Update

The derelicts update brings Stellar Sovereigns first content update since its release, introducing an offshoot of the existing salvage mechanism, the recovery of derelict warships found drifting in deep space across the galaxy.

Upon locating a drifting derelict the player can send a mining mothership to begin its recovery, which can take multiple turns dependent on the class of the vessel and the number of mining motherships present.

The progress of the process is indicated by an overlay, and upon completion a new fleet is spawned in its place with the vessel recovered.



Ships recovered are often full of defects that can be fixed in a shipyard, removing each can be costly and time consuming but restoring them can worth the hassle since each comes with new abilities to boost your combat capabilities.

Six new ships can be found as derelicts, the drifting vessels of a long forgotten empire 3 capital and 3 escort class vessels.

The 3 new abilities of these vessels are Positron Lance, Drone Barrage and Forcefield and the new XL weapon the Accelerator cannon.



The positron lance is a sustained beam which delivers a steady stream of damage to enemy vessels that intersects. The beam fires for a long time so evading its reach is possible as well as to rotate the ship toward the evading vessel or to another in reach to reposition the beam.



The drone barrage launches a swarm of energised plasma drones that hurls themselves toward the target breaching its shield, armour and hull penetrating the vessel just to pop out on the other side to do it all over again. It has a new damage value labelled internal, the only damage type that causes damage directly to the vessel's internal integrity.



The forcefield ability establishes a large forcefield acompassing nearby vessels in a field that has a high chance of stopping enemy weapon fire upon contact. The field acts a barrier against enemy fire but can physically be crossed by vessels to circumvent it or negate its effectiveness by deploying weapons with shield penetrating properties.



Lastly, the new XL weapon the accelerator cannon punches right through the target damaging the vessel's internal integrity and hits any unlucky vessel in its way.

So it is now on you to find and recover these vessels to make good use of them, they might have been forgotten through the ages left to drift among the stars but you can give them a chance to shine again!

Development

This update had been a lot of fun for me, making new ships from an excellent kit bash and creating new abilities to give each vessel something that makes it unique from the default vessel of the fleet sets.

It also had been a proof of concept of introducing ways to extended the variety of vessels the player has access to, which is something I really would like to explore in the future.

Speaking of the future, as I was developing this update I kept thinking in which way could I introduce substantial difference in between the 3 fleet sets.

At present the main differences between the fleet sets are their looks and the physical placement of their weapon ports. Not very substantial, I must admit!

So my thinking is the following I will create a set of modifiers for each vessel set that every of their vessels will inherit in the form of a special module slot.

This dedicated module slot will hold the fleet set specific modifiers effecting the base stats of the vessel. Nothing new here, this is often the way to distinguish between different factions.

But my thinking is that this special modifier module could be recovered from destroyed enemy vessels getting your hand on their modifier that you can retrofit your vessel with if you wish.

Let me know what you think! Its merely an idea at this point, I look forward to your input!