2017.7 release notes

Modules

• New Trade module: Entrust (teleports a transport ship cargo to another transport ship)
• New Trade module: Offload (while active, all the transport's shipments will be delivered at a lower rate when the ship arrives at a Trade Station)
• New Mining module: Genesis (creates new asteroids in the current sector)
• New and existing Transport ships level 3 and higher will get an extra Trade module slot
• Destiny: Activating ship is now disabled right after the teleport (8 hours in White Star, 10 seconds elsewhere). Blast radius now constant on all levels. Damage reduced on level2+
• Unity: Damage increase per additional player reduced on all levels
• Barrage: Increased base damage and damage per additional enemy on all levels. Max damage is now capped at the equivalent of having 5 additional enemy ships in the sector.
• It is now possible to uninstall non-weapon modules from any ship, to help with Hydrogen usage

2017.6 Release Notes

White Stars have arrived! Coordinate with your Corporation members to outsmart the competing Corporation and gain Relics. See this post for more details on White Stars.

Other changes:

Introducing White Stars: Asynchronous Co-op with PvP elements and Corporation progression

I've written before about potential star types we're evaluating. Today I'm happy to announce an upcoming new star type that I think will be a great fit for the game. As usual, keep in mind gameplay details are subject to change as we playtest and tweak.

2017.5 Release Notes

Modules

• New Trade module: Rush (increases the Transport speed proportionally to the number of shipments carried that are destined to the next waypoint)
• New Mining module: Enrich (increases Hydrogen stored in current sector by fixed percentage)
• New Support module: Alpha Rocket (launches a projectile that does damage to all enemy ships on impact, but can be destroyed by enemy fire before impact)

Corporations

• Corporation Search screen allows filtering Corporations by name, Region, total influence, and number of members
• Corporations can set Minimum Influence requirement. Players below that influence level cannot join (or request to join)
• First Officer can now step down by promoting another Officer to their role
• Senior members and Officers will now see an Invite option when viewing the profile of another player that is not in any Corporation

Chat 

• "Report player" option will show up on public Red Stars
• Added language filter on Galaxy chat and public Red Stars
• Added Mute option for Galaxy chat and public Red Stars (also affects alerts)
• Fixed scrolling issues when browsing past chat messages while a new message arrives
• Most emojis will now show up when sent from Android devices

Other improvements

• On the Shipments screen, the most recently loaded shipment will show on the top of the Transport's carried items list
• The Progress Report screen will show any planets that have finished upgrading while the player was offline
• Short Range Scanner placement can be cancelled while the scanner is under construction 
• New animations for salvaging Artifacts
• Shipyard will show progress bar while a ship design is under upgrade
• "Depart now" button does not show Hydrogen cost, to remove confusion about when the cost to move is paid. "Cancel move" button shows the amount of Hydrogen that will be refunded if the move is cancelled.
• New Shipment Beam effect
• New visuals for Level 7 artifacts and the level 7 Red Star planet
• Performance improvements (framerate should be higher on most devices)

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where Remote Repair would keep working for the entire period the player was logged out. It will now only work until the activation period is over.
• Fixed an issue where Salvage was not applied when a ship in the sector was destroyed and had Sanctuary equipped (affects the Cerberus Colossus)
• When multiple adjacent Short Range Scanners are available to uncover a sector, the cheapest one will be used (previously, a random one was used) 
• Fixed issue where ships would stack on top of each other if the station they were docked onto was moved 
• Fixed an issue where the Fast Forward button was not speeding up the action after a Replay was started over
• Shipment Beam will now deliver the picked up shipment immediately, if the ship is docked at the shipment's destination

2017.4 release notes

Corporations

• Private Red Stars that are not full can be joined by other Corporation members after they started
• Senior Members and above can Invite other players to the Corporation
• Corporation chat entries that are related to Red Stars have different appearance and are collapsed by default after the mission has expired
• Corporations can now set a Region (country) to help visibility. Recommended Corporations can be filtered by Region (note that only Open to All Corporations will show up in the Recommended list)

Other improvements and Bug fixes

• Increased Credit Storage for level 15+ planets
• Red Star participants can send an alert to bring specific locations to other player's attention
• Time Warp no longer affects Red Star timer
• Fixed issue that was not allowing space stations to be moved within the same sector
• Fixed an issue where Teleport could move a ship straight on top of a Star
• Fixed issue where Destroyer beam was showing as active when the Destroyer was disabled (i.e. because of EMP or Supress)
• Stealthed ships no longer affect Cerberus movement (including Interceptor)
• Now allowing up to 8 Warp lane hubs on a single sector
• Added confirmation prompts when rushing Artifact research, and when purchasing an Artifact with Crystals
• Transports and Miners using Sanctuary will lose all cargo when teleported to safety 
• Fixed issue where the Battleship count in a Red Star was not updating correctly when a ship exited the Red Star using the Sanctuary module
• New planet explosion visual effect
• New visual effects for Recall and Hydrogen Upload modules
• Addd support for the Russian language

2017.3 release notes

Red Stars & Combat

• New Cerberus ship: Destroyer (starts appearing at Red Star level 6)
• Ships that are docked on the return stargate in a Red Star at the moment the supernova happens will automatically jump back (instead of being destroyed)
• New artifacts for Red Star Levels 7 and 8. New art for L6 artifacts and Red Star 6 planets.
• Red star planets will display correct level (in red stars, planet level affects the levels of the artifacts the planet contains)
• Tweaked number of planets in Red Star level 4+, to make more higher level planets available
• Fixed another case that could cause Cerberus ship movement to be affected by ships docked on asteroids from a nearby sector

Modules

• 7 new modules (3 Trade, 1 Mining, 3 Support)
• EMP: Reduced duration for level2+. Reduced blueprint requirement to upgrade for level6+.
• Barrage: Total damage now depends on number of enemies in the same sector (instead of number of enemies within firing range). Reduced damage per additional enemy, to compensate. Increased upgrade blueprint requirement for level2+. Hydrogen usage increased on all levels.
• Battery: Increased damage on level2+ (does not affect Sentinel)
• Laser: Increased maximum damage and time to reach maximum damage for level4+ (also affects Colossus)
• Mass Battery: Decreased damage per second for level4+
• Mirror shield: Increased mirror damage on all levels. Decreased shield strength on level2+.
• Destiny: Increased damage on all levels. Decreased cooldown to 5 minutes. Decreased range for level2+.
• Hydrogen Upload: Reduced install cost
• Trade Boost: Increased bonus percent and decreased install price on all levels. 
• Red Star Life extender: Duration and activation cost decreased on all levels
• Impulse upgrade now increases duration, whereas impulse force stays fixed for all upgrade levels. This does not affect the behavior of the module, but fixes a serious issue where it was not possible to judge the upgrade benefit (since impulse force is not displayed in the UI).
• Most modules installed on a friendly ship will now show up in the list over the selection bar (even passive ones)

Shipments

• Planets will store shipments unloaded on them, up to 2x their capacity. No further shipments can be unloaded over this overflow capacity. Previously, shipments stored on a planet over capacity would be deleted on the next shipment refresh.
• Added ability to move Trade Stations
• Shipment computer no longer limits number of shipments automatically picked from intermediate waypoints. Upgrades to the module just increase the bonus payout. Tweaked bonus payout for all levels.
• Movement routes now show up dim, except for the selected ship, to help distinguish selected Transport route when many transports are on the move
• Maximum number of waypoints increased (from 8 to 15)
• Fixed an issue that allowed a warp lane to be linked to itself

Misc

• New ship upgrade process (see here for details)
• New Crystal Shipments in app purchase (best value for Crystals, Crystals are delivered over 7 days as additional planet shipments)
• Planned maintenance will now show countdown timer, to help players avoid risky combat situations just before the servers go down
• Fixed an issue where miners with mass mining could get stuck if their asteroid field was depleted by another miner
• If in a Corporation, the chat window will open by default on the Corporation tab (unless there's unread messages in the Star System tab)
• When a ship is selected, the next/previous selection arrows will now cycle between ships of the same type anywhere on the map
• Added support for French, German, Italian and Spanish languages

Upcoming changes to ship upgrades

On the next update, the Ship Upgrade process will change. This is in response to the devastating fleet losses issues we've acknowledged before, as well as to provide better balancing and progression.

June 2017 - Status update

As we are headed into global launch later this summer, I wanted to take the opportunity to write about the current status of the game and what we see as priorities for future updates going forward.

2017.2 release notes

Our new update is now available! Here's what's new:

2017.1 Update - Release Notes

Today we are releasing the first update to the live version of the game, available in Canada. Soon we'll have more details to share on our plans to launch in more countries - stay tuned!

Here's what's new in this update:

Red Stars: are you with us or against us?

I got greedy again and neglected to look at the timer and lost a transport ship. That’s always the way it goes for me, but at least this time, I didn’t lose a battleship! Hi, I’m GALaxy and I’m playing Hades’ Star like the rest of you! This is my millionth system and I love it the most because it’s permanent. I’ve been testing every version this game has ever seen (remember when we were saving colonists?! No? That was just me, then) and boy am I glad to say au revoir to the tutorial.

I’m not what you would call a “gamer” so don’t get your hopes up for cool moves and sweet tricks. I mean, maybe I might come up with something, I just can’t promise anything. My game play is more strategized for my daily life. I like levelling up, maxing out, collecting all the cats and then I’m like, “Now what’s the point?” so that’s when there had better be some weekly events or updates to keep me going. Good thing Hades’ Star is headed in that direction because it would be really hard to let my husband know that I’m bored of his game, and I’ll be quitting in exactly 6 weeks once I’ve achieved my last achievable achievement.

Case in point: Hay Day. Hay Day is a farming game where you feed animals and make products and expand your farm as you cater to customer’s orders. I’ve been playing this game off and on FOREVER. Or at least it feels like forever. It’s been at least three years. Probably four. I’ve got a really terrible memory for dates. I’m at level 103. I have all the stuff. I can very easily complete all tasks in the weekly derby event. If I'm being honest, though, I’m really tired of fighting for tasks every week and setting timers. Before the derby, Hay Day was a really nice, calming game. I could just pop in and out whenever I had time. I liked the derby because it gave me a purpose, but now I don’t like the constant conflict. No one ever discusses what tasks they want or who should get what, it's bare teeth, scrambling, and diamond usage if you want to get any sort of decent task in the first four days of the derby. It's exhausting.

That brings me to red star missions in Hades' Star. I’m hearing here and there how there is no player vs player. Well, I beg to differ! Technically (read: as the developer would like), red stars are supposed to be played together wherein we talk to each other and work it through and decide who gets what. But so far, I have encountered no chat (also to my fault) and other people just taking all the artifacts. Are they stealing from me? Am I stealing from them? It’s become a grey area. On my end, it feels like theft FROM me. All of those are mine, aren’t they?

So I’ll pose the question to you! Red Stars: yours for the taking or friendly sharing?

The end of Alpha, and the road ahead

Today we are shutting down our game server, ending an alpha testing period that lasted a bit over 3 months. During that time we had hundrends of participating players that helped a lot both with fixing bugs, and with suggestions and in game activity that affected our developer priorities. We feel this alpha period has been very helpful in making a solid game, so if you participated: Thank you!

The game server will be down for one week. After that period, we will be gradually launching the game in select countries over time. There is no final plan for all countries yet, and details are still being figured out, but here's the current plan so far.

Around March 20: The game will be available for players in Canada on Android, via the Google Play store.

Around March 27: The game will be available to download on the App Store, for iOS players in Canada.

After the Canada launch, we'll be looking to launch into more countries, but there are no concrete plans at the moment. As we are a very small team, this process could take a while, and will also depend on any issues and feedback we receive from our initial rollout. Our approach will be to launch in smaller countries first, ensure the game and servers are well balanced, and then launch in larger markets. That means players in the US or bigger European countries may have to wait for months before the game launches in their country.

We realize if you have participated in the alpha this wait can be frustrating. If you really can't wait to start your proper Empire in the game, send us an email to support@hadesstar.com with your platform of choice (iOS or Android) and we'll see if we can help.

Ongoing Alpha Test - Update #4 Release Notes

Today brings the release of the last update to Hades' Star Alpha, which has been live for almost 3 months. This update brings some final content we felt was necessary before going into beta (especially the Weapon modules, the Leaderboards changes, and the Warp Lane Hub buildings which should bring a new level of strategic planning to delivering shipments for higher level players). During this time we were able to significantly improve the game, largely thanks to the help of early players. If you participated in the alpha - thank you!

For the next few months, we plan to slow down the rate of major features. There will still be some new modules, but the majority of the focus will be on balancing existing content and make yellow and red stars as fun as they can be. We are still on track to launching our beta version some time in March. The alpha version will be live until March 6, at which point the servers will be brought down for a few weeks as we prepare for proper launch in our initial countries.

Here is the list of changes for today's update:

Shipments

• New Building: Warp Lane Hub. Hubs can be linked in pairs to create Warp Lanes. The link lasts one day and costs a fixed amount of Hydrogen. Once the link is active, all ships can travel between the hubs instantly and without consuming Hydrogen.
• Shipments window can sort the list of shiments by destination or by reward amount

Ships and Modules

• Ships can now be upgraded at any time. Upgrade screen is similar to other object's upgrade screen and displays relevant info, including what type of new module slot will be gained by the upgrade
• Ships at level 3 and above can have a custom name assigned (once per ship only)
• A ship can have multiple modules installing at once, no longer have to wait until previous module done installing
• Hydrogen consumption for moving and jumping a ship depend on the ship's level
• Activated modules now cost a fixed amount Hydrogen paid on each activation (instead of having a constant cost added to the ship's movement cost)
• 2 new Weapon modules
• 2 new Shield modules
• 2 new Mining modules
• 2 new Support modules
• 1 new Trade module
• Transport Capacity offers more shipment slots on level 3 and above
• Weak shield renamed to Alpha Shield, strength increased
• Standard shield renamed to Delta Shield, strength increased in low levels and decreased in later levels 
• Strong shield renamed to Omega Shield, strength decreased on level 3 and above
• Laser: Increased maximum damage and decreased time to achieve maximum damage 
• Increased mineral capacity for the Hydrogen Storage module
• Greatly increased duration of mining boost, also increased its speedup modifier. Mining boost is essential for mining from red stars. 
• Increased red star life extender duration. 
• Cerberus Colossus hull strength reduced, but now comes with a shield (affects newly spawned ships only)
• Cerberus Guardian hull strength increased, firepower decreased

Red Stars

• After you have upgraded the Red Star scanner, you will still have the option to search for a lower level Red Star (if you find the new star too hard/expensive, and to help coordinate runs with other players). This way upgrading the Red Star scanner too early does not punish the player.
• Low level Red Stars were made significantly easier
• Added levels 6-10 to the Red Star Scanner, to gain access to the same levels of Red Stars. Any Red Star level after 5 will require significant coordination between multiple players to have even moderate success in. 
• Red stars now have a limit of how many battleships can be sent per player. This is to help us balance Red Stars properly, and remove incentives to create completely imbalanced fleets (many players choose to create fewer than optimal miners and transports in favor of battleships). It should also help make Red Star combat more strategic, hopefully focusing on tactics instead of having players fight the user interface trying to manage more ships in combat than we ever intended. 
• Added Influence points, which can be earned in Red Stars and now are used to calculate player and Corporation Leaderboards. For more details, see this previous blog post.

Economy

• Tweaked Asteroid spawn rates (should be getting more asteroid spawns per day, but each will be holding a much smaller Hydrogen amount)
• Hydrogen drop rate and storage for planets has been decreased
• Miners now keep working on a sector without manual intervention, as long as there are available asteroid fields in the sector.
• We expect and intend the asteroid changes will require players to build more Miner ships, and use additional mining modules to keep up with Hydrogen demand as their empire grows (including planning mining expeditions in Red Stars)
• Player info window has historical graphs for credits and hydrogen income and expenses per day
• New Tycoon achievements (for maintaining sustained income levels for 7 continuous days)

User Interface

• Selection action buttons moved to the bottom of the screen so they don't interfere with everything going on around the selected object
• Selection should work much better now, especially with respect to de-selecting by tapping on empty space
• New selection effect makes it clear what object is selected
• Can preview module range by holding down on the module button (activation can still be cancelled by dragging the finger off the button)

Other improvements

• Notifications should be working again (check your device's settings if they are still not received)
• If playing the same account on multiple devices, notifications should be sent to all devices 
• New notifications for building complete/upgraded events
• Destroying Cerberus stations now gives XP to the owner of the star system. They also explode spectacularly. 
• Fixed bug where Cerberus stations would pick a new target mid-combat for no reason
• Buy Artifact page shows yield info on each artifact type (can also be used as general reference for Artifacts retrieved from Red Stars)

Leaderboard changes and the new Influence score

If you've been participating in the alpha, you may be familiar with the Leaderboards window, which shows the players who have advanced the most in the game:



In its current form, the "Score" column is just the amount of XP a player has collected. XP is gained by doing shipments, upgrading planets, researching artifacts and completing achievements. Nobody ever loses XP, so it's an indication of how long someone has been playing, and their overall level of progress.

There are major issues with using XP for the leaderboards:

• It rewards whoever is playing the most. If a player near the top doesn't log in for a day or two, they will most certainly lose their spot. 
• Players who started playing the game later don't have much hope of catching up. 
• Spending Crystals can directly translate into more XP (i.e. by buying more shipments or Artifacts, or buying the resources to upgrade planets). 
• There is no risk of ever losing XP, so there's little movement and excitement at the top of the leaderboards. 

This is why on the next update we're completely changing how Leaderboards are calculated. We are introducing a new resource called "Influence". Influence is an indicator of the overall power a Player/Empire has to affect change in the Hades Galaxy. Initially, Influence will be used just for the leaderboards, but we want to explore more potential features that are related to this metric. 

Players gain Influence mainly via military operations in Red Stars. We are re-designing Red Stars so they start off very easy, but will keep the difficulty high on the very high level Red Stars. As of the next update, we will also allow players to start a Red Star search for any lower level star that their scanner supports. This should help with coordinating Red Star matches between players. It will also address the issue where players could be punished for upgrading their scanner too early. 

Each Red Star level has its own thresholds for awarding Influence. Very easy Level 1 Red Stars will award Influence to a player even if they only destroy one Cerberus Sentinel, but only up to a certain Influence limit. After they reach that limit, players have to upgrade their scanner and go to higher level stars if they want to continue gaining Influence. 

Players can also lose Influence, if they initiate a Red Star mission and then immediately abandon the star, or fail to meet the quotas of that star's level (i.e. because they didn't retrieve enough Artifacts or didn't destroy enough Cerberus ships).

Influence is gained collectively by all players that participate in the Red Star mission. As long as they contributed anything, everyone will be awarded based on the group's result. For example, on a Level 3 Red Star, you might have 3 participating players who destroyed 5 Cerberus ships total. One of the players only sent one battleship in, and that battleship did less overall damage than the other players' battleships and didn't destroy any single ship on its own. Still, all 3 players will be awarded Influence. Success or failure in Red Stars is always collective. It is our intent that very high level Red Stars should require increasingly more sophisticated coordination between multiple players to gain Influence.

Influence is also a metric that applies to a Corporation. A Corporation's Influence is derived by the individual Influence scores of its members. The Corporation leaderboards will use this new metric. We expect that competitive Leaderboard players will want to increase Influence not only for themselves, but also for their Corporations. The cooperative nature of Red Stars, as well as private Red Star searches from within Corporations that we will be adding in a future update, will help do exactly that.

As a final note, our design decisions account for the fact that not everyone is playing the game to climb the leaderboards. Our goal and hope for this system is to make it a challenging and fan aspect for the people who want to participate, and completely invisible for the ones who don't. It's perfectly fine to play Red Stars just for the fun of it and for collecting a few artifacts or Hydrogen every now and then. Our goal is to not make those players feel like they are missing out by not maximizing their Influence score. We do believe very high level Red Stars will be fun to try and beat with other players, but at the same time we won't be forcing everyone to play them (for example, we won't be hiding exclusive Module blueprints in those difficult Red Stars - it will still be possible to unlock all modules without playing the very hard Red Stars). 

Influence points will be introduced on our final alpha update, coming next week. Each existing player will be assigned an initial Influence score based on their XP, but after that Influence will be calculated independently based on the results of Red Star missions.

We will still be keeping XP and Empire Level as a general indicator of each player's progress, but that metric will be mostly decorational from now on.

As always, all thoughts and feedback are welcome. See you in game!

Ongoing Alpha Test - Update #3 Release Notes

Today we are realeasing our 3rd update to the Alpha version. We have made great progress in improving stability and fixing issues, largely because of your reports. Thank you and please keep the feedback coming!

Our current plan is to do one more update to the Alpha during February, then end the alpha period 1-2 weeks after that update. After the Alpha ends, the game will be unavailable for a few weeks as we prepare to launch in certain countries.

Here is the list of changes in today's update:

Ships and Combat

• All ship speeds increased. Battleship is now faster than both Miner and Transport ships.
• New Cerberus Ship: Sentinel (low hitpoints but high damage, dangerous in high numbers)
• New Cerberus Ship: Colossus (very strong, equipped with the Salvage module)
• Cerberus Sentry renamed to Guardian
• Cerberus ships no longer have levels
• Cerberus ships will now quickly and predictably react to ships moving into their sector.
• Hitpoints and damage has been rescaled (x10 to all numbers). This will cause an issue where existing ships in the Alpha will start with a small amount of health after the update.
• Shield duration greatly increased for all shield modules, to match the activation cooldown time 
• Red star lifetime increased to 15 minutes for all star levels
• Ships no longer automatically move to closest planet when the object they're on is removed (i.e after a cerberus base is destroyed or asteroid field is depleted)
• Damaged ships take longer to repair when docked on a planet (can be sped up with Crystals)

Modules

• Greatly reduced Module installation price and time, especially for low level modules, to address unreasonably high risk when sending ships to combat or red stars
• Upgrading a module to a new level from the Technology screen now takes time. Once the upgrade is complete, all existing installations are automatically and instantly upgraded to the new level.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to install the same module on two different slots (existing double installations will not be fixed in the alpha)
• Fixed issue where a module could be replaced with an identical same level module
• New Module: Unity (Increases firepower if there are other player's ships in the sector)
• New Module: Fortify (Reduces damage received and forces all enemy ships to direct fire on the owner ship)
• New Module: Salvage (Instantly restores a percentage of hull strength each time any ship is destroyed in the same sector)
• Laser damage ramps up the longer it stays focused on a single target
• EMP affects Cerberus bases
• Reduced cooldowns for EMP, shields, and Teleport

User Interface

• Added radial buttons for giving orders to the currently selected ship. Activation buttons for any installed modules show under the radial buttons. The new system has some big advantantages over the old one, but we are still working on it to fix cluttering issues that remain. 
• Previous/Next buttons to facilitate selecting the next ship docked on the same planet as the currently selected ship
• When an object is selected it briefly scales up to make it obvious what was selected
• Double tap on empty space to zoom in/out depending on current zoom level 
• Object Info window no longer has two tabs (merged stats to the main page)
• Improved Corporations, Settings, Buy Resources, windows
• Trade Stations now display shipment yield per hour on their info page
• Ships now display total hydrogen use on info page (takes into account all installed modules)
• Diplomacy Link window was completely redone to allow easier finding of diplomatic partners (only recently active players shown as recommendations; all incoming requests will be shown so the player can pick the one they want)
• Clumped ships are separated visually on closer zoom levels so they can be selected individually
• When a sector is being scanned, time remaining shows on the sector
• When preparing a move, cerberus ships close to the planned route will automatically display their attack ranges
• Trade stations are now named after the sector they are placed in
• When upgrading a planet, building or module, the time to upgrade shows up in the Upgrade button
• More sound effects added to the user interface

Visual Improvements

• Improved colors on Yellow star nebulas 
• More visual variety in Red Stars
• New visuals for Cerberus Bases
• New visuals for rare Ice planet
• Remaining Shipment indicators now use a continuous fill bar, and are consistent between planets and trade stations
• Radial bars have been replaced with horizontal bars. Hitpoint and shield bars are now continuous.
• It is now easier to see sector boundaries at high zoom levels

Other changes

• Some achievements have been rescaled so it takes more time to finish them completely
• Broken "Red Star" achievement has been removed, replaced by number of artifacts researched
• Fixed issue where it was possible to scan sectors while the Short Range Scanner was under construction
• Fixed an issue where the game was lowering volume of external audio on iOS
• Can now link your account between an iOS and Android device via the Settings window
• Added ability to buy Artifacts using Crystals in the Research window
• Added experimental Battery Saving mode in the Settings window
• Push notifications that arrive while the game is running will display in the game in Yellow color

Known issues

• Hitpoint rescale causes all existing ships in the Alpha to have a very small amount of Hitpoints. Make sure to repair your Battleships before sending them to combat.
• Push Notifications are still not working (no change since last update)

Hades' Star: Understanding the Economy

Greetings explorers! Over the next several weeks we’ll be giving you a better look at some of the features of Hades’ Star. This week we’ve decided to discuss the early stages of the game as well as some of info you’ll need to do to survive and triumph in the cold, unforgiving vacuum of space.

If you’re completely new to the world of Hades’ Star, your mission is one of expansion through the colonization of planets, the building and upgrading of your fleets and the defense of your acquired territory from constant Cerberus threats. There is a lot to do, and a whole lot of space to explore and conquer.

We’ll start off by discussing the basics of the Hades’ Star economy. There are three types of currency you’ll have to manage and obtain in game, Credits, Hydrogen, and Crystals. Each one is vital to your success and can be obtained in a variety of different ways.

CREDITS: Credits are your main currency, used to buy ships and build infrastructure. Quite simply, building a space empire is expensive and will cost you a ton of credits. Credits are obtained through (mostly) safe trade done by your fleet’s transport ships. The more transport ships and cargo space at your disposal, the faster you’ll gain credits. Simply direct your transport ship to a colonized world or moon, select shipments, and see what goods need a delivery. The amount of credits gained through trade is typically linked to the distance traveled by your transports, so long journeys typically yield more credits. TIP: Once your transports can carry multiple shipments, always keep an eye out for goods that can be delivered to the same, or nearby, planets or moons. You’ll get more credits and will travel the same distance!

HYDROGEN:   Hydrogen is your main fuel source and is consumed when moving ships around a star system. The more ships you have in your fleet, the more rapidly you’ll consume your hydrogen supply. Hydrogen can be gained through mining, so having a few nearby asteroid fields is great for quick hydrogen production. Miners will also continue to mine an asteroid field until it is depleted, so keeping your hydrogen supply up early in the game is typically not an issue. TIP: Moving around your own system doesn’t cost a ton of hydrogen, but jumps to Red Star systems can be quite expensive. Make sure you have plenty of hydrogen available before attempting numerous jumps with a large fleet.

CRYSTALS:  Depending on how much time you have available to you, crystals can be used to speed up various in-game operations (such as the discovery of a new sector, the upgrading of a station or the construction of a new module or station). Crystals can also be used to buy Credits and Hydrogen, should your supply be running low. TIP: While crystals are typically obtained more slowly than hydrogen or credits, don’t be afraid to use them to speed some things up! Also, don’t forget that crystals can also be earned through trade done by your transport ships.

We hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about the economy of Hades’ Star. In the coming weeks, we’ll be digging into the various ships, modules, stations, enemies, and combat that you’ll find in the game. Make sure you follow us on Twitter @HadesStarGame and say hi!