Hello! After long time without news we have some (I believe) good news. These two weeks we worked on a little bit of everything. Mostly over things that have the most likes on trello page, the crew, their needs, experiences, AI, and orbital mechanics.
Actually we made a small mistake. we're worked on a crew, but at some point we became not satisfied that the planets move in perfectly circular orbits and we decided to fix it. However, it was harder and took longer than we expected. Eventually we spent almost a week on various improvements and refactoring of code of orbital mechanics. Unfortunately the new system does not bring much new right now, but it will be much easier to do it in the future.
The orbits of planets now is slightly elliptical, that is more realistic and there is prototype of orbital planner.
The shield now have an adjustable radius of protection field. The more radius - the more energy consumption. It is calculated as area of sphere so energy consumption rising not linear. Simply saying, large station requires a lot more energy to maintain the shield than small ship.
Radius can be changed only on reactivation and reactivation requires some time.
Also shield can be expanded and used to protect other things around. Everything which was located inside the shield when it was activated - no longer affect on it (able to fly in\out).
The shield operator now gains the experience for each point of received damage. The more experience it have, the less energy consumption and less damage receiving.
Shield skill increased (Yes, there is mistake in word "Engineer", already fixed)