New mechanic - System Augments
Systems can be slightly augmented now. Currently, these include positive augments but the system will likely expand to include a mix of both positive and negative augments. The design goal here is to have a reason to pick larger systems over smaller ones to make that decision point more interesting. Smaller systems are seen as low risk and larger ones are high risk. This system should make larger systems retain their high risk but add more reward to taking that risk.
Balance changes
I've heard that some "optimal" play is to just wait for wave after wave to spawn and reap the rewards from those waves. This strategy is a bit antithetical to the whole concept of the game, so I want to increase the difficulty of this strategy to make it a lot riskier. These changes should keep the early game difficulty similar but discourage "farming" of waves as an intentional strategy.
- The minimum spawn rate for waves has been reduced.
- Health scaling for carrier ships has been increased, each wave will be slightly stronger than the last.
- Increased fire rate for carrier ships.
- Increased damage when ships are set on fire or afflicted by acid (This was a little undervalued so buffing it a bit, should be about 20% more damage).
Additionally, I've heard that farming resources to max after the system is saved is very common. While I don't think it's necessarily bad to have a short farming session to prep for the next system I do think spending the time to fill up on every system gives the game a lot of unnecessary downtimes. There's a mechanic in the game where ambush squads will spawn in the system but it's not strong enough to encourage the player to move on at this point. So I'm ramping that up considerably.
- Enemy ambushes will start spawning sooner and more frequently after a system is completed.
Overworld
I've added a bit of an overworld (or universe in this case) to the transition between regions. This is mostly a small aesthetic improvement but will likely add more story elements here to further the world-building.
Core Updates
- Two new weapons.
- Four new ship upgrades.
- Three new enemy ships.
Other fixes/additions
- Weapons that fire a random weapon will not fire any weapons that could harm the player.
- Non-enemies have a more distinct style to discourage players from immediately trying to blow them up.
- Added the option to change the window size.
- Mouse should lock to the window in full-screen mode.
- Fixed an issue where explosions were getting cut off after they damaged anything. (This probably results in a significant buff to explosive weapons. They were only hitting one enemy so they should hit multiple now).
- Added a UI indicator for final encounter doors.
- Warp gates sustain max speed for longer and slow down only at the very end of the journey.
- Charged Mines take full damage from weapons instead of needing three unique hits so it's easier to detonate with high-powered weapons.
- Fixed an issue where Ninja Stars would "shoot out" when using ship abilities that are not the Swtchbade.
- Fixed a crash when interacting with an item while dying.
- Fixed an issue where napalm would do damage upfront when it should only set the ship on fire.
- Beams fired by enemies will get destroyed if the enemy is destroyed while firing it.
- Imported fresh localization strings from Localizer. https://www.localizor.com/power-of-ten.