We've been hard at work through the end of summer and all of fall, and we're very happy to bring you this latest public release. Because it's the second release of the game into Early Access, virtually every part of the game has been improved.
Helm's joystick integration is much more seamless, now. Keyboard, mouse, and joystick control all work together without interference. the 2d radar display that multiple consoles rely on has been changed to show all the new anomalies/pickups properly, and to handle mouse zoom and drag properly.
One of the things (on helm) that hasn't changed much is the "easy mode" control scheme, which allows limited y-axis movement. This doesn't mean that 3d movement is impossible or secondary. The 3d movement GUI modes we've been building simply aren't ready for release. However, the future intent is certainly to give experienced helms officers complete 3d freedom of movement, as well as normal 3d fighter movement.
Weapons console gets a new fire mode that lets the weapons officer trade beam power for beam speed. This can really help when Torgoth drones are coming in fast and heavy. Weapons can see more combat effects (like beam fire and explosions) on their radar. We've spent some time prototyping an upgrade of replacement for the old manual beam targeting GUI, but we haven't reached consensus, and we don't want to build any pointless minigames that waste your time.
We've listened to everyone who noticed how anemic the nukes were, and we've adjusted that. There's still a problem with the EPM torpedos, but we'll get that fixed soon.
The most radical changes you'll see are on the Engineering console, where we're advanced the internal ship display, and the complex underlying simulation. Now the ship hull is filled with complex spaces, and damage control parties that are much smarter than in the old game. The damcon units have a lot more to say now, too.
We also listened to everyone, and re-added the coolant "dots" to the GUI.
Science information and scans are much more solid and informative. Enemy shield weakness information is now available, and it works. Science has a MUCH larger visibility range, which means more data for the science officer to parse, but we continue to make the GUI better and more supportive. Engineering can boost sensors, which lets science see even farther.
Comms has working taunts and surrenders, friendly ships can be guided with a new graphical display, and stations can be told what torps to make. Several improvements have been made to the comms GUI, but the most work has been done under the hood, improving the enemy AIs and the conversations the comms officer can have.
Red alert works.
So many bugs have been found and squashed. The main to-do list is still pretty full. But the game is more playable than ever, If every bug were fixed, we'd be releasing 1.0. But so much progress has been made, we feel the game is more playable than ever, and we didn't want to keep you waiting. Enjoy!
