hero will try to escape more often than a wimp.
A slave collar needs to be charged with energy cells, otherwise a slave may escape. The wearer will automatically be reminded to recharge the slave collar themselves at the enslavement facility. When slaves try to escape they will aim to form their own group among each other, and work together to flee towards freedom.
Slaves Escaping
Slaves dream of escaping one day, and if they get a chance they will aim to form a group of their own and take their chance at freedom. If a slave is able to wiggle free of their slave collar, they may set others free to and look for a way to escape together.
How they do this will be left as a mystery for now. Perhaps you will witness it yourself in the game. =)
A base for the Slaver's Guild
A Slaver's Guild base, with special chambers to keep their slaves in order.
The Slaver's Guild is getting their own base, buried deep in the galaxy in an area controlled by the Slaver's Guild. Perhaps you aren't keen with the whole idea of slaves, and want to rid the universe of it. Seek out and enter this base, clear it out of any resistance you meet. Find the special chambers made to hold slaves captive and free them of their perilous fate... You will have their undying gratitude!
Faction Interactions
The Military Alliance is happy to see you have some Pirate Coalition crew members as prisoners.
We've implemented some new features, which expands and opens up some new possibilities on how your actions affect your relationship with various factions. We've also expanded the factions in a way where they have a bit more meaningful relationships between each other.
Some examples of these new interactions include:
- A faction finding out you are sheltering their enemies, keeping their allies captive or the Military Alliance finding out you have slaves.
- Faction spaceships/stations may contact you and ask for help if they run out of some resource they need.
- Factions now get frustrated if you keep bailing on paying settlements.
- You'll be able to claim bounties for certain captives factions are interested in. The Military Alliance is keen to get their hands on Pirate Coalition crew members.
- Refugees can now be forced into prisoners, but they will fight you for it.
Under Inspection
We've implemented a new feature, where factions may want to inspect your ship either by scanning or by visiting your ship and having a look. This can happen if the faction has become suspicious of your activities for various reasons.
Fingers crossed the Military Alliance doesn't scan our room full of contraband!
When you are being inspected by a faction the user interface above will show the progress. It lists the various items you are at risk to be discovered for, and the consequences. This feature gives a reason for factions to visit your ships, and adds to the tension as you watch it happen.
If a faction is allied with another faction, and they scan your ship and find out you have enslaved or taken their allied faction crew members captive, they will react negatively towards you.
Francesco is getting questioned by Darin from the Military Alliance. Hopefully Francesco can keep his cool!
The Military Alliance tries to uphold whatever law is left in this wild west of space, they will sometimes do inspections to see if you are engaging in illegal activity, or have contraband hidden somewhere.
While the Military Alliance searches your ship they will also carry out some interrogations on your crew members. Your crew member might spill the beans, or hold their cool and lie successfully. This gives a bit more depth to the characters, as you may find out that it is Shifty Hal spilling the beans every time he is interrogated.
Military Alliance prison stations
The Military Alliance now has prison stations scattered around the galaxy. Here they hold their enemy faction members as prisoners, for breaking the space law. These are usually members from the Pirate Coalition and the Slaver's Guild. You can sell your own prisoners to them, as long as they are members of the factions who are enemies with the Military Alliance.
Bounties
You can now claim a bounty by bringing prisoners back to the faction these captives belong to. This means you can find crew members imprisoned by the Military Alliance, and instead of making them part of your crew you can decide to ship them to a Military Alliance ship and claim a bounty for them.
Double doors
Sometimes two doors is better than one!
We're adding a double door (2 tile wide door) to appease your symmetry needs. =)
The hyperdrives now have nice looking roof graphics!
With each update, we're also putting some time into making the game look better. Our graphics artist has been working on some roof decoration graphics, and you can see the hyperdrive roof graphics in the image above.
We've also spent time polishing the NPC ships, slightly modifying their looks and adding some more variation to the floor tiles of their different rooms.
Timeline - When is Alpha 11 Update Available?
We don't have an exact date, but we're getting close and we're working on the final additions to Alpha 11. After this we will publish the new update to the experimental branch and iron out any issues. The process is as follows:
- We push a new Update to the Experimental Branch - Where you can test new experimental patches before the game is officially updated. (We will announce when Alpha 11 is available in the experimental branch)
- Once the experimental game build looks solid and stable we will push it out officially to all players!
Join Space Haven Discord: http://discord.gg/spacehaven
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Report bugs here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/979110/discussions/4/
Discuss Space Haven here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/979110/discussions/0/
Technical Support: https://steamcommunity.com/app/979110/discussions/1/
Thank you for reading, Spacefarer. Stay tuned for upcoming news on Alpha 11 and hope 2021 has started well for you!