Hello everyone,
This is our third big update of Vanguard Galaxy's early access period. Introducing crew & the boarding mechanic, Battlecruisers / Carriers and a lot of different changes. We'll highlight some of the bigger features of this update below and we'll give you a brief look into future development.
If you are still on the beta branch, feel free to stay there, this update, and upcoming fixes, will come to public and beta. We want to thank all of you that have been checking out the new features on the beta branch, you're input is greatly appreciated and very valuable to us!
Ships now have a crew size, with a few types available that each give their own bonus. Officers can be levelled further and there are items that can be found to upgrade them.
A new Leadership skill tree is added to allow you to improve them in the areas you find most interesting.
In order to further utilize the new crew you can now board enemy ships. Make use of the newly added EMP stat of weapons to increase the chances of the enemy ship to become boardable rather then destroyed outright. A minigame has been added that allows you to take control of the enemy ship.
Once successfully captured the ship will fly off and is added to your Dry Dock, here you can choose to break the captured ship down into materials, sell it or spend materials and credits to restore it and add it to your fleet.
Boarding can not only be done to ships, but also to certain installations that are spread throughout the galaxy. Find loot and valuable items, but be aware of the dangers to your crew while investigating.
With this update the Battlecruiser and Carriers (size 6) have been added. The carriers allow you to take the starter ships (size 1) and deploy these as fighters. You can fully configure their loadout to suit your needs. Be it combat, salvage or mining.
Several new turrets have been added, such as beam weapons, radiation cannon and the microcell launcher.
With this update we introduce a new mechanic to spawn bosses which will drop unique aspects. You can craft signal traps to lure the bosses to your system and defeat them to get their loot. This mechanic will be improved upon in future updates.
Ships in the world will now spawn with a ship level improving their capabilities. Of course the player can now upgrade their favourite ships as well to become ever more powerful.
A new type of inventory has been introduced that can hold all data items. Jumpgate passes, mining and salvage claims and blueprints have been converted to data. This means these will always be accessible from the data tab.
In the case of the jumpgate passes this also means these no longer need to be dropped at a jumpgate, but the jumpgate will scan your ship to check for the jumpgate pass.
New loot items have been added to that will be present in the data inventory as well and we will expand on those in the future.
- Vicerak-Class Size 6 Salvaging Barge (Utixon Corp)- Loxagar-Class Size 6 Salvaging Barge (Utixon Corp)- Assayer-Class Size 6 Mining Barge (Mindus Holdings) - Manglor-Class Size 6 Battlecruiser (Marade Wharf) - Monsoon-Class Size 6 Battlecruiser (Akai Armory)- Absolution-Class Size 6 Battlecruiser (Spirit Design)
- Decrodan-Class Size 6 Battlecruiser (Varlis Construct)
- Redemption-Class Size 6 Battlecruiser (Spirit Design)
- Aquila Nidus-Class Size 6 Battlecruiser (Stellar Industries)
- Aquila-Class Size 6 Battlecruiser (Stellar Industries)
- Bogatyr-Class Size 6 Battlecruiser (RedStar Forge)
The story has been wrapped up for the Conquest area, stay tuned for its continuation.
A new mechanic to increase the difficulty of the game for better rewards called Escalation
Resonant Boosters are introduced that replace the current boosters. Unlock more powerful upgrades over time by using them in action
Space ships will proactively try to avoid collisions
Blueprints for exotic equipment will now be level dependant, extract them from higher level equipment or find them in the galaxy to increase your crafting level with them
Several calculations have been reworked to be more logical and predictable.
Drone damage calculations have been changed to make sure each drone contributes its own damage properly.
The penalty for having multiple turrets on a ship has been removed, the HP of targets has been increased to compensate.
Several optimizations have been implemented to reduce save game size. Also the real time calculations for (temporary) increased stats have been refactored to reduce their impact on performance
The very next focus for Vanguard Galaxy will be the removal of the artificial level limit for content. For that to happen another expansion of the galaxy will be added. After that we will focus also on Empire and Fleet mechanics. This will result in more features for industrial and economic gameplay and the possibility to eventually start your own faction.
Again, we want to thank everyone for their contribution to the game. Have fun with the new content and as always, let us know if you have feedback.
You can best reach out to us on Discord and we will of course keep an eye on the Steam forums.
Join the Vanguard Galaxy Discord
Cheers,
Bat Roost Games
If you want to dig down into all the patch notes that have led to this update since the previous live version 0.8.0.15, you can find them here: