The big winner of our Next Big Thing poll was “Economy”. We’re very glad to see that our players are just as passionate as we are about the economy of Starmourn.
As such, we’ve drafted up our plans for the next big updates and those plans include
- a new mechanic for exploring planets which will yield commodities – search the wilderness and set up special equipment that will reveal and allow spaceships to come and pick up natural resources from the planets
- specializations in the manufacturing chain
- on overhaul on refining and processing
- various improvements to modding and our daily quest system
For more insight on what we have planned, visit this thread on our forums HERE and join in on the discussion.
We’re very happy to announce that we’ve just finished and released the Faction Engagement Missions – The Cerebral Augment Chambers. Each faction houses one of these titanic contraptions, the purpose of which is to enhance the mental and physical capabilities of all faction members via their mindsims and wetwiring.
Through the CAC, you will perform daily tasks such as killing certain denizens, completing market orders, delivering commodities, defeating enemies in space incursions and others, in order to obtain Report Slivers. These Report Slivers can be fed into the CAC in order to enhance a particular aspect of all members of your faction. These aspects are: increased experience gain, increased hacking/captaincy experience gain, extra damage in incursions, extra damage against denizens, increased stats.
Come learn more about the system on our forums or jump right into the game and start empowering your faction!
May brought a ton of new things in Starmourn and you are missing out if you are not logging in to check them out!
Ship Customization: a brand new feature that brings your ship off the Overhead Map and into the space station, where it can be looked at by yourself and, more importantly, by others.
Just like your character’s appearance you can describe your ship with a paragraph of text, as well as pimp your ship’s look with dozens of options available in station chop shops across the galaxy. Kit it out with snazzy paint colors and finishes, exciting wing and hull shapes, and thematic decals that you can combine to make your ship unique – and uniquely yours.
Shopfronts are better than ever and they have received a lot of love this month, making being a crafter more appealing than ever: you can now categorize your wares and upgrade your shops to obtain additional perks: stock designs instead of finished goods, increase your capacity, obtain even more categories and even change the color that your shops display in.
Modding has been overhauled! WeaponModding and ArmorModding have been redone and now allow the player more control over what they learn and what mods they wish to specialize in. No longer must you search high and low for a large number of identical mods in order to master a specific mod, you now obtain research credit for a manufacturer’s entire catalogue when you reverse engineer a mod. Oh, and you can obtain a weekly SHIPMENT of mod parts and credits in exchange for resources! How awesome is that?
Another round of Classlead changes have been implemented, bringing some needed tweaks and updates to Starmourn’s B.E.A.S.T.S and Scoundrels.
If you ever felt like you missed out on our awesome promotional items, you can now obtain them via the Promo Market that was just implemented where people can freely trade in all the awesome goodies that Starmourn has to offer in its promotional content.
And speaking of promotions, if you ever wanted to ride your own Hoverbike or Speeder, now is the time to log in and check out how awesome they are and get one for yourself from either the promotional chests or via the Promo Market from other players or the mysterious smugglers that sometimes offer them for sale.
All of these updates are made even sweeter by the numerous bug fixes we have put in and the many quality of life improvements that the team has worked so hard to bring to the game (transparency in mob attacks, factory movement, tweaks to jewelry designs, improvement to the base commands and many more).
You should also come check out the forums and see what we have planned next: Factional Engagement Missions, the system where you help your faction as a whole get stronger via the tasks that you complete.
Oldtown. Flooded, abandoned, and destitute, the former heart of Haven City is now a slum for the poor, the dispossessed, and the forgotten. While most would never choose to call it home, for the resident Bushraki, it’s territory they’re willing to fight fiercely for when it’s threatened by outsiders seeking something of value.
Will you aid the Chrome Skulls and their unhinged leader in his quest to take over Oldtown, or help the Dikamazi Ventrats beat off the invaders trying to steal what is theirs? Maybe you’ll just head to Gravity, Haven City’s favorite watering hole, to catch up on gossip about the current events. No matter what way you slice it, there’s plenty of good reasons to log in and get involved today!
April has been a very busy month for us. It seemed like it passed in the blink of an eye! Here’s the features and improvements we’ve implemented in April that we are the most proud of:
- Station Missions have gone through several stages of improvement and refinement, with more on the way.
- Our very first round of classleads have been approved and implemented.
- We’ve refined and improved commodity generation.
- We’ve introduced a way for factions to generate income via taxation.
- Kidnappings and Ry’nari revolts have sent ripples through the apparent peace in the galaxy.
- A new questline has been unveiled in Mir.
- A Black Market has opened up for those with shadier business inclinations.
- A brand new Ship Customization system has been released.
- Hundreds of bugs have been joyfully squished.
- Quality of life improvements have been implemented to make the experience of both staff and players a little easier and smoother.
May promises to be even busier – we’re keeping ourselves occupied with several awesome new things! Keep reading for a preview of what we’re up to and what we’re planning for the coming weeks.
- Cosmpiercers – we hear you, and we’re hard at work looking at solving some of the issues we have with the current Cosmpiercer system. We hope to present you with a better experience in the following days!
- We’ve done some work on the economy, and we’re going to do more. We have some storefront improvements in the works, changes and fixes for some of our existing tradeskills, and more!
- Speaking of tradeskills, our overhaul of WeaponModding and ArmorModding is almost ready – we’re very excited to see the changes released!
- Our Storytellers are hard at work with some interesting events on the horizon. I want to tell you more about them, but I’d be spoiling the surprise…
- We’re working on new content in the form of daily missions, a new system that aims to reward both you and the faction you are a part of with bonuses and temporary boosts.
- More classleads
- And as always, we’re continuing to squish bugs with a vengeance.
Starmourn is a unique game in the Iron Realms ecosystem, and a unique game in the world of muds in general. As a science fiction text game with an active, hardworking development team, it is important to us that it be a standout example of the genre – and quite frankly, it is! But we have plans to take it even farther.
A few of the features we are the most proud of are:
- An intricate economy system
- An engaging, fun hacking system
- The magic of space and everything about it
- Ship piloting, ship battles, ship resource gathering
- New innovations in our unique PvE experience
- A PvP system that is quite different from the other IRE games
Over the coming weeks, months, and years of development, we want to double down on these features and make sure they reach the level of polish and stability they deserve. Transparency is important, so we would like to make sure the playerbase of our game is fully aware of what we’ve been planning!
One of our main goals is system integration. We want our unique systems to feel less like distinct entities, and more like a seamless whole that works together like a well-oiled machine. It is important to us that the playerbase, whatever their main areas of interest (be it exploring, fighting, spaceships, etc) feels as though they can participate in the “whole Starmourn experience” without worrying that they are missing out on anything the game has to offer.
As a standout example, we eventually want all areas of performance to link back towards what we understand as the game’s economy. Colonizing an asteroid and setting up a refinery there would give you significant manufacturing boosts, but might also draw the attention of your competitors. Performing certain PvE tasks for your faction might give you mining bonuses for a while. Getting involved in PvP events that require you to hack into a corporation’s servers might allow you to funnel resources out of their accounts and into your own.
The above is just an example, one of many such concepts the development team has been discussing and experimenting with avidly since Starmourn’s launch. These features, however, are not something that can be accomplished in a day or a month, but will grow over time as we update our existing systems and implement new ones. The development team strives for steady forward progress, while constantly tuning the existing game and adjusting things based on player feedback.
The goals in the categories below are not in any particular order of importance, but we have determined that they are the things we would like to accomplish to provide a solid, CORE experience to the game. If something isn’t listed here, it doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking about it, discussing it, or planning it, but it would be impossible to put everything we have discussed or thought about into a “Development Roadmap” – there would be no end in sight!
So, without further ado, here are the “outstanding” development goals on our radar.
PVE
- Make cover more appealing and useful
- Improve evasion
- A focus on social play (better crew/group dynamics, dynamic scaling)
- Expansions to the main story line
- Dynamically scaling instances and zones
- Quest reward expansions
- Daily quests/collaborative activities with factional implications (generally, ways to engage max/high level players who want an alternative to bashing but still want to remain within the PvE sphere.)
- LEVEL UNCAPPING!!
- Naturally, an ongoing expansion of areas and visitable planets
PVP
- Cosmpiercer improvements
- On-demand PvP areas/games – starting factional/individual conflict without the need of setting up/coordinating a large team to do so.
- Open PK high-reward incursions
- “Cargo mule” missions that allow piracy
- Class improvements that would allow for more diverse stat setups
- General WW improvements
ECONOMY
- More uses for commodities
- Improvements to the way you gather and availability of comms to better reward the time you spend doing those activities
- Improvements to the MARKET
- Better Faction strength and relevance in the economy of the world through activities that bolster/facilitate crafting and manufacturing
- Improvements to the Economies of the world to make them more appealing and diverse and encourage you to leave the safety of the Omni processing area
TRADESKILLS
- Shipmodding (for real!)
- Modding in general to be revamped into a fun/useable system
- Storefront improvements
- Extra tradeskills based on what a lot of you have requested
CUSTOMIZATIONS
- Ship customizations – really put your personal touch on how your ship looks and show it off to others
- Weapon/Armor customizations
SHIPS
- Space grouping and fleet systems for players
- Extra ship modding and variety
- More flexible PK rules
- Economy-based NPC ships and police forces
- Possible social elements for ship usage
HACKING
- Level uncapping
- More challenging hacking games – extra encounters, multi word passwords
- Hacking being involved in factional conflict (see OnDemand PvP)
- Hacking being involved in discovering the world’s lore and obtaining information
- Hacker vs hacker PvP
COLONIZATION
- Colonization of asteroids/planets for player worldbuilding
- Bonuses offered to holding certain aspects of economical life on said colonies/establishments
- Involved activities for colony expansion/maintenance
- Conflict options for colonized space (takeovers, raids, hacks)
Starmourn will never stop evolving. We are aware some of the systems and improvements we are planning may turn out to look very different from what we originally envisioned based on your feedback as we develop them. However, it is important to us that you know we have goals we wish to achieve and a solid roadmap towards the future of the game. Ultimately, Starmourn is the player’s game. We want it to take the shap6e which the majority of you will enjoy. We know it would be nothing without you contributing to making Starmourn a unique experience!
We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on everything we just
Thanks for reading, Starmourners. We’ll see you all in space!
Forums Link:
https://forums.starmourn.com/discussion/907/starmourn-roadmap
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