The relentless march down our dev roadmap carries on with tonight's major update. Over the last few updates, we've been putting cracks in the wall that is the starport rebuild, but this update knocks a serious hole through it. We're not done by far, but we've made the first major strides toward completing this dev roadmap item on the v2.1.x family.
As we round the corner to Update #23, we're excited to continue to tune balance, connect more systems, and improve the layering of politics, conflicts, reputation and all the rest.
Starport Revamp
The improved starport upgrade experience follows the same flow as before but allows you to compare components during replace, see the active list of filters on your list of components, get an exact price for the component you are trading in, as well as seeing the individual sources of discounts (Talents / Contacts) listed out.
In addition, we've rebuilt the display for ship components in generally, which you'll see in the starport and main status. Every modifier, bonus and stats for ship components is visible and listed and we've swapped a lot of the displays over to icon pairs to make them easier to scan quickly.
There is a lot more coming in this area before we can knock this officially off the dev roadmap, but we're on our way.
Encounter and Conflict Improvements
This release includes the first update to ship encounters -- changing the XP amounts granted for all types of ship encounters to clearly mark the incentives down the chain of options -- from victory as the best down to surrendering as the lowest.
We've also upped the Reputation granted by Solar and Trade Wars in ship victory to further reward chasing these conflicts and throwing your strength behind one Faction or the other.
Railguns were the only weapon sporting both Void and Radiation Damage, and we've simplified the weapon type down to just Void.
Mission Navigation
This release continues the work from last release including buttons to navigate and set waypoints for missions and the next mission steps quickly and easily as you move through them. You can now complete missions potentially without ever opening the Mission List which helps move things along and reduce overall clicks.
Whenever you recruit an officer from a Contact, they now recruit with Rank 1 in their primary Job, which gives you all the freedom to assign the rest of their ranks as you please.
v2.0.61 - 1/13/2018
- Improved Starport Upgrade experience -- compare components, see active filters, see trade-in price, discount sources
- Improved ship component display on all screens -- engines, weapons, skill bonuses, component damage
- More Starport and component upgrades coming!
- Officer recruits from Contacts only starts with 1 Rank in primary Job -- increased freedom to assign Jobs
- Rebalanced Experience rewards for all results in ship encounters -- Victory, Draw, Defeat, Surrender
- Balanced Reputation gained by defeating enemy ship in Solar or Trade Wars
- Mission Summary now offers an immediate Navigate Now button under valid step
- Mission completion now offers a Waypoint option for the next mission step
- Slight increase in Intel Record counts from Spying to help Trait / Talent / Component % bonuses make impact
- Fixed issues with Officer skill bonuses (Tactics / Command) in ship combat
- Increased cooldown for Makeshift Repairs to match Port Maintenance, clarified log message
- Fixed issue where ship combat was not correctly ending after striking down enemy Captain while boarding
- Fixed issue where some orbital missions were ghosting after completion
- Fixed issues where victory in ship combat from damage over time effects was delayed by 1 turn
- Removed redundant Radiation Damage from Railguns
- Prevented running Exploration with less than 6 crew
- Prevented running Orbital operations with less than 6 crew