Red Star changes in DARK NEBULA

Red Stars are the foundation of Hades' Star. As the first activity star type to be implemented in the game, they entire game revolves around them. They are crucial for establishing a daily routine, providing daily gameplay challenges, for progressing technology that can help in any star type, and for meeting and interacting with other players.

The current Hades' Star game has found success because it showed how Red Stars can be a fun, cooperative, cooperative social, consistent daily activity. It has found success despite some fundamental problems with Red Stars, as described below. A big part of the development effort in Dark Nebula is going towards fixing these problems so Red Stars can fulfil their true potential and open up to more diverse types of strategy players. 

Shipment changes in DARK NEBULA

We previously covered overall Credit changes coming to Dark Nebula, including potential changes to shipments. 

This post goes into more detail for high level changes around Shipments. 

Blue Star changes in DARK NEBULA

The DARK NEBULA update will bring significant changes to how Blue Stars are played. These changes are designed to address the following problems: 

CREDITS changes in DARK NEBULA

As explained in a previous blog post about Hydrogen, the DARK NEBULA update will rework many aspects of the currency economy to address fundamental core problems in the game. While not as far reaching as the Hydrogen changes, the Credit changes will also affect many systems and will be quite visible in daily play.

Module changes in DARK NEBULA

Equipping ships with Modules is the most important gameplay system in Hades' Star. All combat and economic activities on all star types heavily depend on Modules. The exact same activities can range from mind numbingly boring to extremely fun, depending on how well tweaked the involved Modules are. Without properly designed Modules, there's no progression, no strategy, no gameplay, and no Hades' Star. 

Given the importance of Modules, the Dark Nebula update will take the time to carefully review the role and place of every single module in the game. The goal will be to fix the current Module problems described in detail below. 

Hydrogen changes in DARK NEBULA

Hades' Star foundation is the economy around its 3 main resources (Credits, Hydrogen, Crystals). The economic focus of the game gives it a very unique experience compared to all other similar games.

Despite the success Hades' Star has found thanks to its unique economy mechanics, there are also serious problems with these mechanics that threaten the long term viability of the game. The Dark Nebula update will focus on fixing the problems head on. Fixing the problems means that existing game mechanics can realize their true potential and become far more interesting than they currently are. It also means means that new exciting mechanics can be properly designed and built on top of the base economic features in the future.

White Star changes in DARK NEBULA

From all the game modes in Hades’ Star, White Stars have the most potential to be a truly unique, truly tactical, truly social game - all important goals for Hades’ Star in general. But the overall complexity in other parts of the game has done White Stars a disservice so far. Modules like Time Warp (which should never have been allowed in White Stars in the first place) and unintended features like bonding Cerberus ships as Leap targets, have taken over gameplay completely, eliminated vast categories of interesting tactical choices, and made the overall experience swift towards random directions over the years. With Dark Nebula, we are taking a step back and dedicating a lot of time and effort required to bring White Stars back to their original vision.