The Halycon 6: Lightspeed Edition has been released today:

What's changed in Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition?

Literally EVERYTHING in Halcyon 6 was tweaked and optimized to make the Lightspeed Edition. Pretty much every single number and algorithm was adjusted.

Overall, the campaign takes a much shorter time to complete (down to about 12-15 hrs instead of 20-25 hrs) but no content was removed, we only adjusted the overall progression to be faster and require much less grinding.

The bulk of balance and progression tweaks fall into three main degrees of change:
“Greatly increased/reduced” indicates changes in the 25% to 50% range
“Increased/reduced” indicates changes in the 15% to 35% range
“Slightly increased/reduced” indicates changes in 1% to 15% range

*slight spoilers ahead!*

[...]

Halcyon 6 will be updated to Lightspeed Edition, free for all existing owners.

Hello Commanders!

We're please to announce Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition! A community-driven, reworked, rebalanced take on the original game along with new features and content, optimized for faster progression for an action packed adventure on board your favourite starbase. Out on August 10th, this one's FREE for all our existing players of course. A big thanks to you, our backers and players for making the galaxy a better place ;)

Here's the official trailer:

loading...

And here's a summary of what's in Lightspeed Edition:

• Streamlined Campaign greatly speeds up progression and tightens the campaign to an action and adventure packed 12 hrs depending on your play style and pace
• Streamlined All Systems for faster progression, including economy, starbase, resources, and officer levelling.
• New Officer Progression System with 6 subclasses, 3 Prestige classes, new skill tree, and over 20+ new Prestige/Epic powers.
• New Ship Loadout and Config screen will let you customize loadouts (and save them) for your ships just before entering combat
• Enhanced Combat includes 25+ new alien faction space combat abilities, more combos for both players and enemies, increased faction weaknesses and resistances, and other balancing tweaks
• New UI Overhaul designed for greater readability and usability. Many quality of life enhancements to all areas of the game, too many to list here.
• New Difficulty Mode called Vice Admiral and slightly increased difficulty across the board

What can you do to help?

For those of you on Twitter, please help by LIKING and RETWEETING our announcement here:
https://twitter.com/Halcyon6Game/status/887002078538846208

And feel free to LIKE and SHARE our trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tQ52bRgK_Y

We'll be announcing one final big sale for H6 on July 20th. Keep an eye out for that and let your friends know!

Thanks again for all your support! More coming in future updates :)

The Halcyon 6 Team

Destructoid and Zam have reviewed Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander:

Destructoid:

Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander is September's sleeper hit

Space pirates and pixel art

[...]

A simple glance at the galactic map is enough to encourage continued play sessions. Halcyon 6 is the kind of game that you can lose hours to. The game’s constant push and pull of new missions and management requirements is aided by great art and quirky humor. Space has never looked prettier in a pixelated format, nor has the silliness of attempting to interact with alien races been quite as charming. On a minute-to-minute scale, it balances challenge and humor to make for a game that feels like a well-realized version of some long forgotten sci-fi TV show.

Zam:

Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander review impressions

It's like Xcom, but in spacier Faster Than Light space.

[...]

At the most straightforward level, success and failure aren’t clear enough in Halcyon 6. You can, for example, lose officers and ships in combat, but it feels like a total disaster that should call for a reload -- in large part because it’s incredibly difficult to have happen in the first ten-plus hours of gameplay. You can be short of resources for what you want to built, but this never seems to be life-threatening. On the other hand, it’s also possible to be faced with a seemingly overwhelming number of distress calls that indicates that things are going badly -- but it rarely appears to be an existential threat.

This has the net result of making it feel like Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander is nearly-great, but just missing the one thing to put it over the top, in the way that Darkest Dungeon’s stress system tied everything together with that similar game. This doesn’t make it bad in the slightest, but it does mean that Halcyon 6 isn’t quite as exciting as its first impression makes it appear.

US Gamer has reviewed the space sim Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander:

Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander PC Review:
A Flawed But Promising Space Sim

Halcyon 6 doesn't quite live up to its immense promise out of the gate, but it's on its way.

[...]

What I found was a game that wove together many of my very favorite game elements: Turn-based combat, RPG elements, base-building, and strategy; all with an attractive pixel art look. My hope as I played the first few hours was that I had found one of my favorite games of the year. The reality turned out to be somewhat more complicated.

[...]

Halcyon 6 has tremendous promise, but tedious resource gathering, repetitive combat, and bugs hurt what is otherwise an ambitious and interesting space sim. I can't quite recommend it right now, but I'd check back in six months or so: It may well be on its way to being something truly special.

Score: 3/5

The Strategy base building RPG Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander has been released:

On the edge of Terran space lies Halcyon 6, a derelict starbase left behind by a mysterious precursor race. Your mission is to reclaim the derelict station and rebuild it.
A mysterious alien force is making a beeline towards Earth and this starbase is the best chance for the New Terran Federation to establish new alliances, research new technologies and otherwise figure out a way to stop the impending invasion.

Using only the resources you can salvage from the derelict station and gathered from nearby star systems, it’s up to you to rebuild the starbase to lead the Terran Republic’s scientific research, exploration and diplomatic efforts on the edge of known space.

loading...

Halcyon 6 is a passion project who’s design is inspired by our years spent playing classic games like Star Control, Master of Orion, X-COM, Civilization and new classics like FTL.

Features:

• Base Building: spend resources to build station facilities (rooms) to enhance your production and technological capabilities, or build ships to help you control more territory
• Exploration: assign your fleets to nearby star clusters, where they can handle emerging enemy threats, do missions for alien factions or secure bonus resources
• Crew Management: assign crew to station facilities to greatly improve their output efficiency, or to ships where they can contribute in unique ways to combat, missions and events
• Deep Tactical Combat: fight tactical ship or ground battles to resolve hostile events, create a foothold in the sector and ultimately defeat the enemy mothership!
• Story Events: based on game criteria like rooms-built, alien diplomacy scores or officer traits/skills, the game will produce story events (often with multiple choice outcomes) that can lead to combat, time-related applied bonuses/negatives, officer attribute changes or any number of crazy in-game stories.

Project Goals:

Unlimited Replayability: Each playthrough has players dealing with a new randomly generated derelict station, surrounding galaxy, crew recruits, and alien factions

Motley Crew: Each crew member has unlimited potential for acquiring unique behaviours, traits and abilities, for better or for worse. Making the best use of your dysfunctional crew will be one of the keys to success. Who should be your main Science Officer? The insomniac that works insane hours but has an addictive personality or the agoraphobic mad genius?

Encounters of the Weird Kind: There are 6 alien factions in Halcyon 6 and they are all quite different with varying objectives and personalities. Only your wit and your crew’s skills will help you navigate the diplomatic waters to gain them as key allies or valuable trading partners.

A new update for Halcyon 6 titled 'Officers Unleashed'. Patch notes are extensive, among many notable changes are the addition of personality traits for officers with new story event options, starbase layout changes, planetside away missions and more.

What's New:

• Halcyon 6 starbase layout has been completely changed!
• The starbase is now host to loads of different space monsters that you can encounter and "interact" with while exploring it.
• Officers now have unique ground combat powers (they start with 4) that can be selected as they level up.
• Officer Level cap increased to 15.
• Officers now have attributes that determine how adept they are at performing certain tasks.
• Base rooms now have tasks that you can perform to unlock upgrades and tech, and can, from time to time, trigger special events.
• Tech Research tree has been completely revamped.
• Officers are now awarded Skill Points upon level up, which can then be used to unlock powers from the Officer Quarters / Profile Screen.
• Officers now have personality traits that affect their statistics as well as story event options.
• Officers now gain and lose special combat traits based on their experiences in combat.
• Player's ships and Officers are no longer automatically destroyed / killed when Health reaches 0 - instead, they enter a Critical Condition state where any additional damage may kill them. The amount of damage done determines the % chance of being destroyed.
• You may now reroll" a limited number of times during Officer selection, to find an officer that best suits your Fleet.
• New menu and button icons, all new screen transitions.

General Bug Fixes and Enhancements:

• Enemy fleet strength is more varied (ie. not always super strong).
• Cadets can now be upgraded in the new Cadet Barracks base room.
• Reduced chances of consecutive base room encounters while exploring the same room.
• Unlock Officers and recruit replacements at the new Officer's Academy.
• Fixed bug with Ship stats being affected by Officer levels (only ground combat stats should be affected by Officer levels).
• Fixed cooldown timing causing enemy ships to "pass" their turns in combat.
• Enemy ship health is now displayed on the starmap, alluding to the difficulty of the fight.
• Ground combat damage has been adjusted across the entire game.
• Opening cinematic combat has been updated to include more clarity and information.
• Lowered XP requirements for Officer levelling.
• Countless small event system fixes, upgrades and typo fixes.
• Animations upgraded across the entire game and additional all-new Space Combat backgrounds.

Quest/Mission & Economy:

• Rebalanced generated enemy fleet strength (slightly easier).
• Slightly increased cost of healing officers.
• ncreased Crew generation on colonies.
• Reduced resource generation for Materials, Dark Matter, and Fuel.
• New planetside away missions in the Federation and Pirate areas.
• Early missions tweaked to include the ALL NEW task system and officer academy changes.

Ships/Officers & Powers:
=Hull and health bar values now displayed permanently during combat
=Officers now gain XP while exploring Base Rooms.
=Pirates have started captured alien vessels to use in their fleets!
=Ships that have been attacked with Ship Disable will gain a temporary resistance against it.
=Officer powers shuffled for balancing.
=Most Healing and Repair powers have been given a boost in effectiveness
=Enemy damage has been given a significant increase in effectiveness
=Damage over time powers now have damage based on relative ship strength
=Group Heal / Repair powers will no longer remove status effects, except Matter =Reconstruction
=Enemy faction resistances have been lowered for lower tier ships
=A MASSIVE overhaul and rebalance on specific power & ships, including:

• Chimera now has a resistance to Ship Disable
• Cloak now does minor repairs and lasts longer
• New Eng Power - Reinforce Hull
• Reduced duration of Brace
• ncreased damage and repair of Siphon Dark Matter
• Warder now has Overheat Hull power (exploits Crew Panicked)
• Strafing Run now causes Engines Down
• Triple Shot now exploits Vulnerable
• Bend Spacetime's cooldown has been increased
• Salvage Harpoon now inflicts Hull Breach instead of Sensors Offline
• Bridge Shot no longer exploits Hull Breach, instead it inflicts Weapons Disruption
• Dimensional Flashbang no longer inflicts Crew Panick & Sensors Offline, instead it inflicts Engines Down & Weapons Disruption
• Fire At Will no longer inflicts Hull Breach, instead it inflicts Engines Down
• Suicide Run no longer exploits Crew Panicked, instead it exploits Vulnerable
• Supercharge Polarity is now a single target attack that can inflict Vulnerable
• Siphon Dark Matter no longer inflicts Vulnerable, instead it inflicts Crew Panicked
• Stasis Lock no longer inflicts Engines Down, instead it exploits Weapons Disruption
• Warp Atomic Structure has reduced cooldown time and no longer inflicts Hull Breach or exploits Vulnerable, instead it inflicts Crew Panicked and exploits Hull Breach
• Ablative Field now can target allies but has slightly reduced effectiveness
• Adaptive Armour now has a group heal
• Suicide Run has slightly reduced % to disable and damage
• Death From Above and Ramming Speed have reduced % for self Hull Breach

Thank you all so much for supporting us during our Early Access! We're working super hard on getting Act 2 and Act 3 out there. We hope to exit Early Access in the late August to early September timeframe.

Good luck out there in this Chruul infested galaxy!

Halcyon 6 Team

Prepare for an extensive update planned for late May/Early June for Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander

Next Steps and Road to Full Release

What's next? Well, we're going to keep pushing towards the Final Release of the game as soon as possible!

There will be TWO major updates to the game, the first is Officers Unleashed and the second will contain Acts 2 and 3 together. In between these major updates, we'll be pushing smaller updates to fix bugs, UI issues, polish and 'quality of life' tweaks to make the game better.

Once the two major updates are out, we'll launch the Full Release version of the game. After the Full Release, we'll work on immediate stuff like Linux version and the Kickstarter stretch goals (as promised!).

So, onto the next major update...

Officers Unleashed!

From the beginning, officers were always an integral part of our game design. We're adding to what we launched in our Early Access build to give players more customization and more control over their officers.

First up is levelling up an officer. In Officers Unleashed, you'll be earning skill points as you gain levels and you can go to this screen to spend those skill points however you like. Be it upgrading an existing power or training in a brand new one, the choice is yours.

Officer Level Up Mockup.

We're also revamping our Tech Tree and moving some upgrades to trainable upgrades that may not need as much resources but simply an officer and time to unlock in the new Officer Academy room:

Also in the Officers Unleashed update, we'll be adding Away Missions on planetary surfaces and enemy strongholds.

Of course this means more stuff for your officers to do.. we'll be adding more officers into the earlier portions of the game to balance it out.

And of course there will be lots of tweaks and balancing as well. We're aiming to get Officers Unleashed out for late May/early June timeframe and yes this is a huge change to the major areas of the game so old saves will not work.

As with any major update, we'll be needing you to help us playtest and provide us that valuable feedback that you've been giving during our Alpha, Beta and Early Access phase.

Thanks again for supporting us in this journey, we're so proud that we were able to deliver a good experience in Early Access to both our backers and our new players from Steam and we can't wait to get Officers Unleashed, then Acts 2 and 3 into your hands.

- Halcyon 6 Team

After a limited number of hours playing Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander, Silver brings us his very early impression, with the promise to come back with more info at a later stage.

As for the space station itself you will find it familiar if you have played XCOM. It looks like an ant farm from side-on but the amount of potential facilities you can construct is much larger than XCOM. You will need to clear out ruined areas before new facilities can be built and that means assigning an officer to the task. I had my first experience with ground combat when this task was interupted in which I was given the option to flee before battle started or engage. It works much the same as ship combat with your officers abilities being used in complementary fashion.

Make sure to pay attention to the tech tree as various facilities can only be constructed once you pay for the research. The tech web is handily colour coded for different areas like yellow for fleet tech and purple for starbase facilities etc. You will need to spend materials and dark matter to acquire technologies which will be available instantly. Pro Tip: I found it most useful to focus on officer tech and starship level tech.