Well, it appears most of the bugs are (probably) out of the Crew system. About the only major thing I want to do before release, other than finish the first-pass stuff on the lights / shader toys is to work on the balance of a Neutron Nullifier- a straight counter vs. Neutron stuff, since it's the Achilles Heel of a bunch of the Factions.
Now that Armor Regeneration feels roughly balanced, I think it's appropriate to stick that in, as it's kind of a cheap kill on Stations and a few of the capital / cruiser ships. It'll probably be expensive enough that it caps an Armor Regeneration build sans shields, but you won't be able to do both shield-tank and armor tank... but you'll get your Flux back. Gotta think about that, but I think this is a better way to go than just straight nerfing the Neutrons; they should be something you have to counter but at a cost you're going to have to think twice about, imo.
Did some playtesting tonight, mainly just seeing the pretty lights and the performance (it's up again, rarely went below 30 FPS on my hardware).
Tried pulling a Glaug Station with a Black Eagle and a few Cruisers and a carrier. Uh, no. Just no.
It went fine at first... I blew away a few Stations, the fighters did their thing, all was well. Then the Annihilators showed up and we just died, horribly screaming (well, OK, not horribly screaming, because I haven't put radio chatter in yet, but whatever).
This is how scary I always wanted the Glaug to be; they're great when they have enough buffs.
However, I need to fix them up in Tech-Mining encounters; I'm not sure what's wrong but it's probably a goofy Faction file.
They need a carrier in the midrange size to meet in Asteroid / Tech Miner fleets, too; they get pwnd far more easily than they really should; that, and the Haunter, which has always sucked, still sucks, instead of being at least plausibly dangerous.
They're pretty much a cakewalk until the very end, unfortunately, when suddenly they're very scary and I desperately want a capital ship or three, because Cruisers just don't cut it.
That, and they need custom Stations, but that's going to have to wait for more free time than I have this week.
Oh, and... anybody play with the Repair Frigate yet? I am seriously thinking that I will let them repair Armor, too; that would make them end-game items you'll really want to have, to re-heal damaged Neutronium Plating, even to the point of farming Hegemony fleets to get them... well, until I give them to more than one faction, anyhow. The AI doesn't use them terribly well, of course.
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Topic: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 34) (TC Mod) (Read 420574 times)