Habitat News

Commanders - presenting Habitat v0.6! We know it’s been a while coming - here's what's available in the latest version:



NOTE: Many aspects of the game have changed. Not all of the new systems are present in the Tutorials. Read about the details below to familiarize yourself with the changes. NOTE: Saved game data file formats have changed from v0.5. Your previous save games are not guaranteed to work with v0.6. If you wish to remove or edit them, they are plaintext JSON files here:
PC: Users\\AppData\LocalLow\4gency\Habitat_EarlyAccess_\HabitatSaves
MAC: /Library/Caches/unity.4gency.Habitat (Early Access)/HabitatSaves
LINUX: Home/.config/unity3d/4gency/Habitat_EarlyAccess_/HabitatSaves

Three Levels - Earth, The Moon, and Mars

As a preview of the game’s multi-level campaign mode we’ve introduced three levels you can now jump among via Gateways. Each level has a different backdrop, size, hazards and specific space junk types. Each map also has a city that you can interact with.

Earth - the starting level, small size in order for Commanders to get familiarized to the environment. Light on hazards, but the space junk types are, in general, whatever the Union of Orbital Constructors could send your way on short notice!

The Moon - an industrial way station out of the local inner half of the system. Heavily populated with asteroids towed in for mining operations. Heavy scatterings of industrial equipment great for wreaking havoc.

Mars - something has gone wrong here. Nanomachines from terraforming operations have been running amok, spawning copies of famous relics and destroying any ships that approach. *Enter zone with extreme caution.*

As we go, we'll add more levels that you can jump between, and the final version of the game will feature each location prominently as part of a connected campaign. Get familiarized with each location early!

Elemental Damage System - Fire, Ice, Electricity and EMP

As part of branching out Habitat’s combat and crisis system, player and enemy habitats and their components can now take - and dish out - elemental damage of multiple kinds.

Fire - nuclear heat from stars, burning hydrazine, local fusion cores gone runaway.

• Does 10 damage per second to whatever it's on (more if it has a weakness to fire)
  
• Has 5% chance of spreading to another connected node every second
  
• Can be extinguished by freezing
  
• Causes fuel consumers to consume fuel 2x faster if on fire
  
• Can be extinguished by engineer repair
  
• Burns out if not fully lit, but does not go away once lit - has to be put out by engineers or freezing
  
• Chance of spreading to other nodes if colliding with them
  

Freezing - endothermic nanomachine reactions that draw away heat at a dangerous speed.

• Causes physical damage to be 2x more deadly to a frozen node
  
• Any booster or weapon that does Fire status effect is inoperative (the fuel freezes)
  
• Fuel producers affected by freezing produce no fuel while frozen
  
• Extinguishes fire
  
• Can be extinguished by fire
  
• Can be extinguished by engineer repair
  
• Goes away on its own eventually
  

Electrical Overload - high-voltage bleed of current causes systems to go haywire.

• Turns on activate-able nodes including turrets, booster rockets, and more
  
• Rotates turrets around automatically
  
• Electrocutes any engineer that tries to tether to the affected node (engineers won't auto-tether to these nodes, they know better)
  
• Any electrical consumer consumes 2x if electrified
  
• Can be extinguished by EMP
  
• Extinguishes EMP
  
• Goes away on its own eventually
  
• Chance of spreading to other nodes if colliding with them
  

Electro-Magnetic Pulse - all circuits burned out, leaving systems dead and vulnerable.

• Deactivates any node that it hits for a period of time. Can't use the node.
  
• Electrical producers produce nothing while affected by EMP
  
• Can be extinguished by Electricity
  
• Extinguishes Electricity effect
  
• Goes away on its own eventually
  

Look for the multi-colored nebulas as you explore; be careful about flying through them or sending in your engineers.

Some more notes on elemental damage:

• All nodes have resistance values to each type. Greater than 0% is shielding, causing effects to accrue slower and drain faster, less than 0% is weakness which causes effects to accrue faster and drain slower.
  
• Elements have opposites. Ice and Fire cancel each other out, and Electricity and EMP cancel each other out.
  
• You might notice a biohazard symbol in the interface suggesting a fifth element. The International Prosperity Coalition assures us there are no biohazards in orbit. Absolutely none. So the very fact there’s a biohazard symbol for a type of space plague or infection is completely irrelevant and ridiculous. Pay it no attention.
  
• Elemental nebulas aren’t the only way to take and give out damage. Some weapons deal elemental damage too, and as we build out the combo system non-elemental weapons can be upgraded to do elemental damage.
  
• Be careful about putting objects behind operating booster rockets. You may end up with explosive results!
  
• There’ll be more facets and functions to the elemental damage system as we go, including potential benefits to offset the costs. We want this system to really make a difference in combat and exploration!
  

Keeping it Snappy - Physics Tweaks!
We’ve been monitoring acceleration and speed values on your flying creations, Commander. We felt like giving you a boost.

• Engineers move and drag items faster
  
• Less drag and higher acceleration on habitats and booster rockets
  
• Stronger physics joint connections holding your habitat together
  
• Engineers may still die in the process of flying with your station, but they should no longer create an “immovable wall” that blocks you from moving if you hit them.
  

Remember, we are tracking features and taking feedback on our Habitat Roadmap powered by Trello. Check it out here:

https://trello.com/b/HBFLCdhi/habitat

We hope you enjoy the new features! Keep on spacing!

- The Team at 4gency

We’re still working on our next update, but I did want to share some of the details about what exactly we are working on for you folks!



It’s now time to go out further in space with brand new sectors for you to explore. You now have the Moon sector and the Mars sector for you to visit, explore, and gather resources and space junk. All sectors will now also have hazards, encounters, and interactable objects for you to check out.



Also new to this update will be status effects – such as fire, ice, electricity, and EMP. These status effects change the way you deal with items and the dangers of space. Is that piece of junk electric? Well how about hitting it with your cannon that has an EMP status on it! Each status has a counter and each status can make things act different! (T-Rex head breathing frost?) All of the junk in game now have status resistances too!



We’re also fixing small bugs and adding more polish to the overall quality of the game. We're hopeful we can finish this update soon and get it in your hands!



--4gency

We’re still working on our next update, but I did want to share some of the details about what exactly we are working on for you folks!



It’s now time to go out further in space with brand new sectors for you to explore. You now have the Moon sector and the Mars sector for you to visit, explore, and gather resources and space junk. All sectors will now also have hazards, encounters, and interactable objects for you to check out.



Also new to this update will be status effects – such as fire, ice, electricity, and EMP. These status effects change the way you deal with items and the dangers of space. Is that piece of junk electric? Well how about hitting it with your cannon that has an EMP status on it! Each status has a counter and each status can make things act different! (T-Rex head breathing frost?) All of the junk in game now have status resistances too!



We’re also fixing small bugs and adding more polish to the overall quality of the game. We're hopeful we can finish this update soon and get it in your hands!



--4gency

Attention Commanders:

With apologies for the radio silence over the holidays, we’re back and hitting the ground running on Habitat!

On Steam Early Access and at shows like GDC, PAX, and RTX, 2014 gave us the opportunity - with your feedback - to refine the vision of what Habitat will become as we push onward: a dynamic, physics-based space survival game where ingenuity and resourcefulness will lead you to victory.

There are things that are working well, and then there are some things that need improvement. Combine that with the list of features we aim to complete from our Trello board and you’ve got the formula for a very busy dev team this year!

We know we've still got some orbits to complete on development, so as we exit the deep freeze of winter I wanted to share with you the updated vision of Habitat, what and how we’re planning to deliver, and - maybe most important of all - what’s right around the corner for our February Early Access Update!


How Habitat Will Evolve

From its crazy notebook-sketch beginnings, Habitat has always been about creativity and resourcefulness under pressure, with a sea of opportunities in which to build and play.

But we want more than that. Habitat isn't just a sandbox, it’s a story. One of survival, one of beating the odds, one of creativity, guts and grit winning the day and saving humanity. It’s about exploring, growing, taking risks and facing down enemies to emerge victorious.

We plan to resolve some key challenges to build that story through gameplay and improve Habitat to become a truly epic experience. Here are the big themes we are going to be tackling over the next few months:

Put Survival Front and Center: Citizens, First Class!

Since v0.5, Habitat has had a basic conception of Citizens - the people you need to save with your Habitat - but they need to matter. Citizens will play a key role in growing your Habitat, unlocking new powers, and coming out on top in combat. It won’t be a cakewalk, though - citizens can be ejected into space, blown up, virus-infected and lots more, and in the heat of the moment you’ll have to make some tough calls to survive. Who do you rescue? What will it cost? This is why you’re the Commander.

Living Systems and Crisis: Status Effects

Speaking of tough calls, we want to give you the experience of habitats being truly affected by the world around them: fires onboard, freezing, EMP bursts, electrical surges, nano-machine infections; whether it’s from unique weapon and combo effects, environmental hazards, or chained disasters encountered during combat, managing crisis needs to mean more than just watching the health bar. Fires spread, electrical spikes can drive systems haywire, EMPs can shut down whole swaths of nodes. Having particular habitat nodes respond differently to these environmental effects (and modified through combos and the tech tree) means you’ll need to build carefully and plan contingencies as crisis hits. Of course - you can also use these effects against enemies...

A Constellation of Combos: A Much Deeper Properties System

One of the things we love to see is people discovering the Tactical Mode and tuning properties on their habitats as situations change. Not as obvious is the Combo system that grants special bonuses as objects are tied together. We want to put these two concepts together even more tightly and deliver you an amazing set of combo effects that you will discover as you play; unlocking special powers for your habitats, upgrades and tradeoffs you can activate to dynamically change how you play and deal with crisis. Attaching habitat pieces needs to yield unique rewards depending on structure and order, and we want them to truly matter.

Going on the Hunt: Common, Rare, and Ultra-Rare Items

If you’ve played Habitat for a while you know many of the items that are at your disposal. But with the status effects and combos above, we have the opportunity to seed the world with rare and ultra-rare variants with amazing powers, and give you the chance to go on the hunt to find (or steal) truly exceptional pieces to make your habitat into a juggernaut. We will be creating special variants of the junk items you know and love to increase the possibilities and give you even more quests.

A Chained World: Multiple Sectors

The Habitat game world is extensive, but you deserve more. More locations, more themes, more challenges, more space and more space junk! As we develop new sectors, you’ll be able to travel between them, taking on unique missions and exploring individual environments near Earth, the Moon, Mars...well, best not say too much yet. We don’t want to give everything away!

And Plenty More...

New mission types, environmental hazards, improved physics and flight systems, a tech tree, increased customization options...we’re staying busy this year, Commanders. You deserve a truly epic space survival adventure, and we’re committed to deliver it.

The Next Update

Look forward to the very next Habitat Early Access update this month!

We’ll be delivering the start of the Status Effects system, and a number of sectors you can travel between, as well as new enemy encounters, improved physics, plenty of bug fixes, and more that we’ll announce as we get closer.

We will also be reaching out on the Steam forums to get your opinions on feature ideas to further refine the vision for what Habitat will become; we are hungry for your feedback as we develop the game. Watch for us on the forums, don’t hesitate to give us your thoughts! We’re building Habitat for you, and we know you’ll love it.

Keep on spacing!

-Charles @ 4gency

Commanders - presenting Habitat v0.5! We’ve got a whole host of updates and new features for you, so read up for the latest!

New Features

NOTE: Many aspects of the game have changed. Not all of the new systems are present in the Tutorials. Read about the details below to familiarize yourself with the changes.
NOTE: Saved game data file formats have changed from v0.4. Your previous save games are not guaranteed to work with v0.5. If you wish to remove or edit them, they are plaintext JSON files here:
PC: Users\\AppData\LocalLow\4gency\Habitat_EarlyAccess_\HabitatSaves
MAC: /Library/Caches/unity.4gency.Habitat (Early Access)/HabitatSaves
LINUX: Home/.config/unity3d/4gency/Habitat_EarlyAccess_/HabitatSaves

Junk Cities - Mission and Marketplace Central
Perform missions and restock from three unique cities in Earth Orbit.

- There are three junk “cities” in the initial map: New Britannia, Corinth Station, and New Atlantic City (come for the prime rib, stay for the Space Boxing)
- Each city has unique items stocked in its Marketplaces for purchase. Wondering where the Ferris Wheel and Cruise Ships went? One of the cities has them now.
- Weapons need to be ordered from cities now, not the Delivery System buttons on the bottom. The only exception is the grappling hook for towing - you can always order this.
- All missions are now dispatched from the cities as well. Queue up as many as you want, claim rewards when you return.
- To interact with a city, approach it until a notification shows up on the Combat Log that you’re in range. Click the city to access the city interface.
- When hiring citizens, you must attach the Delivery Pod to your habitat to get the new citizens onboard. Don’t leave them behind!
- Note: Cities can not be (currently) towed, pushed, or destroyed. The IPC does not insure habitats that attempt any of these maneuvers with cities - watch out!

Citizens - the Everyday Inhabitants
This update introduces the first iteration: used for engineers and for staffing Command Nodes. Keep them safe!
- You start with 10 citizens on board. Every Engineer you create will use 1 citizen. Every Command Node you create will use 5 citizens.
- You can get more citizens from the three Junk Cities. If you need more engineers, get more citizens.
- You have a maximum number of cities you can sustain, which is based on the number of living space producers you own. Build more living space producers to increase the cap.
- If you lose living space producers such that your citizen count is over your max, they will die over time until the citizen count returns to the lower cap. Oh, the humanity!
- Citizens will become even more valuable in future updates - start learning how to take care of them. We’ve even given them names to make it easier.

The Energy Control Panel - your Tactical Command Console
Tune energy to Weapons, Boosters, and Producers to maximize what you need right now.

- Every Habitat in the habitat list on the right side now has an Energy Control Panel with Weapons (W), Boosters (B), Producers (P) and Available (A) energy categories.
- In this update you have a maximum of three bars of energy to distribute. The higher you boost a category, the more effective everything in that category will be:
— Boosted weapons will do more damage and fire faster
— Boosted boosters will grant more thrust (speed)
— Booster producers will grant more resources per second
- If you starve a category completely it will not work at all - weapons won’t fire if W is empty, boosters won’t work if B is empty, producers will produce 0 if P is empty.
- Click the bars for a category to change the amount committed.
- You MUST lower one category (putting at least one bar in the Available (A) column) before raising another.
- In future Habitat updates we’ll introduce ways to get more bars of energy to work with. Stay tuned!

Producer “Hats” - Customize and Optimize your Habitats
Many Habitat nodes now have upgradeable sub-pieces, which can produce resources and provide other benefits.

- Enter Tactical Mode (SPACEBAR) and notice red cubes on your habitat nodes. These are producer upgrade points.
- Click a red node, and choose a producer to install. Each producer gives different benefits and costs a different mixture of resources.
- New producers start at Level 1. They can be upgraded twice, up to Level 3. Click an existing producer in Tactical Mode to upgrade it for double effectiveness.
- Once a producer is added, it cannot be removed. It’s on there for good.

The Combat Log - The Final Word on Events
Interactive list of all key habitat events, always on, always available.

- The Combat Log is in the bottom-right hand side of the screen. As events happen in game, the log will display them.
- Click on any log entry to snap your camera to the object being referenced. Habitats, enemies, even engineers.

Combat Turret Rotation - No Tactical Mode Required!
You can rotate turreted weapons in real-time without needing to enter Tactical Mode.
- Hover over a turreted item that is part of your own habitat, and hold the LEFT or RIGHT arrow keys to turn it in real-time.
- You can still use Tactical Mode to rotate the turret with precision while time is stopped.

Safety System for Placing Habitat Nodes
Accidental overlaps when attaching nodes are a thing of the past.

- When attaching nodes, invalid placements will show up as a glowing RED node. If a placement is acceptable, the node will turn GREEN.
- If the node is glowing RED, it cannot be attached, either rotate the node with C and Z or choose a different node to attach to.

Named Habitats, Engineers, and Citizens
Habitat is getting personal; more names on the way!

- All new habitats will get assigned a name for easy identification.
- When engineers are produced or citizens brought aboard, they too will get names.
- In future versions we will support the ability to rename habitats, engineers and citizens, along with many more default names.
- Kickstarter backers, watch out soon for a survey so you can contribute your own engineer, habitat, and asteroid names!

New Space Junk
* Tree House - A terrestrial enclosure, with ceilings far too small to house adult creatures standing up. Researchers are perplexed.
* Rail Gun - The Montauk-V Mass Driver unit features a magnetic-pulse core and integrated rechambering unit for lethal engagement.
* Mine Layer - Clay Astrodynamics built a number of these Orbital Denial minelayer units, using a nano-constructor pattern from an old war.
* Gun Pod - A still-sturdy blasting weapon from a shattered orbital Dreadnought station, loaded with explosive rounds.
* Energy Artifact - An artifact of unknown origin and purpose. Scans indicate an energy field within, still only at fractional power.
* Solar Panels (Small, Med, Large) - Salvaged from the derelicts of earth's old space stations. Good for building and producing energy.
* Armor (Weak, Medium, Strong) - The use of junked materials to fashion defenses is commonplace in orbital combat.
* Earth Delivery Pod - Pods that can deliver citizens and other material from Earth to orbit, or - before the event - the other way around.
* Rocket Arm- A mechanized armature from JPC Corp's Anthro-ZERO series; this unit contains a very powerful booster rocket behind the wrist.

Watch the Roadmap!

Remember, we are tracking features and taking feedback on our Habitat Roadmap powered by Trello. Check it out here:

https://trello.com/b/HBFLCdhi/habitat

We hope you enjoy the new features! Keep on spacing - and remember to keep it weird!

- The Team at 4gency