I just wanted to hop on here and give a progress update on the 0.1.1.7 milestone.
This milestone brings about several large mechanical changes to the game. Currently, I am about halfway completed with the milestone, and the features that have been completed have already been pushed to Steam.
A list of pushed changes are:
Holographic field of play
There is now a holographic astral-pitch that gives the game more of the sports-feel that I'm going for. Along with this addition, the boundary sphere has been modified to be less distracting now that we have an actual field of play.
Ships can take multiple hits before dropping the ball
Each ship now comes equipped with a shield that allows pilots to take more than a single hit before the ball's grappler fails. I'm still tinkering with the numbers, but now that the actual mechanic has been implemented, these are simply configuration values.
Onboarding, and tutorial updates
This was probably the first part of this milestone to go live, but there have been some changes to force players into going through the basic flight test training so that the very basics of the game are learned. There is a bit more to do here, but I'll knock those out in another milestone.
Battlecruiser durability, and new game objective
As we crept in battlecruisers last milestone, it was now time to give them a function. You must now disable the opponent's battlecruiser shields. You can do this by either shooting the ball into the goal for a large amount of shield damage, or by taking pot-shots at the carrier. There's plenty more work to do on the battlecarriers, but it was just really important to make sure the basics were covered so that I can iterate on them. I should probably update the flight test courses to include battlecruiser mechanics, too.
I have plenty of work left for this milestone, but I'm working as fast as I can to get it all knocked out!
For a detailed list of the current milestone, and other backlog items, please check out the public issue tracker