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[MShadowy]

Wellp, not much to be said, sorry about the slowness.  A release candidate for 5.2.5 should be coming out over the weekend and is currently ~95% done.

Upcoming changelog should read as follows:

0.5.2.5 Prerelease Changelog:

Spoiler

• General improvments to feel and effects the Nidhoggr Lance, the Mimir's built in heavy weapon:
  • Made the weapon significantly more a gamble to fire - damage and flux use doubled.  Bigger payout, bigger risk.
  • Made the projectile for the Niddhoggr Lance significantly more bling (thanks to Tartiflette)
  • Improved sounds for the Nidhoggr Lance firing sequence (thanks to Cycerin and Foxer)
  • Weapon now has a charge and firing animation (many thanks to Tartiflette)
• Changes to CEPC line of weapons:
  • Shots fired should look significantly better now.
  • Improved sounds across the board. (Thanks to HELMUT poking me and myself figuring out how to make better use of EQ)
  • Light CEPC changes:
    • Damage/shot reduced to 20 (from 25); Energy/shot reduced to 30 (from 40).
    • Ammo received in 5 shot magazines (2 seconds/mag); charge reserves increased to 60 (from 40).
  • "Chaingang" changes as above except recharge rate reduced to 3.75 shots/second (from 5 shots/second), with 20 round magazines (5.3 seconds/mag).
  • Standard CEPCs recharge rate down to 1.35 shot/second (from 2 shots/second) recieved in 3 shot magazines (2.2 seconds/mag); charge reserves increased to 30 (from 12).
  • Medium CEPC recharge rate down to 0.85 shots/second (from 1.5 shots/second) received in 2 shot magazines (2.4 seconds/mag); charge reserves increased to 20 (from 14).
  • The Scatter CEPC is now significantly more burst focused, making use of the "clip" mechanic to throttle its DPS.
    • Fire rate massively increased -- 0.6 second turnaround (0.2 second up, 0.4 second down).
    • Ammo recharge rate down to 2 shots/second (from 4 shots/second) recieved in 20 round magazines (10 seconds/mag).
    • Damage/shot reduced to 40 (from 45); Energy/shot reduced to 1200 (from 1500).
• Fixed sound implementation for Deva and Murti CAS beams so that the charge up sound plays, and reauthored sounds for both weapons to give them more zazz.
• Murti CAS Beam - increased range to 650 (from 500)
• Deva CAS Beam - increased range to 750 (from 700)
• (maybe) generally decrease flux cost of weapons, reduce SRA ship flux dissipation (probably by ~20%)
• Mimir -- changes to logistics and system:
  • CR% to deploy to 25 (from 23).
  • Changed the Heavy Skimmer system to the (provisionally named) Lock Drive system; the system will send the ship haring off along it's current vector, as well as reducing all damage by 50%, while locking weapons and shields off.  Lasts 3 seconds.
• Charybdis CR% to deploy to 20 (from 18).
• Scylla and Shamash -- added High Maintenace hullmod.
• Southpaw -- generally made it more killy but also more vulnerable to flux issues:
  • Flux capacity increased to 3000 (from 1900).
  • Shield damage multiplier increased to 1.15 (from 0.8 )
• Thresher -- as above, more killy but vulnerable to overloading:
  • Flux capacity increased to 11000 (from 7500).
  • Shield damage multiplier increased to 1.3 (from 1.1)
• Skinwalker -- slight tweaks.
  • Traversal on it's forward gun has been increased to 45o (from 25o).
  • The bit drones have similarly had their traversal increased to 45o (from nothing whatsoever).
• Raksasha -- split the double Tusk rack into a pair of single Tusks in order to let them fire their ordnance more quickly.
• Made Tusk Torpedo sprite more readable.
• Updated and fixed ship variant OP usage.
• Adjustments and replacements to ring systems in Anar and Gigas.

[close]

Thank you for your patience and sorry about the substantial delay for this release.

[MShadowy]

Dev download ready; changelog above still mostly accurate, save for a couple additions: Nexerelin is now properly supported, and a hidden pirate base has slipped into Anar to give all you bounty hunters sommat to shoot at while in system.  Additionalkly flux costs for weapons have been reduced to an ~1.1 flux/damage ratio, and most ships have had their flux venting reduced by ~10%.

=dev download=

[Harmful Mechanic]

Feedback:

- The Mimir's Lock Drive is interesting, sort of a midpoint between a Phase Skimmer and Burn Drive. I tend to short-jump it with carefully-timed venting rather than waiting for it to run out - a lot like Burn Drive.

I've had a couple of errors where the game crashes out when (I assume) an AI Mimir tries to use the Lock Drive in the main menu. Not sure what's going on there.

- Nidhoggr Lance feels great. Animation is gorgeous, Energy damage makes it vastly more effective. The anamorphic FX on it is kind of odd, though, especially the black ends when you fire it over a nebula. Makes fighting an Onslaught much more interesting, more of a fun gamble and less like rolling the dice to see if you time your shot right. Thus far the best tactic seems to be ripping off a Nidhoggr shot fast while your flux is low, at extreme range or right after venting.
- New CEPCs are great. Sounds (the warm wubbiness of the Light CEPCs especially), projectile, all of it. Magazine reloading makes them much easier to use and time. Medium CEPC's muzzle flash feels off to me - maybe thinner, longer, and less persistent?
- The three-round burst from the Shrike and Blackcap medium mounts is a little weird visually. Upping them to four and increasing the cooldown slightly doesn't seem to affect balance too badly, but it's just me being anal, not a real problem.
- The medium Splinter mount is damn hard to hit a moving target with. I tweaked my copy to fire in a spread pattern, like the small version. I can share if it would save you time.
- New Tusk sprite is gorgeous. Played around with a Narwhal/Railgun Enlil build.

[MShadowy]

Thank ye.  I've been playing around a bit with the lock drives timing but that's definitely some interesting feedback to hear.  Glad you seem to approve.  As for the crash issue and such, Meso also pointed out the bug and with the information provided I believe I've got enough information to resolve it in short order.  Also Tartiflette and I brainstormed a visual effect for the system last night so hopefully that will all be in place soon as well.

I'm glad the changes to lance feel good, making it more a fun gamble was exactly what I was hoping for, so it's good to hear that.  As for the anamorphic flare well... that's just me being a derp and forgetting to set the render type to additive.

Overall I'm quite pleased that everything seems to have gone over so well.  Thank you very much for the commentary.  Also, guess I'd better play with the medium splinter launcher and MCEPC a bit, eh?

Well, that being said there should be an incremental upgrade to the dev release later today.

Cheers!

[MShadowy]

Alright, some iterative work on the dev.  The Lock Drives active time has been reduced to 1.5 seconds (I'll probably be shifting this value around a bit more) and cooldown increased to 15.  I've also set the anamorphic flare for the lance projectile to additive blending so it should be less visually noxious.  Audio for the Deva and Murti has been reduced in volume and so should be less obnoxious; additionally their USE_VS_FrRIGATES tag has been removed, at least momentarily, since the computer had trouble using them against small craft.

I've also completely replaced the old random mission setup with a more modern version (with MesoTronic's blessing), so it should now work without issue.  There are a number of tweaks and fixes/attempted fixes beyond this, in particular an experimental revision of the Nidhoggr Lance to hopefully cause it to stop hitting missiles.

Most of the other work done today was set up for the Lock Drives visual effect, which should hopefully be up soon.

=download dev 0.5.2.5rc2=

Edit: While it's commented out, the Mimirs ship system does have a custom AI attached to it.  Why is commented out?

Spoiler

[close]

[MShadowy]

Final dev release; all functional parts of the mod are now working correctly (including the Lock Drive AI), all that remains are the graphical effects for said ship system; it might be a bit.

=download dev 0.5.2.5rc3=

[MShadowy]

Shadowyards 0.5.2.5 is ready for release.

0.5.2.5 Changelog:

Spoiler

• General improvments to feel and effects the Nidhoggr Lance, the Mimir's built in heavy weapon:
  • Made the weapon significantly more a gamble to fire - damage and flux use doubled.  Bigger payout, bigger risk.
  • Made the projectile for the Niddhoggr Lance significantly more bling (thanks to Tartiflette)
  • Improved sounds for the Nidhoggr Lance firing sequence (thanks to Cycerin and Foxer)
  • Weapon now has a charge and firing animation (many thanks to Tartiflette)
  • Fixed a longstanding error in which the Lance projectile would veer off course.
• Changes to CEPC line of weapons:
  • Shots fired should look significantly better now.
  • Improved sounds across the board. (Thanks to HELMUT poking me and myself figuring out how to make better use of EQ)
  • Light CEPC changes:
    • Damage/shot reduced to 20 (from 25).
    • Ammo received in 5 shot magazines (2 seconds/mag).
  • "Chaingang" changes as above except recharge rate reduced to 3.75 shots/second (from 5 shots/second), with 20 round magazines (5.3 seconds/mag).
  • Standard CEPCs recharge rate down to 1.35 shot/second (from 2 shots/second) recieved in 3 shot magazines (2.2 seconds/mag); charge reserves increased to 30 (from 12).
  • Medium CEPC recharge rate down to 0.85 shots/second (from 1.5 shots/second) received in 2 shot magazines (2.4 seconds/mag); charge reserves increased to 20 (from 14).
  • The Scatter CEPC is now significantly more burst focused, making use of the "clip" mechanic to throttle its DPS.
    • Fire rate massively increased -- 0.6 second turnaround (0.2 second up, 0.4 second down).
    • Ammo recharge rate down to 2 shots/second (from 4 shots/second) recieved in 20 round magazines (10 seconds/mag).
    • Damage/shot reduced to 40 (from 45).
• Fixed sound implementation for Deva and Murti CAS beams so that the charge up sound plays, and reauthored sounds for both weapons to give them more zazz.
• Murti CAS Beam - increased range to 650 (from 500)
• Deva CAS Beam - increased range to 750 (from 700)
• Reduced the flux/damage ratios of all weapons to approximately 1.1 to 1.
• Mimir -- changes to logistics and system:
  • CR% to deploy to 25 (from 18).
  • Changed the Heavy Skimmer system to the Lock Drive system; the system will send the ship haring off along it's current vector, as well as reducing all damage by 50%, while locking weapons and shields off.  Lasts ~2 seconds; has a 15 second cooldown.
• Charybdis CR% to deploy to 20 (from 18).
• Scylla and Shamash -- added High Maintenace hullmod.
• Southpaw -- generally made it more killy but also more vulnerable to flux issues:
  • Flux capacity increased to 3000 (from 1900).
  • Shield damage multiplier increased to 1.15 (from 0.8 )
• Thresher -- as above, more killy but vulnerable to overloading:
  • Flux capacity increased to 11000 (from 7500).
  • Shield damage multiplier increased to 1.3 (from 1.1)
• Skinwalker -- slight tweaks.
  • Traversal on it's forward gun has been increased to 45° (from 25°).
  • The bit drones have similarly had their traversal increased to 45° (from nothing whatsoever).
• Raksasha -- split the double Tusk rack into a pair of single Tusks in order to let them fire their ordnance more quickly.
• Made Tusk Torpedo sprite more readable.
• Updated and fixed ship variant OP usage.
• Adjustments and replacements to ring systems in Anar and Gigas.
• Added a secret pirate base, Berins Stash, to the outer reaches of the Anar system.
• Corvus Mode support for Nexerelin added.
• Fixed a number of typoes and removed all archaic references to the SRA's previous moniker from the descriptions.

[close]

=download Shadowyards 0.5.2.5=

This took an absurd amount of time, largely due to my procrastinating excessively.  Sorry.

Still, with this out of the way, I can focus on the next release; I hope to add a Destroyer (the clade) and the Norn (a capital sized freighter with a lot of variants).  Additionally I expect to add between three and five weapons for the next release, and add additional polish where needed.  In particular, while it's been partially addressed with this release, Shadowyards is still relatively lacking on the sound front, which is a shortcoming I would like to fix.

This will most likely be the final 0.5.x release.

Well, this finally finished processing; has some audio problems though.

[Histidine]

I've noticed the submunitions of Tusk torpedoes (fired from Narwhals) deciding to go after random nearby enemies instead of the original target, is this intended?

[MShadowy]

That's... curious.  And no it is not.  It must be a bug with the default missile AI, so it sounds like a custom missile AI might need to be added for the bomblets.

[pyg]

Just started .5.2.5 w/SS+ and misc.  Like/love all the changes.  Haven't got my hands on a Lock Drive Mimir yet but the video looked good... also mostly I think Mimir needs nerf not help as it's my favorite capital by far.  Also like the changes to CEPCs.  Rakshasa is still best bomber in the game with Dagger in second.  As others have mentioned Splinters still suck but that's fine really.  Anyway, still one of my favorite mods and thanks for continuing to improve it.

[FasterThanSleepyfish]

Shenanigans with the Mimir's (in)famous Lock Drive! Just a snippet from my latest streak of streaming SS.

Spoiler

[close]

[Midnight Kitsune]

Well that vid does it, I'm gonna DL SRA (And hope SS doesn't crash hard...)

[Adraius]

Request: I love my Elysium, it brings cruiser-level survivability to my destroyer charge, and the AI handles it surprisingly well, given it's unorthodox design.  That is, with the exception of one element: the REIS.  The AI pilots the Elysium by bringing the right broadside to bear at an angle, then periodically rotating back to bring the Pandora Array to bear.  The Elysium also takes this opportunity to fire off the REIS - but due to a slight chargeup time (or some other effect?), it almost always fires after it has rotated halfway back, causing the REIS to miss.  Could the chargeup be eliminated? (or could it be allowed to fire within an arc like a turret?) Additionally, the AI doesn't consider friendly fire targets when using the REIS - I've had it fire directly through me to hit a target.  Could friendly fire consideration be added, or if impossible, could it only effect enemies?  Thanks - I'm loving the mod!

[MShadowy]

Alright, got a new dev version up.  Not 0.6 quite yet though, about... halfway done with the new content, though it's still unrefined.

=dev download=

Added in this version are the Clade-class Heavy Destroyer, the Trishula Tactical Laser, and the Barrago-type LRM.

[Toxcity]

Man you must have been working 24/7 on this. Trying it out now.