Work-In-Progress News #5

Let's take a look at some things we have been working on for the Update 1.0, which will bring the third and final Chapter to Space Reign.

New Ship Class - Cruisers

As you may have noticed from the ship polls, we have been quite busy adding the largest ships to the game - Cruisers. (besides the Mothership).

Ranging from light to heavy, both Novatech and Tyrcorp will be getting new ships in this class which features a lot of firepower with main focus on more S3 hardpoints.

Spearhad Light Cruiser - Tyrcorp

Glaive Medium Cruiser - Tyrcorp

Ballista Heavy Cruiser - Tyrcorp

While being the most durable and capable of dealing some serious damage, it will be a wise idea to accompany them with smaller ships able to deal with fighters equipped with anti-capital ship loadouts.

Valkyrie Light Cruiser - Novatech

Arcturus Medium Cruiser - Novatech

Nautilus Heavy Cruiser - Novatech

We are looking forward to your feedback, it is very exciting to see these beasts in some epic battles.

New Weapons - More S3 Types

Autocannon

Following the approach from S1 and S2, we’re introducing the standard autocannon in the S3 category as well — giving players a reliable mid- to close-range option with solid damage output.

Artillery Cannon

This is the longest-range weapon in the projectile lineup, ideal for providing fire support and picking off enemy modules from a safe distance.

Beam Laser

An experimental weapon designed for pinpoint accuracy and reliable sustained DPS — trading away explosive burst damage for consistency.

QOL Updates & Tweaks

Unit Box Selection

We have finally found the time to implement a classic box-selection tool, which will allow you to select and give orders to multiple ships with ease. Yay!

Better Collision Avoidance

Ships are now equipped with a new predictive collision-avoidance layer that runs on top of the existing system. Instead of reacting only when something is already close, ships now forecast future collisions by analyzing the relative velocity and projected positions of nearby vessels.

If a possible impact is detected, the ship calculates a dedicated avoidance vector and smoothly adjusts its course to steer away before a collision can happen.

In practice, this means fewer accidental bumps in big formations and ships that feel more aware of their surroundings when moving through busy space.

Custom Corp Name

If you’ve had enough of the BenCo, Inc. label on your fleet and in the Corporation Panel, you’re in luck. It’s time to brand your corporation with a name of your own. ːsteamhappyː

In-Sector Travel

Based on the feedback received since the last Major Update, we will be speeding up the in-sector travel time by increasing the fast travel speed of all ships.

Game progression

We have also decided to lessen the overall grind in the core progression loop by increasing the experience gains from contracts and other objectives - making it faster to level up the Corporation Rank.

Steam Cloud Saves

Space Reign now supports Steam Cloud saves and your progress should be available across all devices with Steam and Space Reign installed.

Performance Optimization

While we're pleased with Space Reign's overall performance, we've identified plenty of room for optimization — especially useful with the larger battles and increased total ship limit arriving in Chapter 3. This was done in two areas bescribed below.

VFX Rework

One of the bigger issues we ran into with Unity 2020 URP is that VFX Graph effects can’t be batched together. In busy scenes this was putting a lot of extra work on the CPU, especially during large battles where dozens of impacts and explosions can fire at once.

To deal with this, we went through and reworked most of the visual effects (bullet hits, missile impacts, explosions, damage sparks, etc.) using Unity’s older Shuriken particle system. Shuriken can batch properly and spreads its work across multiple threads, so it ends up being far more efficient for the kind of action Space Reign has.

In big fights, this change alone can improve performance by up to around 50%, depending on how much is happening on screen.

Weapon System Rework

Previously, every weapon system on a ship had its own rigidbody so it could handle bullet damage independently. Because these systems were parented to the ship, this was the only reliable way to keep everything working correctly.

This has now been reworked. Weapon systems are no longer physical children of the ship — they follow the ship’s movement instead, which means they no longer need their own rigidbodies.

With this change, the overall number of rigidbodies in a typical battle drops by roughly 80%, since each ship was carrying an extra 3 to 8 of them.

In practice, this gives an additional 8–15% performance boost, depending on how many ships are on screen.

Version 1.0 and Chapter 3 Release date

Our current goal is to release this update by the end of the year, but we want it to be as complete and polished as possible. We’ll share one more post before launch with final details — including another look at more features and changes coming in version 1.0.

See you in a bit! Adam & Daniel