Greetings Commanders!
After so long, Ship Crew Update (part 1) is finally here!
There is a lot of changes in the game, not only on the ship crew but lots of little improvements and BUG fixes.
So let’s dive right in:
Ship Crew
Most spaceships now require a Crew to function, especially bigger models that will hardly move without a pilot or generate energy without an engineer, for example. Smaller ships like shuttles and yachts, although not required, can benefit from Co-Pilots, which can improve any function of the ship, including it's weapons. You can hire crewmembers at stations or even rescue them around the galaxy.
Gunners can be assigned to turrets and will automatically fire. They will prioritize drones or missiles if they have a PD weapon installed.
Ship Crew will level up, slowly increasing their skills and eventually gaining new ones, and also improving (or gaining new) bonuses.
You’ll get more in-game instructions on how Ship Crew will work but that’s the basic info. So lets get to the features:
New Features:
- Ship Crew added, with 6 different skills for now: Engineer, Pilot, Navigator, Supervisor, Gunner and Instructor.
- Added the missing Social skills with crew related bonuses.
- You can now Deposit/Load using Shift + middle mouse.
- 'Unequip all' (and other functions) now deposit everything in the bank instead of the ship cargo.
- Added Heavy and Capital Impulse Drives up to Mk.V, and a pirate version for both sizes.
- Reduced top speed on Heavy and Capital Impulse Drives plus other small changes.
- Speed Boosters now stack better and use less energy, but are less effective than before.
- Cloaking will now properly hide weapon turrets.
- You can now set weapon energy to zero, which will prevent you or gunners to fire.
- You can now order gunners and mercenaries to fire at the selected target by pressing 'F' (default).
- Basic Ship Crew will now be added to required positions when starting a new game.
- Added HP regeneration to Venghi ships (They can't have crew, except gunners for now).
- Fixed a BUG that would prevent weapons from being installed on some AI ships.
- Fixed BUG that allowed you to unlock ships in Arena mode.
- Fixed Mi'Iaoshu drop chance.
- Initial station on the Arena will start with a higher level.
- Fixed Marauders target aquisition.
- Added a 5 base energy storage to all ships to avoid certain issues.
- Higly increased distance relics will travel in the dead zone before disapearing.
- Pirate Impulse Drive now uses 2 spaces instead of 3, but had the acceleration power reduced to 19.
- Fixed crafted weapons losing their names after changing language.
- Fixed Jettisoned ship not keeping its loadout.
- Fixed weapon mounts appearing with the wrong orientation in the ship panel.
- Fixed message stating that a faction lost 2 billion percent reputation after a station is destroyed.
OBS: Part 2 will come next, with unique crew members, taxi missions and more. The ability to add pilots to your other ships and create your own fleet is coming soon too.
Be advise there may be more BUGs, as usual for a big update like this. So I'll probably be updating the game very soon and try to keep it more frequent from now on :)
Have fun everyone!