We're so excited to announce that Interstellar Transport Company is launching out of Early Access on May 24th 2019! After almost two years of development in early access we have come a LONG way! We couldn't be more thrilled with our progress and we couldn't be more excited to see where this goes from here.
We expect full launch to be huge for ITC based on how well the game has been received lately by new players and how much development has gone into it over the past couple of years. We've accomplished a lot since launching into EA, some of the bigger achievements are below:
Autonomous Distribution Networks really streamline the mid and late game, allowing you to focus on the big picture instead of micromanaging many hundreds of ships.
Tech tree / research system really gives you more decisions and control over how your company develops.
We've fixed the major balance and performance issues.
Multiplayer is great now, it feels just like playing singleplayer but even better with human opponents. Give it a try if you haven't already!
Added Mac & Linux support and some basic localization for ~15 different languages. It's not perfect by any means, mostly using Google translate, but it should allow these folks to enjoy the game!
New Ships and routes screens with much more functionality and information.
6 new ships since launch.
Hotkeys for game speed, pausing etc... many other quality of life changes like this.
Ship refitting & ship replacement with newer models.
List of current buildings on a planet and redesigned interface for constructing buildings.
Tons of interstellar re-balances and fixes to make this more playable.
Entire UI and individual windows are now scalable
Market prices now visible at each planet (even more easily accessible info coming soon with the new spaceports screen which is a WIP)
7 new cargoes and complete re-balance of existing cargoes. New cargo bays, buildings etc... to support these new cargoes.
New, more fair reputation system with more visibility of information.
Completely new UI graphics!
For 1.0 we are focusing mainly on polishing and balancing the game so it gives everyone the best experience possible. We will be adding a few features however. Namely a new order ship screen, a few new ships, a new song in our already great soundtrack (the longest and possibly best yet) and many other quality of life improvements.
This isn't the end of the road though! We have more content planned and will be supporting ITC for a long time to come with the same great level of customer service you have come to expect from us.
Thank you so much for everyone who has helped us get this far, we couldn't have done this without some of the awesome support we've gotten from our players and community. You guys rock!!
We can hardly contain our excitement! Be sure you wishlist our game or come back to check it out on May 24th if you've been away for a while! v1.0 here we come!!
It's drone time! v0.5.0 patch released
This is a BIG patch! We've been working tirelessly to get this one polished up and out to you all. There's so many improvements and the game has really took another big step up in quality overall. Mid and late game are hugely more playable with the addition of the autonomous distribution networks and much improved AI.
To use distribution drones you will need to turn a gate into a Distribution Hub on the planet you want to source cargo from. On the planets you will be receiving cargo upgrade one of your owned spaceport gates to a Distribution Receiving Center. If they are within range of eachother, drones will start moving cargo autonomously from the hub to the receiving center(s).
Level1 Hubs only are able to supply a planetary system (a planet and it's moons)
Level2 Hubs can supply any planetoid within 3AU.
Level3 Hubs can supply any planetoid in its star system.
Below are the patch notes (excluding many dozens of small fixes and improvements).
Can't wait to hear what everyone thinks of this! Enjoy.
-Mike and the MT Worlds team
April 29, 2018 v0.5.0 PATCH NOTES: -Autonomous Distribution Networks added. These allow you to upgrade spaceport gates to hubs and receiving centers allowing cargo to automatically flow without the need to micromanage large amounts of ships. This will make the mid and end game much more playable for large interstellar companies!
-Reworked how Raw Materials and Consumer Goods work in game and rebalanced both. Added RM mines and CG factories.
-Changed Most spaceport graphics to make their appearance more dynamic as they grow.
-You can now automatically reorder rockets when they land by using a toggle on the route.
-Icons above the gates when ships are getting repaired, waiting for full load, or waiting for dilithium fuel.
-Added buttons to move between planets in planet view.
-New ship icons for all the different classes of ships.
-New research point graphs allowing you to compare your research output with your opponent's.
-Robotics and Stellarium rebalanced.
-Added random company names
-Seperated research costs as it's own category in the company ledger.
-Rebalanced all ships some, added quite a bit of cargo space to bigger ships.
-Added tooltips to all research projects in the Research screen.
-Colonist amounts rebalanced, it will now start a bit slower and gradually increase in pace.
-Tooltip Tutorial system is now turned off when in the standalone tutorials.
-Some big performance fixes were implemented in regards to the translucent windows along with other optimizations.
-Fixed a medicine exploit.
-Fixed lobby search window from staying open when returning to the main menu.
-Fixed some supply values in the planet UI.
-AI can no longer ever assign ships to a flight with no gates.
-A & D keys work when editing a planet's name now.
-Increased pirate attacks some to make security more important.
-If ship is one time use it will never break down.
-Flight stats now records properly for rockets.
-AI will prioritize class C ships more now.
-AI now mothballs all research stations after researching all techs
-Fixed a potentially AI-breaking error when they sold a ship.
-AI holding onto unprofitable ships for too long at times.
-AI favors rockets over 909s more frequently now for new colonies.
-Major improvements in the methodology AI uses when deciding to expand flights and add ships.
-Removed some big lag spikes that occur in mid-game.
-Moved Colonial Involvement to be sooner in tech-tree.
-Improvements to auto-saves
-Many other bug-fixes and small improvements
Autonomous transportation patch coming by end of April
This patch has taken months longer than anticipated, but we are finalizing the main autonomous transportation mechanics now. Soon we will be doing intensive playtesting and polishing. We will be releasing the patch by the end of April, hopefully within the next few weeks!
This will really make the game a lot more playable in mid- and late game, we can't wait to get it out to everyone!
Stay tuned in the coming weeks for news on a full launch date as well!
Thank you to everyone for your continued support and patience.
Bugfix patch 0.4.1
I hope everyone is having a good time with the new tech-tree system! We have a smaller patch to fix some issues with 0.4.0.
We will now be starting on the autonomous transport system which I can't wait to get into the game! I really think it will take ITC to the next level. Patch notes for today's patch below:
December 27, 2018 v0.4.1 PATCH NOTES: -Medicine will now be given priority over other cargoes of same slot when its price is higher.
-New Cochin ships now have exhaust trails.
-Passenger icons are now white and much more visible in planet window.
-Added a few new tutorial popups
-Lowered brightness of class M4 planets
-Fixed problems with Cert research for B3, C4, WC2
-Pressing esc now properly unpauses the game when exiting the menu.
-research station text and tooltips corrected.
-Fixed a game crash having to do with Robotics production on Mars.
-Fixed a bug causing subsidizing industries to not always take your money.
-Fixed bug causing AI to not go bankrupt sometimes.
-Pickup next demand for machinery and robotics will now always work correctly.
-Increased max system scroll radius.
-Fixed machinery prices on Mars.
-Ship hover details no longer will stay visible when a ship has warped out of the system.
Merry Christmas! Research / Tech Tree patch 0.4.0 now live!
We hope everyone is having a great time with family and friends for the holidays! We would like to add to the cheer with a Christmas gift of our own. Patch 0.4.0 is now live!
This patch has a lot of great additions and changes. Including our research and tech tree systems which changes fundamentally how the game progresses and gives players another fun way to manage the development path of their companies. You must now construct research centers, which are orbiting facilities, and spend research points to gain access to new ships, efficiency upgrades to your ships, different buildings, and even a way for you to gain goods from newly subsidized industries.
We've added three new ships from a new manufacturer "Cochin". All three of these ships are late-game heavy haulers. Two being intrasystem and one being a giant 160 slot interstellar ship.
Bankruptcy now functions quite differently and is more forgiving and easy to tell when it will hit you. We have made a new in-game popup tutorial system to help new players. There are also a TON of optimizations this patch! Should make things quite a bit smoother graphically. We didn't stop there however, there's a bunch of other small fixes and additions.
I hope everyone enjoys, and we look forward to hearing any feedback you have! We'll be working on a patch to fix some of the smaller issues with this release over the coming week or two, then we will be moving on to another big system which will add to the play-ability of the late game experience a ton!
-New Research system. You must now construct a research station to build up reseach points which can be spent on various technologies to advance your company.
-3 new large ships available from new manufacturer (Cochin)
-Bankruptcy now works differently. It now takes 3 straight months with negative cash to go bankrupt. Getting positive money at any point resets the timer. On easy and normal difficulty players will now get a one time grant from the government when cash goes negative.
-New in-game popup based tutorial system to help guide new players.
-Auto save game improvements. No more giant list of save games
-Big performance optimizations!
-New trail render based orbit lines (experimental)
-In game bug report system
-Government colonizing toggle in custom games
-More work on new spaceports menu to make it more functional (still a work in progress)
-Once editing a ship name, icon changes from "edit" to "save" symbol
-Leasing a gate now prompts for "Yes" or "No"
-Various new tooltips to assist players in game setup and play.
-Button in the routes screen to bring up ships screen with route filter applied.
-Limited system, galaxy scroll boundaries.
-New notification when a planet reaches it's max machinery level
-Fixed dilithium crystal price readout
-Some AI improvements to route expansion.
-Fixed spaceport passenger list width and scroll speed.
-Ship type drop down fixed in ledger
-Upgrading a ship no longer reset's it's name and group
-Tooltip on the ships screen to view exactly what a ship is carrying.
-AI will take a small loan to buy a gate if it has too many ships orbiting.
-Ability to rename and nickname planets.
-Last company name and color saved from previous games.
-Added button to reorder rockets on route in routes screen.
-Stopped some more hotkey inputs from triggering while typing in an input box.
Updates on next patch
Hi all, wanted to give a quick update with the status of our next patch. We are already more than a month behind schedule and honestly it will probably be another month before the patch is ready. It will include the following things:
-New tech tree system, ships, tech upgrades, industries, buildings etc... will now unlock via a research system.
-Research stations which generate research points. These will be orbital facilities that will only generate 100% of their potential output when placed around a planet class that doesn't already have a station. These are also upgradeable.
-New tutorial system based on "hints" during real gameplay instead of separate tutorials.
-Bankruptcy will now work differently.
We've actually finished most of this, however AI needs to know how to use the techtree system which is quite a big undertaking and we haven't yet started on the new tutorial system which we want to get right before releasing more complexity to the game.
We apologize for the slow patch time, full time work and full time school have been getting in the way for us big time recently.
Thank you all for your patience! For slightly more frequent updates, please follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MTWorlds
1yr, 10k sales! A look at how far we've come and updated roadmap.
Wow, I can't believe it's been over a year since we first released Interstellar Transport Company to early access! It honestly seems like just a few months ago. We're also extremely happy to say we've made over 10,000 sales of our game with a very good 85% review rating on Steam. All of this is a magical feeling for us! Thank you so much to everyone for your support, encouragement, and appreciation of our game.
While it wasn't enough for us to quit our day jobs and focus all of our time on the game, we have been able to get a ton of content and systems added to ITC since launch. I just wanted to take a moment and go through some of what we added since August 16th, 2017.
We've fixed the major balance and performance issues found at launch.
Multiplayer is no longer a "stutterfest", it feels just like playing singleplayer but 10x better with human opponents. Give it a try if you haven't already!
You can lose the game in predefined games (BIG changes to this again coming in the next content patch, maybe a month away)
Added Mac & Linux support and some basic localization for ~15 different languages. It's not perfect by any means, mostly using Google translate, but it should allow people in those nations to play.
New Ships and routes screens with much more functionality and information.
3 new ships since launch, many more to come soon!
Hotkeys for game speed, pausing etc... many other quality of life changes like this.
Ship refitting & ship replacement with newer models.
List of current buildings on a planet and redesigned interface for constructing buildings.
Tons of interstellar re-balances and fixes to make this more playable.
Entire UI and individual windows are now scalable
Market prices now visible at each planet (even more easily accessible info coming soon with the new spaceports screen which is a WIP)
7 new cargoes and complete re-balance of existing cargoes. New cargo bays, buildings etc... to support these new cargoes.
New more fair reputation system with more visibility of information.
And most recently completely new UI graphics!
This isn't the end though, we still have quite a bit to complete from our roadmap! Here is what we plan on completing over the coming months before full launch which is very tentatively scheduled for February 2019:
We will be putting in a tech tree system along with adding many new ships to the game. This is already in production and we hope to have this patch out to you all in about a month's time.
Next we will be implementing some autonomous transportation using transport hubs. You'll see a lot of information about this after the tech tree system is in place!
We will possibly be adding more incentive for players to subsidize industries (maybe giving them some percentage of goods directly to company storage)
Interstellar obstacles
Contracts from local governments
Buildable jump gates
Additional starting scenarios for predefined games
Ranked multiplayer game mode
These next two items may possibly be pushed out until after full launch: - We will be implementing our politics and factions system. This will introduce interstellar wars, nations and nation-wide reputations, embargoes etc.. We are considering pushing this out to gather even more information about how it will impact gameplay. During design brainstorming sessions it seems like a lot of work for very little impact on acutal gameplay. We are very open to feedback however!!
- Stock market system
Reworked UI visuals! 0.3.5 patch available now!
It's been a long time coming, but we finally reworked the UI visuals and boy does it look better!!! Not only has everything been reskinned we completely redid the window sizes, got rid of the borders around windows, fixed transparency issues, created new icons, made a new main toolbar etc... It really helps to be able to enjoy the game when you're not fighting against the user interface so much! I hope everyone enjoys and I would love to hear what you think. Plenty of other changes in this patch as well including a bug we missed for the AI from last week's patch.
0.3.5 PATCH NOTES:
-Completely reskinned the User Interface.
-New windows with less transparency, no borders.
-New fogged transparency on windows.
-New more modern menu bar and menu buttons
-Less words, more icons throughout interface.
-Started adding research elements, not functional yet.
-New spaceport menu, still a work in progress. This allows you to compare spaceports, buy gates and setup two stop routes from one location. Will expand on it's functionlity over coming months.
-Optimization of RAM usage. The game now uses ~25% the RAM as it did previously.
-Fixed the AI "loop" bug which stopped AI from functioning.
-Unity upgrade to 2018.2.4f1 to fix some Unity bugs.
-Fixed a couple NAN situations.
-Profit line graph loan issues corrected.
-Surface building buttons always appear so you can see requirements for building them now.
-Fixed cargo not loading correct amount with "next hop demand" pickup rule selected.
-Dilithium crystal price corrected in planet view.
-Machinery prices lowered.
-Food, water, Raw Materials, Rare Resources prices all raised slightly.
Lots of AI changes, better readability on tooltips, MP lobby changes and more! v0.3.4 PATCH NOTES
-AIs have a completely reworked ship selection method.
-AIs now will expand routes more aggressively.
-AI sends more passengers than before.
-AI will reduce ships and remove / buy gates more logically than before.
-AI no longer buys 2nd gate when expanding a spaceport.
-Tooltips are much more readable now.
-Planet development should get stuck at 99.9% much less often now.
-Added more AI companies to predefined games.
-Fixed building shuttle service step in tutorial 3 and other various tutorial issues
-Fixed supplemental video tutorial not playing.
-Slowed colonization rates a bit.
-Active MP games are shown but greyed out in the browse games list.
-Milestone text sized up.
-Lobby passwords now work.
-Search lobby no longer disappears.
-Updated Unity to 2018.2
-Fixed Linux double input bug
Patch will be live in about an hour. Enjoy and please let us know if you run into any troubles!! I hope you enjoy the more competitive AI and all the bugfixes!
v0.3.3 New reputation system!
As discussed briefly in our development roadmap, the reputation system in Interstellar Transport Company needed some love. It was just too confusing, too many variables at play, not transparent enough, and the 2.5% penalty when constructing a building was frustrating to players. All of this has changed!
As shown in the screenshot above, you can now easily see exactly what modifies your reputation. The calculations have been simplified and modified, the 2.5% reputation penalty removed and reputation is slightly more impactful to fare prices etc... I think you will all really like these changes!
In addition we've changed the way colonization occurs. You will now notice faster colonization when there are more companies in the game and early game colonization has been guaranteed a little bit to provide a slightly more predictable early-game experience. We've also fixed a few other bugs and inconsistencies that should also help improve the game!
Enjoy and we look forward to hearing your feedback!
June 6, 2018 v0.3.3 PATCH NOTES:
-New reputation system and calculations.
-New reputation tooltip showing exactly why your reputation changes.
-Removed reputation penalty for constructing a building.
-Colonization rates now adjust based on how many companies there are in the game.
-Early colonization will now always occur.
-Upgraded to Unity 2018
-Slight rebalancing of fares.
-Security station tooltip fixed, no longer shows AU%
-ship name in "Not at least two stops" tooltip.
-Changed "taxi" to "shuttle"
-Renamed "operating profits" to "overall profits"
