Today we are introducing the first part the Interstellar Rift combat upgrade to the experimental branch. We are adding in two new weapons, the new CPU system, and the armor generator system.
First up in the editor you will see two new weapons that you can mount on your ships, the light autocannon and the light pulse laser, these two weapons work in a different manner from the weapons you are used to. They track the position of your cursor and fire in that direction. Meaning it should be easier to hit your targets.
The autocannon fires projectiles similar to the old guns meaning the bullets have a travel time. And the lasers are hitscan, so they hit what they are aiming at when you press the button.
Additionally ships now require a CPU in order to operate equipment and weapons. So we added two new types of devices, a power CPU, and a weapons CPU. These control ship devices and weapons. Even though a ship in itself has a power CPU and weapon CPU, by default these are nowhere near as powerful as the additional CPUs you can install. For weapons only one CPU can be active at a time.
And lastly there is the armor generator. This new device determines the armor level of your ship and it needs to be equipped with the new nanobots resource. When the generator is equipped with nanobots it will slowly repair the armor overtime. Even when not equipped with nanobots the ship will still have armor so long as the device is active.
And lastly your ships hull has been downgraded to basically paper. It will offer very little protection once the armor has been destroyed, and can only tank 100 instances of damage.
These new progression systems will be iterated upon in the next few updates, so your feedback is very valuable, please let us know what you think!
For full patch notes, and to leave feedback, see here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/363360/discussions/4/1741090666222995319/
Instructions on how to join the experimental branch can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/363360/discussions/4/350542145693906320/
Thank you all for playing and see you starside!
-The Split Polygon Team