The Last Federation 2.0 and Betrayed Hope Expansion Arrive Today

[cupogoodness]

We're happy to announce The Last Federation's first expansion Betrayed Hope has officially released on Steam, GOG.com and other digital storefronts. To celebrate, the new content will extend its beta discount of 10% through launch week, and the base game is on sale for 55% off as well.

The expansion includes 17 new ships, 2 new solar system backgrounds, 32 new abilities, 19 new achievements, 13 new music tracks and 5 new quests. It also introduces two completely different ways to play the game -- Betrayal and Invasion:

Betrayal Mode reverses the usual game flow, making you a full planetary power trying to achieve solar domination -- adding a new layer of 4X onto the existing game. You gain the ability to command armadas and ground troops, and the meaning behind political deals is very much shifted. Rather than working toward unity, you attempt to destroy all your foes through subterfuge, war, and temporary alliances.

Invasion Mode sees you working with the other races to survive slaughter by a grave new threat, putting yet another major spin on things. Forming the federation isn't a priority when you are trying to keep a terror from consuming the entire system.

The Last Federation 2.0 arrives alongside the Betrayed Hope expansion this week as well. Here's what's been added or improved upon between 1.0 and this new release:

- Tons of improvements to GUI clarity, explanatory tooltips, etc.
- Auto-resolve option for battles.
- Permadeath made optional (and off by default).
- Awesome new ship graphics for during battles.
- New Burlust "Turmoil" mechanic.
- New ways to persuade races to join the federation.
- New actions that NPC-races take when it seems appropriate to them.
- Six new quests.
- Added player actions to support a ground invasions, oppose them, or simply start bombing stuff independently.
- Added the Ark and the Mire, two randomly seeded unique buildings that help make each game different.
- Major improvements to how RCI, Attitude, and Influence numbers work so that they make more sense to the player.
- Major revisions to widely-disliked missions like "Clean up AFA", "Deliver Spacefaring Technology", etc.
- Radical shifts to solar map pacing and many revisions to how actions work to increase player agency.
- New moddable "Bullet Pattern" engine that allows some really crazy new behaviors for enemy shots. Tons of new and revised bullet patterns.
- You can now do practice combats at the black market to try out tactics or just enjoy blowing up tons of ships.
- Substantial CPU/GPU performance improvements.
- Rebalancing both in combat and on the solar map.
- Multitudinous bugfixes.

For those interested in delving deeper, the full release notes from version 1.0 to 2.0 total more than 61,000 words.

[Misery]

Congrats on the release here! 

I meant to say that yesterday, didn't, hah.


One thing though.... this isnt showing up on Steam for me at all.  I mean, I have it, but it's nowhere else. Not in the "all new releases" section of the store, or.... anywhere.  Other new DLC and expansions show there, including ones I already have...

Ugh. Not fond of the current store layout.  Dunno how anyone is supposed to find anything in there...

[x4000]

If you already have something, it doesn't really show stuff for you.

I am _super_ fond of the new store layout, because it makes us loads more money.  People actually find our games now, whereas they didn't before unless they were on sale.

This game unfortunately doesn't show as a new release because of it coming out in beta back in September.  It is being advertised on various parts of the site, BUT the system knows you already have it and so is not advertising it to you.  Which is good, because if it did then it would negatively affect our clickthrough rate, thus making our game seem less successful just because you already own it.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the congrats!  And all seems to be well.

[nas1m]

Congrats from me as well. Meant to do this for days...
I am a bit busy at the moment.
Glad its doing well !

[Billick]

I haven't bought it yet, and it still isn't showing up on Steam for me unless I explicitly search for it.

[Misery]

Yeah, still same here.

Theoretically even if I have bought it, it SHOULD still be showing up upon selecting "all new releases" as opposed to the default, which irritatingly only lists "popular" releases.  Scrolling a couple of pages back, still dont see it.

A variety of other things I bought recently still show up in that list (both DLC and otherwise)... they're just marked with "in library" in blue on them.

[Mick]

If you already have something, it doesn't really show stuff for you.

I am _super_ fond of the new store layout, because it makes us loads more money.  People actually find our games now, whereas they didn't before unless they were on sale.

This game unfortunately doesn't show as a new release because of it coming out in beta back in September.  It is being advertised on various parts of the site, BUT the system knows you already have it and so is not advertising it to you.  Which is good, because if it did then it would negatively affect our clickthrough rate, thus making our game seem less successful just because you already own it.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the congrats!  And all seems to be well.

Oh good. I was a bit worried about the apparent invisibility of this expansion, but this makes a lot of sense.

[x4000]

It's definitely not our most successful expansion launch ever, at least that I can recall it's not, but it's looking on course to earn back its cost within a couple of weeks, which is still solid.   This was a more expensive expansion than a lot of the AI War ones, because it required a lot more art and more programming/design in some respects.

I do believe this was our most successful beta period ever for an expansion, though, in terms of sales, which is pretty awesome.  By quite a long shot, unless I'm overlooking something big.

And in terms of the actual performance here at release, it's solid in general.

[chemical_art]

It's definitely not our most successful expansion launch ever, at least that I can recall it's not, but it's looking on course to earn back its cost within a couple of weeks, which is still solid.   This was a more expensive expansion than a lot of the AI War ones, because it required a lot more art and more programming/design in some respects.

I do believe this was our most successful beta period ever for an expansion, though, in terms of sales, which is pretty awesome.  By quite a long shot, unless I'm overlooking something big.

And in terms of the actual performance here at release, it's solid in general.

Now that it is out, I wonder, perhaps betrayal mode and invasion have been too separate expansions? They are all very different.

[x4000]

We could have done, but I like providing a lot of value in one package. It really provides a clear message of "this is worth it if you like this sort of thing" to potential players, I think. Much better than being borderline.

[madcow]

Congrats on the release!

I actually didn't see anything about it's release on steam which surprised me. Glad to see that apparently it's just steam not showing when games you own get released, which is an odd decision.  You would think it would go out of the way to let you know a game you have in early access was released.

Anyways, I got it in beta but was waiting for it to be released on trying it out - will have to give it a play soon!

[chemical_art]

This game unfortunately doesn't show as a new release because of it coming out in beta back in September.  It is being advertised on various parts of the site, BUT the system knows you already have it and so is not advertising it to you.  Which is good, because if it did then it would negatively affect our clickthrough rate, thus making our game seem less successful just because you already own it.

In the future, how effective it would have been to have the "beta" purchase be site only (with the promise of giving keys later upon release) so the "new release" on steam would be the proper X.0

You would have less funds, but isn't the point of the beta is feedback which implies you read the site anyway?

[x4000]

It's kind of a pain to distribute that way, in a lot of respects.  For a full game, I definitely would not do the soft-launch approach like this.  For an expansion, I don't think it matters much, but it's hard to say.  In the past we've always done site-only, or at least not-steam-until-ready.

[chemical_art]

It's kind of a pain to distribute that way, in a lot of respects.  For a full game, I definitely would not do the soft-launch approach like this.  For an expansion, I don't think it matters much, but it's hard to say.  In the past we've always done site-only, or at least not-steam-until-ready.

I meant expansion only, I could easily see the pain of a new game for this. I just wondered if the labor cost of distrubting keys + lost of greater beta sales was less then the impact of a new expansion release on steam without the beta tag.

[x4000]

Right now it's hard to say, I don't have enough data.  I wonder that too, and wish I did have more data.  It's something that Erik and I will definitely discuss with other devs.