Dev Log: Combat & Customization (v1.1.0.0) BETA Update!

Hello explorers!

We know we thank you all A LOT for your thoughts and feedback about Halcyon 6, but we mean it. We’ve been reading and listening and here’s what we heard: you dig Halcyon 6 but could be soooo much cooler! After addressing your feedback on resource collection in v1.0.0.4 - Hello Satellite Drones! - our focus was on combat.

It’s here! The Combat and Customization BETA is here! Our main goals for this combat update:
- We wanted to address some of the player concerns regarding space combat, specifically the complaints about how repetitive and grindy it can get in the latter half of the game.
- Increase challenge and make combat more strategic and varied
- Reduce grind, reduce punishment for losses and mistakes
- Improve player agency, make player choices matter

To that end, we’re super stoked about the major changes you’ll see in v1.1.0.0:

• Ship Customization!

  You can now customize Terran starships, completely changing their power load outs to create your own unique fleet compositions

• New Officer Cloning Chamber!

  Clone your dead Officers and bring them back, almost as good as when they died, with the help of Crew “volunteers”

• Colony Facility Rebuilding!

  You can now rebuild ruined colony facilities from the View Sector screen

You can find the full v1.1.0.0 patch notes here.

Wanna try it? Wanna try it NOW!? YOU TOTALLY CAN. The Combat and Customization update is available now as a BETA update.

Starting today, we're introducing our Playing With Fire BETA updates. Different than a regular ready-for-prime-time updates, these Playing With Fire updates are experimental builds designed to showcase new content that we're working on and gather feedback from our players.

Choosing to download and test drive a Playing With Fire version of Halcyon 6 is completely optional and, in the interest of full disclosure, these development versions may have bugs or some unfinished features. But, it's a cool chance to provide your feedback to us before development is finalized. Tell us everything: What's overpowered? What the hell did that thing just do? What's confusing? What is amazing and should never, ever change?

If you'd rather just play the game in its finished state, awesome. You don't need to do anything! You'll still see Halcyon 6's regular updates and patch notes.

However, if you want to switch to the Playing With Fire version, do this:

1. Restart your Steam client, go to the Library and right click on Halcyon 6
2. From the context menu, select Properties
3. Open the BETAS tab, and from the dropdown select “beta - Playing With Fire”
4. You should see Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander start updating right away!

Once you're done Playing With Fire, you can repeat these steps and select NONE, which will revert your version of Halcyon 6 back to the live, stable store version.

Important notes/fine print about Playing With Fire:

• We've created a new sub forum for these BETA builds.
• Saves are not (really) transferrable between the live version and the BETA version.
• While you can use a live version save to start a BETA game, you can't transfer that BETA save back to the live version.
• Once a Playing With Fire version leaves BETA and hits public release, you STILL can't transfer that BETA save back to the live version.
• As noted, it's a development version of the game: you might find bugs and you may encounter unfinished features. This is theoretically part of the fun. If that doesn't sound fun to you, perhaps reconsider the whole Playing With Fire thing.

As always, we love hearing what you folks think. Don't be shy about sharing your thoughts and feedback. See you in space!