Well, I’m back at it after the holidays. Hope you have all had a great start to your New Year.
First – load times between levels have improved in all areas – about double what they were before on average. Areas like the trade station have improved but need more work. Load times are of course dependent on your system specs. I still have work to do in this area including loading from saves and a few other optimizations.
I’ve added new border highlights throughout the game for objects in the world environment.
I’ve consolidated a lot of the game data so patch sizes can be much smaller going forward.
Here are the notes:
FIXED – You can no longer equip a heavy turret to a light turret slot. If you currently have a heavy turret equipped to a light turret slot, you will only be able to equip a light turret to that slot going forward.
FIXED: Typo on new game creation screen.
FIXED: A crash when creating a new game – caused when clicking or dragging the mouse while the starting in-game cinematic was loading.
FIXED: Universe generation random seed can no longer exceed 8 digits in the entry field.
FIXED: When exiting video tutorials from the help menu, the game is no longer left in a paused state.
FIXED: Heavy turrets and missiles can no longer be placed in light turret slots. If you have a ship where you have equipped a heavy turret in a light turret mount point, it will still be there, however, you will only be able to equip a light turret there going forward.
FIXED: Hacking exploit fixed.
FIXED: Speak to Scarby mission now completes and is removed when speaking with Scarby.
FIXED: Travel to Achmedius Trade Port mission now completes. Just head towards the Cantina area on the trade port to auto-complete the mission.
FIXED: Capped afterburner speed while in combat so ships equipped with high quality warp drives cannot exceed the speed of combat projectiles.
FIXED: If a team member is blocked when walking towards or trying to use a object, they will no longer stop and then perform the action on next move or action.
FIXED: When entering a gravity well from micro-warp, occasionally you would lose keyboard control for thrust and rotatation – you would need to click in space to restore keyboard control of your ship.
UPDATED: The Pharris Mace AK-7 is now available on the ship merchant.
UPDATED: Updated the way characters interact with objects in the environment so animations do not delay interaction and block clicks.
UPDATED: Ship missile speed increased
UPDATED: The game now uses border highlights for interactive objects in world exploration mode. Old highlighting methods have been removed.
UPDATED: Ranged weapons (Pistols, SMG’s and Rifles) that drop from enemies or purchased from vendors have had their maximum ammo capacity increased. This change is not retroactive and does not affect equipment you currently have in your inventory.
UPDATED: Nano’s can now be equipped to all weapon types. There are a total of three ranged and three melee specific mods. Nano’s are now global.
UPDATED: Tutorial videos are now higher resolution – some will be revised in future updates.
A note about sidearm range. The average range of sidarms was doubled in the last patch (Space Combat Patch). This bonus is applied when starting a new game to all starter weapons and to any new weapons you find. The change is not retroactive – so sidearms looted before the space combat patch still have the lower range – I won’t be modifying them. Any loot drops or weapons found on merchants going forward will have the new range adjustments applied to them.
This patch adjusts maximum ammo up for rifles and sidearms. This can of course be adjusted by applying mods to higher quality items.
In Stellar Tactics, your ranged weapons have a falloff factor to chance to hit (accuracy) and bonuses applied based on your skill, stats and other factors with that weapon class. Here is how CTH and range penalties are calculated:
1) Your base CTH is calculated based on the weapons maximum range and the range to your target – a range penalty
2) A crouch bonus is calculated if you are crouched
3) A weapon skill bonus is calculated and applied. The higher your skill the more accuracy bonus is applied to the weapon. When you start the game, you have only a few points of skill in whatever your weapon choice was when you created your character. As you increase in skill, you will noticed that your CTH goes up – at higher levels you will rarely miss.
4) A STAT bonus is calculated (PER, DEX etc)
5) A weapon tier bonus is calculated ( Basic, Exceptional, Rare etc)
6) A weapon wear panalty is calculated (this is disabled for now until crafting and repair go in the game)
7) Your adjusted BASE CTH is calculated based on the information above.
8) A penalty for Burst and Full-Auto fire modes are applied if applicable (these will be adjusted when I work on the ground combat system)
9) A body target penalty is applied to the CTH calculation – smaller body parts are harder to hit – like a head shots.
10) And finally an equipped mod bonus is applied to the calculation if applicable
11) Some weapons recieve a CTH bonus factored by range applied to the final calculation.
As I mentioned, sidearms have seen a bit of attention doubling their range. I am listening to the feedback your are posting and I’ll start working on a good number of changes and additions to the combat system starting next week. These include the addition of a few new options in combat, adjustments to the movement and blocking system, burst and full-auto damage and effects and the removal of a number of general gameplay annoyances that are on my list to fix. I’ll keep you all posted as I make progress on this.
Thank you all for the feedback.