I’ve been working on a combat problem that kept showing up in playtesting.
Perihelion’s combat is built around transversal velocity: how fast a target is crossing your line of fire. The best hits happen when you line up the shot and bring that transversal close to zero.
The problem was that combat could still settle into a safe pattern. Orbit a ship and fire at it, or fly alongside it and fire at it. Simple enough, but not the most fun, and definitely not the best way to apply damage.
Overdrive is my answer to that. It’s a timed buff to damage and fire rate that stacks up to 5 times when you land clean direct hits. The more you line up those big hits, the harder and faster you hit. It turns good positioning into momentum.
I also added Shield Surge. If you kill an enemy with an Overdrive hit, your shield recharge gets boosted for a short time, which lets you stay aggressive when you’re flying well.
Missiles got pulled further into the same positioning model too.
Before this, missiles cared more about their own application rules and less about the angle you created. That made them useful, but a little disconnected from the rest of the combat model. Turrets were asking you to manage transversal and line up clean shots, while missiles could feel like they were playing by a different set of rules.
Missile damage now considers transversal as part of its application. They still have their own feel, and they should, but positioning matters more than it did before. If you fly well and create a better firing angle, missiles reward that more clearly now.
There are also a bunch of readability improvements in this update. Player shield and armor now draw as arcs around the ship, status effects show as HUD chips with timers, and the firing solution bars now communicate more about Overdrive and missile application. All of it makes it easier to understand what’s happening in the middle of a fight, without taking your eyes off the fight.
All of this ties back into the core of Perihelion: Rogue Orbit - null your transversal, land the shot, and snowball into feeling unstoppable.
This one's a big one. Enjoy!
Changelog
Added Overdrive: clean direct hits build up to 5 stacks, increasing weapon damage and fire rate by 10% per stack.
Overdrive can be gained from direct hits on enemies and structures.
Overdrive now cools down one stack at a time, appears in HUD and firing solution readouts, and refreshes/pauses reliably.
Overdrive gain now uses burst ring VFX instead of a popup.
Burst weapons now treat each burst as an explicit volley, letting Overdrive trigger once per volley instead of using a timed cooldown.
Burst volleys now cancel cleanly when the firing ship is disabled.
Added Shield Surge: qualifying Overdrive kills boost shield recharge by 50% for 8 seconds, with a HUD status timer.
PERI now calls out Overdrive activation and suboptimal hits.
Player shield and armor now show as arcs around the ship.
Added a low-armor alarm when player armor drops below 25%.
Timed special modules now appear as HUD status chips, including Phase Shift, Last Stand Protocol, and Weapon Overload.
Weapon Overload now lasts 15 seconds and has active halo VFX.
Weapon module cards are now disabled when no weapon target is selected and show "NO TARGET SELECTED."
HUD, overview, module, and status readouts now update more reliably.
Aggro indicator animation now pauses cleanly with the game.
Anchor targets can now speak when they aggro.
Scan beacon targets now draw target links when selected or used as movement targets.
Transversal damage application retuned for turrets and missiles.
Missile damage application now considers transversal, appears in firing solution bars, and has been retuned for fairer hit quality.
Transversal is now capped at the target's own contribution.
Player shots now get a small transversal tolerance; enemy shots do not.
Enemy turret tracking reduced across combat ships.
Burst Cannon tracking reduced from 0.45 to 0.25.
Destroyer missile explosion velocity increased from 105 to 130.
Jump inhibitor durability increased from 260 armor / 180 shield to 420 armor / 240 shield.
Priority target bonuses reduced from 2.5x to 2x armor, shield, and damage.
Support ship pressure now scales by sector instead of being tied to individual anchor escort rolls.
Support ships can now be placed as escorts, replacements, or small harassment packs when needed.
Priority target sectors now bias support placement toward the priority target's pack.
Retiring a run now preserves result stats through the fade to the run result screen.
Refined module icons across weapons, defenses, and utility modules.