What's changed in Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition?

[ModMax [Massive Damage]]

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!*

MAJOR CHANGES

STREAMLINED CAMPAIGN:

Reduced total campaign grind/length by:

• greatly reducing costs for unlocking tech research
  
• reduced costs and build times for building starbase rooms
  
• reduced time to complete exploring ruined areas of the starbase
  
• reduced times required for recruiting crew
  
• greatly reduced times required for creating Dark Multiplier
  
• greatly reduced times required for replicating Materials
  
• reduced number of starbase room clearing encounters
  
• greatly reduced frequency of Chruul base incursions
  
• reduced time it takes before player is allowed to build satellite drones and allocates 3 drones immediately when the tech is unlocked
  
• Lowered officer level restrictions for deploying satellite drones and reduced costs and time to build and deploy satellite drones
  
• Reduced costs and time for cadet upgrades, chruul lab research, fleet speed upgrades, officer cloning chamber, general upgrades to facility

Resource Tweaks:

• Resources of rewards from combat encounters
  
• Resource bonus at beginning of Act 2
  
• Costs for cloning dead officers
  
• Material production on colonies
  
• Chances of equipment loot drops without overkill

Missions Tweaks:

• Greatly reduced time it takes for the first Spire to appear
  
• Greatly reduced wait times between Chruul lieutenant appearances
  
• Reduced time for chimera to reach starbase
  
• Reduced frequency of Chruul, Voraash, and Faction raids in Act 2
  
• Increased strength of Chruul presence on ground missions
  
• Enabled retreating during ground missions on destroyed colonies
  
• Slightly increased difficulty of main campaign encounters

NEW OFFICER PROGRESSION SYSTEM:

New subclasses and prestige classes:

• Each class (science, engineer, tactical) has 2 subclasses to choose from. Science → Biologist or Physicist, Engineer → Mechanic or Inventor, Tactical → Operative or Strategist
  
• There are also 3 new prestige classes that your officer can spec into as they grow in experience: Chaos Theorist, Counselor, or Commando
  
• Chaos Theorist Skills: Force Targeting, Reflective Shield, Dimensional Inversion, Dark Matter Storm
  
• Counselor: Meditation Boost, Subtle Encouragement, Microaggressions, Psych Up
  
• Commando: Guard Ally, Focus Fire I, Focus Fire II, Focus Fire III

Other officer related tweaks:

• Reduced XP requirements for higher levels
  
• Reduced costs for unlocking additional Officer slots
  
• Expanded custom officer selection process which includes Kickstarter Backer officers
  
• Added class-based status effect resistances, vulnerabilities, and proficiencies

ENHANCED COMBAT

• 25+ new alien faction space combat powers for Pirates, The Collective, Yabbling, Korzan, Voraash, Xlar, and Chruul
  
• more combos for both players and enemies, increased faction weaknesses and resistances, and other balancing tweaks
  
• increased faction-based resistances for enemies at higher tiers
  
• increased faction-based weaknesses for all enemies
  
• greatly increased the damage inflicted by exploiting effects
  
• increased evasion of all alien faction ships
  
• increased resistances and vulnerabilities of terran ships
  
• increased base chance to land all status effects
  
• various tweaks and balances for powers across the board

NEW UI OVERHAUL

• Designed for greater readability and usability
  
• Shows the ship construction screen with the ship queue
  
• View colony and send fleet buttons on the starmap
  
• Sector names can now be toggled on or off in the starmap view (n to toggle)
  
• UI can now be toggled on or off from any screen (h to toggle)
  
• All new officer death animations, even more gruesome than before in pixelated glory!
  
• New ship configuration screen before each combat
  
• Ability to store 3 loadout configurations for each ship
  
• Lots of little quality of life UI tweaks

That most of it! I hope that gives you a sense of how much we’ve put into Lightspeed Edition.

[LostAngel1000]

Okay so my main question is, how much time is streamlined out of the Classic into Lightspeed? Is it going to still have enough length like the Classic that one will be able to dig in and enjoy the game with out beating it in a blink?

[ModMax [Massive Damage]]

Originally posted by LostAngel1000:

Okay so my main question is, how much time is streamlined out of the Classic into Lightspeed? Is it going to still have enough length like the Classic that one will be able to dig in and enjoy the game with out beating it in a blink?

As noted in the 2nd paragraph.. if you rush it, you can beat it in about 12 hours. We didn't remove any content, we just reduced the grind.

[LostAngel1000]

Okay cool, cause sometimes stream lining means "removed things that were grindy or basically made those things pointless."

[Marisa Fan]

As a representative of the mega guide team we beat you to it rekt

[Tegga21]

Originally posted by ModMax Massive Damage:

Originally posted by LostAngel1000:

Okay so my main question is, how much time is streamlined out of the Classic into Lightspeed? Is it going to still have enough length like the Classic that one will be able to dig in and enjoy the game with out beating it in a blink?

As noted in the 2nd paragraph.. if you rush it, you can beat it in about 12 hours. We didn't remove any content, we just reduced the grind.

can we play all of the new lightspeed extra stuff without the nerfed length campaign as an option?

[Marisa Fan]

Originally posted by Tegga21:

Originally posted by ModMax Massive Damage:

As noted in the 2nd paragraph.. if you rush it, you can beat it in about 12 hours. We didn't remove any content, we just reduced the grind.

can we play all of the new lightspeed extra stuff without the nerfed length campaign?

It made faster and didn't take out anything no point in asking this its like asking for pain

[Tegga21]

Originally posted by No one of consequence:

Originally posted by Tegga21:

can we play all of the new lightspeed extra stuff without the nerfed length campaign?

It made faster and didn't take out anything no point in asking this

There is a point, I don't like the reduced length, thus why I'm asking. Like civilization marathon length.

[Marisa Fan]

Originally posted by Tegga21:

Originally posted by No one of consequence:

It made faster and didn't take out anything no point in asking this

There is a point, I don't like the reduced length, thus why I'm asking

No wait i edited it look again no point in wanting it kind of but no

[Marisa Fan]

The answer is just no though

[Tegga21]

Originally posted by No one of consequence:

The answer is just no though

asking for a dev response(since we havn't played it and don't know if there is a toggle for 'classic length'; hoping so

[Marisa Fan]

Originally posted by Tegga21:

Originally posted by No one of consequence:

The answer is just no though

asking for a dev response(since we havn't played it and don't know if there is a toggle for 'classic length'; hoping so

i have played it i got about 8 hours

[Tegga21]

Originally posted by No one of consequence:

Originally posted by Tegga21:

asking for a dev response(since we havn't played it and don't know if there is a toggle for 'classic length'; hoping so

i have played it i got about 8 hours

Thats too bad, please add this dev's. Some people don't like short versions ^^; but want the extra features.

[Marisa Fan]

If you want a challenge try hardest difficulty on ironman hope i helped

[Tegga21]

Originally posted by No one of consequence:

If you want a challenge try hardest difficulty on ironman

I always play ironman in games. I just don't like length cut because some people complain about grind. So this is a feature request I guess.

[Marisa Fan]

Originally posted by Tegga21:

Originally posted by No one of consequence:

If you want a challenge try hardest difficulty on ironman

I always play ironman in games. I just don't like length cut because some people complain about grind. So this is a feature request I guess.

Well its werid to me (also seems like wasted time consitering the bug fixes they need)