Glad to see it has improved so much since release =D Great work with Lesbird continuing developing and improving it. There are two kind of game projects nowadays, games that are done and maintained as part of a job, a cold, commercial product managed like some kind of Agile project, and games that are crafted with care and maintained as a labor of love. (And there are some projects that fall in between.) You can see the differences when playing these two. Happy to see this game belongs to the second category. Looking forward to more exciting future updates. Any future plans of releasing a PC version as well maybe with maxed out graphics settings on itch.io or something? I know that opens doors to potential risks such as hackers and piracy but just wondering.
yes this is definitely a labor of love… I don’t really have plans for a PC version but anything is possible. I’ll take a look at itch.io and see what publishing there would require. Les
I use the gamesir g4pro. Sensitivity is better for me. Can’t say about that green screen glitch but I haven’t had it since. I almost want the online status to be the default. Once I saw under the button another user on. Love this recent update. Now I can bump along the planet’s surface. I’m glad you added the left and right views, more immersive. It would help more with locating stars and beacons if the hud elements remained (green square for beacons etc). A controller binding would be nice though. My game crashes a lot less often now! Previously, it would always crash after my first visit to a system after playing some time. Maybe the frame rate is slightly better too? I could be wrong. Still cooks my iphone XS but I’ll make the sacrifice. How does saving work? I crashed last night after a long play session and when I started today, I was in front of an unclaimed star base (which I would never leave unclaimed). Did you get rid of the overhead turn-based battles? I noticed the torpedo restock option is gone from starbases so I guess I know the answer. Do you plan to bring them back or some kind of battle mechanic? I still can’t figure how to make that hologram (with the Y and Z axis?) useful and I could use the guidance when I’m trying to find that white dot star on the local map and I’m spinning around in all directions and just can’t find it. I had a glitch with upgrading my speed. I finally saved up 50k for the lvl 3 upgrade. Right after I paid, the lvl went back down to 1 with the cost showing 20k. I’m holding off from trying again just in case. Don’t wanna waste my precious space bucks. (Btw kinda nice being able to upload and sell to a base you own and then claim the profits ). I didn’t notice this game is indeed premium. Shame I got it when it was free. I tried to find out if I could ‘un-own’ the game so I could buy it but to no avail. If someone thinks they’d like this cool game and would like to try it, shoot me a dm. I’m feeling generous. Edit: Unfortunately, must be from the Canadian AppStore.
Just pushed an update yesterday to bind the left/right view to the controller. The game should save anytime a major action occurs such as a purchase or star/planet claim. Also anytime the ship comes to a complete stop it will save your progress. I'll double check this. Weird about the speed upgrade glitch. I'll check into that. The overhead battles were eliminated until I can find a better way to do it. I've been thinking a lot about battles so will try to come up with something soon. And yes, glad you discovered that upgrading your ship at your own starbase rewards you with profits, so it's kind of like an ownership discount. Les
V3.0 update coming soon The big add is a new PLANETARY WARS system. Here's how it works. You can now colonize any planet. Each planet has a random number of resources available (from 1 million to 1 billion). When you colonize a planet you choose how you want to distribute the resources. They can go to planet defense or fleet production or anywhere between. Additionally you can choose how much you want to tax the population. Higher taxes produce more credits but slower fleet productions and slower population growth. Lower taxes do the opposite, faster fleet production and faster population growth. Habitable planets produce better results than non-habitable. You can, for example, commit a few planets to 100% fleet production but no planetary defenses if you want which will grow your fleet faster. See screenshots of colonization settings. If a planet has already been colonized by another player then you can INVADE the planet with your fleet and try to defeat the planetary defenses. If successful you win the planet and can now colonize it. You may choose to invade if the planet is rich in resources as those resources can now be applied to your fleet. How do you find planets and plan your attacks? Well, a new feature has been added to the STAR LIBRARY where you can view ALL planets and sort them by resources, population, etc. Using this you can locate planets to colonize (highest resources) or to invade. The more planets you colonize the faster your fleet production is and the more credits you can collect. Three new leaderboards added to show who has the biggest empire. Should go live sometime this week. Just a bit more tweaking and tuning to do before pushing it. Les
This upcoming update seems very intriguing, especially since you can already ‘claim’ stars and planets. Does star ownership/planet discovery play a role in the colonization mechanic? Is the fleet quantity per planet or a total amount? Initially when I first started playing, I just tried to fill some holes in the starting quadrant. Lately I shifted my focus to snapping up all starbases I came across while flying a wide circle to spread out my coverage to maximize potential player customers. Now I’m venturing out from the starting middle quadrant to the less populated NE one. Maybe there can be time limited events around the galaxy to encourage players to venture to unfamiliar quadrants? This had me thinking, there seems to be some ownership saturation starting in the middle quadrant. I was late to this party so I missed the chance to claim the highest value starbases (IMO) which are in the centre where new players start and seems to have the most activity. I know we’re only at 1.3% stars discovered, but will there ever be claiming limitations/expirations in the future? Finally, a couple quick Qs: In star library, what does cpp and cpm stand for? What happens when fuel runs out? Curious what this meant in the patch notes: “objects now use floating origin system”? How does multiplayer work? Once I saw someone else was online but had no idea where they were. Does it show people online only if they’re in the same quadrant?
Star/planet ownership does not play a mechanic. You can colonize any planet whether you own it or not and there's no advantage colonizing a planet you own, however, habitable planets do produce fleets and population growth quicker as they do not need habitats to support life. Fleets: they are produced on a per planet level but the fleet that you invade with is a combination of all planet fleets. The more planets you colonize the faster your fleet grows because more planets contribute. As it currently works there is no expiration on star/planet discoveries. Once you claim a star/planet it is yours forever. And yes, the majority of discoveries are definitely in the center quadrant where new players start. Earlier I did have an Easter egg star system (000-000042) and I advertised a hint to see who could find it first. A few people ventured out to try and find it and finally someone did. I hope to re-implement this feature with dynamic Easter egg stars - perhaps one per month, or something like that, to get people to venture out from the center. It's on the roadmap as soon as I figure a good way to automate it. The Galaxy Map is interesting to look at (see attached image). Star Library: cpp = credits per planet, cpm = credits per mineral When you run out of fuel you can get rescued. An imaginary supply ship comes to you and refuels your ship for a credit fee. You never really die or have to start over. If you don't have the credits you go into debt. Patch notes: "objects now use floating origin system" is a technical behind the scenes method for positioning objects that have vast distances. Floating point numbers have a limited range before they lose precision so using a floating origin system is a way around it. You may have noticed in an earlier version that when you ventured out to a planet that was hundreds of millions of kilometers from the center that there was some jitter when flying down to the surface. Floating origin system fixes these issues. Multiplayer: all players that choose to go online will share their position. You can see any ship that is online - there is a HUD icon that tracks each ship and HUD arrows that direct you their locations. You can even explore planets together. I haven't really advertised multiplayer support yet - it's there if you turn it on and discover it - as it is still in an experimental state. Once I'm happy with how it works I may make it the default mode but for now it's completely optional, and I know from V1 that some people preferred to not go online and just explore in single player mode. V3 has been submitted to the App Store - just waiting for Apple approval now. Les
Hi - a couple of questions - I see in the Star Library how to find Stars with Starbases that have the most profits, is there a way to see the same but with planets? Also, I saw that one of the planets I had colonised was captured by someone else, how can I find that Star/planet? Thanks in advance.
Hi, so the Star Library is really powerful for finding stars/planets. Here's how it works. First, when you launch Super Starship it calls out to the server and downloads the entire star/planet database. Once that is done (doesn't take long) you have the entire discovered universe on your device. When you first open Star Library you'll see your discovered stars called "MY STAR LIBRARY". To find your starbases and sort by profits tap the "STARBASES" button at the top then select to "SORT BY PROFITS" by tapping on the "PROFITS" button. You should now see a list of your starbases sorted by profits from high to low. Just tap on any of the boxes in the list to set a course to the star. Close the library and rotate your ship around until you see the green arrow directing you to the star. That much you already know about. Now to see the planets just tap the button that says "ALL STARS" and it'll cycle through a series of options: ALL DISCOVERED STARS, ALL PLANETS then back to MY STARS. When you see the title that says "ALL PLANETS" tap the "MY PLANETS" button then tap "COLONIZED" then sort by profits. You should now see a list of your planets sorted high to low by profits. If you want to see all planet profits then unselect "MY PLANETS" and it'll list all planets high to low by profits. Tap on any planet in the list to set a course to that star system. Unfortunately no, there's no way to find a planet that has be overtaken, however, you can look through your colonized planets and see if someone else has colonized them. Their name will show up in red if you own the planet and it is colonized by someone else. At that point you can plot a course by clicking on the planet and go take it back. Hope this helps. Les
Thanks Les, that's really helpful, it answered all my questions and has opened up a new dimension of the game for me.
