I ran into the word count limit for the other December Updates! So here's today's update, and following, the notes are also available in the forum update thread:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/414950/discussions/0/494631967666248183/
Update 18/12/2015 (v1.02):
* Added a cool feature, thanks to user suggestion. The Ambulance Drone! How it works is the Drone will detect the presence of Lifepods on the sensor map and fly to scoop it up, flying back to your ship and dropping it straight into your hold. It'll keep on doing it until there's no more Lifepods.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=577843432
How to obtain it? I hear there's a Drone dealer somewhere in the Free Union systems.
* Added a message on the Star Map to better reflect systems which players smuggle in too much Drugs.
* Increased the negative effects of "substance addictions" on non-Homeworld systems.
* Make turret targeting sight less transparent for easier viewing.
* Fixed the Re-Arm All to actually charge you credits...
* Lower the Friendly Fire threshold & standing loss for the Pirate Syndicate (sorry I had forgotten about all the player Pirates in the last FF update!).
* Fixed the hotkey [4] to fire all missiles, to not trigger when CTRL is held down (for manual turret toggling).
* Increased the availability of Gravonite & Elypsium on some mining colonies! For those with lots of creds who wish to get more of those rare ores via less risky means.
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Update 18/12/2015 (v1.03):
Due to common feedback regarding the Friendly Fire system, I decided to re-work it, hoping to achieve a balance where it still promotes careful aiming but not being too punitive. Please understand, I do not want a playstyle where there's no consequences for friendly firing (it utterly detracts from immersion as NPCs ignore your fire).
How it now works:
For Factions which you can Ally with (Empire/Federation/Collective):
Not recruited to join them yet (not an Ally):
Friendly fire threshold raised so they can tolerate more stray shot. After many consecutive shots in a row, the penalty is halved.
Each friendly fire kill lowers standing by 10%. The 3rd consecutive kill in a short time-span, will flag you as their enemy.
Recruited to join them (Ally):
Friendly fire will only be warning, NO faction standing is lost.
Friendly kill, NO faction loss, but the 3rd consecutive kill will cancel the ally-status and flag you as their enemy.
For every other factions:
They will warn you over coms for FF, if you push it a lot (threshold raised), the penalty has been reduced by 50%.
Friendly kills will lose 10% standing, the 3rd one in a short time-span will flag you as their enemy.
* Changed the Omni Plasma Launcher weapon to behave like Missiles. It will now ONLY hit ships which you have targeted & others belonging to the targeted faction. This should make them no longer able to FF unless you specifically target friendlies, in which case, it's your fault.
* Fixed a bug for Flare turrets (Beam Weapons) when striking Zerker ships, it will now have the damage text correctly.
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Update 19/12/2015 (v1.04):
This update focuses on improving the Conquest AI to make late-game conquest more dynamic, balanced and prevents some potential stalemate situations.
* A major feature was added for the faction conquest AI. If the player has joined a faction and raised their standing above 800 points, the player can spearhead invasions IF the ally faction is currently not invading a hostile system. This can override their priority for defense, so make it count if you intend to use it, ie. diverting their forces on a strike. If they lose, it will be a major blow.
How to initiate the Strike Fleet? Just go to an enemy system (non-Homeworld or adjacent to Homeworld), attack them and defeat their forces, if you deal lots of damage to their enemies, your Ally will be inspired to launch an attack, together with your help, to take over the system!
There's a cooldown to how often you can initiate the Strike Fleet, it's ~10 minutes to let them recover their forces (because they could have been hammered on the defense). This feature is intended to be used to solve a stalemate situation where player inputs can tip the balance.
* Change the AI conquest behavior: once a faction have you as an ally, they will devote less ships to defend. This results in them launching counter-invasions more frequently, but they will need your help on the offense as it's a small strike-group! If you do not assist, they will retreat if the odds are poor. This should prevent the AI from being pushed by enemies into only defending.
* Hugely speed up calculations for siege resolve if player participated in the conquest. You should no longer need to wait around after the battles are over, it should resolve within ~1 second.
* Improved the balance of the conquest mechanic for active Allies assistance on offense or defense. It is based on the economic conditions of the factions involved, but it skews to give players a challenge.
* On Conquest Offense, if your ally fleet is destroyed, you can still fight to the bitter end, if you defeat the defenders, your ally will send a small reinforcement to capture that system.
* On Conquest Defense, if your ally fleet is destroyed, they cannot send a reinforcement fleet to keep on contesting it.
* Extended the Quadrant Prices tooltip to show potential profits! Thank you for the suggestion!
* Sometimes Pirates want to run & Jump out but they couldn't power up their Jump-Drive... now they should be able to do it most of the time.
* Fix negative storage hold bug.
* Added a red background to illegal goods. Again, thank you for the suggestion!
* Rebalance the Mass Addiction mechanics, it will now last twice as long, so make sure you smuggle drugs to your enemy's systems!
* Fix a mining bug where Asteroids can fall below 0 density.
* Fix some Starports which sell Pleasure Sims demanding Pleasure Sims.
* Fix a rare bug with the Sensor Drone not auto-resupplying on landing.
* Fix an encounter.
* Block the usage of the Emergency Warp while paused as it leads to a lock-out.
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As always, I welcome suggestions & feedback so that I can improve the game. The next feature I would like to add would be a player Hangar access on ports to switch out ships, either this or Port News service to show current events & tracking of some missions. Or both. :)
If you enjoy the game, please leave a positive review. Every bit helps for small time dev like me! :)
Regards,
-Huy