New release: Halcyon 6

Ken Seto from Canadian indie developer Massive Damage, Inc. writes in to announce the release of Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander, which they describe as a sci-fi RPG which blends base-building and exploration at both the starship and away-team levels.

Here’s the premise:

[A]n unknown alien force is carving a path of destruction towards Earth and you, as the Commander of an immensely powerful, newly discovered derelict starbase left behind by a precursor alien race, are the best chance for the New Terran Federation to stop the impending invasion.

The devs state that the game features “deep tactical combat,” but then go on to describe it as a “JRPG style combat system,” which…I can only assume the developers have a very different notion of what constitutes a deeply tactical system than I do.

Anyway! Here’s the release trailer, where you can see for yourself some snippets of the game in action:

And here is the official feature list, per the developers:

• Base Building: spend resources to build station facilities (rooms) to enhance your production and technological capabilities, or build ships to help you control more territory.
• Deep Tactical Combat: fight tactical ship or ground battles using a huge array of powers and combos to resolve hostile events, create a foothold in the sector and ultimately defeat the enemy mothership!
• Exploration: assign your fleets to nearby star clusters, where they can handle emerging enemy threats, do missions for alien factions or secure bonus resources.
• Crew Management: assign crew to station facilities to greatly improve their output efficiency, or to ships where they can contribute in unique ways to combat, missions and events.
• Story Events: based on game criteria like rooms-built, alien diplomacy scores or officer traits/skills, the game will produce story events (often with multiple choice outcomes) that can lead to combat, time-related applied bonuses/negatives, officer attribute changes or any number of crazy in-game stories.
• Replayability: Each playthrough has players dealing with a new randomly generated derelict station, surrounding galaxy, crew recruits, and alien factions

Halcyon 6 is available for Windows and Mac; you can snag it on Steam for $19.99 (less with the launch week discount).