Projectile graphics now rendered at correct aspect ratio based on the width of the trail, regardless of its length
So, if a shell bitmap's 8 pixels wide and 24 long, we define the trail at 8 pixels and it'll render correctly, yes, and if we make the width of the trail 16, it'll double the size of the bitmap by making the quad bigger, yes?
Yep, barring any bugs.
@naufrago: Some of this is actually improved (in particular, re: high tech lowering shields too aggressively), but I don't think I wrote the changes down. I'm aware of these general issues - I'll probably take a look at one point or another, but at this point, it just makes more sense to spend time on campaign features, unless a particular AI behavior is a serious problem. It's never going to be
perfect, there'll always be incremental improvements to make. I still want to hear about it when it does something undesirable, though
- Varying degrees of independence (bombers - none ("stay on target!"), interceptors - lots)
- Will target and individually avoid incoming missiles
Does that mean less fighters flying into a wave of bombs from Piranhas?
There'll be a lot less of it, and they won't be quite so oblivious about it.
Alex, what about giving HP to heavy projectiles and adding pierceSet to them in order to make railgun type weapons in 0.54?
Yeah, I remember from last time we talked about it. And from that time it came up in the suggestions section
It's not high on the priority list, but if I get some time, this may be one of the things I'll look at. There are lots of nice-to-haves, though.
Alex, this is all really great, but could you please, please change "Ordnance Expert" to "Ordnance Expertise" ? It kills me to have one skill fall out of (grammatical) alignment 
Erm, "Gunnery Implants" and "Computer Systems" aren't aligned either. I'll give the naming a bit more thought, though.
Will the enemy fleets also be using the skills and perks? If not, that would be a sizable advantage to the player.
Eventually, yes. For the next release, probably no. The way it's coded is specifically designed so that it can apply to any fleet/ship, though, not just the player's.
First time i read about synergies my though was: 'oh man, that`s going to be too complex'. Then i read about synergy chains and just imagined how difficult it would be to plan ahead what your char is going to be with all those interlinks.
A simple aptitudes and skills tree with soft cap and some additional skills that branch off from the main ones is a much better system. While i like complexity and usually criticise modern games that run towards casualness - SF is going to be deep, complex and enjoyable on itself without synergies.
Yeah, it was just too involved. I'm not crazy about skill
trees, though. They end up forcing a bunch of picks on the player... I'm sure you could get them "right" but it seems difficult.
I'm honestly just glad I won't have to use the word Synergies after this moment
New mechanic: "core competencies".
(Just in case it's not abundantly clear to everyone: I'm joking.)
