We are releasing the biggest Astra Exodus update so far. The changelog is quite massive, and you can find the full changelog below. Unfortunately, some of the changes were structural, and as such this new update doesn't have savegame compatibility.
Let us know what you think of the update: as usual your feedback is essential to us, so that we can keep improving Astra Exodus and making it better and better. And yes, we have some ambitious plans for the game, but we're not quite ready to reveal them...
Version 1.00.05 Changes
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- + Improved datanet UI items so they are highlighted when they have art to show when activated + Improved item selection graphics, specially in the fleet composition panel, but also in other areas + Made sure that you can set normal speed with space, when the start battles paused option is active, plus make it possible to toggle extreme speed that way also + Fixed a bug in which backing out from a tactical battle end panel, with right click or back button, messed up the camera zoom + Fixed a bug that fired when loading a file save from the game itself, in which the scale of the fleet icons was messed up, if you are zoomed out when it happens + Fixed a bug in which a save file couldn't be load due to a null starsystem owner player + Fixed a visual bug in which core modules were not showing production costs or upkeep + Exposed base upkeep and core cost modifiers for starship roles in the Globals.lua file, plus rebalanced them to make ships cost less + Exposed the minimum materials efficiency value to the Globals.lua file + Added the ability to the AI to use the new retrofit feature and improve its ships + Made sure to disable starmap scouting via population only fleets + Added a way for renaming individual starships from the fleets screen + Added a retrofit button to the Fleets main menu, which takes you to the corresponding colony screen + Applied the starship build item colony filter for retrofit projects as well + Incorporated the feature of starship retrofits, via projects which show up on colonies that can retrofit ships. + The AI now moves fleets to closer owner Starsystems, before going into enemy starsystems + Added a way for the AI to insta move population on higher difficulty levels + Added the ability for the AI to move population around + Made sure the planet visual indicators show up immediately on the starsystem view, when stuff is built and sold on colonies + Added the ability for the renaming of outposts + Added the ability of renaming an owned starsystem(this is done in the starsystem view) and also the homeworld. + Allow for sandbox games without victory conditions + Increased weapon fire evasion of smaller ships to encourage their use + Increased upkeep of large starships to encourage the use of smaller ships + Fixed the default designs, taking into account power/ordnance/capacitor requirements, which some had wrong + Now advises are immediately updated whenever a diplomatic exchange is successful or war is desclared + Fixed a bug that skipped the turn, whenever a space was introduced when renaming fleets/colonies + Made sure modded designs don't mess up the new design persistence file system + Added a datanet notification for when a colony is destroyed vía bombardment + Moved custom starship designs to MyGames folder and enable Steam cloud for the files so they are synchronized between machines + Added the feature of colonist transport into the game. You can now launch any colonist(5 freighters required), move them as any fleet and land them on one of your colonies + Fixed a bug with redirecting a fleet in hyperspace, in which the movement line remained
Astra Exodus - Dev Diary #16 - Post Launch
Hey everyone. I am Fernando from Atomic Kaiser. It’s been a couple of weeks since the release of Astra Exodus now and we felt it was a good time to go over the launch, what went wrong and what went right, and talk about the future of the game, the updates we have released so far and a small hindsight over what we have in mind for the the future of the game, based on the feedback we have got since then.
Launch Summary
Sadly we didn’t have the best of launches for the game, as not only a couple of nasty bugs slipped by us, but on top of it all many people at launch were expecting something quite different to what Astra Exodus actually is. All of this showed on the reviews we got to the game and of course it was a major concern for us.
As I mentioned then in our first status post in the Steam forums, bugs can and were squashed. We did the same with improvements and features added / implemented as they were reported / suggested by the community. But please bear in mind that fundamental parts of the game like the art, graphics and aesthetics of the game are something we are not changing even if we could. This would go against the 90's theme we are going for with the game, something we have shown with pride in all marketing material.
On the expectations front, which were as per the reviews totally different in some cases to what the game actually is, we frankly don’t know what we could have done differently as pretty much all marketing material was quite upfront with how the game looked, felt and played as.
Updates so far
Ever since release we have been updating the game with bug fixes, improvements and even new features, responding to the concerns to the community as fast as possible. At the time of writing this post, with version 04 out to everyone now, we have no known bugs left and the following improvements and features added to the game since release:
Improvements
Enable colonization of planets which were previously used for one of the player outposts
The game now remembers the position and zoom level the camera was, when going from and to the galactic view
Added info on starship's health (hull / armour) on it's tooltip and improved the related UI object
Reduced the RNG factor in auto-combat battles to make them more predictable
Reduced the frequency of AI offers through diplomacy to make it less annoying
Changed auto-retreat of fleets to not have any punishment at all
Added an additional speed setting to space battles in order to speed them up
Now space battles start out paused instead of in a slow time setting
Decreased the base turns required to achieve victory conditions to speed up games
Removed advice to lower/increase taxes when you can’t do so
Enabled faction customization in modded games
Features
Added a Visual Styles setting to the game, which adjust the color / contrast / brightness and several effects options for the starmap and battles
Added an autosaves option to the game with several settings
Added an option to disable edge panning of the camera
Added a new ship attack stance for long range attack called Siege
Added an option to use hardware cursor instead of software
You can compare the looks of the old Colourful visual style with the new Darkened visual style
Future Plans
We don’t have like a year long road map with specific dates or anything like that, as not only longer we don’t think it’s necessary, but also we find that in many cases it’s impossible to live by it. What we do have is some big features on the horizon that we will be working towards, in parallel to smaller patches and updates.
We don’t want to reveal anything at this stage as we are defining how to implement certain major features and new content that we have in mind, but be assured: Astra Exodus will expand, and will keep improving. As mentioned, we have plans for the game, and we are sure that many of you will find what is coming rather intriguing.
In the meantime, if you are enjoying the game (or not!), why not leave a review telling us what you like and don’t like about the game? We certainly would appreciate it, as would the rest of the community. Until next time!
Hi all. We are releasing a new update, bringing the game to 1.00.04.
We are going to release a new Dev diary later today, so be on the lookout for it. Our main point is that Astra Exodus' path continues, and we have future plans for it.
In the meantime, you can download the new update, and find the full changelog below.
As usual, many thanks to all those who gave us feedback and suggestions! It is very much appreciated.
Version 1.00.04 Changes
• Fixed a bug in which opening the load game panel, loaded automatically a mod, when a save from said mod is present • Made sure that custom starting population values in the Globals.lua file are correctly taken into account for the homeworld • Made sure fleets can attack and invade in the same turn, but not move after to avoid one turn defenses problem • Improved the camera smoothness when zooming and panning at practically the same time • Made sure an outpost planet can be colonized from the planet buttons interface • Changed test battles shortcuts so they don't impact faction customization in the main menu • Updated the SW mod to work with the latest version of the game • Made sure the customize faction option is enabled when using mods and fixed any problems it caused • Added a toggle option for the game to use a hardware mouse cursor where available • Added an option to disable camera edge panning in the game • Added an additional stance for long range combat called Siege • Fixed a bug which was corrupting the game, every time a fleet was splited in mid hyperspace jump • Fixed a bug that was preventing end turn, after loading a campaign game, related to corrupted victory conditions
Astra Exodus - v.1.00.03 Update
Hi all.
We are releasing a new update for Astra Exodus, bringing the game to version v1.00.03.
We'd like to thank everyone who provided us with feedback, as this really helps us with improving the game. This update in particular consists of a number of fixes and quality-of-life improvements. It also introduces experimental support for more types of resolution, like 3:2 and ultrawide.
Version 1.00.03 Changes
+ Fixed a bug that was removing heroes in the campaign, like they do in the sandbox + Added experimental support and improved UI for 3:2 factor resolutions + Added experimental support and improved UI for ultrawide resolution + Fixed a bug in which autosaves were firing once without being turned on + Increased pollution construction destroying effects + Parametrize pollution, morale and corruption effects in the Globals.lua file + Fixed a bug in which governor heroes were not applying correctly modifiers based around pollution, morale and corruption to colonies + Fixed a bug that was preventing end game repeatable techs from accumulating their effects + Now changing the tax rate affects immediately the selected colony if in that view + Fixed a bug when offered to trade specialization techs from the AI and you had no specialization points available + Randomized a bit the list of techs asked by the AI, so it doesn't always asks for the same + Fixed a small graphical glitch with opened tooltips on the audience screen, while hovering the techs for trade + Fixed a bug that happened when going to the next/previous colony from the colony screen, in which the starsystem info of the original system disappeared + Removed the advise to lower taxes when its already at minimum, same for the other extreme + Now space battles start Paused instead of at a Slow pace + Reduced the amount of turns required for the ascension victory condition + Added the ability to specify victory conditions required turns in the Globals.lua file + Fixed a bug that was preventing terraformed planets from having the correct maximum population + Fixed a bug that was preventing the Steam achievement for freighters from firing + Fixed a bug that was affecting campaign saves, regarding empty or invalid items on the build queue + Fixed a bug that was preventing the immediate update of the available special techs, after one was available due to a crisis + Now the game notifies the player when others declare war against each other + Fixed a bug that was preventing the achievements for galactic crisis to fire
Astra Exodus - v.1.00.02 Update
Hi all, we are releasing a new update for Astra Exodus, containing some of the fixes that were highly requested by the community.
Admittedly, Astra Exodus needs some extra work, but this is what we are for. We won't stop working until Astra Exodus keeps improving and getting better and better, so stay tuned to check what's next for the game.
You can find the full changelog down below. Please let us know what you think, as usual your feedback is extremely important to us, and it'll be very helpful as we start working on the next update. Thank you!
Version 1.00.02 Changes
+ Fixed a bug in which the weapon mount was not being selected correctly when editing a starship design + Fixed a bug in which enhanced core modules, were not being loaded correctly on the starship design screen + Forced 1080p at game start to try to avoid strange UI deformations on non standard resolutions. + Set a target framerate and forced VSYNC method on all quality settings, to try to avoid any high CPU/GPU cases + Fixed a bug in which some graphs values were not being correctly shown on game load + Change credits for treasury in the government graphs and adjust values according + Fixed a bug in which some modifier based custom faction traits, were not being applied correctly on game start + Now when a colony can no longer grow, it shows a message indicating so. Plus there will not be a 0 turns instead of 1 for growth/shrinking + Added the AI the ability not to loose pop on colonizer construction on higher difficulty levels + Decreased AI ability maluses in easier difficulty levels + Added a super fast time control setting called Extreme for space battles + Added the Autosaves feature settings to the game, with several turn intervals + Added the Visual Styles feature, which is a settings option that changes how the starmap and battles look, making it be more dimmed or darker; vs the default colorful way of the game + Now the game remembers the position and zoom level the camera was, when going from and to the galactic view + Added the percentage damage to hull and shields received, to a starship's info panel or tooltip + Imprved the visualization of a starships health, including mostly hull and armour. + Reduced the RNG factor in autobattles for both land and space. Plus parametrize the values in the Globals.lua file. + Added the ability to autoretreating fleets for avoiding all damage + Improved the readability of several UI objects in different languages + Reduced the frequency at which the AI asks for an audience by a third + Parametrized default AI aggresiveness and socialness in the Globals.lua file + Added the ability to save automatically, when exiting a starmarine mode game + Fixed a bug in which the Starmarine mode file saves, were not being saved with the correct file extension + Added the ability to be able to colonize planets that have an outpost from the same player, granting back credits as the outpost is scuttled + Fixed a bug in which the Heroes missing notification, when clicked on, failed to load the available for hire heroes + Fixed a bug in which the Colonies list was not updating build project ETC and materials build efficiency + Fixed a bug in which the player couldn't grow back population, when a full colony launches a colony ship + Fixed a bug in which when loading a save game, the stats, upkeep and treaties info in the government panel was not loaded correctly until ending the turn + Fixed a bug in which Heroes were not being removed after 20 turns from the list, plus the selection on click was failing sometimes + Improved AI ability in regards to starship range and overall upkeep, according to Dificulty level + Improved AI ability in regards to starship might, damage and defense, according to Dificulty level + Added Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Russian support into the game + Optimized active starsystem info UI objects to reduce significantly the delay between camera view changes
Astra Exodus is out
Astra Exodus is the new 4x sci-fi strategy game from Slitherine: a compelling mission-driven campaign where you will need to manage all aspects of your star empire: economy, war, diplomacy, espionage, technological research, exploration
There’s no place like home. Humanity has reached the stars and explored the galaxy, but all memory of its home planet has been lost. Now it’s time to head back home and find the lost Earth, exploring all corners of unknown space. But be prepared: this search will be dangerous. Merciless Alien factions and Space Pirates lurk in the shadows, waiting to annihilate Human colonies and wreck their homeward-bound fleets.
Astra Exodus is the new 4x sci-fi strategy game from Slitherine: a compelling mission-driven campaign where you will need to manage all aspects of your star empire: economy, war, diplomacy, espionage, technological research, exploration...
Play either the single player story campaign, where you will lead mankind in its search for their lost homeworld, or play in the sandbox mode, where you will be able to pick your faction (or customize it) and decide on the type of galaxy, opponents, and type of victory conditions.
Explore the galaxy, colonize hospitable planets, build cities and factories, and prepare to defend them: first design your own ships by choosing which modules you want to install, then wage war by fighting real-time pauseable battles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-G0KwuJxhM
Astra Exodus is out now at a 10% discount for one week. Take advantage of this offer while you still can.
It will be live-streamed on our Twitch channel later today at 6 pm GMT. Don't miss Admiral Richard Yorke wage a full-scale interstellar war.
Astra Exodus Steam Achievements
Astra Exodus will release tomorrow and we know many of you are excited. We've received a lot of enthusiastic feedback and many questions on our socials. One of the most common question is about achievements.
Will Astra Exodus have achievements?
Well, the answer is YES!
Astra Exodus will have 55 Steam achievements. Let's have a look at a few of them.
The Market's Whim
Suffer a Economic Crisis event and nullify its effects, by researching Galactic Trade Commission.
Exterminate with prejudice
Defeat a menace, in the Sandbox game mode.
Terra invictus
Achieve any victory condition in the game, as the Terran Republic faction.
Evolutionary Ascension
Achieve an Evolutionary Ascension victory in the Sandbox game mode.
There's a lot more of course, but we'll let you discover them on your own. Astra Exodus will release tomorrow in the European afternoon. Are you ready?
Video Tutorials for Astra Exodus
Astra Exodus will be released in two days, so we thought it'd be a good idea to prepare some video tutorials.
Each video focuses on a different aspect of the game and they are a great way to get acquainted with the basics of gameplay. There are 20 in total, and there's quite a lot there. Let us know what you think and if you need clarification on anything.
Welcome back to our last dev diary before release on January 30. Today we are going to take a look into modding: how players can change the base game to their liking, create entire mods from zero and upload them easily on the Steam Workshop, for those who play on Steam.
Mod Structure Astra Exodus was designed from the ground-up to be moddable, as pretty much everything in the game is loaded from files editable by users, organized in a certain structure. This very same structure, found on the base game directory, must be reproduced by any mod, adding a main data file as well which defines the mod.
In the /MyGames/Astra Exodus/Mods path, you’ll find a data file named after the mod, plus a main folder that contains the mod files, with the same Data and Graphics folder structure as the main game.
Data Files The data files into the game allow you to define pretty much everything on Astra Exodus, from technologies to factions and starships, everything can be changed or expanded. They are in LUA format, which can be easily opened with any text editor. We recommend using Notepad++ though.
Here you have a base file called Globals.lua, where you can change the main values of the game, such as how much food a colonist consumes for example. Then you have a folder structure, grouping factions, techs, troops, and everything else together. Opening any of the contained files will give you an example of how to change or add one of these yourself.
The most complex values you can find on these files, to configure whatever concept each represent, are the references to localized text and the path to the corresponding graphic files. The localized text tag is searched in the files under the Localization folder, where one must exist for each language the game supports. Finally a graphics file reference is basically the path, from the base folder, to the corresponding image (PNG) file.
Graphics The game’s graphics come from PNG image files, which as we just saw, are referenced via a relative file path by the data files. So for every Installation an image must be referenced in order to be used in game, just like with everything else in the game. The game requires PNG files in order to have an Alpha channel available, as it is used in almost all possible scenarios, when using graphics in game, from starship classes to techs.
There are some extra graphic files that need to be supplied for every mod, regardless of any reference from the data files. These are the mod icon, main menu and data net background images. The first ones can be placed anywhere inside the mod folder, as long as they are referenced on the main mod LUA file, however the DataNet images must be placed in a folder with that name, inside the mod’s Graphics folder.
Steamworks Once you have set up a mod, you might want to share it with the community. To do this, you can always just zip the files and share it on the Internet, however Steam has a system that makes it much easier: the Steam Workshop, which Astra Exodus fully implements.
With the mod working properly and after defining everything on its main LUA file, all you need to do is click on the Up Arrow on top of the mod UI object, in order to upload it to Steam with your current logged in user. Then you’ll be able to change the name, description, add screenshots and a lot more through the mod page; automatically created when you upload it.
We hope this was clear enough. If you have any question on Modding, please let us know either on Discord or the forum, and we’ll do our best to get back to you with further explanations.
Next week we’ll be launching the game, on January 30. Are you ready?
