Well, hello there space fans. Dave here with an update for y’all.

First off, we’ve (finally) added Steam Trading Cards! You can now collect all six cards, featuring Warp Weasels and the famed captain Ego Blondsmann. Also Tad.

Collect them all, and you’ll earn backgrounds that feature gorgeous Away Mission art, and some nifty little emoticons to use your chatting heart’s desire.

Next up, we’ve reduced the base price of Orion Trail to $7.99! Sweet space savings!

Finally, we’ve also updated the game to Unity 5.4 to make it easier to support the game in the future. In addition to the engine upgrade, we’ve staged a new update that fixes a lot of bugs and grammar bads.

This update also adds a pretty neat (and long time coming) feature: mid-mission saving! Halfway through the Long Haul and need to take a break? Quit and save! Warp Weasels warped into your fridge? Save and quit! Unexpected software update restart your machine? Your game is probably saved! The future has truly arrived.

We still need to spend some more time QAing both the content fixes and the mid-mission saving (which has a host of weird edge cases), but we’re confident enough that we wanted to release a public beta of it. To opt in to the beta, do the following:

1. Find Orion Trail in your Steam Library.
   
2. Right click and select “Properties.”
   
3. Navigate to the “BETAS” tab.
   
4. Enter the following password: oriontrailblazer
   
5. Click “Check Code.”
   
6. You now have access to the Beta Branch! You might need to restart Steam to make sure the game updates.

Keep on space trippin’, folks.

- Dave

Captain on the bridge! …forever!

We’ve just finished QAing the new update and have deployed it to the live branch! We’ve added some new content (Encounters, Crises, Officers, Captains), options to change the Probability Drive animation speed, and a super-sweet crossover with Captain Forever!

Happy holidays, and remember to always be excellent to one another.

- Dave

• New Feature: Probability Drive Speed Setttings
  
  • In the options menu, you can now change the speed of the Probability Drive animation: Normal, Fast, and LIGHTSPEED!
• Trade Post Updates
  
  • Removed a few steps from all Trade Post interactions. It should take significantly fewer clicks to navigate through these menus.
• Art and Animation Updates
  
  • When you are low on Hull, the bridge is now on fire.
    
  • Super-neat new teleport animations.
    
  • Several Officers and Captains had props added and animations tweaked.
• New Content
  
  • 3 New Captains, including the hyper-rad Captain Forever!
    
  • 3 New Officers!
    
  • 2 New Encounters!
    
  • 10 New Crises!
    
  • 1 New Away Mission!
• Bug Fixes
  
  • Various typos, incorrect results, and the like.

It’s here! We’ve been hard at work ironing out any last minute bugs that cropped up with this new feature, but we’re very excited about the result.

I’ll let the patch notes speak for themselves, but this update introduces the oft-requested feature to choose your starting loadout at the beginning of a mission. This new screen has also been added to the Trade Post structure (which have also received some cool additions). We’ve also added a sizeable chunk of content to boot!

Be sure to let us know what you think! Your feedback has been instrumental for us to identify where to focus our efforts.

- Dave

• New Feature: Starting Ship Loadouts
  
  • At the beginning of each mission, you are now able to adjust how much of which resource you start with.
• Trade Post Updates
  
  • Trade Posts now use the new trade interface that we have implemented.
    
  • Different Trade Posts have resources that are in high demand. The Space Alamo wants Crew, so trade them for twice the resources!
    
  • Each Trade Post also has different mini-encounters that let you trade resources to increase one of your Stats! Go trade crazy!
• New Probability Drive Animations
  
  • We’ve updated the Probability Drive to have a little more charm. Round and round it goes! Will it stop? Yes.
• Starmap Updates
  
  • Several Starmaps have had their structure updated to accommodate the new systems introduced in this update.
    
  • The Wilky May will now be seeded with any Away Mission, instead of just the Arena.
• New Content
  
  • 2 New Captains!
    
  • 2 New Officers!
    
  • 2 New Encounters, along with updated art for some existing encounters!
    
  • 1 New Away Mission, plus some updated art for several existing ones!
    
  • ~80 New Traveling Events!
    
    • Many of these new events allow you to make micro-decisions about what to gain/lose!
• Bug Fixes
  
  • The Warp Weasel Wevolution achievement is now actually attainable. Sorry about that.
    
  • Various typos, incorrect results, and the like.

10/19/15 - Balance Patch
Howdy!

As promised, we’ve deployed our new balance patch to the live branch of the game.

You can get the nitty gritty of the changes below, but we believe these changes make successes always feel good to get, and make failures something that can actually be recovered from. We’ve also reverted the addition of the checkmarks to the probability drive, since these changes do a better job of toning down the difficulty overall, and having both changes in place was kind of overkill.

Give the game a try and let us know what you think! We’ll be turning our focus to adding more content / features for the next update. I know I keep saying it, but thank you again for taking the time to give us feedback about the game - it really helps us know where to focus our efforts to keep making Orion Trail better and better.

- Dave

• Balance Changes
  
  • In almost all cases, the resource subtractions from successes have been removed or toned down.
    
    • You’ll no longer blow up from risking hull and succeeding!
      
    • In cases where we wanted to preserve a joke, we’ve either toned the punishment down significantly, or rewarded more resources to compensate for the loss.
      
    • Some text has been updated to reflect these resource changes.
  • Standard failures drain fewer resources.
    
  • Critical failures are still really bad, but we’ve spread out their bad effects over more resources to make sure you CAN recover.
    
  • Several star maps have had their layouts changed.
    
  • Reverted the change from v2015_10_13_68 that added two checkmarks. This balance update does a better job of adjusting the difficulty, and having both together wasn’t working.
• Bug Fixes
  
  • Gravestones will no longer appear with a blank message if you click through them quickly.
    
  • Various typos, missing words, and incorrect payouts were adjusted as part of the rebalance pass.
    
  • Added several missing names and Redshirts from our Kickstarter / BackerKit backers.

Dave here with a quick update for y'all.

We're in the process of testing the new balance of the game, but it needs a little more time in the oven. We wanted to make sure this new balance is actually making the game better, and we think it needs a few more tweaks.

If we're happy with it sooner, we'll push it over the weekend, but expect to see it on Monday afternoon at the latest.

Thanks again to everyone for their feedback! I look forward to getting this new build in front of everyone ASAP.

Hello again!

We're deploying another patch that addresses some more itty bitty bugs, as well as some of the balance tweaks we've discussed in the Game Balance Feedback Thread.

Give the thread a look over to see what else we have planned and chime in with your two cents.

• Fixed incorrect rewards for several steps of the Moonman Away Mission.
  
• Fixed incorrect rewards for Bravado Critical Success in Plana Terry Realignment.
  
• Incresed number of Checkmarks on the Probability Drive by two. This will likely change as we continue to make some of the adjustments outlined in this thread.
  
• Made various changes to the Ursa Major starmap to reduce difficulty. It requires less food and fuel to traverse now, so you shouldn't be as strapped for resources.
  
• Disabled several events where you lose stats. We still want to them, just not as many.
  
• Added art for the Space Ghost encounter.

• Clicking through a gravestone too quickly can cause a blank encounter window to appear.

Hello again, space friends.

We're about to deploy a bugfix patch that addresses some small bugs we've seen crop up now that more people are playing the game. Patch notes are below.

Also, I'd like to say that we appreciate everyone's honest feedback about the game. Early Access was helpful in ironing out some early issues with the game, but now that we have a larger group of players... well, playing it, we're able to get a much better picture of how the game feels overall.

We’ve posted a proposed change list over on the forums, so we’d really appreciate it if you’d hop in and give us your two cents! We want this game to be the best it can be, and we need your help to do that.

• Fixed incorrect rewards for Nana Nutra Away Mission.
  
• Fixed incorrect button graphics and text for Nana Nutra Away Mission.
  
• Fixed text overflow for the Attack Critical Success for "Tower of the Astromancer"

Hello friends.

This build is a doozy. We’re getting ready here to put some of the finishing touches on the game before we graduate it from Early Access on October 12th.

We’ve squashed bugs, beefed up Trade Posts, added a sizeable chunk of new content, added the second to last Star Map, and introduced scaling encounter difficulty. Also, achievements are in! Yeah, achievements!

Give it a play. As always, we want to hear what you guys think. Just because we’re hurtling towards our official launch doesn’t mean we won’t be listening. We are.

Keep it space real.

• Achievements
  
  • Achievements have been enabled!
    
  • Added achievements for the latest starmaps.
• Starmap Updates
  
  • New Starmap: Quadrilateral Quadrant.
    
  • Telchines Tangle has been renamed The Gates of McFadden.
    
  • Space Montezuma’s Revenge and The Gates of McFadden have been drastically updated to be better in line with their earlier map buddies.
    
  • The Gates of McFadden is now a later level Starmap.
    
  • Ursa Major has been condensed. Most travel distances should now be in the range of 3-5 rather than 5-8.
• Out of Fuel SOS State
  
  • This is now triggered by a button-press instead of automatically. This should hopefully make a few edge cases less confusing when you run out of gas.
• New Feature: Threat Level
  
  • Encounters can come in three different difficulties now: Normal, Hard, and Extreme.
    
  • By selecting a star on the Starmap, you can see its threat level represented from 1 to 3 skulls.
    
  • The harder difficulties are, well, more difficult, but they also have increased rewards. Choose wisely!
    
  • Away Missions will always be “normal” threat, and Trading Posts will have no threat level.
• Trading Posts
  
  • Overall structure has been modified so that all resources are available for trade.
    
  • Resting at a trade post will now heal the Captain and all three Officers, instead of just all three Officers.
    
  • Four new Trading Posts have been added. While we love the Space Alamo appearing 4 times, it’s probably good to have some variety.
• Encounters, Crises, and Away Missions
  
  • Added 3 new Encounters.
    
  • Added 16(!) new Crises.
    
  • Added 2 new Away Missions.
• UI Updates
  
  • Made the encounter choice buttons a little cleaner to accommodate the + Resource box.
    
  • Updated How to Play screen with recent rule changes and additions.
    
  • Added How to Play button to Mission Select screen.
    
  • Various tweaks to animations, timings and the like.
    
  • Update the credits to make sure and give credit where it's due.
• Balance Changes
  
  • The current “Normal” probability drive spread has been modified to be a little easier.
    
    • Changed from “2 Skulls, 8 Fails, 1 Success, and 1 Critical Success” to “1 Skull, 8 Fails, 2 Successes, and 1 Critical Success.”
      
    • With the longer maps, skill checks, and other additions to the game, the previous difficulty level felt brutal.
  • When starving, Officers will only lose 1 HP per tick instead of all 3. We still want you to have a chance to come back from starving to death!
    
  • Rewards for several Away Missions have been updated.
• Bugfixes and Typos
  
  • We closed out, like, at least a hundred typo and grammar bugs spanning all of our content, so the encounters should read better than ever.
    
  • Fixed weird issue where the final step of an Away mission wouldn’t scale properly / refer to an Officer by name.
    
  • Optimized loading time for levels.

Hello again, fearless space travelers.

We’ve recently announced on Kickstarter that we’ll be leaving early access on October 12th, which is pretty exciting! But we’ve got a long and windy space-road ahead of us, so let’s get to it.

This update adds some more polish features (shiny stars, smokin’ ship when you’re low on Hull), as well as new encounters.

We’ve also revamped the Wilky May and Ursa Major to both be longer and have include Trading Posts. Exciting!

Check out the full notes below.

See y’all next time!

• New Feature: Trading Posts
  
  • These guys will appear during your travels, and you’ll have a way to trade resources. So long, redshirts, hello fuel!
    
  • The structure is very similar to Away Missions.
    
  • Currently, the only Trading Post in the game is The Space Alamo, so expect to see that one a lot.
    
  • Let us know what you think!
• Starmap Updates
  
  • Wilky May (Starmap #1) has been revamped to include Trade Posts and Crises. It’s now twice as long!
    
  • Ursa Major (Starmap #2) has been revamped to include Trade Posts and Crises. It’s about three times as long as its predecessor!
    
  • Note: Space Montezuma’s Revenge and The Telchines Tangle currently have no Trading Posts, so you won’t see them there.
• Balance Updates
  
  • Food consumption has been lowered from 5 per tick to 3. This puts it in line with Fuel’s consumption rate, so hopefully Food will be less of a necessity ALL THE TIME.
    
  • Various reward outcomes were tweaked / updated.
• UI Updates
  
  • New notifiers for when you are low on Hull have been added: a cracked viewscreen, smoking ship and alarms!
• New Content
  
  • 9 new Crises have been added.
    
  • Crises have different variations of art now, based on the stat associated with them.
• Bugfixes and Typos
  
  • The bughunt continues.