Alpha Demo 0.4.0 is now available to download and play - adding the second playable aircraft, and two new missions for you and your wingmen to fly it in!
What's new?
The Valkyrie
The counterpart of the fast, agile Phoenix, the second playable aircraft is a heavily armed and armored juggernaut purpose-built for ground-attack missions. Pilot the Valkyrie yourself to take advantage of its higher resilience and much stronger main gun, or assign them to your wingmen so they can destroy ground targets even faster.
The Valkyrie's unique R&D stat is Firepower, increasing both reload speed and maximum ammo capacity - allowing you to wreak even more havoc on enemy ground targets.
Primary Weapons
Seeker Missiles - a pair of reliable homing missiles, as on the Phoenix.
Auxiliary Guns - four more rotary cannon, for when your main gun just isn't enough.
Burst Lasers - high-power, short-duration laser cannon, as on the Phoenix.
Plasma Throwers - continuously spray superheated plasma in a cone in front of you, suitable for melting planes and tanks alike.
Secondary Weapons
Hydra Missiles - cruise missiles that split into smaller guided missiles just before they reach their target, hitting other high-value targets nearby. Their high range makes them handy for eliminating a base's defenses from outside retaliation range.
Quake Rockets - automatic volley-fire of up to 10 unguided, high-explosive rockets at a time, great for saturation bombardments.
Splitter Cannon - gigantic double-barrelled cannon that fire hundreds of submunitions with a wide spread. The recoil is enough to knock your plane backwards, so be careful you don't stall!
New Missions
The two new missions in 0.4.0 take place around one of Jupiter's massive floating cityships, a turbine-powered platform with both its upper and lower surfaces covered in skyscrapers.
The Urban Defence mission requires you to protect a cityship from the CLE's three-pronged assault, as they aim to knock it out of the sky by destroying its turbines. You'll have to help allied forces keep the six giant turbines safe by intercepting the enemy before they can reach them!
Meanwhile, the Urban Assault mission sees the INDF taking the fight onto the surface of the cityship itself in a chaotic ground battle between allied and enemy forces. You'll need to weave between the skyscrapers and destroy the ground units in their shadows in order to win - whether it's through strafing runs in Flight Mode, or pinpoint bombardments from Hover Mode.
Mission Layout Improvements
New tech built for the urban warfare missions has been carried over to the rest of the game, refining the way units and structures are spawned. You'll find that both allies and enemies spawn in more concentrated clusters, leaving the map less cluttered and making it easier to pick your next group of targets.
New Ground Units
Both sides of the conflict have deployed some brand-new units to the Urban Assault and Urban Defense missions:
INDF allies make landfall for the first time with their agile, floating ground units - sturdy hover tanks with resilient shields and anti-armor cannon, backed up by self-propelled AA units providing defense against enemy planes, and tank destroyers that can use their railguns to snipe enemies from a distance. With careful choice of targets and close air support, you can keep these units alive in missions, allowing them to back you up and earn you even more points!
On the other end of the battlefield, enemy tanks have been reinforced by quadmechs, large quadrupedal robots that can cling to walls and ceilings to reach better vantage points. Anti-armor quadmechs tower over other ground units and have devastating firepower, but the key enemies to watch out for are the AA quadmech variants that can climb onto rooftops to fire both autocannon and missiles at you!
Visual Improvements
As the beginning of a game-wide visual overhaul, every shielded vehicle in the game has been revamped to use new shield bubbles that are more visually recognisable from a distance, show a visual cue when the unit's shield starts recharging, and has better performance to boot!
All aircraft have also received replacement thruster exhaust VFX, including enemy planes like Goblins and Manticores that previously didn't have any - look out for the glowing flares behind them in night-time missions!
Minor Improvements
Updated briefing screen UI
Briefing dialogue text now wraps correctly
Briefing dialogue can now be skipped through
The default controller mapping for Target Cam is now the right stick
While Target Cam is active, use the right stick to switch targets
Renamed the "Default" flight system to "Precision"
Button mappings are now displayed on menu tabs
Bugfixes
Prevented plane colour schemes from becoming corrupted under certain circumstances
Fixed an issue causing wingmen to lose their invulnerability
Fixed unusual movement behavior when navigating menus
Available missions now update correctly when aborting runs
Mission select button backgrounds now resize correctly
Prevented unintentional inputs when switching between Hover and Flight mode
Fixed erroneous mapping icons in the Tutorial
Fixed issues with Prototype Upgrade behavior
So what's next?
0.4.0 finishes setting up most of the systems needed to make Nova Squadron a solid gameplay proof-of-concept - mission generation, aircraft choices and upgrades, ground combat, and so on. From here on, then, it's time to move away from the core gameplay loop and start making Nova Squadron more of a fully-fledged, detailed game in 0.5.0:
Better progression between missions
More sophisticated options and decision-making
Embedded lore and narrative
Characters you can talk to and build relationships with!
For now though, we hope you enjoy flying the Valkyrie, experimenting with its weapons, and weaving between skyscrapers in Alpha Demo 0.4.0!