Interstellar War

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Hey everybody! It has been a while since any major content update from us, and the game has been in a stable mechanical place for almost two years.   So what's missing?  What's next?  We stand at a major crossroads for the future of ISW and we need your engagement. 

We want to invite you, the community we built this game with and for, to come and join the discussion around the future of the game on discord.  We need your input, because this game isn't just for us, and without you it simply doesn't exist. 

Where we came from

ISW in 2005 was a feature-light game that the community turned into a roleplaying sandbox. The emergent gameplay, the community created narrative and stories, player engagement, the memories of great wars and politics.  It wasn't really the game systems, but the players that made the game. And it was incredible, right up to the moment the original devs had to pull the plug. 

It was a game that had provided such a singular community experience that nothing quite like it had come since.  And that community stayed connected across time and the internet.   Every few years for more than a decade, this dead forum would flicker to life with either a question whether or an announcement that a new ISW project was in the works.  It never was, or ended in disappointment; year after year. 

So about 7 years ago, introduced by that decade-old, nearly-abandoned forum (whose yearly post engagement probably numbered in single digits), divided by an ocean, virtual strangers to eachother, we set out with the intent to rebuild Interstellar-War as faithfully as we could. 

We started from nothing but an ancient info website, a downloaded imagepack, the Wayback machine, and memories (colored at least a little rosy).  And unlike ISW in the early 2000s, which got to start with nothing but Scout Ships and 8 Starbases in Sol and build organically from there, the expectation was that the re-make release with everything that ISW had the night it was shut down.

None of the mechanical systems, none of the ways the stats of the ships or costs of anything were calculated or used, none of it was documented.  So, we derived as much as we could, then rolled up our sleeves and made it up, trying to maintain as much of the look and feel as possible. We told the community (who probably expected another disappointment) we were working on it. 

And we did it. Virtually every gameplay system that existed at the end is present, with changes only intended to improve performance and experience, and we have some extras in here too. It took us a while and we had some bumps along the way, but we did it.  It even looks and feels almost identical.

Almost 20 years after the plug was pulled on the original ISW, Interstellar-war exists in the wild, fully playable once again.  

Where are we going?

The question now is what's missing?  With the game up and running, what is the community waiting for from us?  What do we still need to do?

We have been doing behind the scenes work to update the UI, improve the performance and user onboarding experience.  We have systems in the backend that could allow for more item and inventory interaction, crafting, narrative quests, and more generic mmo style quests.  And we've got more ideas than time. 

But more important than that, to us, is whether we are directing our energy properly.  There are very real time and financial constraints that we need to consider. Is it worth it, and will anyone see it?     

This game is not a commercially viable product, there's minimal-to-nonexistent marketability or monetization opportunity.  But we really don't want it to be!  It's a passion project for us and the community of the original game.  We didn't set out to create an engagement mill or a dopamine-factory and that's not what we want to do. 

So, come talk to us and your fellow community members, or join the community and let's figure out what's next, together. Because it is you who make this game. 

With the end of 2022 upon us and hopefully a far better 2023 ahead of us, it’s as good a time as any to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Yours,
The Dr’s

It’s certainly been a while since I last wrote out an update, and a lot has happened, with time flying past faster than many of us would care to mention. Eek! We’re already nearly at Christmas, after all!

This year has been interesting, but that doesn’t mean we’ve been slacking. Forever present is the question of what comes next for ISW. Mainly, the game has held a feature parity with the old game, with less piracy, for some time but is by no means finished. After all, it was never “finished”…

So, where do we envision ISW 1.0 “stable” to be? For now, it’s still very much an active discussion. But officially moving past the initial combat balancing and ship design and on to more dynamic features (less minor tweaks) such as missions, random events, crafting, trading and areas that add a pulse to the game is an excellent place to start.

Therefore, for those on the fence, rest assured that we’re putting a pin in combat for the moment. Instead, changes may include customisation and other features, but the game's core should remain mostly as is.

With that in mind, some of the more tedious but incredibly complex changes have recently been made, including an entirely new dynamic mission system and fleet builder. Both are long-awaited but have represented a SIGNIFICANT investment in time/energy but now allow for building complex missions/fleets right in the browser without touching a line of code “look, maa, no hands!!”.

This may not seem a lot, but it unlocks incredible possibilities by providing simple reusable building blocks on top of which we can start to shape the game, all from a simple interface, which can be rapidly changed and expanded. As you’d expect, Boom is already tinkering away…

Unfortunately, however, as we move towards ISW 1.0, we’re starting to outgrow the older design, it served us well, but we need more room! Afterall, we need to shoehorn missions in somewhere, right!?

Jump into Discord and let us know your thoughts on the  new designs

Just a quick notice, we are currently experiencing issues with emails being sent. This will affect password resets and those creating new accounts.

If you are experiencing any issues, please get in touch with one of the admin team on our discord.

Hey Everyone, It’s been an “interesting” and challenging time for all of us this past year, and although understandably quiet at times, we’re glad to see everyone is doing well!

We had hoped to have a far more exciting year for updates and events, but alas, circumstances conspired against us (in more ways than one).

Fortunately, we’ve still managed to add a few exciting updates with Dreadnoughts, Item crafting, the killboard, and even a significant ship class rebalancing all making their way into the game. Why not check those out if you haven’t already?

But with the end of 2021 upon us, and hopefully a far better 2022 ahead of us, it’s as good a time as any to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Yours,
The Dr’s

For a short while now we have been working away on the next phase of ISW, bringing together many of the changes that we already put in place and adding quite a few others as steppingstones for things to come.

As many of you will recall the original ISW sadly never really transcended past the go here shoot that / tend your empire phase of its life. This left a bit of a void for things to do with the rest of your time. That is not to say the former/current aren’t fun (we all have fond memories) but inevitably we all now want more, times have changed!

With this version we’ve been keen to explore this with new ways of expanding the ISW ecosystem, introducing new mechanics and revamping old ones to offer new avenues to explore although for a long time there has still been a niggling void.

Missions! these represent a coming together of various parts of our project to fill that void but equally perhaps also the most ambitious step. As many of you will know through ether experience or fortunate lack thereof, we have had missions in game for some time now, albeit basic. These missions have allowed us to observe several things but foremost, what we had wasn’t quite going to cut it.

For missions and indeed a few other things to progress ISW needs to evolve, this evolution has started in a lot of places, the most obvious being minerals/manufacture but this is just the surface… ISW is a project of two halves and perhaps not the two you are thinking of!

For a while now Boom has been working on narratives for missions, recipes for items and even all the ships you fly. A great deal of this work happens out of game in various shared documents of all kinds, countless messages, and other time-consuming means. 

Over time this has become decidedly less so with more and more of this work now happening in game… yay for productivity! Not so much when your ship decides it no longer needs an engine, gun, shield… we’ve had pretty much all of them now right?

Sadly, however not all aspects are in game are quite so far along and instead are rather inflexible, this still holding true for (you guessed it) missions! We knew therefore that to keep ahead and keep expanding our old missions weren’t going to cut it…

So, enter the second part of the game, behind the curtain, the tools that account for a big proportion of our time. For missions and other aspects of the game to remain as flexible and up to date as possible we irritatingly must spend a lot of time in places sadly no one will ever get to see… its where we do all our best work! (Really!)

At present a great deal of time is being spent on a mission builder, something flexible enough to allow Boom to whip up missions of all kinds that can take advantage of many aspects of the game and a few more besides. We’re looking to bring to force random events, item drops, new items, new systems, new characters, and a host of other things... and equally hoping Who doesn’t find it… can you imagine!?

Unfortunately, something with as much scope doesn’t come quickly (or without a lot of sleepless evenings) but we’re still here and still working away. There may be some other updates besides we will hopefully inflict the first round of likely basic missions on you as soon as we can…

P.S You could also help... in fact… why not crack out your digital pen and paper... write up a mission that you could see yourself playing out… maybe more than one,

Yours,
Drs

At long last we’ve finally made the push into the changes we’ve been promising for quite some time. Thank you to everyone who has borne with us through the months of lockdown, Covid, and personal issues, patiently waiting for the updates.

Dreadnoughts and Siege Mode

Firstly, Dreadnoughts are finally here! They have been enabled in game for the five primary player factions. For now they can be purchased at your starbase for 500,000cr. The Dreadnought class is a capital ship that comes equipped with a formidable array of rank 3 equivalent armament against all classes of threats, significant pools of hull points, powerful shields, anti-starbase weaponry, and planetary bombardment capability.

However, the most exciting change is the siege module, the first module in the game that will require a consumable (Antimatter), have a cooldown penalty and act in an interference/disruptive capability. For the time being, Antimatter can be purchased from your local starbases.

Siege Mode:

Effect:

• Disables the offensive capabilities of the target for 5 minutes, during which it cannot attack you or any other ship.
• Immobilizes your ship for a full 10 minutes, twice as long as the disabling effect

Activating Siege mode:

• Targets a planet or starbase
• Consumes 5000 units of Antimatter
• Creates a new yellow Siege bar under Hull and Shield on tactical screen decays from 100% over ten minutes.

N.B.: You will need to re-activate siege mode before 5 minutes or 50% of the bar has elapsed in order to maintain the effect uninterrupted.

Newly rebalanced Ship Classes

We have also streamlined the ship classes available in the game. For a long time it was unclear what the capabilities and functions of each ship was, and what kind of threat a player was to expect from an enemy. Hopefully we have closed that gap in a way that elevates the function of every ship. Each class of ship has one intended target class that they hard-counter, one target class that hard-counters them, an equally matched target, a target that ends in a stalemate.

The Classes

• Interceptor: small and highly maneuverable ship designed to fight other small maneuverable ships like Interceptors, Corvettes, and Bombers
• Corvette: small and maneuverable ship equipped with weaponry to destroy larger opponents like Destroyers, Cruisers, and Siege Platforms
• Cruiser: large and unwieldy ships equipped with heavy weaponry to attack large ships like Cruisers, Destroyers and Siege Platforms
• Destroyer: large and unwieldy ships equipped with fast tracking weaponry designed to destroy fast and maneuverable craft like Interceptors, Corvettes, and Bombers
• Bomber: Small and maneuverable attack craft equipped for assaults on Starbases and planets.
• Siege Platform: large and unwieldy bombardment craft equipped to attack to Starbases and planets
• Dreadnaught: powerful behemoths equipped to defend themselves against all threats and with support use their unique siege mechanic to assault starbases and planets directly.
• Monster npc: slow, plodding, and unintelligent space dwelling beasts, they have offensive capabilities against all comers, but lack any defensive instincts.
• Klakanid npc: quick, tricky, and ravenous spacebound giant insectoids, they are equipped against all threats, and are too agile for Cruisers and Corvettes to lock onto.

But what about ranks?!? Higher ranks are equipped with more weaponry, and more health, but otherwise fall into the same class categories as far as their matchups. For example, if the matchup is a "equal matchup" but it is a r3 vs a r4, the r4 still has a definitive edge

Check out this handy graphic to see it laid out

What’s Next?

We will be following this update with a major industry and engineering update that will include a new market, crafting menu, and the first glimpses into the future of item and ship creation. The work on the backend crafting system has been underway for months, and is very close to a finished product. We will be adding new items and materials to the game for use in upgrades, and as additional loot found in the salvage from a destroyed opponent.

Because the majority of the heavy lifting work for that update is mostly done, the Drs are also going to be hard at work uplifting the missions system and adding new PVE content and narrative to the game. Including a revamped player starting experience and some narrative galactic shakeup.

Quietly in the background we've been tinkering away on the siege mechanics that dreads will bring. The basic bones of this have now been added to the game in readiness for a few final changes and the inevitable adjustments ahead of the ships themselves ending up ether in…. or maybe even attacking a starbase near you!

There have been quite a few behind the scenes changes that had to happen to allow sieging planets or starbases so it seems about time to share some of the details of how things work and have a bit of a recap.

Firstly, Dreadnoughts a capital class ship that among other things come with a siege module, this is the first module in the game that will require a consumable (fuel), have a cooldown penalty and act in an interference/disruptive capability.

When used the Siege module will disable the offensive capabilities of a target for five minutes whilst consuming a quantity of fuel. However, be mindful, once activated the ship will be immobile and unable to escape for ten minutes. Siege can be reenabled after five minutes have elapsed... if you have sufficient fuel…

Even when not in siege these ships will be formidable, equally they will be far from the most cost-effective ship on the battlefield so should be used tactically and with caution.

Starbases, as we move into an era of items, consumables and even later maybe some collectables it no longer make sense that these items can be so easily destroyed. Ultimately It’s never pleasant to lose your pride and joy overnight . Unfortunately starbases as they where had the potential to cause this disproportionately and therefore starbases will no longer be destroyed but instead captured.

When a starbase reaches 0 health it will go into a state of reinforcement, it will become invulnerable and will not aggress players. After an hour has passed the faction that controls most of the system will gain ownership of the starbase. We will be looking to adjust some of the pre-war faction statuses (and maybe add a few more??) to allow you to restrict access to bases as needed.

Jettisoning will soon (once enabled) no longer simply discard your items and instead create containers (like wrecks) that will/can be used to transfer items ship to ship in space… beware though these are public! Watch out for those pesky cloakers!

The “Tick”, the above mechanics are the first not to be tied to the tick in any way, the timers, cooldowns, and effects are for the first-time real time and will expire predictably/as expected. We may start to take advantage of this for other avenues in due course.

Lastly, minor but quite a nice addition. Smooth movement has been added to the tactical/starmap. Rather than ships snapping across the screen as previously/OG they will now slide gracefully to their new co-ordinates, this makes a surprising impact in easily identifying where ships are moving from/to as the tick updates.

Hopefully soon we might have to set the stage for “capture the system” event to test dreads and see who wins… invaders vs the galaxy … seems fair?? Surely…

Hi everyone,

For most this announcement won’t come as a surprise as it was posted to discord just before Christmas, with those diligently following and helping shake loose the majority of the issues in short order it seemed about time to publish the initial (and subsequent changes) for the wider community.

This past year has proven interesting and it seems there is a great deal of hope on the horizon, although likely still challenging for us all It is humbling to see the good spirit, health and indeed patience is still alive. We appreciate the game has been in an uneasy limbo state for longer than we would have liked, with the update for many meaning an uneasy hiatus.

For us there has been a lot of current and future planning involved with the update, and a significant amount of change both on and under the surface to make the changes now live in the game. For context some 7,600 new lines of code and countless hours have gone into discussing, planning, designing mechanics, income tweaks, items and underlying systems to make way for what we hope will be a more sustainable ISW.

With this update in place, I am hopeful we can pick up the pace to exploiting much of what is hidden under the surface as well as some of the peskier niggling issues in plain sight.

So, onto the update (the good):

• New inventory section detailing items, ships, market listings, jobs, logistics and fleets
• New minerals have been added, ores redone, and ore refinery added.
• Existing buildings have been reshuffled.
• New buildings including reprocessing, storage, logistics.
• Adjustments in weapons to increase the output instead of number of shots.
• Add storage constraints to planets.
• New building mechanics (for new types).
• Add support for Jobs at Starbases, initially just refining.
• Add further support for items throughout the game.
• Asteroid belts/random spawns are now on.
• Logistic fleets now exist to move your items around.
• Ships, if destroyed can/will now drop their cargo (inc logistics Yarr!! You are a pirate).
• Player fleets are now possible allowing XP and Cr sharing in addition to the location of cloaked ships.

The Migration (the bad’ish)

• Items/ores on planets have been transitioned to their new equivalent, this will mean the value of planets has diminished to a degree.
• User buildings have been adjusted to skill level constraints and transitioned generously to new buildings this may result in some planets needing rebuilding as we could not predict/allow for all configurations.

The Process (now stable’ish):

Fortunately for most now seeing this update, those active on discord have helped (and continue to) help us shake out bugs and features that have cropped up during this update and as they continue to appear. Since the initial posting we have made the following additional updates/fixes and it seems things have since settled in. Thank you for your ongoing support in finding reporting them!

• Asteroid belts have been hidden on the Starmap ownership section.
• Asteroid belts should spawn at different locations vs 100:100.
• The text corrected across dialogues/screens.
• Refining fees have been enabled.
• Fleet rewards have been corrected.
• Fix ship mineral loading/unloading to prevent minerals being split.
• Adjustments for system/asteroid belt respawn rates.
• Fix for to allow planetary minerals to be collected.
• Planet building totals should now be correct across the screens
• Fix a bug preventing the remote building view updating as you navigate planets.
• Fix to ensure building level caps are enforced.
• Increase logistics fleet costs for any hyper based travel.
• Adjust reprocessor description to be clearer how it’s used/purpose.
• Update/Fix for Discord alerts.
• Double cancel button on jobs renamed to avoid confusion.
• Fix to prevent character page showing minerals not actually on planet.
• Fix for starbases firing all weapons at all aggressors in the same turn.
• Adjustments to the storage for ore, Mines add +75/lvl the Refinery is +500/lvl and the Warehouse is +150/lvl
• Updated the fleet commission charged to player to reflect the price shown in the UI
• The Ore output on the refine popup adjusted to show the correct breakdown when first loaded.
• Adjust channel perms for discord, seems the updates channel may have been.
• Vivid Xopticer's processing fee has been adjusted from 500cr to 200cr / 100tn.
• Sparkling Arachnium's items (when refined) have been added/restored.
• Identify fix/issue resulting in some items settings being disabled and issues with some planets.
• Fix cloaking for ships not belonging to a fleet.
• Fix for the targeting & right click causing the modules/scanners to disappear deployed.
• Fix for sale tab, items now appear as expected allowing you to cancel/amend the prices.
• Storage total and total used (items on planet) added to the remote build screen. Both at a summary and per planet level.
• Clone Bay updated such that when your ship is destroyed you will be transported to the nearest Starbase with a Clone Bay AND Space Port controlled by your faction.
• Planet weapon range has been adjusted (including their in-game descriptions to reflect this)
  • Ion Cannon - A light weapon with 75 Mkm range and 500 tracking.
  • X-Ray Satellite - A medium weapon with 50 Mkm range and 250 tracking.
  • Defense Array - A heavy weapon with 25 Mkm range and 100 tracking.
• Update the tutorial with consideration for recent game updates.

So, What’s next?

Presently our plans for the new year are a little less predefined than usual with a focus on rounding off the rougher edges and looking at making use of much of the foundations we have been working behind the scenes to create.

A few of the areas we will be focusing on for the now however though are:

• Dreadnoughts/System capture mechanics, these are a priority for us that we hope to make good progress on soon.
• Outstanding ship/module fixes/adjustments, as ever this is ongoing but something we’re hoping to soon get back on top of.
• Items/Manufacture, now that we have ore -> minerals its hopefully a matter of time before we start to experiment with minerals -> items/ships.
• General UI improvements and refinements to provide more feedback, detail and resolve many of the remaining niggles that have for a while fallen down the priority list. For example, the tactical screen size issues, unknowns and damage indicators.

Aside these there are is quite a backlog of ideas but we’re equally interested to see where people would like to see us go next, what niggles are lingering and what ideas they’ve been hoping we’d explore… post/vote on the issues board – discussion welcome in the discord.

Yours,
Drs

After being able to stabilise the timeslip to some extent for the last 6 hours, scientist's are please to report the phenomenon appears to have destabilised.

Already some systems have returned to normal and the chaos from others appears to disappearing.

Eye-witness accounts from yesterday appear to point towards memories being retained.Whether this is a good or bad thing is yet to be seen.

Stellar Galactic News Network (SGNN)

People are reporting seeing enormous fleets appear in systems. Fearing certain death most flee, however those brave enough to stay have reported they often disappear before the apex, thus doing little to no damage.

Scientists have ascertained that the larger the fleet pulled through the anomaly, the quicker they seem to be pulled back in.

In a further twist, the markings on these ships seem to point to their originating from military bases. Citizens are overjoyed at their being pulled back, whilst scientists are concerned there may be instances where this fails to happen, leaving entire solar systems to be wiped out.

Stellar Galactic News Network (SGNN)

Scientists analysing the TimeSlip have deduced that the galaxy is currently in a state of temporal flux.

It appears beings from alternate dimensions are being pulled across the multiverse.

Further analysis reveals that the TimeSlip will reverse in approximately 24 hours, returning all things to their previous state. Whether any memories will be retained is currently unclear.

Stellar Galactic News Network (SGNN)

We are receiving reports of galactic unrest, citizens across the galaxy have awoken uneasy with an overwhelming and debilitating sense of panic. Having found themselves uncomfortably reliving the events the previous stellar date 666, however all is not as it appears!

Scientists have been quick to discover an anomaly, referring to this anomaly as a timeslip the leading theory is that time has unexpectedly split and moved backward due to a cosmic event or experiment gone awry.

Energy readings indicate the effects of the event are expected to be short lived, to hold the galaxy back a day it is theorised would require untold power which could not be sustained longer than twenty-four hours.

Scientists have urged caution to prevent mass panic however fear that without the risk of loss or gain at this time, mass war and civil unrest is inevitable. We have reached out for comment, stay safe out there!!

Stellar Galactic News Network (SGNN)

It has been a long time since we last put out and update and with the end of the year/Christmas fast approaching it seemed as good a time as any to let you know what to expect at least on our part before we see the year through.

I would like to start with a mixture of an apology on our part and a thank you, the past six months have proven a challenging and tumultuous time for everyone. There has been much none of us could have predicted and a great deal of adaptation that we all have had to make.

It is not yet clear what the outcome of this will be or what issues will have arisen but is clear that the situation has had a profound effect on us all in lots of ways, some apparent and others less so but no less important.

Despite this we are thankful to see everyone is still around and staying safe, even more so without much on our part for a while. Whilst I, Boom and Who have been around its likely very apparent that we’ve not had the greatest amount of time available due to work and other commitments. Although we have alluded this in the channels it’s not something particularly to our liking ether so we can only apologise for the less than usual amount of input on our part.

With all that said, we are all in good health (or as well as can be expected) and are doing our best to squeeze in ISW time wherever possible, this has meant we’re less visible, but we are none the less still around and trying to push things forward where possible.

So, this brings us onto what you can expect. The current state of development has allowed us to complete the following:

• New inventory section detailing items, ships, market listings, jobs and logistics New minerals have been added, ores redone, and ore refinery added.
• Existing building reshuffle.
• New buildings including reprocessing, storage, logistics and soon shipyard
• Adjustments in weapons to increase the output instead of number of shots.
• Add storage constraints to planets
• New building mechanics (for new types)
• Add support for Jobs at Starbases, initially just refining
• Add further support for items throughout the game
• Add support for asteroid belts/random spawns
• A new version of tactical that adjusts correctly to screen size (this may be held back)

What we are hoping to finish before Christmas would be:

• Logistics ships/fleets (30% done)
• Player fleets (60% done)
• Dreadnoughts/siege mechanics/starbase behaviours (10% done)

We appreciate some of these might seem quite shallow on the surface but there is (sadly) a great deal hidden beneath to ensure everything play nicely together. There is a possibility that we may release some of these updates sooner however a lot of features of this update are interlinked which has thus far prevented us releasing it in part, as this would vastly disrupt the game.

This update however is easily the largest single update to date and we are hoping to get much of it out to you as soon as time allows... sadly with everything being as unpredictable as it has been we can’t be firm on an exact date but as alluded we are hoping to get this out in time for Christmas (but don’t hold us to it )

Yours, Drs

During a routine scan of Eros in Sol an ancient burried satellite was found.
The Terran government, fearful of what it may contain, attempted to supress knowledge of it but during a drunken evening at a local spaceport, one of the scientists sold the information to a local dealer.

After weeks of investigation, repair, decryption and translation it has been found to contain secrets of the fateful experiment that were the Brood.

Messge one reads:

Wir sind fast am Ziel. Unsere Experimente zeigen hervorragende Ergebnisse. Ich bin mir sicher, dass wir unser Ziel bald erreichen werden, wenn wir die DNA Sequenzen noch ein bisschen mehr verändern.
Bald sind sie lebendig!

The Terran government continue to work on decyphering the device, and the scientist continues to drunken sell secrets to dealers...

Just an update to keep everyone up to speed with the changes we've made in the last week or so. The new release included the changes to ships, modules and skill effect we had previously announced.

Ship Base Stats:

This Update introduced “Base Stats” to each ship type in the form of Range, Speed, Handling, Tracking, Hull, and Repair. By creating base values that are modified by modules rather than determined by them we’ve opened future avenues of customization and upgrades. Many of these are set based on the ship size and class.
New Stat: “Tracking” - different weapons have tracking values that determine their ability to hit targets with different handling. Generally speaking, smaller weapons have better tracking while larger weapons have worse tracking but do more damage. Faction

Base value Modifiers:

Each faction’s ships have additional modifiers that separate their version of each class from other factions. The Orfine are fast, nimble, and in your face, while the Terrans are slower and deadlier at range. 

Ship Sizes and Classes:

We have standardized base values based on ship size and class. Ship sizes define many of their base values.

• "Light" ships are Size 5-7, faster, nimbler, harder to hit
• "Medium" are size 8-10, heavier, though still nimble enough
• "Large" are size 9-12+, slower, heavy, and heavily armed

Ship classes now are more explicit about the ship’s purpose and intended target. Corvette/Destroyer/Cruiser are built as take all comers, Interceptor/Gunboat/Gunship are equipped to tackle Light ships, but be weaker against Large, while Assassin/HunterKiller/Battlecruiser fare well against Large Ships but struggle against Light.

Below is a quick breakout, on the left is the class, on the right is the intended target type. 

Skill Integration

We have made sure to incorporate the skills into the base stats.  Each base value is improved proportionally by it’s related Skill.  Engineering improves Hull and Repair, Gunnery improves Range and Tracking, Piloting improves Speed and Handling. 

Combat Changes:

We have also simplified the combat formula to improve performance and incorporate the tracking base value.  We changed the calculation for damage to be far less variable, but Gunnery skill now directly improves your damage when you hit.

We have also introduced weapon module sizes, Light, Medium, Heavy, and Superheavy. The heavier the weapon, the more damage per output it does, but the worse it’s tracking is. 

We increased the range falloff, so you will notice your ability to shoot beyond the range of your weapon has decreased dramatically. 

Through your ongoing feedback we have made a number of further adjustments and will continue to monitor feedback to fix any anomalies.

- Adjusted handling values for all ships.
- Added tracking to all ships.
- Ensured modules are having the desired and correct effect as well as skill impact.
- Corrected range for modules in the UI.
- Changed Ship modules sizes to labels (large, medium, small etc) vs output.
- Shields will now will no longer retain any health if offline.
- You will not be charged for offline shields when you repair at a starbase General:
- Fixed a faction page bug effecting pirates.
- Added a fix to prevent ships jumping unexpectedly around the starmap.
- Taking control of an unallied ship will now no longer show a 500 error.
- Adjusted the pirates tax to 0.
- Bounty rewards have been temporarily disabled pending an update, you can still issue a bounty however.

Hi Everyone,

It’s been a while now since we’ve put out an update and in light of all that is transpiring both in and out of game it seems a high time that we let you know where we are with various aspects. (we’ve got to do our bit to keep you from venturing outside!)

For some time now our collective effort has been focused on rebuilding the ISW of old, improving and rebalancing where possible, filling in the blanks where our memories have failed us and of course overcoming the various challenges we’ve had along the way.

This has been no small or easy task for any of us and I believe we’ve all had a whole range of emotions from staring at our screens in frustration through to literally laughing out loud at different situations and conversations.

Throughout this time, we have rarely had time to stop and think about how far we’ve come and indeed how far we are yet to go and what that might mean for the game and everyone involved.

To put things into context a little, players new and old (over a decade ago :P ) have come together to help us and each other in refining and testing the game. We’ve iterating through several versions of the tick, gone from 9 to 2 to 5 factions, seen the return of the arena, the systems, the ships, the planets, the starbases, the buildings, the npcs, the councils and minerals of old that we all loved and remembered.

However, despite reaching a near parity with the old game it became apparent we couldn’t just leave it there, it wasn’t enough to reach a similar footing… things have changed in ten years and we had to go further, so naturally you’ve all joined us in testing several rounds of ship adjustments, NPC invasions, a new building system and even the tutorial.

But that’s not all you’ve been helping us with, your feedback, game time, ideas, comments and even the occasional dispute have all helped shape the direction of the game! So please take a moment to pat yourselves on the back and bask in our thanks… we couldn’t do this without you!

Soo... please keep your feedback and comments coming! - You have my express permission to pester Dr Who at any time of day with your thoughts and comments (that is his job… he is “Community Manager”). Feel free to post in the chat, in game feedback or indeed grab one of us in general to have a chat… we will always make time where possible or answer you when we can.

I appreciate at times we might not be able to react as quickly as everyone would like, but we will endeavour to do our best.

So now let’s move onto what you’re here for… What’s next, and let us first start with an apology, unfortunately we have been slower than we would like due to other commitments, but we are thankfully back on the case and preparing for some big changes so without further ado..

Skills

• In an upcoming update your skills are going to have a much more noticeable and consistent effect on your ships, both how they perform and their attributes. Each level you gain will increase one of the ship stats by a fixed percent per level unlike the current system which on balance has a much less meaningful impact.
• This won’t stop a new player schooling your super shiny R4 in their R4 hunter killer, but it will certainly aid your survivability or help more noticeably in a direct R* vs R* show down.

Combat

• The way in which damage is calculated within the current game has helped us introduce some new desirable mechanics such as smaller interceptors vs larger battleships, but also some less desirable with ships that are near impossible to hit or where damage fluctuates far more than we would like.
• We’ve already introduced Handling to help us balance the need for agility vs speed, but this still didn’t go far enough so we feel further adjustments are needed.
• Therefore, we will be introducing a tracking attribute, this will allow us to tweak the accuracy of ships directly and independently from their speed, handling and other attributes (so look out for that soon)

Ships vs Modules

• So far, we have been reinventing through feedback, gut feel and testing how ships interact and feel. This has culminated in finding a purpose, meaning and impact for each of the original ship stats and working these into our core mechanics. In doing so it’s easy to see ships have become “as a result of their modules” rather than being bolstered by them.
• We will therefore be adjusting (lowering) all modules stats and instead adding stats to ship hulls for speed, handling, shield, tracking and range. Modules will then have ether a negative or positive effect on the ship (or a combination).
• This we feel is an important and far reaching change and is leading us to a level of ship customisation that ISW hasn’t ever seen… soon..

Minerals

• Across the game will soon be renamed and redistributed. Ultimately building an industry system off the back off 44+ elements poses a very significant and insurmountable challenge therefore we’ve opted to reduce the minerals in game to 8 Ores (each with numerous versions) that can be refined to 8 minerals. Each ore will contain different amounts when refined of the base 8 minerals.
• Also note asteroid belts will start to make an appearance, these will appear semi randomly with higher value ores throughout the known systems. These will have a fixed amount (tn) of minerals and will expire once mined. Higher value ores will no longer be found on planets after this point.
• As part of a transition to this system we will likely sell all minerals currently held as these are currently used just for Cr and to aid in transitioning and to not disadvantage anyone.

Crafting

• Once the mineral changes are in place ship building will follow, you will be able to build existing ships with different combinations of the base minerals. This may be slow at first as we add ships or items (yes items) slowly but it will continue to develop.

Logistics

• Has been on hold for two reasons, firstly fleet mechanics and secondly the ability to build logistics vessels… so when time allows you should hopefully see these in a shipyard near you soon.

Planets, Starbases, NPCs

• Due to combat being where it is we’ve held off in adjusting these areas of the game just yet, with the new combat we will more readily and reliably be able to determine DPT (damage per tick) and other important metrics to adjust up/or down stats of varying levels mobs, bases, guns, hp’s etc so we will be looking for feedback soon so please don’t think we’re ignoring it.

Wreckages

• The addition of salvage has been a subtle one and the start of some of our planned passive content, wreckages have the ability to drop items. We are not using this yet but these will soon drop scrap, parts and other useful titbits used to upgrade ships or craft items… these will trickle in and we aren’t likely to announce them (we’ve got to let you have fun working it out?)

Casual Content

• Once the above is done you will likely see we are working towards adding items, modules, crafting and a touch of exploration into day to day life… but we will be looking to do more. There have been calls for us to up the interaction with NPC factions and Missions... all of these changes are leading in that direction and to provide you rewards for your endeavours but we’re always keen to hear your ideas, and happy to change things up and try a more scheduled/direct invasions/expansions if you’d like to give that a spin.. (let us know).
• Again, as with wreckages, I’m not going to give away all of the casual content or confirm them, but we’ve got a few lurking that should be interesting… you’ll just have to keep an eye out or get Who drunk!

Anyhow that’s it for now… We better get back to work if you want to see this in the coming weeks.

Yours,
Strange Observers in Naos report that the otherwise passive Va'tal ships, until now easy prey for captains greedy for plunder and easy hunting, have been transforming. With a strange rippling they have transformed to menacing warships bristling with energy.

Across the galaxy transdimensional anomalieshave sprung up and Va'tal ships emerge from them. For now they seem content to merely wait, but in every system where they appear, they emit powerful gravitational dark matter pulses that repeat every few minutes. The pulse and static disrupts communication and instruments wherever it is broadcast

-** -!*-*- -* ** -!-- *-!-**- - -* *-*- -!-* *- *--!*-** *** --*!*-- - --- * -*- *** *-** - *--!--* ---!-** -!-* * * - ** -**- * - *--!* ***!*-*- *** ** ** --* *- -- *-*- -* * -!-* *- *--!*-** *** --*!*** *--- -*-- -- * - -*- -* * - *--!--* ---!-** -!--*- -*-- - *--!--*- -*- *** **!-- *- ---* -* *-- - -*- ---!-* *- *--!--- *** --* **- ---- *!-*- - --*- --* **- -!---- - -*- -!*--- --* *!-** - -*- -!*-- - --- * -*- *** *-** - *--!-** -- * ---- *** --* *!-*!* ---- *** --* **- ---- *!*** --* -*-!--* *- -- ---* - -*- --- -!-- ---!**- *** *- -!-* *- *--!*-** *** --* -*- ---!-** -- -*-- -*--!--* *- *-- *** --* *--- * - *-- -*-- *-**!--*- *** -*-- -*-- *** -**!-** -!---- -* ---* -!*-- *** *- -!-* -*-- -*--!-** -!*-*- *** --* -*-- *--!*- *** -**!-** -!-*- - --- -**- *** *- *--!-* *- *--!* -* *-* -!*** --* -*-!-*- - ---* - *- **- -!-- *-!* ---- -*- - -!*-- -* *-** ---!-** -!--- ---- -* -*-- -*--!*** *--- -*-- -- * - -*- -* * -!*-** *** --*!-* -*-- -*--

It is followed by what appears to be a countdown timer.  It appears the coundown will end in a matter of days.

Hi everyone,

We’ve been a bit unintentionally quiet of late with our upcoming updates/plans, mostly because we’re still working to iron out the more intricate details and overlaps with existing, new and future changes.

With this in mind it seemed about right to devote some time to give you all a high-level idea of what to expect in the forthcoming updates, rest assured more details will follow (as we agree them) but remember these plans are liable to change.

Industry is perhaps the biggest change to come and will act as a springboard for considerable future expansion, we are planning to reshuffle the existing building/planetary systems to add additional purpose and passive elements to the game,

These are looking likely to include:

Building

• We are currently investigating a more centralised building management approach allowing you to manage your empire from the safety of your cosy starbase... but not without peril (see below).
• Introduce new buildings to support the production of items, enable research and later perhaps even ships!
• Introduce a time-based building model with more feedback allowing for both more casual and more involved play types as well as to provide some interesting balancing opportunities (we may un-nerf guns).

Automation

• I did say not without peril, we will be looking to add automation in the form of NPC shuttles, transports and other aids that will provide both a benefit but also an opportunity for pirates and other opportunistic individuals.
• Queues and overviews to allow you to plan your next big expansion to happen whilst you’re safely tucked up in bed… or work… (I know which I’d rather).

Items

• Currently minerals == credits, we would like to shuffle that up a bit by introducing ship parts, modules, components and potentially consumables over time. (ongoing)
• Market, trade, … monies? Yes with items there comes a need to barter, so a market place will likely start to co-exist offering more opportunity (good and bad) for those inclined to seek it.

Production

• To add items, first they need to be produced, currently consumables are theoretically limitless. This is set to change, items will need to be produced, discovered or acquired in some way… buildings will be created to allow the production of items over time.
• Basic items for ships/other items may be fairly common but as things progress so too will your need to build/expand your production needs.

Mineral Reshuffle

• The current structure of race specific minerals is primarily tied to a closed market where mineral == cr, instead we will likely be reshuffling minerals to better suit their new purposes.

Research Capabilities

• To be entrusted to put together a hyperdrive you had first better have a grasp of physics or who knows what could happen, thus we will be endeavouring to add research capabilities.
• These may take the form of unlocks or granted bonuses and may be associated to other elements like Missions/Causality.

Missions/Causality

• NPC invasions is an exciting feature that we are looking to expand, currently its somewhat toned down to avoid too drastic a reshuffle of the status quo, this will change and NPCs will start to become more of a threat as/when we determine a good criteria set for them that is more Causality based as opposed to random.
• Random events, Whooo… We would like to add some more interesting events, some of which “may or may not exist” and “may or may not” have gone “unnoticed” so far.. we have quite a few interesting ideas for these so keep your eyes peeled as these won’t be announced as we do other features.

Ships

• Specialisms, as part of an ongoing theme with ships we are looking at upgrades and other changes for ships, the EXP system is set to stay but that is not to say we aren’t exploring further upgrade options to bolster what we have… no we won’t be adding pink ship skins..
• Salvage, if we add items to make ships it also makes sense to be able to recover something from the hulk of the ship you just destroyed, in addition this will provide options for missions/discoveries.
• Opportunity, we are at last exploring options that fit in with a “reason” or “value” to add piracy/boarding, as part of some upcoming changes we have a few ideas so this might see a return.
• Arena, It is set to return along with leaderboards and other “mine is bigger than yours” comparisons… let’s however keep it in line with the rules!

General

• UI/UX improvements have been going on for a short while in an endeavour to make the game easier to digest, this will hopefully continue to try and make the game more interactive. We have a few plans but are open to ideas.
• Chat Improvements, the new chat window is a step in the direction we should have done some time ago, this will hopefully continue with @ and # options, private chats, emoji’s and some other nice to haves in the future to hopefully make it much easier to keep everyone centered in the game
• Trade/Transfer/Friends list, these features have been left aside for a while but will also be seeing a return in line with the other changes.

Hopefully as you will no doubt see, our list is long but leading in a direction to provide some interesting and new avenues to explore. We are as ever excited and always tinkering away with the big picture to take the game to the next phase.

Hi Everyone,

Spring and Summer are always difficult and busy times, so Dr.Strange and I wanted to give you all an update on the status of the Alpha and our ongoing efforts toward the game.

Over the last quarter we focused on implementing critical game functionality, making major under-the-hood improvements to make the game run smoother, rounding out the designs for all the core game systems, and planning the future state.

At its core ISW is, as I called it, a “Multiplayer Online Persistent Real-time 4X Strategy Game”. That definition lies at the core of our strategic plans for the game and informs all of our decisions.

Past/Recent Work:
Starbase and Orbital Structures: We have completed work on this and we feel it adds a major addition to the way the faction expansion game plays and feels. Look for more additions as time goes on.

Tutorial and Tooltips: We have been working on a tutorial and tooltips that will make the new player entry to the game more fluid and intuitive so we can build the multiplayer aspect in the future. A multiplayer game without players feels pretty empty.

NPC Behavior: A significant undertaking, we've implemented and will continue improving NPC behavior to make the galaxy feel alive. Random path NPCs are so 2004, we want them to feel like a threat and real enemies in the game.

Changes from the Previous Roadmap
Security and Pirates: Neither Dr.Strange nor I was particularly happy with our ideas for Security or Piracy, given the lack of rewards for stealing a ship and absent economic incentives. For the time being we will be holding off on this until we design and implement a Major Release that implements this properly. Security may be removed from the skill list, or at least blocked from skilling up for the foreseeable future.

Government: as there are currently only two factions, and that will remain for the time being, we are holding off on implementing the full government designs in favor of other work. Most of the work is done, and can be completed when the time is right.

Future Work:
PVE Objectives, Quests, Invasions: NPC behavior was the first major hurdle to these and we’ve added the basics to the game. As part of the tutorial we will also be adding Objectives and Quests. Completing those two projects sets us up to pursue additional mechanics that will provide meaningful and rewarding activities to pursue in game. Objectives will be static things akin to achievements and daily challenges that will reward players for completing particular tasks. (e.g. “Kill 50 Solar Worms – 500xp 1000cr” -> “Kill 100 Solar Worms – 1000xp 2500cr” or “Destroy a Starbase – 10000xp”. Quests will be more story and progressive. Invasions will be periodic major events that will grant rewards.

Economy, Building, Materials: We are examining a revamp of the Mineral system. It’s not really engaging or interesting from a crafting or building perspective, and having every faction with separate required materials we think doesn’t encourage conflict or cooperation in the way we’d like. Look for more info on this as the quarter progresses, but we’re looking at rare materials and rewards from objective/quests, drops from enemies, and exploration.

We seriously appreciate your involvement in testing and feedback on our decisions. Keep providing us with your experiences and ideas!
Thanks, The Doctors

It’s been little over a month since our Q2+ Roadmap update and a lot of updates have silently as well as publicly trickled their way into the game for you to enjoy, so far:

We’re pleased to say starbase functionality is now complete and live, with factions now being able to commission builders, deploy outposts and add upgrades. Each upgrade increasing the upkeep of the base whilst also adding to its capabilities. Everything from weapons through disruptors to upgrade outposts into potent fully fledged starbases!

Screens are also thankfully planned for factions to manage the upkeep once enabled, enjoy the grace period whilst it lasts, your starbases will soon mature to require cr/hr.<

We’ve had time to make a number of nagging UI improvements:

• Tabs have been enabled on the tactical screen, these currently include scanners, engineering, chat and crew, finally doing away with the chat widget and consolidating a few actions for future updates.
• Planets now have a slight background colour to make them easier to see on the tactical screens.
• Aggressing ships will now pulse to help you visually identify them without being fully reliant on the chat.

Ships:

Transport class ships have been added to Matrix and Brood and will be added to other faction ships as well. These will have 10k cargo

QOL:

vast number of under the bonnet updates have been made to boost performance further and help us with future updates, with more comprehensive monitoring to give us better insight into any issues as they arise (always a bonus).

Direction:

We’re still moving forward with our Q2 roadmap although a few priorities may change shortly with the focus shifting to rounding the game. This direction shift will likely explore what is outstanding or holding us back from a V1 release, hopefully enabling us to start building the new player experience, missions and or other objectives. More on this in a future post.

Yours,
The Dr's

ISW Community,

Dr. Strange and I have been hard at work setting up the next phase of features to the game.  Most of these are beyond the initial design phase, and will enter the build phase in roughly the order below.  In the build phase Dr.Strange and I further tighten up mechanics and fill any gaps. The design documents are high level and subject to change if something doesn’t quite feel right.  

Throughout this, we will ask you to test the new mechanics for bugs, exploits, broken parts, etc.  I will be balancing ships and tweaking numbers to align with our intentions.

Starbase/Orbital Structures: Underway

These are at the core of a solid system defense.  They provide utility and defense for all faction players.  They are commissioned and controlled by the faction, can be upgraded, and cost the faction a daily upkeep cost to keep online.

Link to Orbital Design Doc

Security and Planetary Invasions: Ready to Build

Security has been in the back of our minds since the beginning, as the last skill to receive functionality.  This project includes multiple functions for the security skill: Attacking, boarding, and capturing ships, planetary assaults, a new troops attribute for all ships, and Garrison buildings for players to build.  Armor and AP will be included in this feature update, but will be inaccessible until the Equipment Update.

Link to Planetary Design Doc

Building: Partially Built/Ready to Build

Our initial design for Building 2.0 was constrained by architecture and underwent a few re-designs. The first pass you have been playing with is more of a Building 1.5 - this fully implements the designs we had for building, putting the freedom in your hands to do with your space as you will.

Link to Building Design Doc

Government: Partially Built/Ready to Build

We implemented a stripped down single-type version of Government when we went live.  This update features all four of the types of original government and their initial factions, special motions for different government types, the ability to overthrow and reform governments and much more.

Link to Government Design Doc

Inventory/Equipment: In Design In design currently

This update will introduce player inventory in which upgrades and equipment can be stored. These will include the majority of the original items from ISW.  Skill Upgrades, Weapons, Armor, Tools and more. It may include Ship Upgrade Items as well.

Exploration: In Design

I am beginning design expanding the exploration features of ISW.  This update will change how planets are assigned and interact with minerals, especially higher ranks.  It will likely introduce transferring minerals, and potentially more advanced economic ships. It will introduce Explorer-Class ships, multi-use general purpose ships designed to train, mine, and survey planets.  Survey mechanics, which will unearth caches of rare minerals, special equipment, and rare discoveries, which may include Rare Ship Upgrades.

For those alreadying playing you can ignore this update, for anyone having issues using a hotmail/out look account and being unable to login please join us in discord and let us know!

It's a known/reported issue with our mail provider and should be resolved in the near future

Click here for Discord

Yours,
The Dr’s

I’m sure you are all itching to join us in having a good ISW’mas and to kick this festive period off with a great deal of internet spaceship based chaos.

It gives us great pleasure to open the alpha to you all, hopefully you will enjoy this, the first version, of many to come!

Naturally there will be issues so please do let us know, give us feedback and suggestions and let’s try and make ISW bigger and better than it once was.

Please join us in Click here for Slack and Click here for Discord

Have Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Yours,
The Dr’s

Happy Holidays to everybody! Everything is infused with Peppermint, Christmas music is playing in every public place, Interstellar War is going to have an Open Alpha, people are decorating for the season, everyone is shopping for gifts, and hoping to find something great under the tree this year.

Wait....

Did you just read that Interstellar War is having an OPEN ALPHA!!!

That's right folks! Santa and his elves (aka the Doctors) are bringing something exciting for all of us. We have been chugging along aggressively over the past few months and think it is time to show off what we've got.

Everyone is invited to this party, so spread the good news that ISW is coming to town!

ISW Holiday Alpha-stravaganza Info

1. December 24th - January 4th: From Christmas Eve til the 4th the game will be an open alpha
2. You can register right now, and on Christmas Eve the account will be activated.
3. Or, on those dates you can go to the homepage, register, and start playing immediately.
4. Everyone playing is expected to the adhere to the Rules of Conduct.
5. The alpha will end Jan. 4th, and the game will be suspended while we recover from the mayhem of letting everybody go crazy, and fix everything you guys broke. At this time we do not know if a reset will be necessary. It will be a judgement call based on what happens.

Tips, Tricks, Recommendations and Warnings

1. The game is completely playable and we are still adding features and functionality through the end of this month. However, it is an alpha, so we suspect that there will be bugs and exciting things you will break.
2. There are still some feature gaps that we are hoping to get into the game, but we are choosing to open the floodgates with some missing functionality that we will add, rather than keeping you guys waiting.
3. Building: We intend to have some basic functionality for building, but you might want to hold off maxxing it out. There will be terraforming and planet claiming, but other functionality is pending.
4. Security: The redesign of how it will work is underway, but time constraints mean it is not functional. Don't bother putting points into it.
5. Cloaking Doesnt work. At all.
6. IMPORTANT - FACTION CHOICES: when we open it up, there will be NO faction changing or username changing. We recommend that people discuss joining different factions so we don't end up with only two factions with players. Try something other than Terran

On behalf of the Doctors, I want to thank all of you for sticking around and following our development. We are very excited to be able to bring something to all of you this holiday season.

Interstellar Wars is back! (from December 24th to Jan 4th. Normal rules and conditions apply, the doctors cannot be held liable for angry spouses, grandmothers, parents, or other entities which may take issue with you spending Christmas morning playing ISW instead of spending time with loved ones)

Hey there everybody, I know this update comes a bit late in the month, but it contains exciting news. We can’t express how much we appreciate your support and patience through the process, and we believe that the wait will have been worth it. This is a labor of love for us, and we are pouring as much time and energy as possible into getting it up and running as fast as possible.

Get HYPED, because we are so close. We are planning an opportunity to get people into the game and start having fun, breaking things, and getting a full blown dose of that good old fashioned nostalgia.

Major updates:

1. We have been making incredible headway and are aiming for a Christmas Alpha release.
   1. Much of our time is being spent on finishing up and polishing the existing game features as we try to implement as much as we can before the Alpha go-live.
   2. How this will look and how many/who will be involved is still being determined, but we have some BIG plans.
   3. Look for the Alpha Announcement at the beginning of next month, and instructions for how to join the Alpha shortly after that.
2. The Admin team has put together a preliminary Rules of Conduct, check it out at the end of the update. We needed to put this together so that the community has rules that govern behavior. We want everybody to want to play the game and know that they aren't going to run into issues.

Development Updates:

1. Planets and Systems
   1. Mapped planet locations and Imported to the game
   2. Imported Planet minerals
   3. Linked Mining to the Tick
2. Ship Combat
   1. Shield functionality added
   2. Critical Hits! Will be implemented after the Alpha
3. NPC Interaction
   1. Populated NPCs in All Star Systems
   2. Behavior Adjusted, Auto-Attack, Chase, Fight Back~
   3. Experience for Killing NPCs added~
   4. Shared Experience Distribution pushed to later build, delayed until after Alpha~
   5. Add enemy Ship Size and Rank to Tooltip
4. Character
   1. Experience implemented, includes experience from NPCs and Mining
   2. Leveling up skills added and working
5. Architecture and UI Improvements (technical)
6. Business Planning
   1. Created a Patreon
   2. Supporter tiers and levels still in development
7. Arena, unsure if it will make first Alpha build
8. Building: we are hoping to push it into the Alpha build, but will depend on time constriants.
   1. Implement Building Skill
   2. Implement Terraforming/Claiming planets
   3. Add the old ISW Building Tables
   4. Add Size/Space Attribute to planets
9. Security (Unlikely for Initial Alpha build)
   1. Mechanics for actual combat completed
   2. Boarding
   3. Taking control
10. Bug Fixing (edited)

Interstellar War Rules of Conduct

Interstellar War is a game created by fans, for newcomers and fans, of the original Interstellar War. We aim to recreate the experience of excitement and player interaction that made it a great game. Cracking jokes, creating rivalries, pulling off impressive heists, and inter-player politics are a part of Interstellar Wars, but building a community of collective fun is about trusting that players are doing the right thing and treating each other properly.

Our Code of Conduct is intended to outline the behavior that can take away from the collective and therefore will not be tolerated.

1. Offensive language - You must not use any language that is offensive, discriminatory, racist or obscene.
2. Player Abuse (includes spamming) – You must not threaten, insult, solicit, or abuse other players of this game.
3. Bug abuse (cheating) - Any bugs found within the game must be reported to ISW Admins immediately.
4. Using third-party software like bots or Macros - You must not use other programs to gain an unfair advantage at the game.
5. Account sharing/trading - Each account should only be used by ONE person.
6. Multiple logging in - If you create more than one ISW account, they must not interact or be used to gain an unfair advantage within or outside the game.
7. Password scamming - Asking for another player's password for any reason will not be tolerated.
8. Asking for personal details (addresses, phone numbers, emails, etc.) - To protect players' safety and privacy, you must not ask for personal details.
9. Advertising/website - You are not allowed to actively advertise in the ISW game or ISW forums.
10. Real world trading - ISW items must only be exchanged for other items/services within the game.
11. ISW Admin or Mod impersonation - You should not attempt to impersonate Admins or Mods in any way.
12. Misuse of official forums - Forums must be used respectfully at all times.
13. Encouraging others to break rules (all rules included) - You must not encourage others to break any of the rules.
14. All rules are at the discretion of moderators and Admins, but we are reasonable gods.

Hey Community!

Major updates:

1. The skeleton of the game is playable.  You can start from the beginning, gain experience and credits by mining and killing npcs, buy better ships to get more EXP and CR, jump to Hyperspace and visit other Star Systems.  IT FEELS LIKE ISW!
2. Chat is live, along with the in chat Combat log
3. Governments motions are live

Upcoming/Work In Progress Updates:

1. Planet Mapping Continues.
2. Ship Combat
   • Shields First
   • Critical Hits!
   • Link Mining to the Tick
3. NPC Interaction
   • Populate NPCs in All Star Systems
   • Behavior Adjustment, Auto-Attack, Fight Back, Repair
   • Experience Distribution
4. Planets
   • Correct Mineral/Planet Table
   • Add Size/Space Attribute to planets
5. Architecture Improvements (technical)
6. Business Planning: Looking into Patreon
7. Arena (Nice to have, unsure if it will make first Alpha build)
8. Building (Unlikely for Initial Alpha build)
   • Implement Building Skill
   • mplement Terraforming/Claiming planets
   • Add the old ISW Building Tables
9. Security (Unlikely for Initial Alpha build)
   1. ~Mechanics for actual combat completed~
   2. Boarding
   3. Taking control

We are incredibly excited about the progress we've made, and a Christmas gift for all of us.

We are targetting an Initial Alpha release in the last quarter before Christmas.  ISW is almost back!

- The Doctors

Hey Everybody!

The progress on ISW continues in ernest. The summer has been busy, so thanks for not taking up the torches and pitchforks when the August Update did not come

Major Updates:

1. The Arena is underway and being tested with 100 ships!
2. NPCs: We've populated the NPCs and have been testing combat against them to make sure it feels right and fun, and doing some tweaks where we felt appropriate.
   • NPC experience will be implemented next.
   • We have an exciting change where anyone who attacks and deals damage will gain a portion of the experience.
   • They attack and get aggressive after you have engaged.
3. Chat functionality has been progressing nicely.
4. Government systems and fuctionality is built out. We've been working on adjusting the way some of the systems work, and how the standings (At War, Cease Fire, Neutral, Friendly) Let us know if you think the standings should affect whether you can attack another faction.
5. I have been working on mapping the Star System planets, which is a manual, tedious, and exciting process.

We're feeling really excited about the progress and where we are getting to.

- The Doctors

Hey there everybody!

We Doctors have been chuggin’ along nicely, designing, coding, tweaking, and adding features as fast as we can.

Some major accomplishments this past month despite us both moving homes:

-Shield Design aligned with the way ships work,
-Designed security both as a base functionality and planning for the future
-Player Experience and Skill ups are LIVE! Designed the NPC experience gain.
-Mining, unloading, and selling minerals is live! You even gain exp from Mining!
-Government systems have been tweaked to align with the faction background material, and designed so that they should all be equally viable. They should be live pretty soon.

We are feeling super positive about the pace and how nicely everything is coming along. We can’t say when the Alpha will go live, but we are aiming for SOON™, and it is well inside the realm of possibility that Christmas comes early.

Our Current Project Plans Below

1. Engineering
• Ship System Control (On/Off binary)
• Powernet
• Repair
• Lock Repair to the Tick
• Design Shield Functionality
• Add Shield Functionality
• Lock all Module Performance to Module % Health
2. Player Skills and Attributes
• Add Player Skills (Command, Gunnery, Engineering, Piloting, Security, Building)
• Add Player Experience Attribute
• Experience Point Cost/Skill Level Up Calculation
• Skill Level Ups (Spend Experience)
• Link Skills to Various Systems
3. Planet Interaction Mechanics
• Planet Attributes + minerals tables
• Move to orbit
• Mine!
4. Economy
• Ship Inventory Interaction.
  • Add/Create [Mining or loot etc],
  • Remove (see below)
• Trade Screen: Xfer to Base/Another Player (Delayed)
• Sell to Starbases
• ?Faction Mineral Tables?
• Auction System for Minerals (Delayed)
5. NPC introduction to tactical. Attributes/tables there, just populate them
• Create Base level NPC loot (exp, credits, minerals)
• Design NPC exp awarding
• Determine NPC placement coordinates
• Ensure NPC behavior is correct (edited)
6. Security
• Design Security Combat
• Implement MVP Security
7. System Layout
• Planets Coordinates in Core systems
• Planet Coordinates in secondary/bonus systems
8. Government Systems Revamp
• Adjust GovSys to be inline with Racial lore and feel
• Collective
• Democracy
• Oligarchy
• Dictatorship
• Design/Adjust Government to Bring them inline with eachother.
• Implement high level government systems.
9. ARENA!!!! Do it
10. Chat
• Test Chat UI
• Update/Upgrade the test chat system
• Implement channels

Hey Community!

As hinted in our last update, we've had a number of commitments that have halted our progress. Thankfully (as those of you in slack would have seen) progress has been made and we should be back on track in due course to start implementing the remaining features.

Below as before is our current High level document for tracking design and implementation, less the now removed the completed tasks and updated with a few now complete/inprogress.

1. Engineering
• Design Shield Functionality
• Implement Shield Functionality
• Lock all Module Performance to Module % Health
2. Player Skills and Attributes
• Skill Level Ups (Spend Experience)
3. Planet Interaction Mechanics
• Mine!
4. Economy
• Ship Inventory Interaction.
• Remove (see below)
• Trade Screen: Xfer to Base/Another Player
• Sell to Starbases
• Faction Mineral Tables
• Auction System for Minerals
5. NPC introduction to tactical
• Create Base level NPC loot (exp, credits, minerals)
• Determine NPC placement coordinates
• Ensure NPC behavior is correct (edited)
6. System Layout
• Planets Coordinates in Core systems - In progress

Hey Community!

The Admin team wanted to provide an update on our progress and our current work being done. The members of the Admin team have had some personal responsibilities that briefly interfered with the pace of implementation, but we can assure you we kept the ball rolling.

Below is our current High level document for tracking design and implementation. We’d like to be highly transparent with you guys. If you have questions or input let it rip on Slack.

1. Engineering
• Ship System Control (On/Off binary)
• Powernet
• Repair
• Lock Repair to the Tick
• Design Shield Functionality
• Implement Shield Functionality
• Lock all Module Performance to Module % Health
2. Player Skills and Attributes
• Add Player Skills (Command, Gunnery, Engineering, Piloting, Security, Building)
• Add Player Experience Attribute
• Experience Point Cost/Skill Level Up Calculation
• Skill Level Ups (Spend Experience)
3. Planet Interaction Mechanics
• Planet Attributes + minerals tables
• Move to orbit
• Mine!
4. Economy
• Ship Inventory Interaction.
• Add/Create [Mining or loot etc]
• Remove (see below)
• Trade Screen: Xfer to Base/Another Player
• Sell to Starbases
• Faction Mineral Tables
• Auction System for Minerals
5. NPC introduction to tactical
• Create Base level NPC loot (exp, credits, minerals)
• Determine NPC placement coordinates
• Ensure NPC behavior is correct (edited)
6. System Layout
• Planets Coordinates in Core systems

You can see some screenshots below as well.

Starbase and Star Ship

Many of you have been asking after the progress being made, and Dr. Strange and I wanted to give you all an update. Moving forward, I will be taking over the Project updates so Dr. Strange can use his superior abilities elsewhere. My aim is to go frequent, informative, and transparent.

Dr. Boom (that’s me) is a Game Designer, rules engineer, and Project manager. He is responsible for most of the formulas that make use of ship statistics, player attributes, and leveling/experience. He is the guy who assembled most of the tables, and designed the NPC statistics. All of my ideas are bounced off Dr. Strange, dude’s a genius.

Dr. Strange is the Lead Developer mastermind behind all of the actual code, systems interactions, and screen layouts that comprise the game. He manages the database that holds the tables that populate the information within the game. Anytime something new needs to be added to the game, an adjustment or tweak needs to be made, etc. he is the man doing it.

Dr. Who is the Workspace Admin and he manages the web portals, and keeps everything online. Without him the lights go out.

Together, we discuss ideas, determine prioritization, and then test our ideas once they’re live. We have made significant progress, but there is still work to do.

First, I want you all to know what you can currently do in the game, and then in my next post I’ll give you a glimpse into our development project pipeline.

Currently, the game is in an incomplete state. You can commission a ship, board it, turn the systems on, fly around, fire your weapons, repair the ship hull. You can even “Activate Hyperdrive”, and then scoot on over to another of the 9 current starsystems. But we aren’t quite "there" yet.

The team has our project plan for the “Ultra-Minimum Viable Product” and we would like to share it very soon. Our goal is to complete that and then open up an Alpha testing phase.

Well, nearly, it’s been 9 months since the first update (but who’s counting). It was an exciting day for us all and although we’ve been working away as fast as possible, time and commitments permitting, it’s always been somewhat difficult to show (let alone describe) some of the work taking place.

Hopefully however you will now notice the somewhat dramatic nature of recent changes and pop over to Slack with any feedback.

Although it may seem minor, the update(s) you are now seeing is the result of 6 months of behind the scenes decisions, development and design.

This new design also marks the first release since we first launched, to put that into perspective, 1520 files have been modified/created and 304347 lines of code have been written.

We’ve still got a way to go but hopefully this will serve as a taster of what direction we are moving in; currently however we’ve got some troublesome NPC’s to wrangle and mechanics to tweak.

Hopefully you all had a good Christmas and are looking forward to the year ahead.

As some will have likely seen on Slack, recently a picture of all of the starbases occupying the void was posted. Although this may seem a little greedy or indeed sinister the purpose was in fact quite the opposite.

By bringing all the starbases into one system we’ve been flitting between them, grabbing different ships and having a bit of a free-for-all, although fun, this is in a view to test that everything is working as it should when ships are purchased, commanded, shot and destroyed.

This effectively being what we’d all like to be doing. Although these areas are looking more rounded there is still quite a bit of work to be done and a lot to be tested.

Much as the previous hinted, we are still considering a preview/testing session, although this may evolve to an alpha style release. Although limited, it would allow us to test a lot of the core mechanics and stresses of certain aspects of the game.

As ever work is ongoing and I’ll endeavour to keep posting updates, feel free to pop into Slack and give us a poke however… we don’t bite.

Since the last update, we’ve been working tirelessly on the game mechanics, ship combat, engineering and module interactions. All of which have come a long way. Each has been tested (perhaps a little too much) and I’m excited to soon start considering a limited alpha… a date with a dev if you will.. where I will likely invite a select few on a number of dates for “supervised” testing.

There are, as ever, still several issues to work out and balancing to consider but for the most part it should feel like the old game, with a few surprises.

Tactical, for some time has been an issue for us. I’m happy to say this is no longer the case, we’ve achieved something which will hark back nicely to 2002 but also fit in 2017 (it’s really been that long!) and I suspect most will be excited to see.

Special mention, for those that have joined slack and provided support/feedback, thank you (you know whom you are). For those that haven’t, join us: Slack

PS, although updates have been less frequent, don’t fear, we are tirelessly working away. Find us on slack if you need constant reminders and sneak peaks of what we’re tinkering with.

Buy a ship, launch, explore…. Then??... over the next few weeks we will be looking at the much needed “what happens next” aspect. Currently our one system is a little lonely… lacking much more than a few boring planets and a starbase.

First up is NPC’s, what we have are NPC’s that are a little lifeless, they spawn as necessary and roam a system (within reason) … at this point we’re looking at adding some firepower and attitude into the mix.

To start this off we will be looking firstly into how damage is delivered, which skills and modules have which effects and more importantly how this is relayed to you to make decisions upon.

We have a few ideas of our own but are open to suggestions (forum if you please). This will likely be a time consuming processes so updates as ever may be few and far between but rest assured we are still here and toiling away.

Lastly, we have a slack channel, please feel free to join and ask questions or be there purely for moral support... this will be rescinded if abused or if we’re harassed too vigorously . Slack Invite

As many will fondly remember, starbases where the hub of most activity within ISW, mainly as this is where our vast arsenals of ships where stored. With this in mind our attention is now shifting away from tactical and it seems as good a point as any to delve into starbases.

Currently we can purchase, dock, commandeer, repair and sell ships… all a good start but more critically we are now able to undock… it seems however docking is somewhat of an art form at present….

Over the coming weeks (once we get our ship back into the base and stop flying around tactical) we should hopefully refine some of the mechanisms involved and start to round of other areas off the game.

Stay tuned.

Tough decisions ahead; for some time now the focus has been exclusively on the new tactical. The idea behind the new tactical is to allow us to slowly move away from turn based logic (but not too far) and add other dynamic layers to the gameplay.

For example, previously ship moment was constrained to the ticks and was purely linear, the newer tactical allows real time ship movement by double clicking the grid, the fastest route (avoiding obstacles) is calculated and said ship will begin its movement. This allows greater use of ship characteristics such as a speed and range but also will add an element of piloting to the mix.

Furthermore, the real-time aspect would also prevent the need to refresh the game which has various performance benefits.

Here in lies the dilemma, the added complexity in delivering tactical 2 is putting a strain on development as naturally there are more hurdles to overcome. As a result it is consuming more time than anticipated.

The existing or old tactical however has been implemented and does function as before (albeit slightly upgraded) however at this stage it feels a little out of place.

At this stage in the project it might be worth taking a fork in the road and returning to tactical 2 at a later stage or it might be worth the delay to proceed as we are.

Decisions decisions.

Over the coming weeks I will be away on holiday, a higher power has banned the use of laptops for the duration and as such there will be a break in development. I will however endeavour to monitor the forum and answer questions so please discuss.

Having eluded to something a bit different being on the cards for tactical, I wondered how best to visualise something that we’ve been tinkering with…

Alas words didn’t seem quite enough soo…. maybe look ... here

N.b: Full disclosure this is a prototype (we are in closed development after all).

It’s been a while since the last update, mainly because we’ve been tirelessly testing different options which alongside other commitments has taken a fair bit of time.

Some of these include:

• TacticalXL: Expanding the tactical screen, somewhere in the region 1000px x 1000px.
• TacticalDynamic: Expand the map to the available screen dynamically.
• TacticalCamera: Have the player centred in the view (camera) whilst they move around a map (like the old starmap).

Unfortunately, there are issues with those among a few less notable options. We do however have another option albeit a complex one. Currently we’re exploring this further but as is likely evident we aren’t given too much away, but stay tuned… there may be a few surprises ahead.

Over the coming weeks our focus is shifting to tactical. The tactical grid allowed for most of the games actual behaviour by using the 15 second tick to allow players to move, shoot and generally cause chaos (as I’m sure most will recall).

Tactical however was quite basic, click here, go there, click here, shoot that. It also only spanned a whopping 580px by 440px (7 x 9 squares), this leaves us some room to get a bit creative in modernising the game.

Here in lies a dilemma, how should we modernize tactical?

Right now, we have a few ideas which we are exploring, ranging from the seemingly simple “make it bigger” through to some quite experimental ideas that could open several doors.

We’re not 100% sure which route at this stage we will take but there will be a few more updates in coming weeks as we explore each accordingly.

There have been a few posts in the past about which aspects of the game we are looking to keep and which are looking to improve or even replace.

The 15 second tick being somewhat crucial among them. This past week we’ve been focusing on the tick, something that we had already put in place but thought it best to revisit.

In the days of old the ill-fated browser refreshing and server unavailable slowly got the better of the game, to keep this in check we’re adopting a new approach.

Instead of refreshing the browser or polling the server for updates we are now pushing data directly to your browsers, this has several benefits but key among them are that:

• We can cut the number of browser refreshes (eventually to nil)
• We can keep all users synchronised in real time (refreshing will be discouraged)

But why keep the 15 second tick?

The game lends itself to a delay, you may need to type a message, cycle your weapons, pick a destination and ultimately choose whom to fire upon (or not).

This will likely be revisited again over time but for now, we’ll be ticking.

Is it Back? In short, Yes.

Over the recent weeks there have been numerous changes afoot. As a result, we’ll not only be breaking our radio silence but also aiming to deliver more updates on a more frequent basis.

The first of which is the forum, we’ve been forced due to technical reasons to create a new forum. In the interim, both will be available and we encourage you to move any content/ideas and or suggestions from the old to the new (as well as signing up).

OLD: http://community.interstellar-war.com/

NEW: https://iwcommunity.interstellar-war.com/

We will eventually close the old forum and have no plans at this stage to create any new forums.

Comming Soon™

State: Open Alpha

Game Day : 2144
Accounts : 3160
Online : 0