The biggest update yet, update 09 is gonna bring the Defense missions and Alien Technology. In the meantime update 08c is Live with bug fixes and several new quality of life features. These include some requested features such as offline progress and multi buy options. I'm still focusing on active play and will be adding active skills the player can use to push faster and farther. Offline will be limited to gold gain for now and at a slightly reduced rate. This gain is still pretty significant, I plan to offer a boost to the gain, but will save it for the defense update.

First things first, Idle Space Ship beta 08c is available on google play store for android devices. Try it and let me know what you love and hate and join me on this journey of android development.

UPKEEP

Kept things to minor updates this week as planned. I finalized a couple, what I felt, major quality of life features. Multi buy, so you can buy upgrades ten at a time and 100 at a time. I was gonna wait till after the defense update. I added offline progress to the game as well and this turned out to be more lucrative than I expected, even at a reduced amount. Multi buy almost became a need rather than a wanted feature. Mostly this update was more tweaks to the UI to fix some bugs from the last update. Some silly like some text popping above random panels to new elements covering portions of the UI on some devices.

Beta 08 isn't finished though. I'm finishing one more pass for the prestige upgrades and will be tweaking at least one of the upgrades and boosting it's performance

MAIN PHASE

The big update is moving along nicely. I'm gonna split it into two releases though, there is still more art to be done. Beta 09 is gonna contain the Defense missions complete and intact. You'll be able to play the missions and collect Scrap Metal, a new currency just for the defense tab. Scrap metal will then be used to construct and upgrade new alien technology. But you will need blue prints that will be included in phase two, along with new missions and alien technology to build and use.

COMBAT

So the way the defense tab will work. You will be given a list of missions each with a level indicating their difficulty and a phase counter. For now there will be 3 different missions, and more added with subsequent updates. Each one will have it's own phase amount and a boss for the last phase. Each one will require you've beaten the one before it, and you must beat the boss at least once to have considered beaten the mission. The bosses will be even stronger ships with unique defenses or stats. These will be simple, x2 speed, or 50% reduced damage taken.

I know that's a lot at once but you'll be given a choice of missions that all have several stages to beat. Upon beating the final boss of a mission, along with the other bonuses you receive, you have the chance to receive a blue print. these will always be unique to the mission you received them on. Each mission will have a set of alien technology unique to it. Gathering all the technology of a set will grant some big upgrades and some unique bonuses still not found in the game yet. Individual pieces of the set will give bonuses as well to the ships speed and money gain along with other minor bonuses. These bonuses will be upgradeable as well with scrap metal. this will probably be done on a set wide bonus, but wont require the full set.

MAIN PHASE

Why split the update? Well I have a lot of planned assets with the enemy ships, bosses and not to mention the amount of technology to add with a planned 4 pieces per set. Moving along nicely, I may have time to force it all into the Update. I chose to take the safe route and the first update will have the first portion, the majority of it. Next update will have the collectables. Aiming for a Wednesday Update on the 16th, till then happy coding.

END STEP

With the project out of the way, I hope everyone is doing good where ever you are in the world. Despite the craziness, I highly encourage everyone to get out from time to time. Some fresh air and moving around can do you wonders. I know what it might be like working too many hours, keeping a hobby going for most the other hours, half of everything is shut down. My go to has been Magic the gathering for a good 15 years, I'm pretty much ready for a game anytime you aske me. I understand it might have a perceived notion of complexity that scares people off, and oh boy does it have complexity out the whazoo. But it really all boils down to some very basic concepts and the complexity just comes out of combining those basic and the fact there's is so many cards. they just all do much the same thing though, with different names.

MTGArena is free and a great way for most to get into it. Nothing beats the actual cards though, if you know people that play and you never have, guarantee they have cards for you to play with. That and bored games are just a great way to socialize, There's something so much more enjoyable without the time limit that comes with most online gaming. Being able to politic your way into house rules and overcome defeat that the game rules otherwise would've brought upon you.

What's your go to social game?