Onward to Beta!<!-- --> | Starborne

Onward to Beta!

Fri Sep 13 2019 (Updated: Mon Dec 14 2020) - 3 min read

Dev Blog

Greetings, Commanders!

My name is Kai and I’m the Producer at Solid Clouds. I wanted to give you an update about the state of the game and our development roadmap moving forward.

The Alpha 9 release in Spring was a major milestone for us – a record amount of players made it through a full round of Starborne and the endgame saw massive clashes between the surviving alliances. We have since set our sights on the Open Beta release and reached a point where we have a sound understanding of the remaining work ahead. As such, we’re excited to announce that the Open Beta will launch in early 2020.

Concept Art for Empire Skins

Our focus will gradually shift towards delivering an extremely stable and polished build for the anticipated launch. That means optimizing our backend, giving every single panel in the game a facelift and squashing them bugs. We’re also going to seriously improve our onboarding process in order to make Starborne less daunting for new players. With all that said, here’s a sneak peek of what to expect before the end of the year:

  • In-Game Wiki
  • Building Planner Redesign
  • Combat Balance Patch
  • Improved Map View Modes
  • Map Pins
  • Alliance Operation Planner
  • Referral System
  • Chat Redesign
  • Empire Skins
  • Playable Tutorial
  • Music and Sound Effects

We understand that some of you may have expected the Open Beta to arrive sooner – but as the old maxim goes: “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” We’ve had our fair share of rushed alpha launches, and the beta launch won’t be one of them. 

The Tournament Server is Coming

We’re launching the 1st Starborne Tournament Server this December. What is a Tournament Server, you ask? These are special servers where the strongest alliances in the community compete for glory and highly exclusive victory rewards.

Tournament Servers require an active Premium subscription to join and non-cosmetic store items are disabled to ensure a level playing field for everyone. This has been one of the most requested features we’ve seen from the community over the years and we’re really excited to see how the game changes with such a large concentration of veteran players on a single server. 

An in-depth post about the requirements and rulesets of Tournament Servers are coming next week – don’t miss it!

Open Beta and Beyond

The Open Beta of Starborne will see a massive increase in concurrent servers to reach critical mass and build momentum for the full launch. On top of exciting gameplay updates, our primary goal during 2020 will be to make the game more accessible to a greater audience which is reflected in our milestones:

  • Cross-Platform Support via Mobile, Browser and Cloud Streaming
  • PvE Servers
  • Quick Servers
  • Seasonal Rankings and Rewards
  • Localization into Other Languages (привет, командиры!)

Details about all the milestones mentioned in this post will follow in the coming weeks and months, and we’ll release an up-to-date roadmap on our website soon.

Thank You, Commanders!

Starborne has always been a dream too big: We didn’t have the people, experience or money to realistically make something so ambitious. But we did it anyway, and your unrelenting support turned a little-known prototype called “Prosper” into what you see today. I wish to thank all of you on behalf of the entire team here at Solid Clouds for helping us get here. 

Left: Early Starborne prototype 2015 \ Right: Starborne in 2019

As a token of appreciation, we plan to give all alpha testers on record a special reward before we head into the beta. Stay tuned for details!

SC iMaple

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