New Stars News

A short development log explaining the recent update on reworked combat system mechanics. Forever gone are the days of simply having damage and a slightly different costs for each turret.

[h2]New Turret Stats[/h2]

[h4]Range[/h4]
Only when a turret/ship is within range to an enemy, it shoots.

[h4]Fire Rate[/h4]
How often a ship fires. A fire rate of 0.10 means the turret is fired shots every 10 simulated days.

[h3]Turret Types[/h3]

1. Gatlings - Rapid fire at a short range, with low damage.
   
2. Lasers - Constant damage at a short range, with a constant fire rate.
   
3. Ballistic - Ballistic turrets have medium range and moderate fire rate.
   
4. Snipers - Railguns have a long range, low fire rate but deal the most damage per hit.
   

[h4]Turret Types[/h4]
Animated combat is supposed to animate what the combat calculations behind the scenes, and turrets now fire when required instead of randomly.

[h4]Turret Limitations[/h4]
Larger ships have more turret slots and HP. Smaller ships have less HP and turret slots but can still handle heavy turrets. Medium and heavy turrets can be unlocked with technologies.

[h3]Ideas for Presets[/h3]

[h4]Gunboat: Swarmers[/h4]
Agile gunboats equipped with gatling guns for rapid, close-range assaults.
+ Quick to strike with significant initial damage.
- Vulnerable to long-range attacks; best used in swarms for effectiveness.



[h4]Heavy Cruiser: Snipers[/h4]
Robust cruisers with railguns, designed to make the first impactful hits.
+ Delivers powerful initial blows with railguns.
- Slower follow-up attacks due to the low fire rate; can be outmanoeuvred by swarmers.



There are 5 unlockable ship types and 13 distinct turrets, offering a multitude of strategic combinations.

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[h2]Happy New Years![/h2]
I decided to improve existing systems, based on feedback, rather than plainly fixing bugs, to conclude Part 1 of the 'Meta' update and 2023.

Thank you to all those who have supported development this year and provided valuable suggestions.

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[h3]Stay tuned for more updates...[/h3]
Feel free to comment your suggestions below.

🪵 View the Changelog: newstarsgame.com/changelog.
🕹️ Playtest New Stars: adamjr.xyz.
⭐ Wishlist New Stars to support development.

This page is intended to be a development preview, which may not reflect the final state of the game.

Bug fixes, especially with the main menu.

[h2]Fixed[/h2]

• Fix: Skyboxes -> Appear lower quality on build due to unnecessary mip maps.
  
• Fix: Main menu -> Origin selection -> Origin description text is not legible enough, requiring cybernetic eyesight to read.
  
• Fix: Main menu -> Selecting empire icon and hovering over other input breaks preview icon.
  
• Fix: Pause menu -> Game settings were not applied correctly.
  
• Fix: Battle -> Retreat -> Does not work with new combat system.
  
• Fix: Start game -> Does not start with gunboat.
  
• Fix: Main menu -> Play -> Huge memory usage on 4K resolutions.
  
• Fix: Open galaxy map -> Borders initially do not have correct colours.
  
• Fix: Fleet -> Starter ships don't match preset ships.
  

[h2]Removed[/h2]

• Remove: Main menu -> Ubiquity inspector -> Replaced 3D planet models with images of planet surface as it caused memory issues.
  

View changes from previous updates: newstarsgame.com/changelog.

Backend simulated combat improvements, and animated combat fixes.

[h2]Added[/h2]

• Add: Solace ship builder -> Evasion stat into stats UI.
  
• Add: Combat system -> Use Solace turrets to deal damage in the backend.
  
• Add: Combat -> Min and max turret ranges.
  
• Add: Combat -> Rate of fire per turret.
  
• Add: Solace ship builder -> Rate of fire to turret stats.
  
• Add: Pause menu -> Open credits button.
  

[h2]Improved[/h2]

• Improve: Ship Builder -> Turrets -> Should have stats on screen, instead of tooltip [for clarity].
  

[h2]Balanced[/h2]

• Balance: Colonist -> Reduced from 75 to 45 power cost on standard speed.
  

[h2]Fixed[/h2]

• Fix: Ship builder -> Background has tiling artifacts on ultrawide displays.
  
• Fix: Solace ship builder -> When fleet types are unlocked, filter type UI does not update after opening the ship builder.
  
• Fix: Pause menu -> 'New stars satellites' logo sometimes appeared duplicated.
  
• Fix: Credits -> Credits username appears in broken font.
  
• Fix: Solace ship builder -> Panels remain open when opened.
  
• Fix: Starbase panel -> Upgrade button tooltip showed technological advance required when can upgrade starbase.
  
• Fix: Pause menu -> Game settings info is not fully visible on ultrawide aspect ratio.
  

[h2]How Turret Ranges Currently Work[/h2]

• When combat is being observed, accurate turret ranges are used from the animated ship position, otherwise if a star system is not open, turret range is based on the center of the fleet.
  
• This is because ship positions are not known by the server, only the client, as simulating positions on the server would be more difficult and require more CPU calls.
  

View changes from previous updates: newstarsgame.com/changelog.

Rebranding of main menu back to the original, and fixing of remaining known saving system bugs.

[h2]Changed[/h2]

• Changed: Replaced November 2023 3D main menu background with July 2022 parallax background.
  

[h2]Fixed[/h2]

• Fix: Load save -> From in-game -> Empire borders don't respawn.
  
• Fix: Load save -> In-game -> Does not restore icons, etc.
  

View changes from previous updates: newstarsgame.com/changelog.

The early-access launch hasn't gone smoothly so far for a few reasons.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/2231270/announcements/detail/3871469509823929286

[h2]Miscommunication: State of the Game[/h2]
In the last post, I didn't make it clear enough that the game only had the bare minimum early-access standard, but used overly-technical terms and didn't go into enough details.

The original post draft was a lot more pessimistic. Here is an example of notes I had for the release post:
- "the game is absolutely not finished"
- "unfortunately, the game has a long way to go to be stable and polished"

This was written when it was taking many extra days to fix and balance each playmode.

I will say there were many issues after release that I have never seen in development such as device-specific GPU memory leaks, and device-specific memory leaks that are still not fully resolved. These require lots of time to fix, and delay features being added.

I personally think the game is often fun to play, at least when things don't break, although I was not 100% happy with the state of the game on release but the release date was decided for 2023. I will say the state of the game is better now than it ever has been.

[h2]Miscommunication: Intended Scope/Scale of the Game[/h2]
I didn't define a roadmap, because I don't know what the game will look like next year except from a lot more stable, which may have caused the current expectations not matching the scope of the game.

[h2]December 2022: When Times Were Simple[/h2]
I first intended to release in December 2022, or January 2023. However, I decided to expand every aspect of the game, for better or worse, before releasing.

This is what the game looked like over a year ago:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxy9r4FKq2w

[h2]2023: Overdevelopment[/h2]
When I decided to improve the game at the start of the year, by adding animated star systems, animated combat for the purpose of depth, decoration, and polishing, although it increased the scope of the game. I think that may have also disproportionately increased expectations and did double development time as such.

[h2]Future Roadmap[/h2]
There will be no hardcore development over a prolonged period of time. It won't happen because I have already done that for a year and it is unsustainable, and possibly a mistake in the first place.

I plan to develop the game until it is a lot more stable/polished, and then we will see from there what to do, with improvements based on player suggestions, balancing, and many bug fixes. The 'shallow' mechanics such as combat could definitely be improved upon, if that is what players desire the most. However, time and resources may be limited so features will have to be prioritized.

[h2]Some things are overdeveloped, some things are underdeveloped[/h2]
So even if workshop support, 1000 game events, localization, and multiplayer would hypothetically be added, the game would be still underdeveloped, as the other things players care about are ignored. I think this will change feature priorities.

My idea for the scope of the game is similar to Northgard and Civilization inspired mechanics, with Stellaris inspired visuals, without the overly-complicated mechanics. I think that has been achieved, although the foundation is not set in stone, and content and polishing can still be added over time such as game events, turrets, origins etc.

[h2]What Went Well[/h2]
Since I didn't start this project primarily for money, it is good that the release caused less attention than expected, but future development would have been harmed more if that happened, and focus would have been diverted away from bug fixes and improving the game.

[h2]2023 Plan[/h2]
There has been 6 patch updates with many bug fixes since early-access release, and there is more to come. I may consider at least one or two features/improvement this year, but we will see.

[h2]New Pricing[/h2]
As a result of all this I plan to reduce the price of the base game further by from $20.99 to $19.99.

This will be effective after 26th of December, after the 10% launch discount has ended, so the players who buy before the discounted price still get a better deal.

[hr][/hr]
[h3]Stay tuned for more updates...[/h3]
Feel free to comment your suggestions below.

🎮 Playtest New Stars: discord.io/adamjr.
⭐ Wishlist New Stars to support development.

This page is intended to be a development preview, which may not reflect the final state of the game.

Credits:
- Star satellites icon by Lorc under CC BY 3.0