Beta 6.0 Pre-release

Just an update for anyone wondering what’s going on with the beta:

It looks like February is still a go. I’ve been tidying up some loose ends, and I’m just about ready to push the button. Once I’m satisfied that everything is running as intended offline, I’ll make an announcement about 24 hours before we go live.

A few sneak previews:

• There’s an all-new Vulcan ship class. (Not the SV-1 from mtrek.pro)
• Delta quadrant is being set aside for now, and will be re-tooled for an expansion later this year.
• The list of torp-regenerating classes has been expanded to include some of those expensive high-capacity vessels. *cough cough galaxy* *cough cough Keldon*
• The rules of aquisition will begin to pay dividends for the Ferengi alliance
• The Orion pirate scum will spread fear throughout the quadrant
• We’ll see the return of a classic mtrek ship that hasn’t been seen since 1989

WARNINGS & DISCLAIMERS:

Any ships you currently have in your fleets should be flown carefully during the beta. I personally recommend setting any important ones aside until you get a feel for the new game balance. There have been adjustments to practically every ship class; some of them are more noticeable than others, but I assure you, they’re there. If you don’t want to mess up your fleet stats while testing beta ships, feel free to create another fleet to mess around in.

If you decide to fly a 5.x ship during the beta or after the final release, please note that your “Delta” ships will have been moved into Alpha quadrant. Most will end up at the corresponding base # to where it was last saved in Delta.

Also note that some ship class adjustments will be automatically applied to the 5.x ships when they enter the 6.0 environment, and others won’t. That means unfortunately, that there exists the possibility of 5.x-era ships ultimately being slightly weaker than their 6.0 counterparts, but in the case of glaring misbalances, I might be able to make manual adjustments. In the end I would generally view a slightly different specification as a “novelty”, and I doubt any of the differences will be game-breaking.

-obit