DevBlog #34 - Space Haven Alpha 6 - The Ship-to-Ship Battles Update.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It is the thunderous roar from a spaceship turret. Space Haven Alpha 6 is the biggest update to date and brings ship-to-ship battles with it, along with a bunch of smaller feature additions, improvements and bug fixes.



Developing support for ship-to-ship battles was challenging design wise, but we're really happy with how it turned out and how it further supports the core of the game. The new additions enables you to build a proper bridge for your spaceship consisting of many console modules.

Note! There's only one turret at the moment, but our focus was to implement the base and make ship-to-ship battles fully functional. We will be adding more with time.

The Spaceship Bridge



It's now possible to build a proper bridge for your spaceship, with 3 new console modules introduced making the total amount of console modules 4. Each console is specialized in controlling a certain aspect of the defense and attack systems. The consoles are:

The Operations Console



The operations console is used to hail other spaceships and communicate with their crew. It is also used to control scanner modules. Needs crew member to operate.

The Weapons Console



The weapons console is used to control the various turrets of the spaceship. One console is capable of controlling all turrets in the spaceship, as long as a crew member is stationed at the console.

The Shields Console



Shield modules form a continually regenerating protective energy shield around the ship, and use power to recharge. Shield generators are controlled by the shields console seen above.

The Navigations Console



This navigation console combined with a hyperdrive enables the spaceship to hyperjump between solar system areas. Needs a crew member to operate.

Ship-to-Ship Battle Mechanics



A ship's overall health is divided into hull stability and shield strength, which can be strengthened with hull stabilizers and shield modules respectively. Power will also play a part, as attack and defense systems will be more prone to consume larger amounts of power.

Various turrets will have their own specifications regarding hull stability damage and shield damage, in addition to these special properties can be added. Examples of special properties could be a turret with projectiles causing internal fires, another turret may act much like an EMP turret shutting down power within an area.


A Hull Stabilizer reinforces the spaceship's frame, strengthening it and generally improving structural integrity. Multiple Stabilizers can work in unison to bolster the hull far beyond its normal limits.

A ship's hull is not generally penetrated until the hull stability is lost, at which point the hull stabilizers will be overloaded and explode, along with other hull integrated elements like turrets, shield modules, hangars and more inevitably causing the whole ship to explode to a good degree. It's still possible to save the crew and the ship after this, but generally a scenario like this is devastating. Roof elements, like turrets shields and scanners, can be targeted and destroyed individually.

All so called system modules reserve system points when built, if you want to build a ship with more hull stability you will have to sacrifice on some other front, like fire power or shield strength. Larger ships will have more system points to spend on system modules. There will not be a wide selection of turrets in the beginning, but with time more turrets will be added to the game.

Scanning



Feeling curious and want to see what's going on in other faction spaceships currently in the sector? Build a scanner and you're able to peek in. The scanner will come in handy when trying to determine whether this is a crew you want to mess with, or where to direct your more powerful special turrets.



"Seems Jemima and Lisette are playing Fatman Returns in co-operative mode. Others are probably sleeping. This is our chance to do a sneak attack and steal their space food."

New Music

We've kept Paul very busy and had him produce 4 new music tracks for the game for this update. You can listen to one of the new tracks above, this one is named "Memories".  The soundtrack has come a long way, now with 12 in-game main tracks plus some additional tracks for things like exploring derelict ships and crew combat. That's well over 30 minutes of excellent music!

Space Haven Official Wiki

We've been working on a wiki/guide for Space Haven, filling it up with information and tips. We hope it will be of help for new players to get answers if something is unclear. We will keep adding information with time as we find out which things are hard to understand. You can check out the wiki below:

http://bugbyte.fi/spacehaven/wiki

How to Update

If you're an Alpha backer or higher you can now update the game either through the in-game update mechanism or through the Bugbyte redeem site:

• Method 1: You can use the in-game update mechanism. Launch the game and go to main menu and click Update! (You need to be logged in to Cloud with your account you used to redeem your Reward Code)
  
• Method 2: Navigate to the Bugbyte redeem site and log-in with your account (Created when you redeemed the Reward Code) to grab the newest build: http://bugbyte.fi/redeem
  

We will most likely be Quick Patching the game in the coming days, so be sure to check out the in-game news section frequently.

If you're not an Alpha tier backer don't worry, we are once again one step closer to Steam Early Access, which is when we will send out access also to Crew Member backers!



We love to hear from you guys so don't hesitate to come have a chat with us =) You can connect with us from through the channels below:

• Discord: http://discord.gg/spacehaven
  
• Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceHaven/
  
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpaceHavenGame
  
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spacehavengame/
  
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BugbyteGames/
  

We also have our mailing list which is great for keeping up to date with important news: http://bugbyte.fi/register

Need help with something? Send us an e-mail and we'll help you at: [email protected]



Wishlist on Steam!

Be sure to wishlist Space Haven on Steam and GOG, to be notified of release =)

Full list of patch notes

• Saved games are not supported from alpha 5 and previous versions.
  
• Ship-to-Ship battles implemented.
  
• Modified and implemented new features to the User Interface to support ship-to-ship battles.
  
• Implemented various ship-to-ship battle effects, such as explosions and shield effects.
  
• 3 new consoles to build: Weapons console, Shields console and Operations console.
  
• New Facilities to build: Energy Turret, Shield Generator, Hull Stabilizer, Scanner and Solar Panel.
  
• Added a new source of power, the solar panel, with efficiency based on the distance from the star system sun.
  
• 4 New in-game music tracks added.
  
• Modified and created some new ships for the factions you encounter.
  
• Smaller improvements to the user interface and various in-game texts.
  
• Balanced power generators.
  
• Improved power view mode.
  
• Added adjustable area range setting to power nodes.
  
• Added in-floor power node.
  
• Gas scrubber now produces carbon over time.
  
• Increased certain starting resources slightly in scenario 01 and 02.
  
• Autosave interval time is now 5 minutes in real time.
  
• Added Hide UI keybind, for taking nice screenshots without the UI.
  
• Help menu added with a link button to the Space Haven Official Wiki/Guide.
  
• Scrapper renamed to Recycler.
  
• Life Support renamed to Oxygen Generator.
  
• Core renamed to Power Generator.
  
• Tweaked default crew priority settings.
  
• Rebalanced Optronics Fabricator, Cell Fuser, Advanced Assembler, Chemical refinery production lines.
  
• Added a jobs associated with this facility tab for facilities, allowing manual assign when needed.
  
• Tweaked traits to include things like surrender rate. A hero will be unlikely to surrender.
  
• Fixed a bug where sector content was not updated when entering a new sector.
  
• Fixed a bug where the resolution could not be bigger than 5280 pixels wide.
  
• Fixed renaming crew member to change the name in the top list also.
  
• Many other bug fixes.
  

Hey guys, how are you holding against pandemic?
Is everything ok with you in Turku ?

Hello, Arturius!

We are doing good, for now at least. Of course it is a big set back if one of us gets sick, but so far so good! Thanks for asking.

Hello, Arturius!

We are doing good, for now at least. Of course it is a big set back if one of us gets sick, but so far so good! Thanks for asking.

STAY HEALTHY! =).

Paul