Latest News

Hi Everyone!

So we're finally ready to start round 2 of the Empire of the Eclipse Beta! The beta test will go live on Sept.3 but sign ups start today using the link below.

http://bit.ly/hgpm3E

There's been a ton of changes in this build which you can read about below.

Empire of the Eclipse Beta 2 change list

• Battle reports are now sent to a players in game email after a battle has been completed.
  
• Planet resource / unit cost rebalance
  
• Build times have been adjusted
  
• Terraformers now work properly.
  
• An animation is now played over the planet during combat. (Full combat display is still pending.)
  
• Combat has been completely revamped
• planet defenses work properly.
• stealth skills now affect combat.
• fleet combat now works properly
  
• Items that can't be built are now highlighted
  
• Chat indicator animates when messages are waiting
  
• The Number of unread emails is now displayed over the mail icon.
  
• There is a separate tab for the tech you have currently qued to research.
  
• You can now post screenshots to facebook / twitter by touching the screen with three or more fingers.
  
• Client side optimization so detailed sector information is only sent when a player is specifically viewing a sector. (this should fix the lag problems Spart was having.)
  
• Lots of small graphical fixes.
  
• General texture memory optimizations.
  
• The Planet Killers planet busting ability now works.
  
• The technology Bio weapons now works properly.
  
• Solar Core Taps are now functioning and behave as ships instead of orbitals.
  
• Black holes now destroy ships when they enter their system if they do not posses hyper space physics.
  
• There is now a limit of 1 Shipyard per planet. The build time of shipyards has also been increased to 24 hours.
  
• Players who posses tech to build cruisers/battleships -and- orbital platforms / minefields will be able to perform a one way conversion to convert a cruiser to an orbital defense platform / minefield.
  
• Non Capital class ships now do 1/4 damage to planets in addition to an increase in mining colonies base defenses being increased so to take a base mining colony you'll need either 1 Dreadnaught, 15 Battle ships, or 25 Battle cruisers.
  
• A new tech, dubbed Advanced Materials Collection, will be required to gather / process Rare Ore. Players can still get Rare Ore by trading with other players.
  
• Trade now works properly. The option to trade with other players will show up when you place a trade vessel in the orbit of another player's planet.
  
• Ship / Orbital build costs have been adjusted so that lower end ships will not require Rare Ore but many of the high end ships / orbitals will.
  
• We're introducing the concept of specialties. When the player starts the game they'll choose a specialty relating to one of the four tech trees. Players will still be able research technologies from any of the trees but each specialty has certain technologies and innate bonuses that only they will have access to. You'll notice that that Trade players have a significant advantage in their potential to collect Rare Ore which is in turn needed by every other specialty to complete their high end structures / ships so that forming partnerships with other players becomes a critical component to the mid and late game.

Specialties

Combat

• Combat specialists gain access to Super Capital Construction.
• Combat specialists gain access to Planet Busting.

Trade

• Trade specialist gain a 10% increase in rare ore collection per rank of Advanced Materials Collection vs. the standard 3%
• Trade specialists build ships and orbitals 10% faster.

Science

• Science specialists research technologies 25% faster.
• Science specialists gain access to Graviton physics.

We have also made a number of changes to the tech tree itself with the Fleet and Combat lines receiving the most changes.

Tech Tree changes
(if a tech is unlisted / unmentioned nothing has changed.)

Fleet Control
Tier 1

• Fleet Maneuvering : +4% warp speed per rank for fleets. (was a T2 tech and is now replacing Basic Ship Handling)

Tier 2

• Forward Fleet: Allows the creation of Cruisers. +2% damage to Cruisers and Battleships per rank.
  
• Advanced Ship Handling : Improved ship agility. +4% defense to all ships per rank. (changed since a non warp speed bonus wasn't useful and +2% bonus to ships that aren't in fleets seemed a little weak / too limited in utility.)

Tier 3

• Armed Command : Allows the creation of Battleships. + 4% per rank defense for Battleships, Cruisers, and Carriers.

Tier 4

• Advanced Fleet Command: Allows the creation of Fleet HQ. A Fleet HQ allows all of a players ships within the same system to defend any other ships, planets, or orbitals in that system even if they're not in orbit of the same planet. Fleet HQ's give +5% defense, +5% defense, +2% attack to all ships in the same system as the fleet HQ per rank . (replaces shrapnel resistant shielding)

(Bonuses for Fleet HQ are currently working but ship grouping is not.)

• Evasive Maneuvers: Fighters gain +10% chance to avoid damage from mines and +5% general defense per rank. (buffed to be more useful in general.)

Combat
Tier 1

• Orbital Defenses: Only allows the construction of Energy Array platforms.
  
• Offensive Initiative: No longer grants the ability to build Cruisers or bonuses to cruisers / battleships.

Tier 2

• Advanced Orbital Defenses: Allows the construction of Missile defense platforms. +2% reduction orbital build time per rank +2% dmg increase time per rank (replaces mine emplacement.) note: These two changes go along with the change that that Energy Platforms be strong against light units and Missile Platforms are strong against capital class ships.
  
• Strike fleet construction: No longer grants the ability to build Battleships / provides bonuses to battleships / cruisers.

Tier 6

• Engines of Destruction - gives bonuses to capital class ships as well as super capital capital class ships. (this is so there's still a useful T6 Combat skill for non combat specialists since combat specialists are the only ones that get super caps.)

Trade Skills
Tier 1

• Advanced Materials Collection : Allows mining colonies to process and refine Rare Ore. +3% production capacity per rank.

Tier 2

• Mine Emplacement : Allows the creation of mine deployment drones. +5% damage per rank. Mine deployment drones are defenseless mine carriers that can be converted into a mine field.

You can now browse our forums using an app on the iPhone. It certainly makes viewing the forums a lot better.


Please let us know what you think of the app, we would love your feedback.

Hi Everyone,

If you signed up for beta -and- registered your device (you can do this by checking the email you received from test flight on that device) you should be receiving a build of the game on Saturday (4/9) at 6pm EST.

We're looking forward to seeing you all in the game soon.

We're now at the end of Q1 2011 and some of you have been wondering where Empire of the Eclipse is. The answer is that we've decided to delay the game but we think it's definitely for a good cause. The the game is simply huge and we're doing our best to make sure that everything gets properly tested before launch but more over after all the responses from GDC it really seemed clear that making battle feel more visceral was the big thing the game was missing and that it's definitely something that needs to be done for launch.

So the bad news is we're delaying the game to an undetermined date but we'll definitely be out this summer. The good news is that the combat has gotten a lot more engaging and to that end I've included a brief demo video of where we're headed with the combat display. Basically battles are presented in a manner similar to Advance Wars except that you're seeing large scale battles instead of single units and the battles take time to play out giving players time to move reinforcements or for friends to join into the fray if they're close enough. Below we've included a video of where we're headed with the combat display along with a sample of the 40 min soundtrack that was made for the game by the very talented Christian Andersson ( http://www.craze.se/ )

Thank you for your patience, we look forward to playing the game with you all as soon as it's ready.

Part 2 of the Tech Tree Dev Diary is now up. We introduce the areas of Science, which grants players the ability to cloak ships and even collapse stars, and Fleet Control which opens up the use of deadly carriers and jump drives.

http://www.zarksoft.com/cms/content....v-Diary-Part-2

Ok, we finally hit 25 fans, so we could shorten our link for Facebook.

If you aren't a fan already.. it's never too late to become one...

http://www.facebook.com/ZarkSoft