The first players are now playing our game live on our official server. We have released Alpha 2 access keys to the participants of our first alpha test. We will be releasing 20 additional login keys on a first come first serve basis through our twitter @thecasualcritic on Friday August 1, 2014 at 7 PM Mountain Standard Time (US/Canada). We will put up a tweet, and the first 20 people to re-tweet us will have game keys sent to them.. In case you don't get a key in this release, there more will be made available as soon as we are confident making them so. This will coincide with the release of the 1.08 client version that focuses on improved security and minor visual improvements as well as bug fixes. Users who are using the 1.07 client will need to upgrade to the newest version.
It is important to stress that participation in our Alpha Test is to be a voluntary Game Tester and you are asked to report all issues in our forum at Ncg19.com. We will be attempting to produce a Mac compatible build of our 1.08 client but the portability of our code has not yet been 100% confirmed so this is only tentatively expected.
We have implemented several new features in our release of Alpha 2 we have expanded the ship mechanics drastically allowing for a much greater assortment of ship designs than was previously possible. We have also made improvements to ship combat.
Ship Equipment Grid
In the ship design screen, each ship has a grid layout based on the amount of space it has and components will be a certain size and shape. Players then drag components on to the grid to equip their ships from the list of all components they have researched. Different components take differing amounts of space and different ship hulls also have different configurations available to component placement.
Ship and Colony Combat
A player's fleet of ships will engage an enemy fleet in open combat where ships are paired and fight until one side is destroyed. Success is modified by ship type, weapon type and defensive components. When colonies are attacked, they can retaliate provided they have a planetary defence structure.
Capture Mechanic
In addition to destroying their foes, players can opt to capture their enemies ships and colonies. Specific ship components are required to capture ships, but all players can capture colonies.
This is a quick look at some of the upcoming planned features for NCG-19: Gravitus. These features do not have a set release date at this time, but we hope to implement them as soon as possible as they are some of the few remaining core game features still not completed.
Mysterious Derelicts
“Mysterious derelict ships have been reported drifting in some areas of NCG-19, your scientists have completed a collector component that your ships may use to harvest resources from these ghost ships. Initial reports state that these ships do not linger long in a given system, instead frequently jumping and proceeding on a course plotted by a long forgotten captain. What little has managed to be salvaged from these vessels is powerful crystal technology that can be used to augment colony installations or ships. Unfortunately such augmentations are unstable and can only operate for a short time before consuming their crystal components.”
Crystal Currency
Players will be able to collect a currency currently only referred to as Crystals that can be used to purchase temporary augmentations to their ships or colonies, and permanent augmentations to ship captains. Additionally some higher tier buildings and ships will require a small amount of this currency to be purchased at a colony. This Crystal Currency will be obtainable through several channels in the game wold including the harvesting of derelict ships, and random daily events. Players will also be able to purchase additional Crystal Currency through the online store located on our website and linked to in game.
Ship Captains
Players will be able to hire captains that improve the performance of ships. These captains are hired by the player constructing a specific building at a colony. This will grant the player one randomly rolled captain. Once this building has been built a player my purchase additional randomly rolled captains up to their command limit using the Crystal Currency. Each captain will have a number of randomly rolled stats, as well as a randomly rolled job (such as engineer or diplomat) that will have three class based skills. Each captain only starts with a single random class skill available but other skills may be unlocked using Crystal Currency. Class skills may also be increased in level improving their effectiveness with Crystal Currency. Finally Crystal Currency may be used to improve a captain's base statistics up to a limit for that class. Each captain will provide various strategic bonuses to the ship they are commanding, the fleet they are accompanying or sometimes their entire race.
Crystal Technology
Crystal Currency may be used to activate temporary buff abilities of a single ship or colony. These buff abilities last for a specific number of minutes or hours and can be repurchased only once they have expired. An example of a colony Crystal Technology buff might be granting a colony additional growth nor income, and similarly a ship buff may improve the effectiveness of offensive or defensive systems. The cost of these buffs will be relatively small as to allow them to be easily available to all players.
In-Game Tutorial System
We have plans to implement a simple contextual tutorial system that will help guide new players through the basics of playing NCG-19: Gravitus. This tutorial system will cover the basics of navigating the star map, training technologies, designing ships, constructing ships, constructing buildings and colonizing planets.
Lag Reduction
Presently when undertaking some actions the client experiences a significant delay. This can be fixed with better virtualization on the client side and is a needed improvement in the near future.
Our re-tweet contest is now live.