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[Alex]

This version is out and can be downloaded here.

Here's the list of changes made in the dev version since the 0.5a release. It's probably missing a few small things here and there that I didn't write down.

Changes as of 3/7/2012

Not save-compatible

Content:

• Added two new orbital stations: "Hidden Pirate Base" and "Tri-Tachyon Corporate HQ"
• Added Tri-Tachyon and Pirate convoys
• Changed available inventory on all three stations
• Added another type of pirate fleet (small-medium sized), made pirate scouts a lot more rare
• All hulls that can be bought now come with no weapons

Modding:

• Some mods may be broken - a few scripts moved from data.scripts.world to data.scripts.world.corvus, so any dependencies on those need to be updated
  • Going forward, it's not a good idea for mods to depend on scripts from the base game. They're not part of the API, and can/will change very frequently between releases. It's better for mod code to be independent of those - for example, make a copy of BaseSpawnPoint.java, if your mod depends on it, and put your copy into another directory (say, data.scripts.world.<your mod name>).
• JSON files are now merged recursively (possible to add, say, a portrait to a faction, a new fleet type, or a new starting ship - without conflicting with other mods that do the same)
• Multiple weapons can now share the same projectile spec without having to have the same damage/range/projectile speed stats
• Added empty hull variants (auto-generated on startup). Id is <hull id>_Hull - for example, wolf_Hull or onslaught_Hull

Ship AI:

• Ships with front shields more careful about incoming missiles
• Improved bomber attack run aiming
• Fighter wings will go to repair & refit earlier

Hull mods:

• Augmented Engines: 25% flux dissipation penalty
• Integrated Targeting Unit: reduced cost, range bonus is 10/20/35/50%, depending on hull size
• Advanced Optics: also reduces turret turn rate by 50%
• Insulated Engine Assembly: also increases hull integrity by 10%
• Armored Weapon Emplacements: also increases ship's armor rating by 10%
• Resistant Flux Condutis: also increases flux dissipation by 10%

Miscellaneous

• Refit screen:
  • Increased max zoom level for smaller ships
  • Added tooltip on mouseover for mounted weapons
  • Added text indicating slot type and size for empty slots
• Increased the Hammerhead's armor a bit
• Reduced the difficulty of "Turning the Tables" to account for AI changes
• Can now export multiple variants of the same hull (in the refit screen)
• When buying/selling items, you can just drop the stack in the station's inventory without having to find an empty slot
• The losing fleet gets a temporary speed bonus on the campaign map, and the winning fleet gets a slight penalty
• Changed some stock variants to use new weapons and to take better advantage of hull mod changes
• Can now lay in a course by clicking an entity (or location) on the map
• Added fleet list (with tooltips) to the trade screen, so you can see what types and quantities of weapons are need
• Added weapon slot types and numbers to ship tooltips
• Improved performance of weapon arc rendering (mostly showed up as a frame rate drop for groups with multiple Tachyon Lances)
• Fleets can now deploy reserves when the enemy controls all objectives
• Ships that surrender have at least a 50% chance to sabotage their weapons
• Ships that surrender because they didn't have enough crew to be combat-ready have a 50% chance of being sabotaged (disabled) by their crew before capture
• Case where either of the fleets doesn't have enough crew to deploy any ships is now handled
• Changed how crew assignment works - a ship only needs a portion of its crew to be experienced, to reflect the relative importance of elite personnel in key positions. The rest of the crew is filled with the least experienced crew available. The percentages of experienced crew needed are as follows:
  • Fighters: 100% (Broadsword Wing: 5)
  • Frigates: 100% (Wolf: 15)
  • Destroyers: 50% (Hammerhead: 25)
  • Cruisers: 30% (Dominator: 60)
  • Capital ships: 20% (Onslaught: 100)
• You can now designate which ship you want to be your flagship on the Fleet tab, instead of it always being the first ship

Changes as of 2/29/2012

Balance changes:

• Fighters
  • Talon - increased armor
  • Dagger - increased armor, hitpoints, and top speed. Armor and hitpoints are still very low.
• Frigates
  • Wolf - reduced top speed
  • Hound - increased top speed and armor, increased turret arc to offer much more coverage
  • Lasher - increased armor, reduced top speed
  • Brawler - increased armor
  • Vigilance - reduced top speed
  • Tempest - reduced top speed (equal to Hound's)
• Destroyers
  • Medusa - reduced top speed (still fastest destroyer)
  • Enforcer - increased armor and top speed, extended coverage of side turrets
• Cruisers
  • Falcon - increased top speed
  • Eagle - increased top speed
  • Dominator - increased top speed (very slightly)
• Capital Ships
  • All capital ships - increased top speed

• Weapons
  • Assault Chaingun, Heavy Mauler, Hellbore Cannon, Hephaestus Assault Gun, Mjolnir Cannon - increased range

Modding-related:

• Certain settings can no longer be changed by mods (see data/config/settings.json for details). "devMode" is the main one here.
• Made "PD" flag work for missiles
• Fixed "getEntityByName" function

Command system:

• Added "Recon" task for scouting a waypoint (sends a nearby fast ship)
• Added "Engage" assignment that functions like "Assault" but against an enemy ship destroyer-sized or larger
• Removed "Harass" as a valid assignment from enemy fighters or frigates - functionally too similar to "Intercept"
• Added "Full Escort" task that assigns several ships/wings (2-3) to escort duty
• Ships carrying out escort duty will try to stay close to the ship being escorted
• Ships carrying out escort duty will position themselves to intercept incoming missiles and fighters
• Only ships close to the speed of the target will be assigned to escort duty, to ensure they can keep up

Improvements to admiral AI:

• Won't keep carriers/fire support ships in the back when the relative fleets are small
• Won't order a full retreat so easily
• Will use the new Escort assignments

Ship AI improvements:

• Fixed bug that was causing most ships to think it was a good idea to circle the target in close quarters instead of engaging head on
• Will use shields to protect against collisions
• Made heavily damaged ships avoid asteroids they otherwise would not try to avoid
• Increased wariness of interceptors faced with PD weapons
• More careful about not colliding with ships it's attacking
• More careful about getting close to ships that are very powerful
• Ships with front shields are more careful about exposing their sides to enemy fire
• Carriers and civilian ships are better about keeping away from combat ships
• Ships now properly treat other ships about to explode as a threat
• Improved omnidirectional shield AI
• More prone to using limited-ammo missiles vs frigates (to reflect the missiles' improved tracking AI)
• AI better about spreading ships out
• Improved flanking logic (better about picking which direction to flank in)

Miscellaneous:

• Ships lose most of their weapons when repaired and/or boarded. Surrendered ships lose weapons based on how damaged they were. The goal here is to make weapon drops more meaningful and create a stronger connection with your ships.
• Removed the effect of personalities on the captain's preference for certain tasks, for now - results were too unpredictable without feedback as to what's happening and why. Captain personality still affects small-scale tactical behavior.
• Storm Needler now uses new rotating barrels graphics
• Added new medium missile weapons - Sabot SRM Pod, Harpoon MRM Pod, Salamander MRM Pod, and Annihilator Rocket Pod.
• Ships that you don't have enough crew to deploy are skipped when assigning crew so that they don't take up crew needlessly
• Repair rate no longer depends on how much crew you have on a given ship (still depends on total, fleet-wide crew amount)
• Adjusted combat map size (generally a bit smaller), removed battles with only 3 objectives - it's now 2, 4, or 5
• Changed retreat and surrender mechanics
  • Retreating ships have a chance to surrender based on how damaged their hull is
  • The chance is always lower than the chance to repair a disabled ship - letting a ship retreat never gives better odds
  • Retreating ships take some extra damage, unless the fleet had the "Escape" tactical goal
  • Ships left in reserve are treated as retreating, unless the tactical goal is "Escape", in which case they're all automatically captured
    • This means that any ships without enough crew to deploy can never escape and will always be captured
• Added fast-forward button (speeds up the campaign game 2x, bound to Shift by default)
• Changed travel speed to be the lower of "slowest ship's speed" and "average minus fleet size penalty"
• Changed travel speed to be tiered, to avoid protracted chases where one side is just slightly faster than the other
• Made retreat chances in autoresolve battles depend on the speed of the enemy ships

Bug fixes:

• Fixed issue w/ UTF-8 characters and save games not working
• Fixed bug that allowed the duplication of any type of cargo in the trade screen
• Fixed bug where your inventory would sometimes not scroll in the trade dialog
• Fixed crash bug for non-English locales
• Fixed bug where hitting "reset" on the ship trade screen would sometimes leave copies of ships behind
• Fixed bug where all crew in a disabled ship would survive to resist boarding attempts
• Fixed bug in ship tooltip showing fleet points instead of ordnance points
• Fixed crash when selecting "scuttle" and then clicking on an empty grid cell.
• Fixed bug where drones do not get repaired due to having no crew
• Fixed bug where picking "Escape" vs "Defend" would not let your fleet disengage
• Fixed "more info" crash when a ship had some empty slots that were nonetheless assigned to groups
• Fixed bug that caused StarSystemAPI.getEntityByName to not work
• Fixed various ship variant/hull inconsistencies (small missile slot on Condor, etc)

[Uomoz]

Love the fix and changes especially:

Tempest Nerf
Medusa Nerf
AC and other increased range
getentitybyname fix *_*
the 3 new commands *_*
surrender mechanics
map travel speed fixes

[Patchumz]

Exciting!

[Paul]

Looking good. A lot of nice changes.

What about the inability to call reinforcements if all objectives are captured? Is that still in, or are you changing it too? Curious, since it would affect how these parts work out:

?Retreating ships take some extra damage, unless the fleet had the "Escape" tactical goal
?Ships left in reserve are treated as retreating, unless the tactical goal is "Escape", in which case they're all automatically captured

If it's still in, might be able to beat up enemy capital ships simply by quickly taking all the objectives so they're stuck in reserve and take damage, or capture them if they're trying to get away and you grab all the objectives.

[icepick37]

Whoooooo hound buff. 

[bubbadean]

Awesome. Excited about the new commands. Keep up the good work.

[Alex]

What about the inability to call reinforcements if all objectives are captured?

I've almost made my mind up to just remove that mechanic. Almost

[Ephraim]

And BAM goes the engage command! Love it, looking forward to the release

[Vizzy]

Looks great. Can I ask what the reasons are to change combat map size (a little smaller) and getting rid of the 3 objective map?

[Alex]

Looks great. Can I ask what the reasons are to change combat map size (a little smaller) and getting rid of the 3 objective map?

Took too long to engage on some maps - especially in defend vs defend. No reason to spend a full minute flying just to engage a relatively small force.

The 3 objective maps didn't play well - pretty much guaranteed to capture the objective on your side, and then fight in the middle. Not much room for strategy. 4 objective maps are a bit more dynamic.

Edit: Re-positioning the 3 objectives in a horizontal line is also an option - worth a try.

[Vizzy]

Looks great. Can I ask what the reasons are to change combat map size (a little smaller) and getting rid of the 3 objective map?

Took too long to engage on some maps - especially in defend vs defend. No reason to spend a full minute flying just to engage a relatively small force.

The 3 objective maps didn't play well - pretty much guaranteed to capture the objective on your side, and then fight in the middle. Not much room for strategy. 4 objective maps are a bit more dynamic.

Fair enough points, do the slightly smaller maps impact larger engagements when LRMs and long range weaponry (Tachyon Lances etc) play a larger role?

In any case, keep up the excellent work. Can't wait to get my hands on it to *ahem* hunt for bugs... and such 

[Himntor]

Awesome Changes. Can't wait! =P
Though I'm not sure why Fast-Forward is linked to Shift by default...Shift is used for Strafing, so why not bind it to F? (Unless F has some big point in the game I don't remember if it does.)

[Alex]

Fair enough points, do the slightly smaller maps impact larger engagements when LRMs and long range weaponry (Tachyon Lances etc) play a larger role?

To a degree, but that's probably a good thing.

Awesome Changes. Can't wait! =P
Though I'm not sure why Fast-Forward is linked to Shift by default...Shift is used for Strafing, so why not bind it to F? (Unless F has some big point in the game I don't remember if it does.)

The fast-forward is in the campaign screen - not the combat screen.

[Zarcon]

Modding-related:

• Certain settings can no longer be changed by mods (see data/config/settings.json for details). "devMode" is the main one here.
• Made "PD" flag work for missiles
• Fixed "getEntityByName" function

Command system:

• Added "Recon" task for scouting a waypoint (sends a nearby fast ship)
• Added "Engage" assignment that functions like "Assault" but against an enemy ship destroyer-sized or larger
• Removed "Harass" as a valid assignment from enemy fighters or frigates - functionally too similar to "Intercept"
• Added "Full Escort" task that assigns several ships/wings (2-3) to escort duty
• Ships carrying out escort duty will try to stay close to the ship being escorted
• Ships carrying out escort duty will position themselves to intercept incoming missiles and fighters
• Only ships close to the speed of the target will be assigned to escort duty, to ensure they can keep up

Wow, I loved just about everything in this fix/patch!    Awesome, expecially the stuff about the new "Full Escort" command, lovin it, many times I had been wishing for just that command.  Also, the Point Defense missiles, wow, great stuff indeed, that'll be fun to mess with.   

[intothewildblueyonder]

What about the inability to call reinforcements if all objectives are captured?

I've almost made my mind up to just remove that mechanic. Almost

Looking forward to the new patch

      I kind of like this mechanic because it usually means that you have out witted your opponent (unless you just loaded up on fighters and frigates ). Maybe the mechanic could be kept, but have a new objective (warp-in point or some such thing or whatever) right by the deployment  area of both fleets. This would make blocking out you're opponent a more meaningful accomplishment and tactical decision.
      Also I know in the missions having your flagship destroyed impacts the mission. Does it also affect the mission if the opponent's flagship is destroyed. Do flag-ships affect anything in the campaign? should they?