Release notes here.
This is a big one! The list of short-term general annoyances is getting much smaller, and the discussion that started it all is here.
So what's new?
- You can FINALLY turn off construction on individual ship lines in your mobile fleets.
- There's a bunch of other stuff you can see about fleets that is handy info to have, too, in their tooltips.
- Waves are now thematic based around the planets they come from, so they should be something that you can plan for without them being absolutely homogeneous around the galaxy. The release notes explain it better, but I didn't go with my "Wave Mainframes" idea because this is simpler all around, less cluttered, and gives more variety without being a mess. It may need more tuning, we shall see.
- Salvage and Reprisal Waves are gone. What? Hol' up a minute.
- The release notes again explain it better, but we have a really cool new Counterattack mechanic that takes the place of Reprisal Waves, and which gives you waaaaay more control over the amount of risk you take on when you attack an overly-strong target.
- In recent builds, some players were getting game-ending reprisal waves "out of nowhere" because of how they were attacking and how the fairly-invisible salvage mechanic worked. This was not something I liked at all, because it basically feels like something you can't control; and in some respects that was literally true, whereas in other respects you needed to have secret knowledge to avoid it. Bad bad bad in both cases.
- The new counterattacks can actually be far stronger than reprisal waves in the recent builds -- absolutely apocalyptically game-ending, in fact -- but the important thing is that the communicate to you the whole time from the point at which they start becoming dangerous. That then gives you a chance to run away and take your small beating (rather than letting it get apocalyptic), or it lets you double-down and paralyze the counterattack long enough for you to eventually dispel it outright by killing all the AI guard posts and command stations on that planet.
- Put another way, it adds some brinkmanship into attacking oversized targets, and gives you the controls to choose just how far you push things. If you can stall the counterattack and then cancel it, that's absolutely the best thing... but the risk of doing that if you might not be able to could mean that you bring down the roof on your head. It's all dynamic, right on the screen in front of you, and gives you an immediate feeling and source of back-and-forth.
- And for smaller targets, it doesn't even come into play and bother you, because this specific mechanic isn't supposed to be a response to you just playing the game in general. There are things like Cross Planet Attacks, reinforcements, and the hunter fleet for that already. We didn't need yet another mechanic that was inevitable. We needed something devastating-but-avoidable, and hopefully the round-one balance on this is somewhat reasonable at least. I'm sure it will need more tuning over time.
- Oh dang, we also added three new hacks, too (thanks Quinn!). You can hack big weapons of the AI to take them over (Orbital Mass Drivers and Ion Cannons), which gives you new strategic/tactical options during taking a planet. Unlike the first game, there was no way to capture these before now. And then you can also hack a co-processor to find all the other co-processors if you don't want to wait for regular scouting to find them.
- Techs also show you a bunch more info that is helpful for when you're trying to capture new fleets, and new fleets also show you more accurate information based on your current techs and bonuses, rather than showing their mark-1-defaults.
- Good grief we also fixed a bunch of bugs, too. This really is a pretty hefty release.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
Problem With The Latest Build?
If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.
The Usual Reminders
Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.
Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.
Enjoy!
Chris