Greetings, Spacefarers!
We’ve talked a lot in the last couple of weeks about combat, defense, and how best to protect your resources against attack. Our recent post sharing a WIP view of our fleet management system has sparked a lot of interest, so today we want to delve further into support ships, what they are, and how they will play into your strategy in game.
It’s important to note that support ships function as a consumable, rather than a permanent addition to a fleet. They can provide significant benefits, but will need to be replenished between combat encounters. You will need to craft an ongoing supply of support ships to keep yourself well prepared. This allows for a great deal of versatility in customizing your fleets to suit your needs for a given purpose.
As seen in our recent clip, each fleet has 4 slots available for adding support ships. These can be changed at any time, though damaged support ships will be scrapped in the process. Support ships will also have a durability stat that functions as a health meter, and when it is depleted the ship is destroyed. The only restriction that applies to adding your support ships is that you cannot add a support ship of a higher rarity than your capital or flagship.
To acquire support ships, players will need to be sure to keep plenty of resources on hand. Support ships will be crafted at the foundry, and will take crafting time as with other ship types in the game. Planning ahead and crafting extra support ships will ensure you’re never without these valuable craft. Each one will boost a single stat, such as mining, speed, defense, etc. Depending on where your focus is in the game at a given time, you’ll want to gear up your fleets with support ships that have stats that will bolster your efforts. You can equip multiple support ships of the same type or stat boost, as long as you have available slots.
Support ships can also be scrapped by the player, to retrieve a portion of the resources spent to craft it. The amount of resources you get back is dependent on the remaining health of the ship, with less being returned the lower the remaining durability. This also applies if you swap out your support ships, and some of them have been damaged.
We will be continuing to explore upcoming features ahead of the beta release later this year, so stay tuned for more news and updates!