Stellar Commanders Major Update 4
Welcome Commanders. Are you ready for the next chapter of your space saga?
As the commanders of the three superpowers venture deeper into the unknown depths of the galaxy, transmission from earth grow longer and the battlefield around. In these chaotic heavens lies Tantalus, the black market asteroid trading hub where the military secrets are up for trade.
Noira Solveig, the owner of the hub, welcomes you, but beware, every secret will have its price.
A brand new shop: The Black Market of Tantalus
Starting with the Tantalus update, playing Stellar Commanders rewards you with Iridium crystals and enemy blueprints if you perform well in online battles. On Tantalus, you are able to then turn these in for shiny new skins or new units.
You will earn Iridium clusters at every game, with rewards for consecutive wins and daily first plays. Enemy blueprints meanwhile are a very rare commodity. You will only get one upon winning and only one every day. So choose wisely what you want to trade them in for.
Brand new units with amazing abilities
With the Tantalus update we wanted to once again go over the Meta of Stellar Commanders and identify weaknesses in our roster. We found several points of interest and advanced units to address those:
Jin Guo is the least played faction and lacks personality
Looking at the plays of all three factions, we were noticing that Jin Guo is the one who is played the least of all three. We feel like their focus on defense and their lack of exciting, specialized units, contributed to them looking boring.
We decided to further address the sneakiness of Jin Guo by giving them two new stealth units. The stealth bike is a cheap, two-tile-conqueror that can help with quick early game expansion.
The star however is the state-of-the-art Manta Assimilator. This massive drone will burrow on enemy territory and convert the next unit built on it. Stealthy tacticians could convert any unit this way. Just imagine an enemy Goliath suddenly spawning in your base!
There is no diverse counter-strategies against big rockets
Huge double radius rockets, like the Goliath (Barovia), Liberator (UCW) or Titan Rocket (Neutral) have no clear counterpart. Only the Jin Guo Iron Dome Defender or a field or cruise missiles. To address this weakness, both UCW and Barovia have gotten a new unit, and a new way to deal with it:
UCW got the EMP defender called Ion Blast Defense. A cheap low-cost defender that can stunlock units in place around a chosen country. This is surprisingly effective against big rockets, since their trajectory and goal is clearly visible for a long time and their slow speed makes advancement between EMP bursts almost impossible.
Barovia meanwhile got the Apex Gate, a tower whose gaze opens a portal to an alternate reality which sends rockets back to the sender. The Apex gate can be easily outmaneuvered by smaller rockets, but big rockets will be sent back like in Tennis. A truly frightening giant rocket killer.
Barovia struggles on large planets
With the introduction of Poli’ahu, it became apparent that there are very few reliable counters to conquering over long ranges. Barovia needs to spend a disproportionate high cost for long range rockets, while UCW can expand quickly and safely with cheap defenders.
To address this, Barovia got a new cobalt effect cannon against ground troops. The Tiamat's Breath can shoot cobalt effects over a long range which makes expansion in early game way harder. As a downside, this unit becomes way less useful in the Armageddon phase.
Other new units
Tantalus has a wide range of fresh units available, also from the neutral deck. There is a quick defender called the Phalanx Gatling Turret; two automated units which will automatically fire or conquer but you cannot choose where; and an orbital unit that provides a shield. Be sure to check all of them out.
Unlockable skins for your units
Its not only units that you can purchase on Tantalus, we also started to introduce skins with this update. Skins are purchasable with Iridium clusters that you win on your plays.
Skins are available for every faction unit. The three new skin groups are called California Sun (Barovia), Space Knights (UCW) and Enlightened Plains (Jin Guo). Their light and colorful gradients paint your favorite units in a fresh light, while still retaining their visibility when playing online.
We are planning on rolling out more skin choices in the future, either on Tantalus or on rewards for playing through the ranks. Stay tuned for more information at the next update.
P.S: If you don't like visual clutter, don’t worry: skins can also be disabled in the options menu.
And other improvements:
Tantalus is by far our biggest update since the launch of Stellar Commanders. It is even bigger than the Rise of an Empire update that introduced the Jin Guo Faction. Aside from the shop and additional units it introduces the following changes:
New icon and app preview
New visuals for the intro and menus
Drastically improved loading times
Multiple profiles for multiple commanders
Reminder notifications
Using the new multiplayer hub
A lot of overdue balancing changes
As always, thanks for staying with us! Let us know what you think of the latest update on our Discord or write us an email. Till then Stellar Commanders!