Dust Fleet News

Hi everyone! I bet you’re wondering - what’s new with Dust Fleet?

It's been another big month - here's what we've been working on!

The Prelude Campaign

We decided to split the game's tutorial into it's own mini-campaign, called "Prelude" which teaches players how to play and then sets them loose to complete the campaign themselves. This served as a really good shakedown cruise. Starting with building the campaign in the game's editors, and every step on the way to being able to play it all the way through, everything has been put through it's paces. It's been incredible to see all the parts of the game working together.



This is Dust Fleet's first start-to-finish fully-playable campaign, and all the work we've done on the game's editors really paid off. Those same editors will be included in the final game so anyone can use the tools we've used to make their own campaigns and missions and share them with other players. I can't wait to see what you come up with when the game is released!

New Turrets

Three new turrets have been added to expand your tactical possibilities: a railgun for long-range sniping, a micronuke for area-of-effect damage and a rapid-fire missile launcher for overwhelming anti-missile defences.

Here's the rapid-fire missile launcher in action.


And a look at the micronuke detonating.


The Raider Light Cruiser
And there's also a new ship created for the prelude campaign. This is the raider light cruiser, conceived when raiders realised that the cheapest way to build their fleet would be to build a load of cargo haulers and refit them for combat. They're old, but sturdy and enough of a match for the UEN's lighter ships.

There's plenty more to talk about, so be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our Discord to get future updates.

Hi everyone! I bet you’re wondering - what’s new with Dust Fleet?

We’d like to update you on what we’re working on and what better way to do that than showing you what’s new! Let’s dive right in.

[h3]Stations[/h3]

These huge hulks of metal house civilians, shipbuilders and scientists. All four of them are now rolled out in the game, so let's talk about what they can do.

• The mining station, when combined with the right modules, generates resources to fund your shipbuilding.
  
• The science station can be used for generating research points or increasing the range of what you can see on the starmap.
  
• The manufacturing station can build bigger ships like cruisers and carriers.
  
• The combat station can fit tactical modules, such as bomber strike, and launch fighters if it's present in a battle.
  

Each station has different amounts of hull and weaponry, and can fit different types of modules. There are a dozen station modules, which we'll take a look at in a future update.



[h3]Starmap Improvements[/h3]

The starmap is the heart of your campaign in Dust Fleet. From there, you can control fleet movements, ship manufacturing and the deployment of new stations. As we rolled out new station types, we took a look at how to make the starmap itself a smoother and more intuitive experience, leading to a ton of work under the hood.

• The visible area of the starmap is now simplified - each ship and station has a radius they can see.
  
• Advancing the turn is now quicker and smoother. An autosave file is also quietly compiled, generated and saved while the player starts their next turn. We worked super hard on optimising this so the player's wait between turns is as short as possible.
  
• The starmap is now a buttery smooth experience - many more items now animated, and lots of annoying little stutters have been smoothed away. Here's a little example of the new animation we've got going on.
  

Finally…

Psst - here's a sneak preview of one of the ship-mounted weapons that we're working on!



That's all for this update! Don’t forget to wishlist us on Steam!

There's plenty more to talk about, so be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our Discord to get future updates.

What’s new with Dust Fleet? So many things!

We’ve been hard at work and we’d like to update you on what we’re working on, so let’s dive right in.

[h3]First off, we’ve been making some AI Improvements![/h3]
The AI system has been updated to give them a little more life in battle. Previously, when you arrive for a battle, they've all been clustered around the center of the map. Now, a new "point of interest" system helps the AI choose things it wants to protect.

Now when you arrive, you're greeted by an AI that feels a bit more like it's been expecting you (like a Bond villain). The wormhole you arrive through will have some ships waiting nearby. If there's a station, the AI will have clustered a few ships there as well. If there's an asteroid field, they'll hang out there too, knowing you might want to mine it.

The cherry on top is the AI's use of mining ships. You'll see enemy mining ships working away when you arrive, shipping ore to and from the station. This all helps the AI feel more purposeful and alive.

[h3]We’ve also added a Notification Camera![/h3]
To help you keep on top of battles, you get a stream of notifications in the corner of the screen that you can click to jump to the action. But sometimes, that's not enough.

Let's say you use one of your station's modules to call in a bomber strike through a nearby wormhole. You just want to choose a target and know that the bombers are taking care of it without having to go check.

Enter the Notification Camera! Some types of notification now pop-up a picture-in-picture display showing you what's happening. Here's an example with the Bomber Strike ability.



That's all for this update! Don’t forget to wishlist us on Steam!

There's plenty more to talk about, so be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our Discord to get future updates.

Hello everyone! I'm proud to announce that Dust Fleet is now being published by Freedom Games ( https://freedom.gg ). For those of you who may not know, a game publisher can take care of a lot of the business and marketing side of releasing a game. That includes managing the store pages, marketing and advertising the game, helping showcase the game at both digital and live events, PR, and a lot more. Really it lets me totally focus on working to make the game the best it can be, and provides me with the resources to do so.

Thank you all for your support so far throughout development! I couldn’t have done it without all of your support and encouragement. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for more behind the scenes look at development and join our community on Discord.

I'm very excited to announce that Dust Fleet is taking part in Next Fest! A playable demo will be available, so you can try out the game for yourself.

Not only that, there will be developer livestreams featuring playthroughs of the game and demonstrations and walkthroughs of the campaign tools that'll be available in the final release for creating and sharing your own missions.

Join me from June 16th to June 22nd to find out more about Dust Fleet.