Flagship Status Report news

Hello everyone,

We know it's been a while since our last news update, and some recent press mentions mean that some of you are just discovering Flagship; many of you have had the same question.

The answer is that we are still working on Flagship. Never stopped, actually!

That said, it's going to be a slightly different game to the one we pitched on Kickstarter. We're trimming everything back and concentrating on the core RTS mechanics. This means some of the things we'd previously said would be in the game are now less likely to make the initial release. There's no definitive list yet, but things such as fully-explorable ships and flyable fighters - both of which increase development scope by quite a lot but are ancillary to the core game - are probably on the cutting room floor for now. We know this will disappoint some of you, but please bear in mind we are working in our spare time with no budget (these things may still make it into the game at some point).

These areas will be our main focus in the coming months:

• Core RTS mechanics
• Bridge simulation mechanics
• AI
• UI overhaul
• Performance optimisations

With this in mind, we hope to have some kind of pre-alpha release ready by the last quarter of 2015. At that point the game will either be released as an Early Access title, or we will launch a second crowdfunding effort and give backers instant access to the game that way. Or, something else entirely depending on the how the land lies when we get there. No promises at this point, but that's the plan.

Recent Press Mentions
We've had some mentions on Rock Paper Shotgun, Kotaku and XPGamers in their roundups of games to look out for in 2015. There are some really amazing games on these lists and we're very proud to be included among them.

Rock Paper Shotgun - PC Games Of 2015: Those Wot Could Conceivably Be Good
Rockpapershotgun.com

Kotaku UK - 51 British Games to Look Out For in 2015
Kotaku.co.uk

XPGamers Top 10 Upcoming Space Sims
Youtube.com

New Website Launch
We've reworked the Flagship website so that it's fully responsive and up to current web standards (such that they are). It should all look much better on mobile devices - those on desktop browsers probably won't notice much difference though. :P

Game Jams
We've also taken part in a couple of game jams. These are always short so don't divert us away from flagship development for too long, but it's a good way to break out and try new things. Some of the game mechanics developed for these jam games may well make it into Flagship someday. These games are free, so give them a try!

Nebula
Nebula was made in 72 hours for Ludum Dare 31. The game places you in command of a lone starship hiding in a nebula with 5 enemy ships. You have to find them using probes, which can scan over a short range (it should only take 3-4 of these to triangulate the ship's position). Once you think you know where a ship is lurking you can destroy it with torpedoes. This game wasn't finished, the biggest flaw being that there's no enemy AI, but it's still kind of fun to hunt down the enemy ships. We're planning to flesh this game out in the future, so please let us know what you think of it.

Drones
This was made for the 7DFPS jam, in which we had to create a first person shooter in 7 days. Inspired by the recent Zero-G combat that RSI demoed for Star Citizen, we decided to experiment with weightless combat mechanics. We managed to boil the controls down so you can actually play just using a mouse. The game is viewed from a thermal camera; you'll get hotter as you fire, which makes you easier to spot. It's multiplayer only at the moment, so if you want to play it you'll probably want to arrange a match with a friend.

That's all for now. We'll try to keep you updated every month or so, but don't be too concerned if updates aren't that frequent - we are still working very hard on this! Thanks again for all your support.