Greetings Star Commanders! Today, we have rolled out an update to the Beta branch for testing. There is still a good amount of content to add in before release and some places where things are unfinished (Nav, for instance), but we wanted to get our general structure down and finalized before finishing up the content. First, let's start with the good stuff. What's new?

COVER COMBAT

For a while, we have felt that our combat has not had a lot of strategy to it. You stand in one spot, the enemy stands in another, and the battle comes down to who remains when the fight is done. To fix this, we have added in several objects to our maps (with more to come) that provide cover when fighting. When any character is hidden behind cover, they will take slightly-to-significantly less damage depending how strong the cover is.

CREW ENERGY

One of the main difference you will notice is that we have brought back energy, but in a different form. Energy now works as a constantly refilling resource which your crew will use for most of their abilities. Healing, Ship Repair, Weaponry, Cloaking...all of these now use energy as opposed to the previous ammo system we had for kits. This means that your pistols are only limited by your recharge rate in combat and can be used repeatedly.

NEW REBEL THREATS

The rebellion has been growing in the time it has taken us to release this game, so you can imagine just how strong it has gotten. They now fight all over, and you might just get a distress call from a Star Command vessel in need. Additionally, you will now see a constant Rebel Threat meter which will grow or decrease based upon your actions in-game. If it gets too high, they will come at all parts of the galaxy with full force. They are of course willing to work with you to grow their strength and might offer you various trades to not fight them in certain places, such as a battle droid or rare weaponry. If you take their deal, they will grow in strength. However, you can also call their bluff and make several encounters intentionally harder. If you win one of these harder encounters, you will take down their threat level a bit.

KIT & SYSTEM UPDATES

With the aforementioned new energy system, we decided to make improvements to two of our more problematic systems, healing and repair. These are still done with kits, but are now done via a pressed button cast rather than internal behavior settings. Those settings are still there, but they have instead been given to droids that will work with you as discovered. Additionally, we have also given most of our ship systems and kits three different levels of strength and rarity, so there will almost certainly be better stuff for you to track down as the game proceeds.

NEW REWARDS

Getting money and XP is nice and all, but it just isn't as exciting as being able to choose your own rewards. To this end, we have added and updated our rewards system to give plenty of objects at the end of various encounters & missions. Some, like scrap and money, are far more commonly found in the galaxy. Others, like new crew and droids, are far less common, but will occasionally come up.
We also do have plenty of smaller pieces that we have added in as well, including a "Select All Crew" keyboard shortcut (Y), purchasable inventories on some NPCs, and several bug fixes. We do plan to continue working on this, including more encounters, weapons, maps, scenarios, missions, storyline, and more. We also need to do a few more balance passes, so things like the in-game economy and drop rates are still very WIP right now. In any case, let us know what you think. Thank you for all of your support! Cheers, Warballoon