Hello, just wanted to drop a quick update on where the game is at. Aside from the factions update, I wanted to improve a lot of the groundwork for the game and fix some bugs. I know it can be frustrating for development to stretch out longer than expected, but I want to make sure the game is solid when it reaches you. Thank you so much for sticking around, and for being patient with the development.
(Scroll all the way to the bottom to see some of the new stuff!)
The following features will be available once the upcoming v0.3.0 update releases:
=== TL;DR / Main updates ===
STRATEGIC
- Better factions
- Bounties now affect relations with other factions
- Factions have different demographics and ideologies, which factor into their government representatives, which vote for decisions during events
- Events: Random (like station workers striking), Cause (voted for by government, like tariffs or declaring war), Effect (can occur from a cause event, like discovering an enemy spy)
- Naturally, outcomes of events affect a faction's relations, credits, stress, and reputation
- Faction government types (dictatorship, oligarchy, democracy)
- Player can be a representative in their faction and vote on actions. You can also bribe other representatives to force a decision.
- When a representative, the player can also propose a vote (send diplomat, declare war, etc)
- Election cycles
(IN PROGRESS)
~ Faction councils for: fund allocation, fleet movements, relations/diplomacy
~ Faction warfleets. Moving with trade fleets or defending stations
~ War between factions
~ War events
~ Station combat
- Certain ships now available only in stations owned by their faction. Good relations required. Neutral ships still sold in all stations
- Better faction flags
- Players can now buy stations and profit from trade and tax
- You can now set what resource your fleet trades
- Resource tooltip shows where it is typically sourced and bought from
- Major fixes and changes for the trade system, which is now working as intended
TACTICAL
- Three new coilguns + three new railguns
- Five new neutral ships
- Missile movement overhaul. They now follow targets properly. Step one for future movement overhaul.
- Kinetic projectiles damage rework. Projectiles now have mass and penetration area, which are taken into account when calculating damage
- Overhauled turret aiming. Now using position error instead of angle error, scales linearly with range to target
SKIRMISH
- New Abyssinia map
- Randomized positions for bodies
SETTINGS
- Bloom, gamma, colorblind settings
OTHER
- Fixed issue where scrolling mouse wheel over UI affects camera zoom in strategic scene
- Fixed Luna lagging behind lagrange points over time
============
NEW WEAPONS AND SHIPS
Coilguns:
- S1 Raijin
- S2 Pili "Thunderbolt"
- S3 Luchnik "Archer"
Railguns:
- S1 Zhanshi
- S2 Tunguska
- S2 Legkiy
Ships (All neutral):
- Zheng He: S1 Beam Lancer Corvette
> Nimble and agile, the Zheng He uses its nose-mounted BM10 laser to harass the enemy as it moves closer to use its four Raijin coilguns. A favorite of G-junkies and ex-racers.
- Battuta: S1 Kinetic Artillery Frigate
> Popular among Belters, miners, and mercenaries, the Battuta class is the standard for long-range protection at a budget. It sacrifices armor to keep its twin Zhanshi railguns and high maneuverability. Keep this one at a distance.
- Sacagawea: S1 Missile Frigate
> The Sacagawea class keeps enemies at bay using its missiles. Anything that happens to survive is then swiftly cut down by its four Raijin coilguns. This ship is the standard for new captains who prefer using missiles on the battlefield.
- Shackleton: S2 Cataphract Destroyer
> Five centimeters of armor and almost five meters per second of acceleration, the Shackleton class has a fearsome reputation. Capable of punching through heavy fire, it uses its many close-range PDCs and coilguns to devastating effect.
- Hillary: S2 Beam Artillery Cruiser
> Designed to support cargo fleets from afar, the Hillary class packs a considerable punch with its capable DM100 nose laser and four Legkiy coilguns. This ship chose delta-v instead of heavy armor, so don't expect it to hold up in a knifefight.
NEW
- Main Menu: Added main button hover SFX
- Settings: Bloom and gamma sliders
- Settings: Custom colorblind setting
- Settings: Added mouse x and y inversion settings
- Settings: Added -5, -1, +1, and +5 buttons for UI scale
- Menu: Steam, youtube, discord, review buttons tooltip
- Skirmish: Randomized body positions on every new skirmish match
- Skirmish: Added "New Abyssinia" space elevator skirmish map (NO COLLISIONS)
- Strategic: Brand new, better looking flags for: Prometheus, Blue Dragon Orbital, Hermes, East African States, Tianmen, Hakugei, and Bandit factions
- Strategic: Players can now buy stations. Stations gain profit from trade and taxes
- Strategic + Skirmish Setup: Shipyard panel showing a ship's modules and mounts now shows kinetic and laser weapon data
- Strategic: Added custom resource trading (Set what resource your fleet will trade)
- Strategic: Bounty Hunting panel rework. Bounties now affect relations with other factions
- Strategic: Amundsen class can now be used to trade DT Fuel.
- Strategic: Bandits flag
- Strategic: Added "state" variable in trader panel
- Strategic: Trade panel resources now show description on hover (resource market data)
- Strategic: Added DT Fuel trade fleets
- Strategic: new games start at 0.01x time scale (+14.4 min)
- Strategic: Added ship name suggestions from community discord server (Now 1444 total)
- Strategic: Added x10 timescale option (use with caution), added pause and 10x timescale text colors
- Strategic: Using a camera to look at a fleet now shows simple exhaust plumes
- Strategic: Ship info cards now refresh data every second
- Strategic: Market panel resources now show a red bar if the resource is not available as the station needs to keep a stockpile
- Strategic: Markets now stop production if they already have desired amount of a resource, which now also has an indicator
- Strategic > Global market panel: Added profit ratio, global quantity, and default global quantity for each resource
- Strategic + Tactical: New track indicator icons for "selected" and "targeted" objects
- Strategic > Track Panel: Added "value" text for stations and fleets
- Strategic: Added Station Panel under Target > Basic. Shows station type, tax, stabililty, and daily organics consumption
- Strategic: Added ship classification guide in shipyard Panel
- Strategic: New bounty fleet compositions
- Strategic: AI ship and fleet names randomized on start
- Strategic: Overhauled station factory recipes to ensure stations make a profit when producing goods
- Strategic: When player owns station, show sale and purchase notif from trade, tax income
- Astrocaster: Added fish descriptions and improved UI
- Tactical: Missile movement overhaul. Missiles now adjust their burn towards their target instead of just calculating a direction upon spawning. This is step one for the future navigation and movement rework. More improvements to come.
- Tactical: Ships now show their faction's flag during combat
- Tactical: Projectiles now have mass and penetration area, which are now taken into account when calculating damage and penetration aside from relative velocity
- Tactical: Updated railguns vfx colors according to projectile speed (follows thermal radiation color spectrum with red being slow and violet being fast)
- Tactical: When the total crew module health of a ship reaches 10%, it is instantly disabled
- Tactical: Added billboard particles for missile exhaust, to make them visible even when far. Similar to laser and projectile glow
CHANGES
- Loading Screen: Reduced horizontal size
- Settings > Controls: Adjusted vertical separator lines color to be more muted
- Settings: Added new "Show hostile ships paths" for tactical scene. This is on by default in order to make it easier to see where enemy ships want to go.
- Strategic: The gray navigation lines now turn off when player fleets start their flight. This was to make the game look cleaner when you have multiple fleets
- Strategic: Markets now dont have a hard cap for resource stock. Traders can still buy half of current stock when it is below the market's target quantity
- Strategic: Opening panels doesn't pause the game anymore
- Strategic: Added notification mask to prevent overflow
- Strategic: Increased farm recipe organics output
- Strategic: Changed global market data for each resource from "average buy and sell" to "lowest buy and highest sell"
- Strategic: Changed trade profit check calculation from using average prices to lowest and highest prices
- Strategic: Changed basic refuel recipe to 15 dt fuel and 5 dh fuel
- Strategic: Changed luna output (L1 - Tianmen Station) and depot output (L3-L5) recipes volatiles production from 10t to 25t
- Strategic > Track Panel (Top-right): Moved select, nav target, and hail buttons outside of "Basic" panel
- Strategic: Stations still produce 10% of output resources even without input resources
- Shipyard: Changed available ship listing "cr" text to icon
- Shipyard: Ship info UI now cleaner
- Tactical: Increased decals draw distance for all quality presets
- Tactical: Cargo modules updated to hold cargo containers (Magellan, Von Neumann)
- Tactical: To reduce clutter, the module repair button only appears when the module or its mounts are damaged
- Tactical: Adjusted Kalashnakava mounts (Molot, Shchit) color highlight to fit palette
- Tactical: When focusing [F] towards track, stop distance is now 2x farther away
- Tactical: AI ships are now soft-killed when total crew health drops below 10%
- Tactical: Kinetic projectiles rework. Collider now stretches behind instead of in front of the projectile and spawns ahead to not hit the turret
- Tactical: Since armor is now more effective, lasers damage has been upped from 75% back to 100%
- Tactical: Changed heat system UI wording from "OVERFLOW" to "OVERHEAT" for clarity
- Tactical: Reworked turret rotation speeds
- Tactical: Increased S1 and S2 crew module repair materials to 400 and 1000 respectively
FIXES
- Main Menu: Fixed clicking "New Game" panel header freezing the game
- Main Menu > Skirmish: Fixed null reference error stopping player from starting skirmish
- Settings: Improved colorblind modes
- Skirmish: Fixed bug where you could have more than 10 ships in player or hostile fleet during setup
- Strategic: Traders now stop buying a resource when its prices increases higher than the lowest global sell price
- Strategic: Fixed null tracks in trackdisplayer script after combat
- Strategic + Tactical: Finally fixed the issue where scrolling mouse wheel while your cursor is hovered over UI affects the camera zoom
- Strategic: Fixed factions not resetting after load
- Strategic: Fixed bandits faction not having icon when loading game
- Strategic: Money up/down sound now has 5 second max duration
- Strategic: Fixed fleet navigation not working (Shows NaN for Dv) after targeting a moving fleet. When fleet starts flight to a station, the fleet just stays in orbit
- Strategic: Trade panel > resource disappearing after right clicking on screen
- Strategic: Autotrade retries calculation if current flight takes longer than 5 days. Fixes trade fleets going on long flights
- Strategic > Astrocaster: Win/catch UI particle fx bug
- Strategic: Fixed bandit faction losing icon when loading save
- Strategic: Notifications > Improved readability of add/subtract player credits notif
- Strategic: Fixed Luna lagging behind lagrange points over time due to small difference in orbital period calculation
- Strategic: Optimized market price calculation code
- Strategic: Improved zoom sfx timing
- Strategic: Fixed player trade fleets teleporting to different market upon arrival to original target market
- Strategic: Ship info card name can't be edited if not owned by player
- Strategic > Track Panel: Fixed panel closing when hovering over a track type different from previous track
- Strategic > Station Harbor Panel: Make scroll bars faster
- Strategic: Improved text formatting for target trader panel, global market panel, and production panel
- Strategic: Fixed recipe production and organics consumption not occurring on new games
- Save/load panel: Saving now clears the input text field
- Tactical: Shanwei fuel module no collider
- Tactical: Fixed advanced damageable textures (drive greebling, crew module, heatsink, etc)
- Tactical: Fixed laser base color not adjusting based on wavelength
- Tactical: Overhauled turret aiming. Now using position error instead of angle error. Scales linearly with range to target
- Tactical: Fixed bug where AI ships dont switch to a new target after killing player ship
- Tactical: Fixed neutral and shenzhen S2 crew modules only having 1 dc team and 10 materials
- Tactical > Navigation Panel: Fixed issue where combat acceleration is shown as cruise acceleration x 100 when in practice, it is cruise acceleration x 10.
- Other: Fixed Shenzhen Zhen and Shizu ships using Aegis mounts in blueprint instead of Molot PDCs
SHIPYARD IMPROVEMENTS
- Ships now only available in stations owned by their faction
- Neutral ships will still be available on every station as long as you have positive relations with the faction
- To buy ships from a faction, you need to reach a certain relationship level based on the ship's size class
- Your relationship with a faction now affects how much they sell it to you (100% relations = 50% discount, 0 rel = -50% discount, 50 rel = 0% discount, -100 rel = -150% discount)
- Faction flag icon and UI fixes. Added "Base value" and "Size class" variables in UI
- Buying a ship from a faction increases your relations with them
A little combat tip:
- There's not yet a "dodge and weave" mechanic during combat, but I've found switching between "Face target" and "brake" makes your ship a lot harder for the AI to hit. Doesn't work that well against lasers, of course
Wanted something more original for the bandit flag, but the skull and crossed swords looked too good. Old habits and all that.
I want to thank you all again for your support, which allowed me to finally activate windows. Happy hunting!
SCREENSHOTS
New faction flags
New events panel (bottom-left) and reworked market UI (top-left)
New factions panel, with faction relations, credits, stress, reputation, representatives, government info, and demographics
New Magellan S1 cargo module rework
New Von Neumann S2 cargo module rework
Zheng He (S1 Beam Lancer Corvette)
Battuta (S1 Kinetic Artillery Frigate)
Sacagawea (S1 Missile Frigate)
Shackleton (S2 Cataphract Destroyer)
Hillary (S2 Beam Artillery Cruiser)
