The big news this week is that [i]Starcom: Unknown Space[/i] will enter Early Access in a little over a month on December 14! Based on player feedback from the last closed beta, I feel that the game is in very good shape. But there are still some areas that I’d like to improve further before then, so I expect one more closed beta before then to test additional changes and bug fixes. Since the last update here’s what I’ve been up to: [list] [*] Compiling feedback and fixing bugs from the last round of closed betas [*] Station News [*] Changes to some existing missions, story lines [*] New region and missions [*] Mines [*] Significant changes to crew skill system [/list] As I’ve mentioned previously, the crew skill system is one of the few areas that didn’t have an equivalent in Starcom: Nexus, and so has required more iteration. I’m still tinkering, but for those who’ve played one of the betas, here’s what’s changed: [olist] [*] Merged Diplomacy into Xenoculture. This matches the command crew count with the skill count, solving weird anomaly phrasing issues like the “Kepler vs. Kepler” debates: crew role assignments are determined at the start of an interaction and should remain consistent until the interaction is complete. These are also the two skills with the most overlap– it’s often not clear why a check would be Diplomacy vs Xeno, since all diplomacy in the game is with alien races. [*] Skill checks are either team based or expert based (i.e., combined team score vs. highest score). As a result, for anomalies specialization tends to be better. [*] Officer training techs. These are techs that give bonuses where generalization tends to be better. E.g.,, +15% resource drops for every officer with at least 1 Astro. [*] Overall rebalanced anomaly skill checks. [*] Additional details on skill checks. [/olist] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42185452/142cac41392342fd6e3aad2cfe23a36cd3e358e2.png[/img] Until next time!