Starborne: Open Beta Dev Blog #002

Welcome Commanders, to our second Dev Blog outlining what’s happening in Solid Clouds and with Starborne: Sovereign Space.

As we prepare our content heavy schedule for the upcoming months, a part of that is in optimizing our tools to streamline the various processes and tasks we need to complete. This ultimately results in – both better and more – content reaching the players’ in-game. We have a brand new map editor which has sped up development time considerably and we look forward to reworking, adjusting and even creating entirely new maps for both Sovereign Space and Dead Zone.

To that end, we are indeed launching an entirely new map for Sovereign Space on Friday 28th August. The objective has been to shake up the existing gameplay while keeping the core victory conditions, ice-belts and dynamics of Sovereign Space intact. Instantly recognizeable Starborne gameplay albeit contained in a brand new map…

2,200 Starting Locations

Keeping six starting sectors but concentrating the spawn locations (green sectors) into two bands across the middle of the map means players will be free to expand in any direction; as lucrative ice belts exist both in the middle and around the edge of the map. And of course, friendly (or not so friendly) neighbours will encroach from the other neighbouring sectors.

Of note are the Dyson Spheres which hold prime locations in the center of each starting sector. We expect serious in-fighting as groups manouvre to take control of the Grand Terrestrial planets and eventually wrestle the Dyson victory condition for themselves.

The mechanisms for the Strategic victory have also been moved entirely into the Black Hole sector in the middle of the map. Since this sector is closed off for the first few weeks of gameplay, we’re hoping to see a landrush as the various alliances concentrate their forces and skirmish with each other before diving into the middle.

Coming up!

We are looking to expand upon this new foundation with a number of twists on the existing ruleset. Trimming the victory conditions to one single goal and concentrating players in just a handful of server-wide teams while maintaining the alliance structure for organization are just two features you can expect to read all about in an upcoming Dev Blog.

As always, quality of life improvements, client optimizations, player feedback tasks and a whole host of other work dilligently continues for Sovereign Space as we buckle in and prepare our future content releases. Join us in our official Discord for more news, spoilers and memes!