USS Freedom

March Update
over 2 years ago – Mon, Mar 21, 2022 at 02:36:14 AM

Hello Crew,

We are already almost two weeks late for this update and we are terribly sorry for that. Many things held us back, and it was a super busy and difficult month. The worst of it was that three members of our team got sick almost at the same time. Ember and Siber had it first and then Vanton had a pretty mean cold. To us it’s obvious that we were attacked by the Ephialtes and their biological weapons!

We made no changes gameplay-wise as most of the game is already right where we want it to be. The only thing we keep playtesting is the new PVP mode as it has so much potential, and we want to be sure it is as great as it can be. 

Translations move slower than expected. Sci-Fi terminology can be a bit tricky, but the translations continue at a steady pace. Also, we are waiting for our metal coins to reach China, hopefully within a month, around the time that production ends, so hopefully no time will be lost there.

At the end of this month something great is happening and we are so, so proud to be part of it. A sister company, Teetotum Games, will go live on Kickstarter for their first board game! The game has already received amazing reviews and is on many lists of the most anticipated games of 2022. As a thank you to our backers for your support and love and patience, we made a deal to offer our backers a 10€ coupon when you pledge for Age of Rome. The coupon will take effect automatically when you pay for shipping. All you have to do is press the "Notify me on launch" button on the following link:  Age of Rome

 
Kerasforos
Planet E-19b is an inhospitable planet of infinite deserts, rocky mountains, and acid rivers. The few intelligent races that exist there have little to no technological advances even though they seem to be more than capable of understanding the concept.
Kerasforos comes from that planet. He was a leader of a warband, but other than that had no real life or attachments. When he first saw the USS Freedom land, he was in awe—amazed, but not at all frightened. He moved closer with his rock axe in hand. Velos aimed at him and got ready to do what he does best, but Shell lowered Velos’ arrow and moved closer to him. She used her vocal translator to speak to him. Nobody heard that first dialogue they had, but since then, they have been best friends. Shell always designs and engineers new gadgets for him. Kerasforos was ecstatic when he first saw a blaster rifle. Although he wanted one, it would be a shame to throw away years of experience with the axe, so Shell made him an axe that was also a rifle.
 

Kerasforos is powerful warrior that excels primarily in melee combat, but also has a single ranged attack that can be devastating if used at the right time. He is extremely resistant to most damage and his wounds do not slow him down one bit—if anything, they motivate him to fight even harder.
Aboard the USS Freedom, he is not as confident as he is slashing enemies up close, but he is still able to pull his weight. He prefers working on the shield generator where he can practice all the lessons Shell taught him about how to create shields as effectively as a trained engineer.

Let us know what you think of our new addition to the USS Freedom crew; stay safe and keep playing!

February Update
almost 3 years ago – Wed, Feb 09, 2022 at 05:01:59 AM

Hello Crew!

February briefing is ready for upload! February is, as always, one of the slower months for a few reasons: the Chinese New Year is still being celebrated, the month is a few days shorter, and most importantly, it is the month of celebrating love… What is more romantic than staying home with your significant other playing board games… No? Just us? Ok, let’s carry on…

Nonetheless, we are very pleased with the progress we have. Almost everything is finalized for production after a final review from our partners, and we are already working on translations. So, production will be almost done before we start our new miniature campaign for the Deathtouched version of USS Freedom. We made amazing progress and added a lot of new elements and improved a whole bunch of them as well!

Some of the changes came right from all of you! The polls we made for our crew gave us some clear messages about which heroes you enjoyed and which…not so much! Thankfully, only two of our heroes seemed to not agree with you and guess what—we changed them. We will introduce one of them (actually they would say it is two of them, but we will leave it up to you to decide) at the end of this update.

Also, one hero was exactly 50-50 on positive/negative reviews, so we decided to hold onto the concept but illustrate him again.
Take a look!

We sincerely hope that you prefer the darker, more detailed version of Velos!

Another improvement was on the upgrade tiles of USS Freedom as we added distinctive colors, dynamic lighting, and interesting effects.

We also added a visual element and reworked the escape/hunting mechanic. On any space combat, you always start with the spaceship token on the middle slot. 

Each time you win a full throttle contest, you move one slot to the right; each time you lose, you move one slot to the left. If you win a full throttle contest while on the far-right slot, you have successfully escaped your pursuer or the gravitational field of a natural phenomenon.

Of course, sometimes you will have to chase someone that is trying to escape from you. In this situation, as long as you do not let the token go further left than the last slot, you do not let your target escape. 

If you lose a full throttle contest while on the far-left slot and are near a black hole or similar natural phenomenon, the gravitational pull draws you in and you crash to your death. Campaign is over. Yikes!

 One of the mechanics we really had fun designing and playtesting was the terrain obstacles. Each has a unique code on their back dictating in which hex they are placed depending on the map where the fight takes place. Each encounter will include a different combination of terrain obstacles, making the location of each fight unique!

The volcanic stinger is found near volcanoes so when you encounter it, the lava terrain is always going to be placed on the battle map! 

Ed and Gar.

Ed is strong, brave, and really smart. Gar is just as strong, slightly less brave, and a lot less smart. Ed is spiritual, loves archaeology, and enjoys art. Gar loves alcohol and gadgets that do stuff for you, and his favorite hobby is sleeping. So, as you can see, life gets really complicated when they have to share a body. Ed and Gar do not believe in technology the same way the rest of us do. They believe in the spirit world that, according to them, resides in every piece of tech gear. So when we set the coordinates for our next destination, to them it seems more likely that we are communicating with the spirit of the ship and asking it to take us there. It is a challenge to communicate about everyday tasks, but they more than make up for it in battle. They are overprotective of the rest of the crew and they always put themselves between danger and their comrades. Everybody is happy to have them on board but…. that lantern they always carry around… that makes everyone uncomfortable.

Ed&Gar is an extremely powerful Hero that can be best described as a hybrid between a relentless warrior and a genius engineer. He can use his willpower in ways no one else can and can easily cover any need at any time. Still, there are places where he really shines. In space combat, that place would be the shields generator; in ground combat, he is a devastating force up close to the enemy but also has a few hidden lightning bolts up his sleeve.
 

This is it for this update, crew, let us know what you think!
Until next time!

January Update
almost 3 years ago – Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 09:46:46 PM

Opening hailing frequencies to all Crew members! The January Update is here!

We are happy to report that we are right on schedule. This is in fact something we are really proud of since the quest we are on is of epic difficulty.

As stated in previous updates, we attempted to improve our game as much as possible with modules we fully tested these last months. Time is of the essence as we cannot delay the delivery of USS Freedom, but at the same time, we want to go live to Kickstarter with the mini campaign that will fund all these new additions that you will get for the symbolic price of just $1.

We are now positive that we have made it. Our illustrator Christos and our graphic designer Giorgos are working overtime at this time in order to make the deadline and now we are confident that everything is set. Our game is now in production and it will be delivered to all our backers as planned, along with Aeolis!

The mini campaign will happen in parallel before the end of the first quarter of 2022.

So please let us introduce to some of the improvements we made. Some might seem like minor details, but for us, the point is improving every single detail. So, let’s start:

Large Battle Maps With Terrain Obstacles

Remember the 12-hex Ground maps for the away missions? Well...forget about them. We have now two 24-hex Ground maps and one large 48-hex map (580x580mm)!

These maps are modular: various terrain obstacles will be added depending on the mission and a minor luck factor always enabling replayability. Your away team will beam down in different locations each time, and the enemy aliens or monsters will also start in different locations or formations. Each battle requires much more tactical thinking and taking advantage of the different map effects.

Enhancing Opportunity Cards

Sometimes a space or ground battle might take an unexpected turn when an appropriate opportunity card is activated. These cards were reworked and are now better (and more fun) in content and also graphically upgraded to be easier to read.

Rework Orange Color Chip to Crystal Clear Yellow

We had a lot of feedback that the orange ability activated by the Orange Nebula chip was easily confused with the red one. Therefore, many testers suggested that we change the color to yellow. The correction was made.

Neoprene Stellar Map Contrast and Font

The font of the trade value of the various commodities printed on the different sectors of the stellar map is now altered to a bigger and clearer font. It is now much easier to read and also looks better :)

Upgraded Navigation Travel Hex

The Navigation Travel Hex token is now printed on both sides. On one side is the USS Freedom and on the other is the USS Liberty. More importantly, it also has an almost 50% increase in size. This way, our large cards attach to the side of the hex since they are now the same size. The Navigation Hex with the 6 cards around it looks much better. Moreover, the procedure of selecting a card to populate each side is now simplified and the card insert makes it much faster and more intuitive to use!

Alien Technology Loot Items

In the vastness of space, there will be alliances with many alien races. However, sometimes war is inevitable. Each alien race, major or minor, has unique technology that you can loot when defeating them. This allows you to acquire strange alien technology that may offer new strategies and tactics for your next battles.

Starship Alien Technology Modules

Each major civilization has a technology that is considered a well-hidden secret. Only by acquiring diplomatic relations of the highest order and by visiting that civilization’s Capital Planet will you be able to acquire these secrets. This is not easy to acquire, but integrating these technologies into your ship will enable heroic feats that you would never believe your ship could perform.

Starship Weapon Tiles

In the PvP mode, two ships fight against each other. First you have the opportunity to upgrade your ship buy selecting and buying upgrade tiles.

In order to optimize PvP balance between the USS Freedom and USS Liberty, both ships should have equal access to upgrading all weapons. Therefore, we had to add a second copy of each upgrade weapon tile. This way both ships have access to all weapons, making the PvP combat much more interesting. Soon we will show you in detail how starship PvP works.

These are some of the changes already applied. In the next update, we will announce all the details regarding the mini campaign and its exact release date!

December Update
almost 3 years ago – Sat, Dec 11, 2021 at 12:29:51 AM

All Crew, please report to your stations!

We have the December update online. And our news is quite important.

First of all, thank you for your overwhelming support for our plans. We were excited to see the mass support for our vision of creating an even better USS Freedom! Ok, to tell you the truth, we were also a bit touched as it was really moving for us to see email after email supporting our dedication to create a better game.

The winner for the new mini campaign is the following. It was a decisive victory and selection from about 75% of you!

So, what is our timetable? Well, as stated in the previous updates, this is the important month for us regarding all molds. They should be concluded by the end of this month. This will enable us to finish production during January so we will ship by the end of February.

Since final touches are still being made with some components, we are working overtime in finishing all the extra features included the next version of the game that will be crowdfunded by the name Deathtouched: USS Freedom.

Please do not get confused. It will include the same content as the first campaign plus, as promised, all new content will be available to you original backers for the symbolic price of $1.

In the new campaign, ALL backers will be able to select their desired language such as German or French.

Please be assured that the new campaign will NOT in any way delay the delivery of the game. We are already producing the new components by absorbing the cost and hoping that the new mini campaign going live in the first months of 2022 will help us balance the cost.

It is a bold move we are taking, but we are dedicated to delivering the best game we can, whatever this might mean, even if it is making a huge investment and leap of faith. We are trusting that we will be able to attract more backers on board to be able to fund the new, better game we are offering to everyone.

Here I would like to take a minute, well a paragraph actually, to say thank you to all the team that is actually working overnight to make this happen. I would like to thank Vanton on Operations, Siber and Ember on Social, Geps on Graphic Design, Zab on Illustrations, Aris on Fulfilment, Emily on Proofing, and Helen on Customer Support. As fanatical gamers, we are all also working on design and play testing and development, sometimes literally working all night. Last Sunday, we arrived at the Dreamcraft office at 05:00 am to start working at this rough hour. No one works at this hour for any kind of salary. You do this because you love what you do. An honest thank you to all!

So, let us show you a sneak peak of the new USS Freedom minor improvements! The ship hex UI is now upgraded and cleaner. The icons around the ship are reworked and the shields look more 3D, now engulfing the ship.

And one more small detail. During the new scenario we are preparing, the crew has the opportunity to board an enemy starship and capture it. From now on, in several campaign and game modes, the USS Freedom will have a sister Starship to sail side by side and face the unknown. Let us introduce to you the USS LIBERTY!

Also, we cannot exaggerate on the fun gameplay when you play team vs team when fighting in Competitive mode with one ship facing against the other. Well, I assume the best thing to do is to create a playthrough video of the competitive gameplay so you can see for yourselves in a future update!

Thank you all for your time to read all this and for all your support! Until next time… all power to thrusters!!

November Update
about 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 01:05:05 PM

Hello Crew!

Here we are for the most important update of all. Decisions have to be made in the following days and we will make them together. Let us explain:

After listening to your feedback, we dedicated countless hours in the last months to designing, playtesting, and prototyping in order to produce amazing new content for USS FREEDOM. Our plans are big and exciting as we haven’t only perfected the base game, but added on to it.

Now let’s bring you up to date with the new content!

We will start with the most important new element! We have designed two new modes of gameplay. One is for all of you who want to meet your friends in the galactic arena and pit yourself against them for galactic supremacy; one is a co-op adventure to enjoy with a friend in which each one of you control your own ship! For both of these, we are introducing a mirror second ship.

Imagine the two ships, one against each other, with the two boards facing one another. PvP is a blast. We have to admit it is a table hog, but it also has amazing table presence. Best of all? It’s a fun thrilling experience. It plays great as 1v1, but can also be played as Team v Team with the Heroes assigned to any number of different players on each team.

The cooperative mode offers new scenario challenges. Imagine two ships battling side by side against more challenging enemies. New cooperation possibilities open. Just imagine a space battle where one ship might need to supply power to the other or shield it against attacks or several other challengers.

Of course, having a second board significantly increases the production cost but we do have an idea about this.

One more game upgrade that we would like to introduce is taking advantage of the second board by using the bottom side for Ground Terrain. This means that we are removing the small 295x295mm board and using the larger 590x590mm. This is four times the area and gives the ability for “cleverer” Ground combat. This in conjunction with the unlocked terrain obstacles can introduce intriguing challenges for your Crew on away missions. Of course, we will use the bottom side of the USS Freedom for the same thing!

The next big thing is the Legacy Achievement System we want to implement in the game to give you that unique feeling of accomplishment. This system works with the addition of Achievement Stickers which can be added to specific locations in the Interstellar Data Archives book. There, when engaging a new challenge, you will be able to see all the information and Lore on your encounter and also, if the encounter allows it, the specific conditions under which you will be able to obtain the specific Achievement. For all of you achievement hunters out there, know this—completion won’t be as easy as you think, but should you prevail, we will personally congratulate your achievement!

One of the most ambitious additions to our game is skill upgrades. This is something that potential backers repeatedly requested during the campaign, but at the time we could not commit to this as we did not know if we could design it in a cohesive way along the rest of the game. We are now confident that we can make it work for the Deathtouched heroes. We have created hero-specific small ability tokens that can be gradually unlocked through a sandbox or scenario campaign. You get to decide where to place the ability you unlocked on the Hero pad, thus steering each of your Heroes towards different specializations.

Now we told you about Hero skill upgrades… but enemies have also gotten smarter. We have experimented with using chips and abilities to create an original AI system that makes enemies unpredictable, smart, and dangerous. To achieve that, there are different abilities corresponding to the game state of the enemy, taking into account their position, current HP, power, and resources while also working together with the chip stack to determine the pool of possible actions. This interplay of the above mechanics brings enemy NPCs to life, giving them intelligence and making them reactive to the game. Never underestimate any more a fleeing starship. It might be trying to fool you while stockpiling power and preparing to through you off guard in a U turn!

Last but not least, together with you, our beloved community, we redesigned USS FREEDOM’s box cover. In the previous week, we showed you 36 new possible covers in our Discord server. Thanks to your feedback, the three most popular designs have been selected and can be found below for the final vote! Select the one you would like to see as the new box art by emailing your vote to [email protected] . Every vote is important, and your choice will be the new box art, as we want you, the backers, to be a part of USS FREEDOM.

As you can probably guess, all of the above mechanics and upgrades need new material to be added to the game. The only thing holding us back from releasing this content is the production cost of the aforementioned materials. Our first thought was to create stretch goals for this content, but the campaign has already ended. So, with your support, we would like to make a new mini crowdfunding campaign for USS FREEDOM that would function like a stretch goal for the original campaign.

To elaborate further, every one of you, our respected backers, will get USS FREEDOM just like you pledged, and when our new mini campaign is hopefully successful, you will get every new upgrade and stretch goal with almost NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE by simply subscribing to the new mini campaign (1$). All we ask of you is your support and patience to get the game you deserve.

IMPORTANT: As the design procedure for the above content is complete, there will be NO delay on the manufacturing and fulfillment of the game. We will decide on the platform for the new stretch goal campaign this month. The name of the second campaign will be Deathtouched: USS Freedom to avoid any misunderstandings. Of course, you will still get everything promised in your original pledge, and all of you who loved the Cosplayers as much as we did will get everything as agreed. However, if the next mini campaign is successful, you will also get all the added unlocks for the cost of subscribing to the mini campaign ($1).

As we are proceeding with printing this month, we need to know your thoughts on all this. Please send your feedback to [email protected]. If anyone does not want the extra goodies, you have the right to refuse them. If you are on board though, your email will mean the world to us.

We can’t thank you enough for being a part of the crew and supporting us in the creation of USS FREEDOM. Glad to have you on board; play on!

Keep in touch with Dreamcraft Games on our Discord server as we will be revealing and discussing all new updates there: https://discord.gg/3wp4gQBWAr . Expect frequent communication, polls, and many exciting surprises! Siber and Ember, our new communications team, will be on the server every day of the week at 6:00PM (CET) to 10:00(CET) / 5:00PM (UTC) to 9:00(UTC), to discuss everything having to do with USS FREEDOM with you.