The Last Federation

[spelk]

Trailer for free expansion, Betrayed Hope

[Tpek]

The expansion is free???
Then how come it was for sale on Steam?  :o

[Huw the Poo]

It isn't free, unless things have changed in the past week.

[spelk]

Oh sorry I got the wrong end of the stick there, the upgrade to an expansion-less title is free. Sorry about that folks, too much Brandy, not enough reading the actual text.

[Huw the Poo]

Gonna buy it fo' sho'.  The new modes sound ace innit.

Also, fuck the Thoraxians, man.

[Huw the Poo]

The second expansion The Lost Technologies has been released:

Features Added In The Expansion

    64 new racial techs create personality-specific developments to parallel the existing Thoraxian Evolutions.  Thoraxians can't have ALL the fun.
    New Tech Race game mode: win the science race before any of the main races do.
    Techs now have "side effects" that can be directly beneficial to you — or other races — in combat.
    Champions: enemies that show up in combat (more on harder difficulties) and use flagship abilities that were previously your exclusive domain.
    Gorgeous new Ring World planet type, home to a very fragile ecosystem.
    More new stuff: 12 techs for everybody, 7 flagship abilities, 2 formidable turrets, and 1 new mission.

About The Expansion

This expansion is focused on filling in all sorts of small pieces of the game that could use a bit of extra content, as well as adding some larger features with a surprisingly high impact. Take tech side effects, for instance: they add dual motivations to getting any tech. Do I want that tech in order to give it to some other race, or do I perhaps just want it to beef up myself a tad?

All of the races feel more unique in terms of how they evolve based on their new race-specific techs in the tech tree, and there are even 8 Hydral techs that you can go on a new mission type in order to find. Champions add a new element to combat where you may need to avoid a specific enemy ship that is doing... something strange and unexpected. You can easily tell the champion ships by their purple glow, and they have a way of exerting a bit of gravity — so to speak — on their part of the battlefield.

Last but not least, the new Tech Race game mode sees you focused on techs to the exclusion of all the usual politics or conquest. One of the tricky things is of course that you can't let any of the other races take over the solar system while you do this. But even more so, you have to partner with other races in order to advance your own scientific interests. Just don't partner with any race for too long, or you might find them leaving you in the dust...

The tech race game mode could be more interesting than it sounds, given that one of the best ways of gaining tech is to research it cooperatively with another race...

[FarAway Sooner]

I really wanted to like this game, but just couldn't keep the different races straight from each other.  At all.

[spelk]

Space Sector does an impressions piece on it..

http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2015/11/tlf-the-lost-technologies-expansion-impressions