Development Update - November 2025

Hello Backers,

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! November was a very productive month for us, with particular attention focused on expanding and improving the space combat and boarding gameplay loops, bringing party management and inventory systems online, and significant progress made on UI and level design.

User Interface

The Art team has made steady progress on our ground and space combat UI designs, and is ready to hand-off the concepts for 3D modelling. The panels are designed to look physically solid and rugged to give the player an immersive feeling of sitting behind the ship's console

Level Design

The San Antiago Spaceport on the habitable moon of Porto Palladio is nearing completion. Here, Captains can find several amenities and services to keep their ship and crew in optimal condition between missions. The port itself offers ship repair and brokering services. Captains can buy and sell their cargo at the Porto Palladio Commodity Exchange. Across the street, captains can find everything they need to equip their boarding parties at Discount Dan's Gun-Shaped Object Emporium. Buy two grenades and the third one is free! At Vacuum Jack's Alehouse, captains can find officers and crew looking for work, hear the latest rumors, connect with clients looking to hire them, or simply kick back and relax with one of Vacuum Jack's specialty drinks. There's nothing like a Plasma Blackout to help you forget the bounty on your head!

Space Combat

Space Combat saw many new features added that greatly improved the depth of ship-to-ship combat. Captains with the proper officers can now call upon a host of special orders, improving their effectiveness in battle. For example, a skilled navigator can have power diverted to thrusters, increasing maneuverability for a short time to avoid a collision or incoming torpedoes. A competent engineer can organize emergency repairs, restoring disabled engines or stabilizing critically damaged compartments.

Cannoneers also now have access to speciality ammunition types, like disruptor shot for disabling engines and thrusters, or canister shot for targeting an opponent’s crew directly. We’ve also added specialty weapons that can be fired from the bow weapon emplacements, such as torpedoes that deal massive damage and are useful for disrupting enemy formations.

Boarding

The amount of enemies encountered when boarding is now determined dynamically depending on the relative sizes of the competing crews. If the enemy crew outnumbers your own, you will have to fight through many more enemies while boarding, and vice versa. Crew members killed during boarding actions also count as crew casualties for the purpose of Space Combat. If the enemy is severely outnumbered and their crew depleted and demoralized, they will surrender rather than force the player into a fight that is a foregone conclusion.

After a successful boarding action, players can now decide what to do with their prize. Crew and cargo can be transferred between ships, officers can be assigned to command the captured ship, or the player can swap ships if the new one is better (or less shot-up than their current one)

Party Management

Many of the RPG Character management systems are now online, such as equipment management and leveling. Characters now earn experience towards leveling up, earning skill and attribute points which the player can distribute to build their characters and officers. Players can loot defeated enemies and search containers for items, and equip them to their characters in the inventory screen

December Roadmap

This month, we will be integrating the finalized character models from MLC into the game to replace our low-poly placeholders. We are also focusing effort on increasing the intelligence of our Space Combat AI behaviors to accommodate the new weapons, abilities, and ammunition types. Finally, we’re also building out our in-game economy by implementing the interfaces and functionality for buying and selling cargo, equipment, and ships, and hiring officers and crew.

Best Regards,

Vincent De Tommaso

Game Director

Full Changelog

Space Combat

• Ship Transfer Menu: Swap Ships - Players can swap their ship with one they’ve captured through a successful boarding action

• Ship Transfer Menu: Crew - Players can transfer crew between ships they control

• Ship Transfer Menu: Officers - Players can assign officers to run ships in their squadron

• Ship Transfer Menu: Cargo - Players can transfer cargo items between ships under their control

• Special Ammo & Ammo Switching - Players can order their crew to load specialty ammunition into their ship’s cannons, such as disruptor shot to disable a target’s engien systems, or canister shot, which specifically targets the enemy crew

• Emergency Repairs Ability - In the situation where engines are disabled or the structure of the ship is compromised, the player can issue an emergency repairs order if they or their chief engineer has the skill unlocked. The crew will focus efforts on restoring engine operation and stabilizing the structure of the ship, slowing healing hull and engine HP for the duration, with effectiveness determined by the Engineer’s attribute level.

• Update action bar if skill dependent actions are no longer available - The space combat action bar dynamically updates with the available abilities

• Quick Turn Ability - Skilled navigators can divert power to maneuvering thrusters, allowing the ship to turn faster for a short duration

• Brace for Impact Ability - The Captain orders the crew to brace for impact. Compartments are sealed and the crew strap in to crash harnesses, reducing the damage received from ramming attacks for a short time

• Transition to Boarding - loading screen is displayed when a boarding action is triggered

• Enemy Ships Surrender - enemies with no chance of success (ie heavily outnumbered and little crew remaining) will surrender, rather than forcing the player to complete a boarding action that is a forgone conclusion

• Space Combat Save State - A save state is created when entering boarding combat, so that space combat can continue once the boarding action is resolved

• Boarding: Spawn crew members for player in boarding - If the player does not have a full compliment of officers to accompany them in boarding, members of their crew will join them

• Boarding: Killed characters cause crew casualties - Crew members killed in boarding actions also count as crew casualties for the purpose of space combat

• Boarding: Relative crew sizes determine amount of enemies spawned - the amount of enemy groups encountered while boarding is determined by the relative sizes of the engaged crews

• Space Combat Maneuverability - ship maneuverability decreased across the board to make combat more challenging

• Bow Torpedoes - ships carrying torpedoes in their cargo hold can now launch them from their bow cannons. Torpedoes fly in a straight line and do massive damage to anything they impact

Party Management

• Implement Character Pool & Player Party - When initiating a boarding action or landing on a planet, players are now able to choose which officers to bring along with them to make up their party

• Party Inventory - Implemented the inventory system to store usable items carried by the player party

• Loot Bodies/Containers - players can now loot the bodies of defeated enemies or rummage through containers for treasure

• Character Equipment UI - Implemented a UI screen where players can outfit and equipe their characters from the items in their party inventory

• Ground Combat Officer Injury - The officer combat injury system is extended to planetside combat, not just boarding actions

• Character Persistence - the status of characters and their equipment persists between scenes

• Party Attributes - Officers in a player’s party contribute to a collective party attribute score, which is used for resolving skill checks the party performs, such as to disarm a bomb, intimidate an official, etc.

• Implement Leveling - characters accrue experience points and level up, granting attribute and skill points to distribute

• Character Screen - Added the UI screen where players can see a summary of their characters attributes and abilities and spend points earned from leveling up

General Improvements

• Refactor Scene Transitions - centralized scene transition logic to a single script for better performance and stability

• Unified Space Combat Ship Prefabs - simplified ship prefab pipeline to simplify game design work

• Music Managers Plays Next Track in Pause Menu - Background music continues to play while the game is paused

• Ship Data Inspector - added an easy way for game designers to reset or replace ships for testing and crafting encounters

• Set Main Camera Physics Raycaster Mask for Ground Scenes - improvement to click detection to ensure lootable containers can always be selected and doesn’t block navigation