- Faction leaders now placing starbase construction bounties using their own tax money and budgeting.
- Bounty refund system for non completable bounties. If you refund yourself it is only 50% back to prevent abuse.
- Added a funding factor to bounties (especially for bases) so over time the bounty increases until it is rich enough for someone to take the bait.
- Part purchases now taxed locally and faction wide. Good earners are some large bases.
- Scanview system merged into one uber system to show all thing green and scanable (this is how we show you the parts and ships in menus as real 3d objects built with the proper stats)
- AI logic for joining factions improved. Factions also have lower requirements if really need people badly and are more apt to take you if you are strong.
- Player can ask people to join, and boot people from faction
- New Starmap entity framing system for menus. So the menu frames what you are interacting with.
- Player assigning Starbases to faction members.
- Controller vs Keyboard auto control switcher (press controller button to be in controller mode, press keyboard button to jump to mouse and keys)
- Ability to change the capital province of a faction (for a price) Capital transports adjust their routes accordingly.
- Each captain got a short personalized description
- Brand new perk system. Every levelup you can pick 1 of N perks (decided by difficulty) and you have to make due. Perks still unlock via a hierarchy but all branches not always available. This better fits the game theme of scavenging and adapting. We also unlock weapons, cores and part sizes though the perk tree now. Lots and lots to buy and much better for progression.
- Added infinite levelup system. Some perks are repeatable so no level ceiling
- Super Asteroids rework to make break much more naturally.
- AI levelup perk picker. Since the AI can level up too, they need to pick their perks smartly.
- Perk system saves next available perks to prevent save scumming to roll the perks you want.
- Tech-O-Pedia. So you can see all the perks you own, and get an idea of what will someday be available (without spoilers) Also shows accumulated bonuses of current perks.
- The Core Dump. Our new combat mechanic went in. During battle to prevent simply holding down the trigger and spamming forever we added a reload to the ships. It added a ton of tactical opportunities in battle because battle is now broken into short shooting and then evading and reloading sections. Having limited ammo per reload also forces the player to use the right weapons at the right time, else they are using power better spent on firing the right weapon more. You can see the enemy ship's capacitor state as well so you know when they can fire and when they can not. Works for first person shooters, and works for starships (it also looks cool)
- Lots of tutorial work and weapons tuning checkins
- Attach helper system. Now when you grab something, little arrows will show you where it can be attached.
- AI wont trade their equipped parts or strike craft anymore. To easy to buy their guns and then kill them (was funny though)
- Player has their own starmap mouse over (been on the todo list for a year) shows more advanced info on the player like rez consumption per second also ship damage.
- Showing restocking times on starbases, so you know when it is a good time to shop and the stores aren't all picked over.
- The Markup system ( posted about this one because it was really exciting )
http://steamcommunity.com/app/252470/di ... 348193308/
- Killing a Starbase causes it to dump all goods. This may be exploity, remains to be seen.
- Damage type icon system in the scan viewer. So you can know at a glance what weapons are good at what.
- Added a loot menu so you can see exactly what you got from a successful salvage operation.
- Used the loot menu for bounty payouts too, since it is nice to see rewards.
- The great yellow hunt of 2015. Removed all 77 warnings from the build.
- Lots of early flow tuning. Richard and I sit down now and actually play together a bit and subsequently take a week worth of notes on things to fix.
- Lots of contextual helper work. Buttons yellowing that need to be looked at, extra advisory updates for when there is a problem needing fixing. Nothing that gets in the way, but definitely good to have reminders. A lot to keep track of at once.
- Perk dialogue. My favorite thing from this month. Some perk levels have unique dialogue and it can be pretty funny. Since Richard wrote it all, it is a joy for me to level up and hear new stuff.
- Bandit bases are now drone focused. They can be deadly without some kind of point defense weapons to thin the drones out.
- AI knows how to avoid ships in the act of exploding. They try to get out of the way before the big pop and subsequent shockwave of death.
- Added local feature icons to the starbases, so you can see at a glance what a starbase is good at.
- Lots of relations change tuning for different actions in game (Each AI captain watches for about 80 different things, so lots to tune)
- Got a video working within a tutorial window. Moving pictures!
- Bandit hives much stronger and therefore AI attacks them less. This leads to less bandit genocide in the game. AI captains were too efficient at wiping them out.
- New Popup help system for buttons. Lessens the requirement for smaller tutorials. Some things can just be learned by hovering the mouse now.
- New single shader based Starmap entity art system. (instead of massive compound objects) Stuff looks better and costs less.
- New Campaign and Sandbox menus are now isolated from each other. Story has pre set sliders that cannot be adjusted, whereas the sandbox is wild west do whatever.
- Zombie appearance slider for sandbox, early...never.
- New smart missile locking system. It manages to hold lock for a while after mousing off an object, and also has a locking bleed so locking smaller ships is much easier.
- Objective arrow system made smarter. So if you mouse over an objective it will tell you where to go if it can. Removed red herrings, like pointing to a starbase to buy a part, but that part is not currently in stock, or pointing to a raid that is already being attacked etc...
- Starmap dragging system so you can move the camera wherever you want.
- Lots of new dialogue/tutorial checkins
- Fixed the smart fire system, so only guns that are in range will shoot (saves power)
- High level bandits made bigger and nastier.
- Mouse over bandits and transports to see what they are carrying (so you know if it is worth taking)