Space Station Designer 0.5.15 is now available!

Happy Sunday! We hope you are having a good time during the festive season. We’ve been hard at work on the development of Space Station Designer since our last update back in August, and we wanted to end 2023 on a high note by releasing Space Station Designer v. 0.5.15, which features a significant number of additions and improvements. Please read on for the details.

‘Campaign’ mode redesign

One of the main pieces of feedback we received regarding the ‘Campaign’ mode is that it was too open-ended and that newcomers felt that the sheer number of options could be a tad overwhelming. We went back to the (online) drawing board and designed a series of mandatory objectives that will progressively introduce players to the various mechanics available in the game. This includes objectives in areas such as ‘Earth Facilities’, ‘Crew Management’, and ‘Research’, among others.

When you start a new campaign, you’ll notice a button in the top-left corner with a ‘target’ icon:

Clicking on it will reveal the initial set of objectives:

You can take as much time as you need to complete these objectives. During this period, the Government will grant you funding on an annual basis, which you can use to keep the station running.

We have been conducting extensive playtesting in the last few days and it took us nearly six hours to accomplish the final objective (“Acquire the 'Expansion in LEO' research technology.”). Let us know how long it takes you to finish phase 1 in the comments section!

Changes to the existing ‘Sandbox’ mode

We understand that not everyone wants an experience with fixed objectives to follow, especially if they have already completed the game and are conducting a second playthrough to try out a different approach. Thus, the previous ‘Campaign’ mode has been renamed to ‘Sandbox’. The mechanics are still the same: you start with a Core Module, and the Government will grant you a yearly reward based on certain criteria, which can be reviewed via the ‘Government’ button. As an open-ended experience, you can progress through the tech tree as you see fit.

Note that the ‘Sandbox’ mode is temporarily disabled for version 0.5.15. We’ll restore it in an upcoming update.

'New ‘Sandbox’ mode

Wait, didn’t we have a ‘Sandbox’ mode already? Yes, we did! And it has been renamed to ‘Free Builder’ mode.

You can continue using this game mode and enjoy a chilled experience while building large designs without any financial restrictions.

Maintenance-related research technologies and modules

We’ve added three new research technologies to the tech tree: “Maintenance Level I”, “Maintenance Level II”, and “Maintenance Level III”. Each one of these technologies features two modules: an ‘Airlock’ and a ‘Maintenance Workshop’.

Airlocks have been revamped and they now have an attribute associated to them called ‘maintenance area of influence’.

From now on, if a module experiences a failure, it can only be repaired if it’s within the ‘maintenance area of influence’ provided by an Airlock-type of module, which represents the area where astronauts can efficiently (and safely) work outside the station. If the module happens to be outside this area of influence, it will have to be replaced altogether.

We’ve also added a ‘maintenance boost’ attribute to the ‘Maintenance Workshop’ modules. If a module experiences a failure, and assuming it’s within the ‘maintenance area of influence’ provided by an Airlock, you’ll receive a small repair boost if they also happen to be close