Transcendence 1.8 changes some of the core game mechanics in fundamental ways. When I first started the design for this version, I wasn't planning on making such radical changes, but now I'm glad I did. I believe these change have led to greater mechanical richness.

Sid Meier (the creator of Civilization) often says that a good game should have a "series of interesting choices." I hope you'll find these changes give you more interesting choices.

Buying New Ships

In Transcendence, your ship is your character. You upgrade your ship the way you would level up your character in an RPG. That's still the case in the core game (at least in Stars of the Pilgrim) and is not likely to change.

But there's no reason we can't offer a chance to buy a different ship in the middle of the game. If players want to do it, great. If not, they can always stick with their current ship. We've added yet another (hopefully) interesting choice.

In version 1.8 you'll be able to buy 8 different ship classes inside the game (9 with Corporate Command). 5 of these are classes that we're not playable in previous versions: EI100, EI200, Centurion, Centurion/X, Minotaur, and Minotaur/M.

Trading Mechanics

Trading has always been a key part of the game, but previous version never got the mechanics right. Anyone could profit from an ice farm to hotel route as long as they knew about the ice farm to hotel route. There was no real challenge to it.

In 1.8, I've made prices more dynamic. Different systems will have different prices for items depending on what stations they have. Systems with lots of ore mines will have low prices for ore. Systems with lots of populated stations will have higher prices for food.

Players will get hints about the system prices in the galactic map and thus will be able to make interesting choices about what items to carry and sell.

Armor Balance

Equipping your ship should involve trade offs. Do you want an omnidirectional weapon or a fixed weapon that does twice as much damage? In 1.8, we've added a mechanic in which heavy armor slows down your ship (drops its maximum speed).

This presents the player with another interesting choice: more hit points or more speed? Different players will (hopefully) make different choices, leading to more mechanical richness and more gameplay diversity.

Other Changes

Transcendence 1.8 also has several minor improvements (and lots of bug fixes):