It’s been a very busy summer with me and my family moving across the country and a lot of time has been dedicated to preparing our old home, selling it, packing, and moving in to our new home. None the less, progress has been made. Now that I am settled in, I am working on Stellar Tactics at my usual pace.
The next update will be a big one and I’ll cover some of the details below. The biggest addition will be the introduction of Chapter 1 of the story. With Chapter 1, new characters will be introduced, primarily the introduction of the Coven and the Sovereignty. The story will continue with a communication from Dr. Jensen who needs your assistance as the doctors continue to look into ways to eliminate the Phage and further their knowledge related to the Jhemm.
The Coven is a specific mutation that presented itself on one of the four ships that made the transit with the remnants of the human race. The mutation applied itself to females while in cryonic suspension and resulted in uncontrolled Psionic powers. The Coven were immediately isolated and studied by scientists on arrival and eventually released to colonize, provided certain rules were followed. Specifically, anyone with the Coven mutation was subjected to surgical implants that subdued their powers. Psionic powers were outlawed and have been since the Arrival.
This did not go over well with The Coven and eventually they went into hiding and removed their implants, refining their powers. For hundreds of years, The Coven have not been seen and are nearly forgotten, though some still do business with them – smuggling goods for trade with the elusive and secretive faction.
In Chapter 1, you will be introduced to the Sovereignty – the ruling power. Taxes are paid, and for that, security and law are enforced by the Sovereignty . The six main Houses (Halamis, Aralion, Cilivon, Conrair, Shikaru and Varadyne) have control over their holdings and pay tribute to the Sovereignty who in turn provides special dispensation to the Houses. The Houses exert their power on the various sub-factions in the Stellar Tactics Universe.
Ayela will be your primary contact with the Sovereignty and will have missions that involve investigating the Phage, The Coven, Raiders, Scavvers as these are all ongoing threats to peace under the rule of the Sovereignty. Ayela has been looking for a crack squad of mercenaries for a few critical missions.
Chapter 1 will also introduce more of the story related to the Jhemm and the menace they warn about in the Prologue. With this, Rhamus is still obsessed with the Jhemm and you will explore several of these locations in Chapter 1 which will introduce the “Azimuth” system. In addition to specific locations related to the story where you acquire Azimuth, a new random mission set has been developed for the Aznari ruins and you will find these occasionally when you scan planet surfaces. 18 new “creature” enemy types have been added for cave and ruins locations to increase the variety of enemy types you will encounter in the universe.
All of the original characters have had a facelift so they will match the new content in Chapter 1.
Speaking of mission sets, 3 new random sets will be added to the game in addition to static locations for Chapter 1 of the story.
The first pass of localization is complete for French, Spanish, Russian and German. Note that as a first pass at localization, the French, Spanish, and Russian localizations are likely very rough. The German translation is in very good shape thanks to community members who joined the translation effort. The localizations will be included in the upcoming content patch. When the content patch launches, I will open up localization again for these languages for anyone who is interested in joining.
Oh, and did I mention that Stellar Tactics is getting it’s final UI? Daniel did an amazing job with the UI and the implementation work is almost complete. There are still some rough edges here and there – overall, it’s coming along nicely.
That’s it for now. No ETA on the release of this content patch. I do hope to get everything finished before the end of this year and I will keep you updated as I make progress.