Good Evening Dear HWS Community,
I don’t know how much sleep I get today and what else comes up tomorrow, so I go a bit different this time and release a semi pre HWS 12 announcement today - especially explaining a bit more behind the scene stuff…
So what is going on?
- I set a clock since 3 days to wake up at 3AM and go to bed at 11PM. ~20 hours straight on the PC for HWS 12
- I am quite tired and just has to admit that I won’t be ready as I wished I would
- Don’t ask me where the time went. I was not prepared well enough but obviously also made not the best decisions. (see below)
- I touched a lot of new stuff (see below), totally excited and happy but most of them are not finished yet. Imagine a little crazy happy kid seeing Lego the first time and touching everything but not finished one build
- It is at it is and I don’t want to delay the release, because it’s a great opportunity to test at least what we made so far (see below)
My questionable decisions
My thrill
Let me start by the hardest part. Even though I’m doing HWS for 4+ years, every day I still learn something new or have a new idea for you guys. And one thing I was so frustrated about was an unfinished EGS HQ Stargate Room for almost 2 years by now. It was even a Patreon Goal.
So I told me, now or never! And finishing all 36 Stargates did cost me incredible a lot of time. Just… Months. Not only adding new ones but also rework old ones. For example the very FIRST Stargate Mission we ever had: The Elemental Space Race.
It is now Dialogue driven with a real Time track feature. Compete against your own and others time.
Alien Asylum as well. Completely reworked, making hopefully everyone mad 
And many more - BUT still not all perfectly balanced and ready. For the next season!
But in comparison to a fledged out balanced cool universe, it had not that big priority…
My responsibility
Second most consuming thing were @Hayawen and my three tools.
He warned me to not do it but… I was a fool 
I released those tools for everyone, even my competitors of course and kept them updated along ALL difficult, partially completely savegame breaking patches.
Whatever they are doing with it, but for me they were a deal breaker. Really easy and fast usage, so I could make with them all 36 Stargates.
You see my brain pattern here already: “let me finish this Stargate mission… wait a tool for it would be awesome… ok I have a tool… I can make Stargate missions faster now…”
Apart from that the third most time consuming thing were testing things. Bugs. A lot of them.
There are of course still many in the game but Alpha 12 is a big step forward in the right direction I think.
This is a mixed priority, since it helped me too but I would make it different the next time if I could.
Oh look, more toys!
Well, it’s cruel but Alpha 12 is totally mind blowing for Server Owners and Scenario Creators. You can realize infinite ideas now…
So I started with a lot of cool things.
- The new SV Alien weapon I showed you
- a reworked Techtree with new categories
- HWS Connect Skill Tree up to 50 days skills
- new POI ideas
- new Event ideas
- reworked EWS and Config ideas like Crews for your ships and more
- new features
- new Economy and so much more
- reworking the PDA
- reworking Origin mechanics, especially Pirates
- and too much more
All of that are not finished yet and obviously not implemented for tomorrow…
BUT since new toys finally stopped coming I can concentrate on finishing them!
Additionally most of the above can be implemented during a season. It’s not hopeless
The time missing status quo or pre HWS 12 announcement
Okay, you ask. What’s the deal then. Dropping 10 000 Stars in the Universe and call it the day? Nah, you know me.
Except from the 36 Stargate Missions (which will cause a PvE hotspot in the center of the Galaxy 
) there was still time and blood left for new toys for you!
-
The Galaxy got changed from the Bing Bang Video Teaser we showed you (technically reasons). We still try my Big Bang idea but a little different. The impulse spheres are now PvE, not PvP.
Starting from the second day, every third day a new PvE Sphere is created. Up to 7 in total - after 21 days. In total 7000 PvE Stars (planets, moons and spaces are inside of them)
Note, for explanation reasons I colored PvE = green and PvP = red. In real it will be not like thatPvP on the other hand will grow equally every day by 7 Light Years with 3000 Stars in Total. Until the whole HWS Universe is revealed after 62 days (the universe has 450 LY radius).
Instead of an impulse sphere, PvP is the foundation of the universe. The ever growing spiral universe:
While at the beginning some shenanigans can be made, especially PvE guys taste carefully PvP experience near the PvE impulse spheres, the spiral arms become longer and longer. Creating a kind of “tube” gameplay.
Claiming one area and prevent others from reaching the outer, still growing spiral arms.
Why? Except from possible HWS Star Fragments… there is more to discover
Be it special POIs, special Commodity Trade Routes from top to bottom and more…Hands down: the Galaxy with so many stars are a test guys. I don’t know if it 100% works out (considering I’m not done with it but still) but I think it can work with some efforts from my side. Talking about them.
-
Common questions I read: what is the incentive to go out? Why killing PvP and so on. There are a lot of ideas to make it fun and interesting but for now I try to release following:
- the inner HWS Star mini galaxy in the center is more or less like the current HWS 11 season (GG reworked)
- that means you know by now roughly the resource distribution. Some more or less very lucrative places.
- outside from that mini Galaxy, the random generated 10000 Stars have some patterns like: no regenerating resources. After some time you just have to move on. Like in games like Age of Empires, it’s all about expanding and fleet management.
- Stars have a resource pattern. You can’t find everything in one star system. Plan and reach your required resource. Keep in mind that some resources will be always exclusively or in huge quantities in our center HWS Star galaxy - hence it keeps a chokepoint and place to return.
- as said above there are interesting things to find outside. VERY profitable long trade routes for example.
- in near future all of that and more driven by Dialogues aka Quests of course. You get bookmarks to find something out there and bring it back etc. (No Man’s Sky style Quests)
-
While there are for sure more Universe driven balancement possibilities we additionally boost it with some new HWS Features and changes
- We added a HWS Discovery Reward feature:
The first explorer of a playfield get a cumulative reward system. 1 RP per playfield and 10 credits * amount of visited star per playfield. So about 10 000 HWS RP and over 70 million credits in sum. Be the first, be the first - you remember? - We added a HWS Conquer POI feature:
Be the first and claim a POI (spread in PvE and PvP playfields) to your faction with a new command egs:conquer. Some conditions have been met like 10 meter near the Core for example. Then you get instant rewarded with HWS RP and credits. It will reset to Alien faction regulary, so you have a constant income - if others don’t conquer it before you - We added a new HWS Scan feature for PvP and reworked the old Exploration Reward feature
If you have additionally the Radar Block on your base, you get daily generous rewarded.
BUT watch out, it is a trade off you always have to keep in mind:
Our HWS Star mini galaxy in the center has the biggest reward and different ones depending on the playfield. All the other 3000 PvP playfields out there have all the same daily reward.
Others will see if there are Radar Bases in PvP playfields! Make your decision…
- We added a HWS Discovery Reward feature:
- Just as a reminder, lastly we implemented the new HWS Star Fragment feature. There are 7 around, spread throughout the whole HWS Universe. The more the Galaxy grows per day, the more likely you will find out… no worry, some hints can be gathered after a while.
Once you claimed one there is an instant reward of +1000 HWS RP and +1% EB Interest for this season
But if you collect ALL 7, you will get permanently +1 OCD Slot.
So yeah, probably I forgot more … like purchasable Supergates, Appartment Keys, Tokens? Ah well, time will show guys. I’m at my limits.
But since I have no time at all I think tomorrow, I wanted to give you some more brain food for now. There are still some questions but it is all a work in progress - for now.
After the season is before the season!
I keep working on everything non-stop to provide you the absolute best Empyrion you will ever get - that is my goal!
Still, I hope you got excited and be open for a fresh HWS gameplay in our 12th season…
It’s a pleasure to see you all playing on our server and thank you very much for all your feedback the last months! Please note those are important to me and even if some of them didn’t make it in tomorrow, they are all queued up!
All the Best.
Your HWS Team
Just so players know =D
