Hello Commanders!

Now that Lightspeed Edition is out (grab yours here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/651660/Halcyon_6_Lightspeed_Edition/), we can dive deeper into all the changes that went into this new edition.

First off, a big THANK YOU to our Kickstarter backers and our player community for being amazing and providing great feedback on our game. We wouldn’t be here without you and this Lightspeed Edition is the result of your support!

Literally EVERYTHING in Halcyon 6 was tweaked and optimized to make the Lightspeed Edition. Almost every single number and algorithm was adjusted.

Overall, the campaign takes a much shorter time to complete (down to about 12-15 hrs instead of 20-25 hrs) but no content was removed, we only adjusted the overall progression to be faster and require much less grinding.

The bulk of balance and progression tweaks fall into three main degrees of change:

“Greatly increased/reduced” indicates changes in the 25% to 50% range

“Increased/reduced” indicates changes in the 15% to 35% range

“Slightly increased/reduced” indicates changes in 1% to 15% range

We also posted an overview video here:

MAJOR CHANGES

STREAMLINED CAMPAIGN:

Reduced total campaign grind/length by:

• greatly reducing costs for unlocking tech research
• reduced costs and build times for building starbase rooms
• reduced time to complete exploring ruined areas of the starbase
• reduced times required for recruiting crew
• greatly reduced times required for creating Dark Matter Multiplier
• greatly reduced times required for replicating Materials
• reduced number of starbase room clearing encounters
• greatly reduced frequency of Chruul base incursions
• reduced time it takes before player is allowed to build satellite drones and allocates 3 drones immediately when the tech is unlocked
• Lowered officer level restrictions for deploying satellite drones and reduced costs and time to build and deploy satellite drones
• Reduced costs and time for cadet upgrades, chruul lab research, fleet speed upgrades, officer cloning chamber, general upgrades to facility

Resource Tweaks:

• Resources of rewards from combat encounters
• Resource bonus at beginning of Act 2
• Costs for cloning dead officers
• Material production on colonies
• Chances of equipment loot drops without overkill

Missions Tweaks:

• Greatly reduced time it takes for the first Spire to appear
• Greatly reduced wait times between Chruul lieutenant appearances
• Reduced time for chimera to reach starbase
• Reduced frequency of Chruul, Voraash, and Faction raids in Act 2
• Increased strength of Chruul presence on ground missions
• Enabled retreating during ground missions on destroyed colonies
• Slightly increased difficulty of main campaign encounters

NEW OFFICER PROGRESSION SYSTEM:

New subclasses and prestige classes:

• Each class (science, engineer, tactical) has 2 subclasses to choose from. Science → Biologist or Physicist, Engineer → Mechanic or Inventor, Tactical → Operative or Strategist
• There are also 3 new prestige classes that your officer can spec into as they grow in experience: Chaos Theorist, Counselor, or Commando
• Chaos Theorist Skills: Force Targeting, Reflective Shield, Dimensional Inversion, Dark Matter Storm
• Counselor: Meditation Boost, Subtle Encouragement, Microaggressions, Psych Up
• Commando: Guard Ally, Focus Fire I, Focus Fire II, Focus Fire III

Other officer related tweaks:

• Reduced XP requirements for higher levels
• Reduced costs for unlocking additional Officer slots
• Expanded custom officer selection process which includes Kickstarter Backer officers
• Added class-based status effect resistances, vulnerabilities, and proficiencies

ENHANCED COMBAT

• 25+ new alien faction space combat powers for Pirates, The Collective, Yabbling, Korzan, Voraash, Xlar, and Chruul
• more combos for both players and enemies, increased faction weaknesses and resistances, and other balancing tweaks
• increased faction-based resistances for enemies at higher tiers
• increased faction-based weaknesses for all enemies
• greatly increased the damage inflicted by exploiting effects
• increased evasion of all alien faction ships
• increased resistances and vulnerabilities of terran ships
• increased base chance to land all status effects
• various tweaks and balances for powers across the board

NEW UI OVERHAUL

• Designed for greater readability and usability
• Shows the ship construction screen with the ship queue
• View colony and send fleet buttons on the starmap
• Sector names can now be toggled on or off in the starmap view (n to toggle)
• UI can now be toggled on or off from any screen (h to toggle)
• All new officer death animations, even more gruesome than before in pixelated glory!
• New ship configuration screen before each combat
• Ability to store 3 loadout configurations for each ship
• Lots of little quality of life UI tweaks

That most of it! I hope that gives you a sense of how much we’ve put into Lightspeed Edition.

WHAT’S NEXT?

In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll detail out our plans for Modding Support, Localization and ports to other platforms.

Stay tuned!

Love,

The Halcyon 6 Team at Massive Damage