In our last post, we covered the brand new Decoration Store and its accompanying holiday event, Presents in Peril! We showed off a lot of new stuff going in, but we honestly barely scratched the surface! Let’s take a look at the updated hit list considering what we outlined in the last post:
A limited-time Winter Holiday special event.A new base decoration system, starting with limited-time winter-themed customizations, including a completely awesome “Snow Globe” effect for your base.- Headquarters upgrade cap raised to level 13, along with new upgrades for several defensive structures.
- Complete removal of Nanofuel, letting players visit as many sectors as they want.
- An overhauled PvP system that puts valuable opponents directly on your map.
- A new Insurance system to replace shields, letting players attack while still keeping their currencies safe.
- Streamlined “one and done” mining gameplay that eliminates cargo capacity and challenges players to mine quickly for special bonus rewards.
- New Daily Quests that award super valuable “Mystery Sectors” that players can mine for special rewards.
That’s still a lot to go over! Fortunately, some of these are easier to explain than the brand new holiday event and the Decoration Store. For example, the Headquarters upgrade? That’s super easy to demonstrate! Check this out:
Upgrading your Headquarters to Level 13 will grant you a slew of new defensive upgrades as well, giving you more opportunities to turn your base into a gauntlet of lasers, missiles, and drones for all those attackers unfortunate enough to pull your base in their queue.
This offers a nice segue into our changes for PvP, actually!
When you download Update 1.1, you’ll notice a few things right away. First, you won’t be searching for rival space miners anymore! Instead, we’ve completely overhauled how bases are selected. Now, enemy bases will appear directly on your map, and they’ll always be resource-rich. You can still find a new opponent after a period of time if you decide not to obliterate a specific base on your map, and this action is now free.
Now that PvP is more free-form and always available on your map, we needed a protection mechanic that was as flexible as this new system. Enter Insurance! Insurance replaces our old Shield system, protecting your resources, but still allowing you to go attack enemy bases without losing it.
So, you might have noticed something in that sector map screenshot above. Something… missing. Give up? Here’s a hint: this is what the top HUD looked like in 1.0
And here’s what it looks like in Update 1.1
That’s right, we’ve completely removed Nanofuel from Space Miner Wars! Don’t ask me how ships fly around without it — the important thing is that it’s gone, and players can now explore as many sectors as they wish. As before, upgrading your Observatory will increase the number of Mining, PvP, Mission, and Resource Base sectors you’ll see in your map. When you complete a sector, it will disappear temporarily before it’s replaced by a new sector of the same type. If you want a new Mining or PvP sector right away, you can always hurry this process along for Infinium.
Now that we’ve gone over the changes to PvP, let’s take a quick peek under the hood of our new Mining gameplay!
When you venture into a Mining sector, you’ll notice a couple of changes right away:
What’s that up at the top? A timer? And a bar with some stars? Also, where’s the cargo space indicator? What the heck is going on?
Every mining sector in Space Miner Wars now features our brand new “Mining Quota” system, which rewards space miners who can blast asteroids, scrap, and enemies with speed and efficiency. The more stuff you blow up, the more the bar fills! Fill up the bar enough, and you’ll earn a star, which gives you a special bonus reward at the end of your mining run. Earn more stars to get better rewards!
When the timer ticks down to 0, you’ll automatically warp out and keep everything you collected. And there’s no need to worry about cargo space anymore — we took that out along with the Nanofuel. Everything you find in the sector is yours to keep! You’ll get your mining report, then claim your rewards before heading back to base.
The last things I want to cover in this post for Update 1.1 are actually pretty tightly connected: Daily Quests and Mystery Sectors.
You’ll be able to start earning daily rewards for checking in on your mining base, along with a second randomly-selected task. This could be mining asteroids, attacking bases in PvP, or completing missions. You’ve probably noticed that the reward you get for logging in every day is different from anything we’ve seen before — which makes sense, because it’s different from anything we’ve seen before! It’s a brand new item we’re introducing in this update called… MYSTERIOUS FRAGMENTS!
By collecting four Mysterious Fragments, you’ll be able to unlock rare, treasure-packed Mystery Sectors. You can keep track of your current progress via the counter on your sector map. What lies within these Mystery Sectors? Well, if I told you, it wouldn’t be much of a mystery now, would it?
While these two posts have covered most of the major updates and additions making it into Update 1.1, there are still lots of things I didn’t even get to talk about! For the full list of updates, covering everything mentioned here plus all the bug fixes, mission tweaks, number crunches, and more, check out our Patch Notes in the official Space Miner Wars forum!
And don’t forget that you can stay up to date on all the latest Space Miner-related news on our Facebook page and also on the Space Miner Twitter feed!
See you around the Vega System, space miners!