Many of you have asked that I remove the constraint of flying only on a 2D plane in space. For a long time I didn't want commit to this until I had combat in and started play testing the system. I'm happy to say I woke up this morning at 5 AM with an idea that fixed a few problems I had with vector math related to space combat and decided to implement it. The combat patch will include full 3D flight for space exploration and combat.
https://youtu.be/lsVGo2-QXO4
Thank you all for your feedback. As always, I'm listening!
Progress Update 12/1/17
This week I am finally feature, code and content complete for the Space Combat update. Now it's just play testing, bug fixing and once everything is stable and bug free, I'll get the update posted for everyone.
https://youtu.be/dY1fwJGRbrM
This week I worked on the Incursion mission system. Incursion missions take place randomly when you are exploring in space. Stations and AI ships in the system will offer you a reward if you can defeat hostile ships in a specific area. You get a cash reward, faction and of course loot when you defeat the incursion. These missions are temporary and if you dock or land on a planet, the incursion will not be there the next time you enter space. They do persist between save games - so if you have an active incursion and save your game while in space, they will be active the next time you load your save.
Of course, there will be more mission types for Alpha. Once Alpha is released the plan is to add more detailed mission types - an example would be:
You receive a distress signal from a ship orbiting a planet in the current system. You accept the mission and travel to the ship and defeat a group of ships attacking the AI that contacted you. You could then be given another mission to rescue the remaining crew on a nearby planet. Once that mission is resolved, the AI may send you to another sector to take another task.
The mission system is quite powerful and procedural missions like this will keep the game alive long after the main story is completed. In sandbox mode, these missions will be the backbone of exploration.
The other big task this week was Station AI. Stations now launch local ships that mine local asteroid fields. It's just the first of several AI tasks local systems will be performing that will make systems feel alive and populated.
That's all I have for this week. Now it's just a matter of crushing a list of bugs, play testing and making sure everything is stable for the update. Thanks for being patient everyone!
Progress Update 11/24/17
Hi everyone. Another weekly progress update.
This week I spent a lot of time on Ship AI including enemy AI collisions, faction through the universe and cleaning up a few long standing bugs in space. Asteroids now have collision and enemy ships avoid stars, planets, space stations and asteroids. See the video below for a few highlights.
https://youtu.be/0atTvLZTUf8
A big chunk of code that had to be written was the faction system. While the basics were already in, they weren't exposed to the enemy ship AI. Here is how faction works in Stellar Tactics:
--When you start a new game, the universe is generated. Every system gets a certain main faction with Achmedius, the starting system, being a Halamis system.
--The AI starts to launch ships with various jobs based on that faction - patrol, anarchy, trade, explore, faction warfare and a few other tasks.
--Ships are launched from stations and begin their various roles, traveling between systems or staying within systems depending on their role.
--You can engage any ship in combat, hostile or friendly. The act of initiating combat causes a minor faction hit with that faction. Destroying the ship generates a higher faction hit to that particular faction. Destroying a ship aligned with a faction generates negative faction with all aligned factions and generates positive faction with factions that are not aligned.
So, there are consequences. This lets you explore the universe and shift your alignment by targeting enemy ships and taking ground based missions that target a specific faction so you can begin to move your faction in a direction where a certain faction you are interested in will do business with you. You could conceivably become aligned with Phage, Scavvers and Raiders if you wanted to. Just know that eventually (not in the space combat build) some stations will not allow you to dock to do business with them if you end up an enemy of that faction.
Hostile factions, Raiders, Scavvers, Phage start out as hostile. All other factions, including the various Houses (Halamis, Aralion, Conrair, Cilivon, Shikaru and Varadyn) start out neutral or wary. If you have been gaining faction in the Abandoned Research Facility, you should have a slightly higher faction with Halamis depending on how many missions you've taken.
There are other factions that are tied closely to the story:
--The Syndicate - Outlaws tolerated by the powers that be. Need something? No problem. Want someone eliminated? Of course! Smuggling? Oh yeah! Masters of stealth, on the ground and in Space.
--Kchor - Blue skinned mutants, wise and secretive. The Kchor are one of several mutations that arrived after the long trip through space. No much is known about the Kchor though they have been called on by The Sovereignty to keep the peace in the various wars that have taken place since the Arrival. Their reward? Autonomy.
--The Fabricants - Purveyors of the finest augmentations and equipment upgrades, the Fabricants also dabble in the darker arts of melding machine with flesh. Some call them Necromancers, others shun them outright.
--The Coven - Outcasts from the time of the Arrival, not much is known about The Coven. It is said that when they arrived, they woke from sleep with incredible Psionic powers. With no understanding of their immediate powers, they nearly destroyed themselves and anyone who contacted them. They were given an ultimatum - leave or be incinerated. They left to the far ends of known space and only have dealings with the Syndicate who smuggle supplies to them on a regular basis.
--The Traders Guild - One of the most powerful guilds, the Traders Guild controls commerce between systems. They will need your help and your alignment with them could make you a smuggler or a wealthy merchant. Your choice of course.
--The Order - A radical religious order that believe in the Old Gods. They are tolerated by The Church and the Sovereignty and actually align on the side of good throughout the Universe. They are the Paladins of Stellar Tactics and merge powerful ancient rituals with melee and ranged combat. They are fierce opponents.
--The Church - The primary religious order of Stellar Tactics Universe. They are primarily political as church and state are one. They are also aligned closely with the Sovereignty and have vast holdings across the known universe - however, something is amiss and you will need to make difficult decisions as the story progresses.
--The Jhemm - You encountered them in the Ruins in Achmedius - You are the only known contact and the Jhemm chose you for reasons you do not yet fully understand.
--The Sovereignty - The Sovereignty are the reigning power in the Universe. One of the first Houses to arrive, they quickly gathered power and subjugated the rest of the Houses as they arrived. Several wars have been fought, however, The Sovereignty has maintained power. A Republic, The Sovereignty imposes limited laws and an iron fist when needed. They are aligned with The Church and share power with them. The Church is the law and The Sovereignty enforces the law.
I'm now down to one major feature that needs to be finished for the space combat update. That is, random missions. It wouldn't be much fun to hope an enemy ship wandered into Achmedius so, this next week I'll be focusing on adding missions that can be taken to defend certain points in space like asteroid fields, stations and planets. Some of these will be random events and others missions that you pick up on the trade station.
Once that's in I'll be testing and cleaning up any bugs and then I think I'll be ready to release the space combat update. I don't have an exact date, but soon.
Have a great weekend!
Progress Update 11/17/17
Lots of progress this week, primarily on the chaff system, directional shields and planetary effects.
https://youtu.be/qHi5nfcJuBg
Chaff system - The chaff system is complete. You can purchase chaff from any ship equipment vendor. Your ship holds a total of 50 chaff modules which can be deployed in combat to confuse enemy missiles.
Directional shields - This system is complete now and includes some changes to the way shields work. Your combat shields take damage until a directional shield is depleted of energy. At that point, you start taking damage to your secondary shields. If your secondary shields are depleted, any combat hits making it through depleted directional shield apply damage to your hull armor. You can select a facing shield to receive extra recharge energy. See the video for details.
Target micro menu - The target micro-menu is finished for now. You can select any ship and a popup menu will allow you to scan or approach that target. I'll likely be adding other features to this menu in the future.
Planet visual update - I've been wanting to do this for a while so I took a break from AI and other coding to update all the procedural planet atmospheres - I think they look a lot better (larger image below). It's hard to tell in the screenshot though in the game it makes a big difference.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1203708864
That's it for this week. Thanks everyone!
Space Combat Progress Update
Hi all! I've been posting regular updates to the forums over the last few weeks. I thought I would post a consolidated progress update to the news area.
https://youtu.be/ylYudCk-B3M
This week was primarily focused on finalizing the ship storage management code, ship repair systems on stations and the space combat loot system. That wraps up most of the work. Here's where I am right now:
Done:
--Turret systems for missiles, projectiles and mining,
--Space combat fully functional - turret based combat as shown below in a previous update.
--All 40 ships playable - Light, medium and heavy variants of fighters, merchant ships, explorers, interceptors and massive cargo vessels.
--Skills are all tied into the ship combat system in the game. Team members at stations gain skill and apply bonuses from their skills to your ships systems.
--Ship equipment system and all loot tables tied into the combat system.
--Ship merchants - trade in or purchase a new ship.
--Ship equipment merchants offer millions (really!) of ship specific variants for components like warp drives, turrets, missile launchers, ship armor, electronics systems, ammunition, targeting computers and shields.
--Cargo management.
--Simple ship repair. When I add the final skill based repair system, you will be able to repair ships in space. For now you can simply purchase repairs on the station.
--Ship storage so you can have multiple ships stored around the universe.
--First pass enemy ship AI system.
--Space exploration HUD update.
--Ship scanning.
--Combat loot system - destroyed ships drop ammunition, ship equipment and ore.
To do:
--Chaff and missile avoidance system.
--An update to the mission system to allow for space combat specific mission types.
--Some additional AI work.
--A few quality of life features.
--A few testing, bug fixing and tuning passes.
--Additional polish.
Things are coming along nicely and I should have everything wrapped up soon. I'll continue to post weekly updates and give you a release date for the space combat patch when I get a bit closer to completion. I should mention that this is not all the work being done, another mission set is nearly completed and be implemented along with two other new mission sets after the space combat patch is released.
Thanks for your patience everyone!
I'm going to post all previous weekly updates below.
Progress update - 11/3/17
This week was all about ship vendors. Still have a little work to do on swapping ships and a bit of cleanup work on the UI. See the video below for details. Please excuse my monotone - I need to catch up on some sleep - coffee and Red Bull's aren't doing it anymore...
https://youtu.be/MkPl3R9sZg0
Ship vendors can be found throughout the universe and they all carry fixed sets of ships that they sell. Purchasing a new ship requires that you either store your current ship or trade in your current ship for a cash credit towards the price of your new ship.
One issue is that your equipment, because it is ship specific, cannot be swapped between different ships. To make things easier, the merchant gives you credit for each item currently equipped on your ship during the trade in. The value generated is the current market value of your equipment + the current trade in value of your ship which is credited towards your purchase. Your charisma affects the trade in value of all items.
If you choose to store your current ship, it will remain on the station until with all of it's current equipment until you come back for it. I'll make sure there is an easy way to see where all your current ships are stored. The ship storage menu in the video is still a work in progress. There will be more information available that is visible anywhere, anytime. For example, the ship list will provide two lists - the first is a list of all ships and their locations in the universe and a second list displaying the ships currently on the station you are visiting.
Regarding cargo - if you have more cargo in your cargo hold than the new ship will fit, you will need to sell your cargo before purchasing the new ship. The hamsters in the cargo bays will go on strike and the ship vendor will reject the purchase. The rule is that the cargo in the cargo bay of your current ship needs to be less than or equal to the maximum available cargo on your new ship.
As you explore, you will loot ship specific equipment. If you plan in advance, you can horde items for that future ship upgrade and after purchasing your new ship, slot those items into your ship.
One last note: On the ship info screen you can see an area for "MISSILE MANAGEMENT". This will eventually bring up a menu that lets you fit various payloads on your missiles and tweak their subsystems for range, avoidance and a few other things. Missiles come in one main variant and you can adjust them for various purposes and damage types.
That's it for this week. Thanks everyone!
Progress update - 10/27/17
Hi everyone - nothing terribly exciting to report this week though lots of progress was made. The focus was primarily on ship equipment vendors, equipping ship equipment, the ship information UI and tying all equipment stats into the combat and ship systems. This was a ton of work and I'm glad it's behind me.
What I have now is a fully functional ship equipment system that allows for the purchase and sale of all ship equipment types. This includes changes to the NPC AI systems, the ship vendor UI, managing the moving data around between the vendors, cargo and the ship itself and displaying that information in the UI. When ship equipment is looted or purchased, it's placed in your cargo hold. From there you can drag and drop the equipment to the equipment slots on the right or the ship UI assuming you are docked at a station.
One item of interest is what I'm calling the "Power Bias". This is rainbow colored bar in the ship UI that displays the combat power state based on your currently equipped engines, shields and turrets. The display calculates the amount of power required to sustain all firing turrets in combat assuming default power settings. A reading to the left of center means that your power balance based on equipped hardware will be effective. Anything to the right of center means that the power draw from your equipment will lead to mis-fires and you will not be able to maintain your maximum fire-power. I'm still doing a bit of work in the screenshot below, tying the correct numbers into several of the fields and moving things around.
I mentioned this before - shields and turrets have a base power cost which reduces your capacitor charge rate. Turrets draw from your capacitor. Your warp engines provide your overall power rating. All equipment displays this information, however, I needed a way to display this so you won't need to break out a calculator every time you are equipping items. The power bias gauge will help by displaying the current power sustain based on the equipment currently slotted to your ship. I may actually add this to equipment rollover info so you can easily see the effect a shield, turret or engine might have on your power bias. There will be lot's of equipment variants to choose from and you will always be looking for the best performance at the lowest power cost.
I can say that I am now weeks away from the space combat update, so that should be good news to everyone. No specific date yet as I have quite a bit of coding and testing to do yet.
Have a great weekend and thanks for supporting Stellar Tactics!
Progress update 10/20/17
The ship loot system is nearly finished - just need a few days to clean things up and get the rest of the rollover information data coded and this task will be finished. There is a lot of code tied to the system including vendors, rollover information, ship attributes and more. I won't go into all the details and will just say this was a productive week with lots of coding, spreadsheet work and many cups of coffee...
A few things about ship equipment and loot. Let's take a look at a ship shield and turret. This is the same equipment at level 10 and again at level 40. Your skills in weaponry and electronics modify the effectiveness of these components as you gain skill. You can see in the screenshots below how bonuses from your skills scale the attributes of the equipment. Green attributes are modified by your skill while yellow attributes are unaffected. Turrets display minimum and maximum DPS scaled to your skill level and the adjustments to their base damage values.
Turrets gain additional damage, reload speed and more efficiency in their use of the capacitors as the team member at the weaponry station becomes more skilled in combat.
Shields gain additional HP from your skill level - this is based on the premise that someone assigned to the Electronics station gains bonuses to shield efficiency from their skill level. Shield resistances are static and scale with the quality of your equipment. Resistances directly remove a fixed percentage of damage from incoming weapon damage before that damage is applied to your shields.
Ship equipment comes in various tiers of quality from Basic to Epic. Legendary equipment can only be looted from vessels/enemies that are high risk or rewarded from missions - it cannot be purchased. Epic ship equipment can only be purchased using faction tokens or looted from bosses.
All equipment is generated by ship type. So, turrets, shields etc are clearly called out for fitting and will only work on that specific ship type. This is because equipment is scaled based on ship attributes like mass, number of hard points and available energy. All equipment has a minimum skill requirement which is also called out in the equipment information UI.
As always your charisma stat will adjust the value of equipment when buying or selling.
The available equipment for ships include turrets, shields, electronics systems, targeting computers, hull armor plating, cargo expansions, warp and FTL drives.
In other news a fourth procedural mission set has been started, the third is being lit as I write this.
That's all I have for this week. I'll be focusing on ship merchants and the ship merchant UI next week.
Thanks again for supporting Stellar Tactics!
Progress update 10/13/17
Hi everyone - another progress update this Friday. First, a video that covers ship skills and how they change the space exploration portion of the game.
https://youtu.be/yZJidlU29C4
Please excuse the bands at the top and bottom of the screen. This video was captured in the debugger and is running at 1/2 FPS and a non standard resolution.
Stellar Tactics takes a bit of a different approach from most other games. Your crew contributes to the performance of the ship over time based on their experience in four key skill categories - Piloting, Weaponry, Electronics and Targeting. Each of these categories is represented by a dedicated station on your ship.
Piloting affects:
--Ship speed - your base ship speed is calculated based on the mass of your ship. Piloting increases your base speed, afterburner speed and micro-warp speed.
--Ship turn rate - massive ships turn slower than small interceptors. Piloting skill adjusts this.
--Evasion - the ability to evade incoming fire as a bonus
Weaponry affects:
--Weapon damage bonuses - as you gain experience, your skill with weapons increases the weapons base damage
--Turret reload speed - How fast your turrets recharge and reload
--Weaponry capacitor drain (Efficiency) - the amount of charge taken from the capacitor each time the turret fires
Electronics affects:
--Scanning range and the quality of scanning data. Higher quality scanning data will sell for more credits to various factions
--Security - the stability of your ships systems against hacking - this is for the boarding module - you may be boarded if the enemy ship is trying to capture your cargo/ship or if they have a mission to capture you.
--Shield bonuses to your shields maximum durability and recharge rate
Targeting affects:
--Sub-system targeting (The UI in the video needs to be updated) - for the boarding module
--Overall chance to hit scaled by range for turret projectiles
--Shield bypass - your ability to bypass shields by attuning your weapons - this bonus applies damage directly to the enemy ships hull armor.
As you gain skill your bonuses are applied to each of the above. At various tiers you will also get perk selections similar to ground combat that allow you to fine tune your ships systems to adjust for different scenarios - Larger or smaller ships, the number of ships you are attacking/being attacked by and their weapon types based on scans. You can pause combat and scan ships and make perk adjustments at any time in addition to adjusting your power, turrets and targeting.
So, space combat, experience and skill bonuses are code complete - that's the majority of the work. I'll be moving on to the loot system next. Following that ship and ship equipment merchants, some faction work, simple space combat mission systems and testing. I'll be sure to post another update for you next Friday.
Have a great weekend and thanks for supporting Stellar Tactics!
Progress update - 10/6/17
Hi everyone. Here is the update for this week. Hope you all have a great weekend.
Added experience system for piloting, weaponry, electronics and targeting skills. You gain experience at the end of combat for each skill assuming you have a team member assigned to the appropriate station on your ship.
Completed key bindings for turrets - Keys 1-6 - press for individual targeting - hold and release to toggle turrets on/off.
Mining lasers moved to turret system. Can individually target each mining laser to multiple asteroids.
--Combat while mining possible. Mining is a bit less peaceful now as it is possible to be attacked by hostile ships while mining.
--Mining turrets come in light and heavy variants.
--Mining turrets will come in various quality tiers similar to combat turrets and can be purchased or found as loot drops. Higher quality mining lasers will generate bonuses to the yield of rare minerals.
--Mining lasers draw energy from your capacitor and have no ammunition requirements
--Mining turrets use the same energy management system as combat turrets. You can balance energy to engines and shields against your capacitor charge. You need to power up your turrets to mine asteroids.
--You can mine while in combat with enemy ships. Larger ships have more turret mount points and you can balance mining with defensive turrets
--Heavy mining turrets generate twice the yield and consume twice the capacitor charge of light turrets. Yield is modified by your skill in mining. When perks for mining go in you will be able to fine tune mining in a number of ways based on your selections.
--Mining turrets can be brought on and offline for energy management as needed
--Mining can be quite profitable and you're going to need the money to purchase new ships and equipment - ships are expensive. As an example the Pharris Crate MRCH-4 has six turrets total, 3 laser turrets and 3 missile turrets for defense. Filling the cargo bay (1700 cubic meters without a cargo expansion ) and not being picky about the mineral yield can net you around 34,000 Credits per trip. Imagine what you could do with a Behemoth CRG-2 which has 4 heavy turrets that will fit heavy mining lasers and 180,000 cubic meters of cargo space!
--I'll be adding asteroid and asteroid field scanning during alpha so you can evaluate the quality of the mineral yields for various asteroid fields. Rich asteroid fields will be guarded and you may need to purchase mining rights from the local faction authority or face resistance.
--I'll be adding the ability to eject cargo for the space combat update.
Moved all new effects (impacts, beams and explosions) to ground combat.
That's it for this week - back to work...
Progress update - 9/29/17
Hi everyone - hope you had a great week. I'm going to post these every Friday so you know how things are coming along with space combat and other content.
This week:
--All 40 ships are now combat ready and playable by both the AI and the player.
--The combat pause system is in. When you pause combat the entire universe stops allowing you to pan your camera to get a better sense of the environment around you, turn turrets on and off, target enemies and turrets individually, review scanning data and manage your energy. While combat is paused you can also review inventory, character info, log data, the universe map and all ship data including swapping team members to various ship stations in the ship UI.
--Combat damage tables are complete and balanced as far as I'm going to take them for now - I'll tweak things once you get a chance to play with space combat and I gather feedback.
--Shield damage mitigation is in and working. Shields mitigate different types of damage based on the quality of the shield you have equipped. You can buy and loot varying quality tiers of ship equipment so as you explore, your ship's equipment will improve (and so will the AI).
--I'm working on the ship scanning system today which is nearly finished. The team member assigned to the electronics station of the ship UI gains experience from scanning and as they improve in skill will gain perks that you can customize. Scan data will provide you with more/better information. Some of the info you won't get at lower levels of scanning skill are enemy turret damage ratings and shield mitigation bonuses.
A few things about space combat and shields:
Ion weapons can turn the tide of battle and are very important. This weapon type is a shield killer and comes in three varieties - projectile, beam and missile. You can of course choose to equip any type of weapon you like, however, if you scan a ship and it has multiple Ion weapons and you do not, you should run or make sure your ship can handle the damage.
Ion weapons do increased damage against shields which is then mitigated by the shields ion resistance ratings.
Ion weapons do very little damage against ship armor.
Non Ion "beam" weapons do 1/2 damage against combat shields and are then mitigated by the shield resistance rating for that damage type.
So, beam weapons are not very useful against shields unless they are Ion based. Depending on the number of mounts you have on your ship, you may want to balance your weapons accordingly. I was trying out a matched enemy ship that had two ion weapons, a missile turret, and two Gauss cannons. I had 2 missile launchers and a few Gauss cannons and the other ship tore me up. I think the key here is picking your fights. I would have been fine against another ship with matching equipment. If I had quality shields that were attuned to Ion damage, I would have likely survived.
And now for something different!
Missiles come in three base types - explosive, thermal and ion. I'll be adding a warhead settings menu for each missile type that lets you customize their payload for specific purposes like disabling turrets/engines, evading ECM and chaff, range/damage, splash damage and a few other settings. Settings for missiles are a trade-off - each of the below can increase/decrease damage based on how you set up the missile. Missiles are configured once and all missiles of that type use those settings until you change them. This may not be in for the initial release of space combat.
Setting the missile for longer range adjusts damage values down and conversely shorter range increases missile damage
Setting missiles to evade ECM and chaff will reduce damage output, however, they are more likely to evade active countermeasures.
Splash damage reduces damage and affects more sub-systems (Shields/Turrets/Engines etc)
Targeting specific systems increases damage to that system and reduces damage the hull of the enemy ship once the shields are down.
At least that's the plan. Once I get the warhead settings menu in place I'll play test it to see if the system is practical.
In other news a third mission set is being worked on now that the caves are done. It's shaping up nicely and will go in the game after space combat is finished. I'll share a screenshot once the lighting is finished.
Until next week...
One year anniversary!
It's been one year today since Stellar Tactics first released on Steam Early Access and it's been a great year for the game. With the help of the community I've crushed hundreds of bugs, implemented community suggested feedback and the game is very stable with over 100 hours of content with the addition of the Abandoned Research Facility.
Looking back I'm really proud of the progress I've been able to make and I hope you can all see the passion and dedication I have for the game. I couldn't have done it without your feedback and support. Stellar Tactics has always been intended to be a Sci-Fi sandbox that I could fill with content and story for years to come. I expect the game to expand quite a bit over the next year and I hope you all will join me as I work towards releasing space combat and add the other systems that need to go into the game before the FTL gates open at Alpha.
Speaking of which, a little progress update here in areas other than space combat. Since my last update all of the space stations for the game have been completed and are now ready to populate out into the void:
Procedural cave systems have all been modeled and laid out and are currently being lit and populated. When they are done they will be ready to be added to the random mission generator and distributed out into the universe.
https://youtu.be/4LOr15gHcns
And finally, a new procedural set for station mission interiors is being worked on as I type this. So, there is a lot of progress being made and I'm working to get everything in the game so even more content is ready for all of you.
I'd like to thank you all for your support and patience as I continue to expand the Stellar Tactics universe. As always I'll keep you updated, answer any questions you have and work hard to make sure the game is fun and stable.
-Don Wilkins
Combat system progress update
Space combat is moving along at a good pace. I thought I would share a quick video to show how the basic systems work.
https://youtu.be/boRWbkSvQ2o
The combat system is turret based. All ships have a limited number of turret mount points and beam, projectile or missile turrets can be looted or purchased. Turrets come in light and heavy variants and each of the 40 ships have specific mount specifications. Heavy weapon mount points can take light turrets if you choose to equip them.
In combat you will be managing range, power, shields and your current ship speed as well as turret targeting.
Power is critical in combat. Your turrets, shields and systems take a base amount of power to spool up and maintain. Available power feeds your ship capacitor and weapons draw from the capacitor so if your capacitor is depleted your turrets will fail to charge and fire and will wait for an available charge. Each turret draws a certain amount of power from the capacitor every time it fires with beam weapons depleting the capacitor at the highest rate. If your energy balance is off, your capacitor will not maintain its charge.
Energy balance is maintained by the number of active turrets, power to your shields, number of activated devices and power to your engines. You can balance the power to these systems by deactivating turrets and devices during combat and setting the active power charge to your engines and shields. Reducing power used by your shields, systems, turrets and engines diverts that power to your capacitor.
Each turret has a range meter - keeping your active turrets range meter green is important because turrets have range accuracy falloffs. If you're outside a turrets optimal range, your weapons may not connect. The same goes for enemy ships. Smaller faster vessels with missiles and beam weapons can go up against much larger ships that have weapons with shorter range and less maneuverability by staying outside the range of the larger ship. You will want to optimize your equipment for maximum charge rate, range, strategy and damage.
Turrets target independently so you can have a unique target for each turret. This allows strategies like utilizing certain turret types that do more damage to shields, then switching those turrets to the next ship once the current targets shields are down. An example would be using your ion turrets on enemy shields to deplete them and then kinetic, plasma or explosive weapons once that targets shields are down.
Ship loot drops will be similar to the ground based loot drops with various quality tiers and different stats to choose from. Ships also drop cargo so if you want to be a pirate, or are not aligned with a certain faction, you can harass them as much as you want. There will be missions like the mission system in KZ-MR7 with various objectives that can be taken on stations, from other ships in space or from faction agents. Space combat can be profitable and dangerous. Scanning targets will be important because it may not be immediately obvious just how dangerous a ship or group of ships are.
I'm still working on things - elements of the UI may change and I'm balancing systems so what you see here is work in progress.
If you have any questions about combat or what you see in the video, please do post here or on the forums. I'll be happy to answer them. No ETA on the release of space combat at this time though you can see it's fairly far along. I'll be working on loot, vendors and ship merchants next week which need to be in place before the space combat release. I'm also considering adding a first pass mission system for the release of space combat so you have tasks to complete in Achmedius.
Updated movement system - Patch 0.094
Another update - this time the game movement system has been completely revised. The old system was written a long time ago and I've never been happy with it. I've been tinkering with this new system for a while now and decided to release it.
https://youtu.be/alpPmdKMa_g
The old system had quite a few problems: --The team did not move as a squad and this caused problems when entering combat. Specifically you had to burn a lot of AP to get into position
--Squad facing was not available. You had to use additional AP to rotate them into position after arriving at your destination.
--In single movement mode you could not select another team member and move them while the last character was moving to a position.
--Single movement did not allow you to set a destination facing.
The new system: --You can now move as a squad and arrive at your destination in formation.
--Team members no longer lag behind
--You can set the direction your squad will face when they reach their destination by dragging the mouse while the right mouse button is held down.
--In combat you can now set a facing when moving team members. When they arrive at their destination, they will rotate to face the selected direction set by the movement cursor.
--Team members can move independently when out of combat in single movement mode. You can select a destination for a team member and then select another team member and move them simultaneously.
--Single/Group mode can be toggled using the [SPACE BAR] when out of combat. In combat, the [SPACE BAR] ends the selected team members turn as it always has.
--Movement speed has been improved
--You can zoom out a bit further now
I think overall, this is a much better system and gives you flexibility, alleviating wasted AP when entering combat. I have future plans for additional quality of life improvements like box selection and formations.
A few additional bug fixes: FIXED: A long standing bug where some armor would not display on your team members. Remove the armor and re-equip it to display the correct armor graphic.
FIXED: Phestus could end up in a state where he would not load his inventory when trading with him.
FIXED: Animation transitions into combat and from idle to attack.
I hope you will give the new system a try and post feedback on the forums. Thanks as always for supporting Stellar Tactics!
First Aid and Hacking perks to level 60 - 0.091
A new content patch today with skill perks for First Aid and Hacking to level 60. Included are a few fixes for the game, updates to damage mitigation closely tied to the perk lines and proofread text for the logs. Hope you enjoy the patch.
As always, if you find any issues, please post them on the bug forums: https://steamcommunity.com/app/465490/discussions/7/
ADDED - Perks to level 60 for the First Aid skill line. You can select various perks at any time that give you bonuses to heal. All perks provide a chance to remove effects from yourself and team members. You have a chance to remove bleeding, poison, hobbled, crippled and stun.
ADDED - Perks to level 60 for the Hacking skill line. You can select various perks at any time that give bonuses to the amount of time you get to decode digits, bonuses to the number of looted items and loot quality of the hacked chest or locker, and bonuses for critical bypass of hacking.
ADDED - Added a new ship reset feature in space. If your ship is stuck for some reason, you can now press and hold the F1 key for six seconds to reset your ship to the nearest FTL point. I'll remove this when the FTL points open up in the future. This is a fairly rare occurrence, however, I thought I should add a way to recover if it happens.
UPDATED - Mitigation for status effects for all weapon perk lines adjusted to resist based on cumulative perk selections. In general:
--First, damage is mitigated by your shields for specific damage types as long as your shields are charged and the attack type does not bypass shields. Damage is reduced.
--Second, armor mitigates the remaining damage including additional AC from perks as long as the attack type does not bypass your armor. Damage is reduced.
--Finally weapon perks that provide effect resists stack and provide a chance to bypass secondary effects like stun, hobble, cripple, toxins and bleeding. These resists do not modify damage, so the damage after shields and armor are calculated and still applied. Grenade damage cannot be resisted at this time. The newly added First Aid skill perks allow you to remove secondary effects.
UPDATED: Shaved a few seconds off loading times.
UPDATED: When rolling over portraits in the turn-order bar during combat, the info bar is now displayed at the top center of the screen. This will give you access to combatant status and detrimental effects without needing to rollover combatants.
UPDATED: All log entries proofread.
FIXED - Fixed a typo in tips related to single/crouched which should have been single/grouped.
FIXED - Fixed signs on crew deck which should have been "Cryo" not "Crio"
FIXED - Gas grenades now reset the DOT timer if combatants are in the area of effect. If you have been cured of toxins, or the DOT effect timer runs out and a combatant is still in the area of effect, your timer will be reset and you will continue to take damage.
FIXED - Grenade explosion material blending.
FIXED - Duplicate combatant selection cursors.
FIXED - Saved shadow settings are now set correctly when loading a game.
REMOVED - Removed screen lock for dual monitors. It was causing problems in cases where multiple monitors were running different resolutions. I'll look into a permanent solution in the future. For now, there are third party applications (some free) that you can download that solve the problem.
Dauntless Remastered update - 0.090
I'm happy to release the Dauntless Remastered update. The Dauntless has been revised significantly. The story remains the same.
The entire start of the game uses new level art.
The Captains Quarters has been merged into the Crew Deck.
The distance you need to travel for various missions has been reduced.
The last boss fight is a bit easier.
Mission objects in the game environment have been scaled up in size so they are easily seen and interacted with.
The Dauntless is brighter overall. If it's still too dark for you, however, there is a new Gamma slider in the options menu that will allow you set the games brightness to your liking.
All dialog, mission text and log's have been professionally proofread for errors.
Several of the longer conversations now have shorter dialog options available.
Better direction has been provided in the log for several of the missions.
Many screens have been increased in size so their font's are more visible making reading easier on the eyes. I'll be addressing the space UI's when I work on space combat.
Overall the Dauntless is now in line with the rest of the game. These changes were all inspired by feedback from the community. I felt it was important to make the experience of the first hour or so as fun, intuitive and trouble free as possible.
IMPORTANT: If you have a save on the old Dauntless, that save game is no longer valid. If you are currently playing on the Dauntless, you must start a new game. Game's saved on the old Dauntless will now appear on the load screen as "SAVE INVALID - OLD DAUNTLESS!" and you will not be able to load the save game. You can delete these saves. Saves after the Dauntless are unaffected.
I'm hoping you will all give the new Dauntless a try and post feedback on the forums. I'm eager to hear what you think. Lots of content, bug fixes and community suggested enhancements have been added since the game released on Early Access.
Here are the notes:
When starting a new game you now have three options to choose from.
Tutorials have all been re-written and proofread. There is now a separate tutorial window with text and video that can be accessed from the help screen [H]. The tutorial window will pop up at various locations as you progress through the Dauntless. Tutorial pop-ups can be disabled in the Options->General menu.
General updates and bug fixes:
ADDED - Added a gamma slider to the video options menu. You can now set the level of brightness to your personal preference
ADDED - Added a movement icon to the team portraits on the explore UI
UPDATED - Dialog, mission text, perks, tutorial text and hints-tips have all been professionally proofread
UPDATED - You can now start the game with SMG's if you apply points in SMG as the starting skill for any team member
UPDATED - Increased the amount of default ammo that you start with on the Dauntless
UPDATED - Final battle on Dauntless made a little less difficult
UPDATED - Increased size of dialog UI so text is easier to read
UPDATED - Rollover info moved to a fixed position in the upper right corner so it does not obscure icons.
UPDATED - Rollover info scaled up so text is easier to read
UPDATED - Character info UI scaled up so text is easier to read. This includes all tabs for Inventory, Character Info, Log and Ship
UPDATED - Combat cursor body-part and chance to hit indicators have been made larger/more visible
UPDATED - All character materials adjusted to be brighter
UPDATED - Small objects like door locks and mission items have been made larger. They can be made brighter when you hold the CTRL key and by turning off subtle object highlights in the video options menu.
FIXED - Grenade projector issues resolved on several of the facility locations
FIXED - Rare lockup during fight with Dr. Rhamus on bridge
FIXED - Missile launcher explosion light fade
FIXED - Enemies with rocket launchers now correctly swap weapons if at close range
FIXED - Enemies with rocket launchers no longer try to fire a missile after swapping weapons to their sidearm
FIXED - Lockup related to enemies with rocket launchers swapping to SMG side-arms
FIXED - Major re-write of the combat initialization code
FIXED - Green keycard bug - should be gone - let me know if you see it again
As always, if bugs are found I'll address them quickly. A huge thanks to all of you for your feedback and support!!
