Starcom: Unknown Space News

It's been a full year since Starcom: Unknown Space entered Early Access, so instead of the regular weekly update, I decided this was a good time to do another progress update.

First, overall I feel very good about the state of the game. While Betelgeuse (the first Early Access release) was solid, there were a number of design issues that needed addressing, primarily with exploration and guidance. Ganymede made significant improvements in the exploration aspect, but suffered from a number of areas where players would find themselves stuck with no clear path of progression. Icarus, the current build, has now been out for over a month and while there are still a few areas where players can get stuck, overall the mission system has gotten better at giving players the ability to progress the story.

Also, the amount of content in the game has expanded significantly. I'll go into detail in a bit, but a first-time player of Betelgeuse took about 8 hours to consume the main content, while a first-time player of Icarus takes about 21.

Currently, I am focusing on late-game content. I have a goal of getting an ending to the story into the game with the next named update (Jupiter), even if it's just a first draft. We'll have to see how progress goes, that may turn out to be too optimistic. This may mean there's a longer gap until the next opt-in build is available. This makes sense for another reason: when the game was 8 hours long, adding 2 hours of content to the game felt significant and a big reason for players to do another playthrough. As the game has gotten bigger, the same amount of content is a smaller percentage of the whole. (Eventually the game will reach a point where all new content is save-compatible and there will be less reason to hold builds to batch content, but we're not there yet.)

[h2]Early Access Progress Stats[/h2]

The following progression is to give players a rough sense of the amount of content that has been added since the start of Early Access. Anomalies are the number of different planetary and space anomalies the player may investigate. Mission logic elements are the smallest unit of "narrative" logic. Words are the total amount of on-screen text the player might see (and will eventually need localization). Median first-time playthrough is the total time first time players take to reach the end game anomaly-- I don't have this stat for every build:

Betelgeuse (Dec 2022, first Early Access version):
75 anomalies
1264 mission logic elements
25,000 words
Median first-time playthrough: 8 hours

Draconis (Jan 2023):
91 anomalies
1516 mission logic elements
29,000 words
Median first-time playthrough: 12 hours

Europa (Mar 2023):
111 possible anomalies
1839 mission logic elements
36,000 words

Fornax (May 2023):
120 possible anomalies
1990 mission logic elements
40,000 words

Ganymede (June 2023):
145 anomalies
2390 mission logic elements
48,000 words
Median first-time playthrough: 16 hours

Icarus (latest opt-in build):
179 anomalies
3339 mission logic elements
60,000 words
Median first-time playthrough: 21 hours

For comparison, Starcom: Nexus had ~195 anomalies and 65,000 words (it used a different mission logic system so the numbers are not comparable, but it had considerably less mission logic than Unknown Space does now).



I want to stress that I'm not too focused on numerical metrics of content like how many anomalies or planets, but I include them to give players a sense of overall progress.

[h2]Weekly Update[/h2]

Every Friday I try to post an update of what I've worked on in the past week, included here:

• Updated the default Icarus build to 15019, fixing a number of minor issues and adding experimental localization
  
• Created some additional conversation options for Captain Dolson on the universe's lore
  
• Several additional anomalies
  
• Continued work on the late-game story/missions
  

Thanks for reading and thanks for playing Starcom: Unknown Space!

Build 15019 has now had enough opt-in players test it, so I'm promoting it to the default build. This is still an "Icarus" build so it should be save compatible. It adds experimental localization options for German and French, as well as a number of bug fixes and QoL improvements. There are a few reported issues of missing localization strings, but these are so far minor.

Change List:

• Adds experimental localization for German and French; these are both Google Translate versions so the quality may be questionable
  
• Map mode performance optimizations
  
• Added map option to highlight incomplete anomalies
  
• Added toggle to some log entries to show on map
  
• Added map zoom modifier (CTRL) to keep cursor position constant
  
• Changed music audio codec to substantially reduce disk, memory usage
  
• Changed screen scaling ratios for HUD
  
• Fixed NPC Ships not being moved out of gateways for autopilot jumps and point portals
  
• Fixed two null reference issues
  
• Fix for secondary weapons initially displaying "missiles" regardless of actual installed secondary weapons
  
• Minor changes to two early missions to reduce risk of player missing key interactions: void detection of Polyhedral artifact extended and more explicit hint regarding possibility of Ermyr bribe
• Improvements to UI performance of switching to Research Lab and Missions
  
• Fix for an infrequent null reference
  
• Increased dimming of fully explored systems on map (to help identify star systems where players may have missed exploration.)
  
• Minor UI, typo fixes
  

If you encounter any issues, please report them in the Discussion Forums or in-game via F8.

Thanks for playing!

- Kevin

I took an off-line work vacation this week, taking a break from the Internet, but still working. One of the larger tasks was something subtle that I'd wanted to implement for a while: adding "soundscapes" to anomalies. Now, anomalies will have one or two layered atmospheric soundscapes to help accentuate their environment. E.g., some light waves for a watery anomaly, arctic winds for an ice planet, etc. In most cases I want them to be pretty subtle so as not to overpower the music, but just enough to complement the anomaly images.

Additional tasks I worked on this week:

• Went through a dozen or so anomalies and adjusted wording to make the lore more consistent with recent story changes.
  
• Fixed a bug causing an unlockable missile tech to stop working.
  
• Based on player requests, changed the volume logic for turbo thrust to only initially start loud, but then fade down to just slightly audible over the base engine sound
  
• Started work on some new interspersed content / RP sources
  
• Continue work on late game content
  

As always, items from weekly updates will not be available until the next build update and are subject to change.

Until next week!

- Kevin

I've spent most of the last week working on new, late-game content. I'll avoid going into more detail to avoid spoilers.

I've also spent a good chunk of time interacting with new players, some of whom have reported areas where they've run into issues.

One of the design challenges with an open world exploration game is that I don't necessarily know what order players are going to do/find things, so unexpected player behavior can lead to scenarios where the game is waiting for the player to do something before triggering some interaction or event, but the player's specific actions or path caused them to miss it. (I'm thinking about adding some additional data to the analytics so I can get a better sense of how players move through the universe.)

While the game encourages exploration and there's stuff for players to discover independently, there should always be a fairly clear path forward. Currently, it seems like most of the obstacles to this are things that could be fixed without diminishing the exploration aspect of the game:

• General: Thinking a region has been explored while there is an unexplored "Flinger". I plan on making unused Flingers much more conspicuous in the next release.
  
• General: Sometimes the player just needs to return to Celaeno.
  
• Early game: Missed passing through the sector between Celaeno and The Aletheia, thereby failing to ever trigger a certain hint sequence.
• Late game: Failed to find all 3 Trinary keys. One of the keys is a drop from the Devout, but won't drop until the player has found the Chariot and completed the Arkadian mission. Also, there is apparently a bug where players could sell the keys to the Guild.
• Late game: Didn't realize they were supposed to "push" the Unstable Cores. There will be an alternate solution to this problem in the future.

Thanks for playing and thanks for helping to improve the game, until next week!
- Kevin

p.s. I plan on going offline for a focused work vacation next week, so may not be responding to forum messages (or submitted saves) for a couple days.

It's Thanksgiving week here in the US, so if you celebrate, Happy Thanksgiving!

As I mentioned last week, there's been an influx of new players on Icarus and I encouraged players who find themselves stuck to submit their saves and post in the discussion forums so I can see examples of locations where players need additional guidance. I got quite a few submissions, and I would just encourage players to keep doing that. If you find yourself with no idea what to do at any point in the game, that could be a bug. Most of the submissions were known areas (a large percentage of players get stuck in the late game task of moving unstable cores to the Chariot so I plan on changing that). But there were some new examples: two players had missed Flingers in their exploration, which suggests that I should draw more attention to unused Flingers.

Also, a reminder that there is an opt-in "unstable" build available. At this point, I'd suggest that if you are about to start a fresh game, you might want to try that version as it fixes some minor QoL issues and improves some mission flow issues.

Finally, I've started work on a late game mission, so not too much to talk about on the development side, as I've mainly been focused on that and I try to avoid spoilers in these weekly updates.

Until next week!
- Kevin