Greetings and felicitations, Emperor! Today is the day of days.

What is Stars in Shadow? It’s an old-school turn-based interstellar empire building strategy game. Command of one of seven distinct civilizations as they rebuild from the ashes of a great war, explore the galaxy, colonize distant worlds, and rediscover lost technologies. But while you rebuild, never forget -- another great war is on the horizon.

Current State of the Game
Stars in Shadow currently has all major features in and working, but we still have a few months of work to do before the game is ready for final release. We don’t know of any glaring bugs in the Early Access build, but you will encounter some placeholder graphics (such as the rear views of some of the leaders in the Diplomacy screen) and a few rough UI’s (such as the options screens) which still need polish. The diplomacy and race morale systems are new, so you may encounter a few new bugs we haven’t squashed yet. Also, the Phidi and Ashdar Imperials are currently disabled as playable factions, though they can still be AI controlled factions.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =762515742

Development Plans
We expect to be in Early Access for a few months while we flesh out systems, add assets and put a polish on gameplay. During this period, we will try to maintain a clear roadmap of development progress, and pay close attention to player feedback. Here is a list of features planned to be added during Early Access, in the rough order in which we plan to tackle them:

• Strategic Zoom: two additional zoom levels for the strategic map, one in and one out, to allow you to better step back and and see the larger picture or lean forward and concentrate on local details.
  
• Galactic Council: adding graphical victory screens both for the existing conquest victory and for a new Galactic Council victory. You don't necessarily need to destroy everyone if you can befriend, coerce, or otherwise awe a sufficient percentage of the surviving sentients in the galaxy.
  
• Diplomacy Event System: in addition to expanding the number of diplomatic issues and the ways factions can respond to them, we are adding a new event system that will allow the AI factions to create issues outside of direct player behavior to help further drive interactions and the sense of a living galaxy. Events can take the familiar form of such things as natural disasters, or they can be action cues for an AI faction leader who may have simply gotten out of the wrong side of the bed that morning.
  
• New Player Tutorials: an expanded set of (optional) advisor notifications that will help ease new players through the mechanics of the game.
  
• Game Options: adding a variety of gameplay options, including graphical settings and more advanced map configuration settings.
  
• Enhanced Refit System: new functionality for the ship refit system to allow mass refit for cash (rather than production), and refit to class (in addition to per-ship refit).
  
• New Encounters: space monsters, Pirate asteroid bases, and new interactions with existing minor races (such as those pesky Gaiads).
  
• Tactical Combat Enhancements: including area of effect weapons and a rebalancing of fighter mechanics.
  
• Added Faction Mechanics: two additional playable factions (Phidi and Ashdar Imperials), and full implementation of the special features that distinguish one faction from another, including: Gremak distortion fields, Orthin shield capacitors, Ashdar stargates, Human salvage systems, Phidi resource trading and mercenary hiring.
  
• UI Refinements: usability improvements to the screens for the Ship Designer, Research, Tactical Combat, and miscellaneous status screens, along with improved informational tooltips throughout.
  
• Steam Integration: Steam Achievements, Trading Cards, and what not.

Post-Release Plans
We have many ambitious plans for features that won’t fit into the time constraints for the initial release of the game, and so if there is still interest, there is plenty of ground to cover with post-release content. Exactly what form this will take remains to be seen. Features we’d like to add include: new playable factions (Tinkers and Gardeners), Officers, Ship Promotions, Player Campaign Victory Conditions, Steamworks integration and Multiplayer support.

Good hunting! Fortune favors the brave!

Steam keys will be sent out starting Thursday to all preorders. The beta system will continue for the forseeable future for those who are still interested in testing dev builds (or for those who just don't like Steam). I'd like to thank you all on behalf of myself and Sven (and all the little Enfi) for your valuable testing and feedback, in the past and in time yet to come.

Already SiS sent Steam key to preorders?

I preordered in March 2015.

I am looking forward.

folexe wrote:Already SiS sent Steam key to preorders?

I preordered in March 2015.

I am looking forward.

I'm sending them out in reverse order, and a relatively slow pace. You were actually one of the very first preorder customers, so your's will be one of the last to be sent out. You should receive it soon though.

sven wrote:I'm sending them out in reverse order, and a relatively slow pace. You were actually one of the very first preorder customers, so your's will be one of the last to sent out. I am in the process of sending them though.

As of right now, everyone who preordered should have gotten an email with a Steam key. Anyone who's still missing a key should send me an email at ashdar.games@gmail.com..

Trying out now... feels a lot more complete on first glance.

Dunno if I asked this in the past but are there any plans for racial adjustments, like a positive or negative trait picking compared to static race kits?

rattle wrote:Dunno if I asked this in the past but are there any plans for racial adjustments, like a positive or negative trait picking compared to static race kits?

No current plans for the initial release. It seems to be a favorite feature, but it would take some work to balance; this feature in MOO2 was one of the most ridiculously unbalanced parts of the entire game (Omniscient and Creative, please!).

Arioch wrote:No current plans for the initial release. It seems to be a favorite feature, but it would take some work to balance; this feature in MOO2 was one of the most ridiculously unbalanced parts of the entire game (Omniscient and Creative, please!).

Pfffft... SubUniTol FTW. So rediculously broken. Or DemoVore.

It's actually more fun to have set races, I think - once you've found the sweet spots the "standard" races seem kinda lame.

SilasOfBorg wrote:Pfffft... SubUniTol FTW. So rediculously broken. Or DemoVore.

Repulsive/Feudal! Max bonus score and you actually get a ship production perk!

SilasOfBorg wrote:It's actually more fun to have set races, I think - once you've found the sweet spots the "standard" races seem kinda lame.

But, yes, this is kind of my current thinking as well. There's certainly more we could do with map and race customizations, but I think giving people *too* much power here can actually hurt the game.

Arioch wrote:(Omniscient and Creative, please!).

SilasOfBorg wrote:SubUniTol FTW. So rediculously broken. Or DemoVore.

sven wrote:Repulsive/Feudal! Max bonus score and you actually get a ship production perk!

I'll add Telephatic+Repulsive. We are Borg. Resistance is Futile.
But aren't this setups not prove that people have lots of fun with customizing? Even if its "broken"?
This is not competitive play, so whats the harm?
Put it under some Advanced button with a disclaimer that it may make your game way to easy or incredible hard.
You will find probably more people who want to gimp themself for extra challenge than cheese through

It might be something we add later as a post-release feature. In addition to the reasons mentioned above, we already have a very tough schedule to get all of the items in our EA roadmap done before the end of the year; there isn't a lot of time for new features.

Arioch wrote:It might be something we add later as a post-release feature. In addition to the reasons mentioned above, we already have a very tough schedule to get all of the items in our EA roadmap done before the end of the year; there isn't a lot of time for new features.

Oh I am not saying that you have to and project constraints are very valid reasons for not having it. Most people will understand that.
Just wanted to say that optional ridiculous imbalance is not necessarily a counter argument for everyone.
For some it's part of the fun/challenge after playing vanilla

So if it will be possible somewhere in the future, way cool. If not, still cool

SirDamnALot wrote:Just wanted to say that optional ridiculous imbalance is not necessarily a counter argument for everyone.

Well, it is sometimes. Having a "cheat" button can actually ruin the game for people; some folks can't resist the urge to cheat, even when it spoils the game for them.

I found UniTol, Lithovore, Aquatic and Subterranean combinations can be strong powerhouses in MoO2, even more so than Creative. Telepathy to blitz the small galaxy . Remember doing an aquatic playthrough essentially starting the game with access to 4-5 oceanic (Gaia) worlds having a major advantage.

What I meant was making the least significant bits dynamic without introducing extreme cases, for example the range of -2 to +2 production malus/bonus would be way overpowered compared to toning this down to -0.5 to 0.5 where the difference is much less significant. Some are better at shooting things, others get a ground combat bonus, some are lazy and so forth. Like dynamic variants. No stone eating aquatic omniscient catfish-bird unification, though it made MoO fun to play

Arioch wrote:

SirDamnALot wrote:Just wanted to say that optional ridiculous imbalance is not necessarily a counter argument for everyone.

Well, it is sometimes. Having a "cheat" button can actually ruin the game for people; some folks can't resist the urge to cheat, even when it spoils the game for them.

It could be solved by only allowing race customization at Normal difficulty and below. I would really like to see something because it's something we're used to, because basically all good space 4X game has that feature.