Version 0.3 now available.
Fixes:
1. Various small goofs in some of the ship designs.
Adds:
1. A new system for fleet generation and deployment. The different factions will deploy their fleets in a more tactical and focused way. This is a placeholder for the battle system, but it changes the feel a lot; the Hegemony, for example, dispatches "expedition fleets" that attempt to clear the Corvus system of enemies.
2. A lot of polish to the balance ramp, with more small fleets to fight during the early stages of play, medium fleets and so forth.
3. The diplomatic-relations code now penalizes players for turning on a faction they've become friendly with.
Balance Changes:
1. The Phaeton's been buffed to be more like the larger version of the Dram it was supposed to be; tougher, better-armed and with a pretty decent potential DPS.
2. Various buffs and nerfs to ships.
3. Cleaned up some weapon graphics and other things.
I think that these changes have greatly enhanced the campaign experience; early play's still brutal but it's doable, no matter which choices you make at the start of play.
Anyhow, I think the next release is going be a pretty big code project; I'd like to get the procedural-battlefield stuff done and maybe get the war system built so that dynamic campaigns become possible. I think balance is looking fairly good at this point; although it's arguable that a few of the starter ships just aren't quite competitive enough yet, I've been able to get through early play with all of them with a little patience.
Feedback about what works, what's fun and what still sucks would be much appreciated, especially if I've left any really easy ways to build a Glaug-killin' fleet
Alex apparently will be fixing one of the other biggies I want to use, custom damage and FX systems, but that has to wait until the bugfix release of 0.54, so I'll have to wait before doing more experimental stuff.