Welcome, Reachers, to a new interplanetary update!

Stars Reach is entering an exciting phase in our playtesting, and our latest updates focus on evolution and refinement. As you may have noticed, this week’s playtest isn’t live yet! We’re targeting tomorrow, May 15, at 11:30 AM PT or earlier if we iron out the last few issues.

We have started implementation of a large number of systems, many of which you’ve been eagerly asking for. Due to this rapid iteration and our desire to get your feedback, we are releasing earlier than we would have in the past. This means that you’ll see new features that might be in an earlier stage of development than in previous playtests.. For that reason, we are asking for both your patience and understanding, but also your keen testing ability. Your feedback on these systems and regular bug reporting will be incredibly important.

In addition, we are hard at work on our infrastructure side of things. We are mostly done with a major redesign of how we manage our galaxy and populations. Many of these changes are fundamental to the design of the galaxy and creating a sturdy foundation as we move forward.

Character Stat Allocations

The next step in our refinement of character creation and progression is to give you access to skill points, which you can allocate into the nine character stats that define you in Stars Reach. These numbers are already in the game system, working under the hood, but every player currently has the same stats. With this update, you’ll be able to tailor new characters to different specialties and playstyles. However, existing characters will not be affected. To experience these changes, please create a new character.

Here’s what you’ll see when you create a new character:

You’ll be given 9000 points. While these are, by default, evenly split across health, focus, and stamina, you’ll have the freedom to adjust the allocation to complement your play style.

Each of the three core stats governs a variety of tangible gameplay elements:

Health:

• Maximum Health:. It’s always been 1000 until now, but it can be more or less!
• Constitution, which is the rate at which your bar will regenerate.
• Toughness, which is basically damage mitigation.

Stamina:

• Maximum Stamina: the actual max on your stamina bar.
• Fitness, which is its regen rate.
• Strength, which is how much it costs to do a stamina-based action.

Focus

• Maximum Focus: the actual max focus on the bar.
• Serenity, which is its regen rate.
• Concentration, the spending rate.

There are presets on the side of the screen that we would invite testers to try out as they experiment with this system. Try adjusting your different characters’ stats to get a feel for how they affect your gameplay experience.

Paper Doll Improvements

The paper doll has been updated to communicate a clearer vision of the dedicated equipment slots. This includes tabs for Tools, Utility Gear, Mobility Gear, Clothing, and Accessories. In addition, the paper doll now shows a correct rendering of your character in preparation for further character customization we will be adding in the future.

The clothing and accessories slots now behave like proper equipment. At this time, we have not implemented new equipment to go into these slots, but the functionality is now in place. This also includes the support for equipment that may occupy multiple slots at the same time (overalls cover your top and bottom, for instance).

In addition to the UI changes to the paper doll page, there are a slew of Quality Of Life improvements.

• Moving items between inventory, equipment slots, toolbelt, and consumable is much more reliable. You can equip and unequip items more naturally using drag-and-drop or double-click interactions. You can even drag between slots on our toolbelt or consumables screen to rearrange them now.
• The consumable radial editing inside the inventory has been improved to allow for a cleaner drag-and-drop experience.
• Behind the scenes, swapping gear is much safer and less likely to result in cases where items could end up in the wrong place when doing complicated equip/unequip actions.
• All slots with keymappings now display the associated keybind right on the slot, and will update correctly if you remap your keys.
• We used to have dedicated grapple and shield slots. We now have two generic utility slots mapped to C and R by default. This means you will be able to equip two shields, if you like, or put the grapple in the C slot.

Compass added to Pathfinder

The Pathfinder tool has been updated to have a compass feature added to it, which provides a visual guide while hunting for survey points.

While the Pathfinder is equipped, the compass will be displayed at the top of the screen. If you stand still, it will automatically scan the local area and provide a jittery icon on the compass based on distance and direction to the nearest unsurveyed point. The closer you get to the survey point, the less jitter the icon will have, giving a more precise direction on the compass.

The goal is to feel similar to the hot/cold game the audio provides, with similarly imprecise cues. This addresses an accessibility concern, avoiding dependency on audio cues.

In addition, for those who just want to know which direction is north or south, you will have access to the compass while the Pathfinder is equipped.

Context Menus

Previously, interacting with the world was bottlenecked by complex user interface and menus. We’ve made a significant change by creating contextual interactions, allowing us to simplify the experience.

• Our first implementation, which you’ll see in this week’s playtest, provides a pop-up context menu. We’ll be improving the visuals and tuning placement and size along the way.
• There is now often an ‘Inspect” option that will give you more detail about items you discover in the world. Not sure if something is functioning or in need of repair? Inspect it!
• Right now, you may need to click multiple times on items like crafting stations. We are actively working on smoothing this experience by adding another contextual interaction. Stay tuned!

Skill Caps

A vital part of Stars Reach’s game economy is that no single person should be able to do everything at all times. We don’t want to limit your ability to explore new skill trees and pick up new skills, but we have added a limit to how many of those skills you can have “in practice” at a given time. We’ve used the analogy of Trading Card Games before: You can have as many cards as you want, but there’s a limit to how many you can have in your deck at a time, and you can’t rebuild your deck on the fly (as usual, you can tinker with your abilities at a Skills Kiosk). With the skill cap, you can only have a limited number of skills active at a time, but you’ll be able to move your learned skills in and out of practice.

The current cap is temporary as we add more skills, flesh out more systems, and await your feedback.

Skills can now be in 4 states:

• Unlearned – These are skills you have not learned yet. To learn one, you must use a Skills Kiosk, meet all prerequisite requirements, and pay the XP/Klaatu cost. You also need to be below your Skill Cap, and all prerequisite skills must be Active. Once learned, the skill becomes Active automatically.
• Active – Active skills are currently in use and provide their full benefits. For a skill to remain Active, all of its prerequisite skills must also be Active. Active skills count toward your Skill Cap, and you cannot exceed that limit.
• Inactive/Out of Practice – Inactive skills are ones you have already learned but have chosen to turn their effects off. They do not count toward your Skill Cap, and you can have any number of them. You can deactivate a skill at any time, as long as it is not required by another Active skill.
• Reactivating – Reactivating skills are Inactive skills that you are in the process of turning back on. Reactivating does not cost XP or Klaatu, but it takes time to complete. While reactivating, the skill counts toward your Skill Cap. To begin reactivating, you must be below your Skill Cap, and all prerequisite skills must be either Active or also reactivating. Once the timer finishes, the skill automatically becomes Active. If you cancel the process and attempt to reactivate later, the process will start from the beginning.

Item Damage, Decay, and Repair

Part of every game loop is the ability to obtain new items and have old ones go away, so we are implementing the first step of item damage and decay into the game.

Many newly crafted and gathered items, and some of your existing items, will now have a durability attached to them. It is currently shown in the description of the item.

Damage or Decay will occur in several different ways.

• Time-Based Decay
  • Perishable items, like food, display a decay timer in their description. When an item fully decays, it will become broken or spoiled causing it to no longer be usable.While spoiled food currently has no use, we do have plans to make it useful in the future, but don’t be afraid to toss them for now.
  • We have added in two new storage items that can be put in homesteads: Refrigerators and Stasis Crates. These will slow the spoilage of food and other perishable items.
• Use-Based Wear
  • Any time you execute a successful action with a tool or weapon, it will take some degradation based on the type of action and its intensity. At several increments, a flyout warning will be given to help you keep track of the damage your items are taking with every use. Be sure to repair your items before they get into a broken state!
• Combat Damage
  • Whenever you take damage, there is a chance that your equipped gear will also take damage. If an item gets to zero, it cannot be used again unless repaired.
• Repair
  • We have introduced a new Repair Kit to get your gear back in working order. When repairing an item, there is a chance that the max durability will be reduced by 10%. The chance of a max durability decrease is based on the amount of damage/wear on the item and the current max durability. Higher damage and lower max durability results in a higher likelihood of another durability decrease.Repair kits can be crafted by those with the Machinist Skill.

Infrastructure Changes to Servers

We are in the process of making some major changes to how we handle the hosting of our servers in preparation for an influx of new players. We need to be able to spin servers up/down, as well as handle situations where the number of players that want to go to a particular zone is larger than the maximum number allowed.

With this update, we have made a huge leap in making this all happen. In general, this should appear seamless, but if certain rare situations occur you may experience some of these changes.

For example, if a zone hasn’t been used for a while, we can now spin it down. Then, when a player attempts to travel to the zone, it will automatically spin back up and let the player enter. With this initial implementation, you may find yourself in a loading screen that takes longer than normal as the zone becomes available. We have made these loading screens a little more interesting with tidbits of lore to keep you occupied as you wait.

Other Changes, Bug Fixes, and Updates

• Update to Gravity in space around Asteroids
  • Previously, we updated our gravity logic so it was completely based on the mass of the asteroids in space. We received a good deal of feedback from many players that realistic physics could cause some odd free-fall situations.
  • We have now simplified the gravity logic to feel more like it used to.
  • Asteroids will now get gravity only if they are massive enough and dense enough
  • Players (who are not in flight mode) are affected by the gravity field of an asteroid if:
    • It’s the largest asteroid near them
    • They are within 5 meters of the surface and are not near the center of the asteroid
• Tone Down the Screen Shake when Meteorites Strike
  • When we updated our camera system to add additional logic such as 1st person view, we didn’t conduct a proper balance of the screen shake that is caused by things like meteorites hitting the surface of a planet. It was a bit overdramatic, so we reduced it to a more reasonable amount. We will continue to monitor the feedback and adjust it as needed.
• Several Animation Motions Updated
  • We have added some additional animations to support a small reaction when colliding with objects and sliding. Give it a shot and lay the feedback on us.
• Add a details section to Containers
  • While we continue to update sections of our UI, one that received some QoL was containers. Previously, you were not able to see details or delete items that were in a container, such as your storage or personal bank account. You should now be able to select the item as you do in your inventory, and it will update the details pane at the bottom of the screen with information about the item.
  • In addition, we have added a confirmation step for deletion of items, to help prevent accidental scrapping of your gear.
• Continue polish to FTUE and Galactopedia
  • We continue to monitor the feedback and metrics from players going through our new player experience with Haven and Crucible. Thank you for all your testing of the systems.
  • There was certainly some confusion around the mining missions, and to help make it a bit easier, we have changed the required resources to Gabbro instead of the Bauxite it was asking for before. This will make it more likely that you will find it with the scan and much easier to find since it is readily available near the surface.
  • Updated the mushrooms on Haven to only have 1 type to make them easier to find
  • In addition, we have added several new help screens to the Galactopedia and cleaned up a few others.
  • We plan to keep enhancing the knowledge base so players will have a good resource for information in the game.
• Simulation Improvements
  • While the majority of our simulation changes are under the hood and not visible at a glance, we have made an overall improvement to the system that is currently showing a 20-30% increase in simulation performance.
• Hide the UI
  • Back by popular demand, we have brought back the ability to hide your UI. By default, this is assigned to the F4 key, but you can remap it in the options.
  • In addition, you can customize which areas of the UI are hidden. We look forward to seeing some outstanding screenshots from you all.
• The default Icon used by the mission system has been changed to a blank icon for now to help distinguish it from active missions.
• Business XP has been added to the game so that you can work your way up that tree and unlock vendors again. Currently, it can be earned by trading with other players, but as we flesh out our skill trees more in the future, other ways will be added.

Known Issues

• None at the moment