Will this game receive any more, major additions/changes?

#1

I'm just wondering if I should be waiting. Tongue Given that there is another game in the making, I assume this game is pretty much finished? Honestly, game still needs a lot of polish. :v
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#2

We are indeed working on a new game, so can't promise any updates to Harbinger. We will need to change the name of the game soon, because otherwise we will be in trouble. So "Battlestation" will become something else here in the near future.

A game is never really finished but we have to move on from Harbinger or otherwise we won't have bread on the table when we come home from work every day. We are happy with how it turned out and we did our best to make it great.
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#3

It sure did - I enjoyed it for quite a bit, for some time. Well, thanks for the answer - best of luck with the next game!
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#4

This has certainly been a very enjoyable game! Though as Perq said it needs a bit of a polish to reach its full potential. But as it goes bread on the table is a nice thing to have.

The information the UI offers, say when selecting ships for the fleet etc., is a little partial. And how awesome would it be to be able to battle PvP? Challenges and time lines are all of course real things and all things considered I for one am more than pleased with the end result.

As for the new game, Replicabase.. looking good Smile
I also enjoy games like EveOnline and FTL, and your games seem to be excellent additions to the genre.. Or should it be to the selection of genres. Your games seem to have a good potential for a nice own ecosystem. Could this be a thought for the future development with Replicabase? Or Harbinger still?

All in all, oh yeah! Good games Cool
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#5

Thanks! Anything is possible in the future Smile
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#6

Hmmm, it just came to my mind - if you are not planning on making any more additions (now), have you considered giving some basic modding support? Guess there would be some people, that could (eagerly) make some great changes/additions, and you could even maybe add some (or all) those to the official "expansion pack", giving of course the original author some credits/shares/whatnot (whatever you'd find practical/fair).
That way you'd still continue developing your new game, while the old one (which still has great potential to unravel) could grow on its own, and eventually you'd profit from it anyways. Big Grin
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#7

Modding support has certainly been on our minds, it would still require work from us to make modding possible. And the more we would like users to be able to mod the more we would need to make tools Smile So it would also take time in the end.
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#8

Modding support is a good idea.
The game is still selling on gog or steam so you are getting funds that can be spend working on it.
Or if you lost any hope and interest - make Harbinger open source so the community will create its own tools.
Or start another kickstarter to fund modding support.

There is always a way if you want it to happen and have some good will.

Take note that many relatively new and nice games are already dead because community complains that devs don't give a damn anymore.
Such comments on steam are instant turn off for buyers.
On the other hand take a look at FTL, its mods and huge replay value.
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#9

Just came back to tackle this idea again. I mean, the game is pretty much dead at this point. Angry Maybe even modding cannot save it anymore?   

I'll be very blunt but... I don't find the new game nearly as interesting as I did Battlestationvoid. And given how complex this game seems to be (at least in theory), it will take ages to develop it to the fullest. If you plan to end its development just as with Battlevoid, I don't mean to be rude, but it doesn't seem to be going to a place where this game become popular and/or replayable enough for people to consider buying it. There are dozens of indie games now.

Don't want to seem like I'm trying to put you down here (because I don't), but I think you could take a look at RimWorld's take on development. Angry
Almost open-source, no anti-piracy protection, metric shitton of mods. Over 10 times copies sold on SteamSpy. 
There is really a big hole in the market for games like Harbinger (be it mobile or PC), but for them to get out there, they need to be content packed and patched. There are people who will spend money on these games, even 30$. 

Just my honest opinion which is probably all wrong and I'm missing a lot of things that I simply don't know about but I guess different perspectives help sometimes. 
Best of luck with the new game, nonetheless!
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#10
(This post was last modified: 03-10-2017, 11:07 AM by AdmiralGeezer.)

Hello, Perq!

I can understand your frustration. So I will explain our decisions as best as I can. Here is a fact, it is not a guess or anything else. The following regarding our choices is a fact to what we believe to be 99% accurate:

We had two choices:

1. Continue on Harbinger and face bankruptcy
2. Start making new games and have a chance to create a more stable company.

Players often think that if a developer continues on a game after the initial publish, then the game will grow and create revenue. This is sometimes true, but most often not.

You mentioned Rimworld. What I would like you to understand is that Rimworld, and all other huge indie successes were successes from the very beginning. Games like FTL, Prison Arcitecht and many others all fall into this category.

These games are selling millions! Of course when developers have successes like these then they continue developing them for a long time.

From my perspective, it is very unfair to expect developers with small successes to work the same amount as developers that have no worry in the world anymore thanks to their big success.

We did not have this kind of a success, we got some revenue and then the sales dropped. We updated the game with a big update thanks to a Kickstarter, and we spent 2 years on the game in total. This did not help in a big way financial wise, but we are happy to get the game into a state where it has 4.7/5 rating on mobile and around 80% on PC. There is no saving a game that tapers off heavily in sales. All games have life curves, some have way better curves than others.

You must believe that we would have liked nothing more to have Harbinger sell in a way where we could have continued on it. Of course this is our dream! As a player you can certainly understand how much more difficult it is to start on a completely new game, compared to just developing a game already a long way further. It would be so much easier to continue on the game! But when the sales aren't there, and there is no hope for them to rise up magically, we have to make this decision or lose our company. It sucks!

You are right about the development time needed for Space Haven! Our hope is that Space Haven will become that Rimworld of ours, that game that will give us a stable income and that we can continue on for a long time. It will need that. We have now worked a year on Space Haven. And we still have some ways to go, but it will be an epic game.

Additionally, because I knew some of our fans would have loved more Battlevoid, I took it upon myself to make it happen. For the past 6 months I have worked 6-7 days a week, spending all my time developing a new Battlevoid game as much as I can Smile I hope I can bring something a bit refreshing to you guys into the Battlevoid world. So this is the moment I announce it, there will be a new Battlevoid game. We have been working on 2 new games Smile
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