Hi Everyone, We have just released v0.8.0 and it is our biggest one yet. There are quite a few major changes in this update. Lets dig into the details.

The Video

This update was huge. It deserved a video, and here it is. Please give it a watch to provide context to what you will read below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUz1HE2IdYs

Configurable Strike Craft and Hangar System

This one was a major player request. People wanted strike craft to matter more and be configurable. We heard you and here is what we did.
The Hangar System The mothership now contains up to 4 hangars (start with 2, unlock 2 more.) These hangars can be used to build multiples of any strike craft that you can afford, up to the command point maximum. The hangar menu has replaced the strike craft menu. Command Points Command points dictate how many total strike craft you can build. Different sized strike craft consume different numbers of command points. So command points dictate your strike craft reserve while hangars dictate how many you have active at a time. Command points are increased through the perk system. Hull Selection Once you select a hangar, you can then select the hull to place in that hangar. Hulls are unlocked through combat using a blueprint system similar to SPAZ 1. Weapon Selection Once you select a hull, you select the weapons for that hull. All the strike craft have had their weapon mounts totally redone. Each strike craft has its own unique set of mounts and it is up to you to pick the mount config that best suits the weapons that you want on the strike craft.

The Blueprint System

Its back! So now when you kill a strike craft there is a chance that a blueprint will drop. These blueprints first unlock the strike craft as a hull that you can build, but over time, they are used to improve the hull as well. So as you pick up blueprints, your strike craft hulls will gain stars which boost their stats significantly. As strike craft get more stars, blueprints for those hulls drop less frequently since they are getting harder and harder to improve upon. If you had a game in progress, we estimate what your blueprint progress should have been, so you don't need to restart unless you want to.

New Strike Craft Sizes/Features

Strike craft now come in three sizes.
Small These are the strike craft that you are used to. They drive their weapons off of their reactor (so no reloading) and don't have shields. They are very fast and pack quite a bit more punch than they used to. They are also pretty inexpensive so are great if you are on a budget or want to flood wave after wave at an enemy. Medium These strike craft are quite a bit larger than the smalls, and some of our old craft have been scaled up to fit this new role. They can field medium sized weapons but are still able to drive them off their reactors (this means no reloading.) The medium strike craft also have weak shields. Mediums can do quite a bit of damage but can't soak nearly as much as their bigger more expensive siblings. Large These strike craft are behemoths and can take on smaller motherships by themselves. They use large sized weapons and as such also need to use a reactor and capacitor combo like a mothership. This means that they need to reload and sometimes cannot fire or boost their shields, just like a mothership. By the time you face these strike craft, your mothership better be of a decent size or they will take you apart. Large strike craft have strong shields and can soak a lot of damage. Junk Class There are three scrap class strike craft. One for each size class. These are always unlocked and are cheaper than their non Junk counterparts. They also take fewer command points to field, so are sometimes a good option if you need strike craft to distract an enemy. They also get blueprint upgrades and can become quite powerful.

8 New Strike Craft!

The new strike craft size system meant we needed some new strike craft. There are 6 new larges, 1 new medium, and 1 new small. The Short Bus (Small/Junk) Our beloved bus is back from SPAZ 1. This is the cheapest strike craft in the game and a great bullet sponge. The Mule (Medium/Junk) Also making a return from SPAZ 1 is the Mule, the old mining ship. It fields two small launchers and 2 medium turrets. The Freighter (Large/Junk) Another SPAZ 1 alumni. This ship is bristling with small turrets and small launchers. The Star Spot (Large) You may recognize this as well from SPAZ. It is a heavily modified Sun Spot, turned on its side. 4 omni turrets for defense as well as a large turret and large dispenser mount. The Gold Digger (Large) This is a new beast. It is a heavy carrier capable of carrying two large fighter hangars (or Krules if you roll that way) Up front it has 2 omni cannons and there are 2 small turrets in the back. The Shatter (Large) The Shatter is the Bounty Hunter's newest strike craft. It supports 4 medium launchers and 2 medium turrets. It is a dedicated launcher platform with a couple of defensive turrets for anyone getting to close. The Hammerhead (Large) Most peoples' favorite ship from SPAZ 1. We had to bring it back. It is a turreted monster as it always was. Two large turrets in the front, and 2 medium turrets in the back. It is just a big pile of nasty. The Star Cruiser (Large) You can't have a Hammerhead without a Star Cruiser. So it is back too :) The Star cruiser is the only strike craft capable of fielding warheads, and two of them at that. It also supports two small launchers (put fighters in there) and there are two turrets mainly for point defense. And the Rest All the strike craft have had their weapon mounts/stats overhauled as well, so none of them got away without an upgrade. Some also got a size upgrade. The Triglave for example is now a lot bigger and beefier.

Combat Hangar Management

In Combat you can now use the Tactics Panel (TAB) to call in your strike craft. Hangars have two modes now, auto deploy and manual deploy. If you set your hangars to manual deploy, then in combat you have total control of when your strike craft arrive on the scene. This can allow you to sweep enemy strike craft from the level and then call in your fleet when you are ready to concentrate on the enemy mothership.

Lots of New Weapons

While we were working on the strike craft upgrade, we realized that some mount types did not have enough weapon variety to make the certain strike craft viable/interesting to configure. This plus a few beers lead to a burst of new weapons, because instead of just solving the problem we decided to go to town a little bit. Weapons are fun to build. The Particle Hose We didn't have an Uzi, now we do :) That was pretty much the conversation there. It is a really fun bullet hose style weapon. The bullets do not do much damage individually, but there are a whole lot of bullets. The particle hose is a medium sized weapon so it will only appear on medium and large parts. Micro Hangars We really wanted to support people having fighters earlier on in the game. Some people love fighters, so holding them back until large parts appeared wasn't fair. So... There are three new micro hangars. Small launcher mounts can now fit a tiny hangar that holds two zappers. Medium launcher mounts can hold a hanger that holds 4 zappers or shooter fighters as well. The Flak Cannon! It has finally arrived, four years too late for SPAZ 1, but it is here. We now have a turreted version of point defense to complement the minigun. Flak cannons are long range defense systems that will try to pop slow moving targets at a distance. They create a large cloud of flak and can sometimes pop multiple missiles at once. Flak cannons are not great at short range defense and the flak puffs will not explode too close to the ship as to prevent damaging themselves. The Cloud Torpedo The Cloud Torpedo drops ion bomblets as it flies. This serves two purposes. The bomblets fly ahead of and around the torpedo to soak up point defense fire instead of the torpedo, and those bomblets that do hit do ion damage to lower enemy shields before the torpedo impacts to wreck the hull. The Cloud Torpedo is best used at long range to give it the maximum time to deploy all of its bomblets. The Ion Shotgun The Ion Shotgun fires long range and somewhat tightly grouped ion projectiles. Its purpose is to take down shields at range. It is a small turreted weapon so it is a great early shield popping solution. Note: The Ion shotgun fires blue (Ion) projectiles whereas regular shotguns shoot red. The Mac Hammer It is a medium sized assault shotgun that says go away... loudly. Very high damage and high spread but with a short range. The Plasma Dispenser Take a pulse cannon and turn it up to 11. It shoots a multitude of very slow moving and very long range explosive plasma charges. Each plasma charge also explodes on impact causing splash damage. It is a devastating weapon. It only appears on large parts and is quite rare... Thankfully.

CUSTOM ORDER PARTS

We had to capitalize that one. It is the number one requested feature that we have seen. We resisted at first because we felt that it went against the scrounging/empire building nature that we wanted to build for SPAZ 2, but SPAZ 2 is a game about building, and tying your hands is really not fair. So... Here's how we tie your hands... Custom Order parts are expensive. The most effective way to build your ship will still be to use what is available in the stores and adapt to that. Later, once you have an empire of your own, take territory that best will produce the parts you want. That will always be best. However, now there is a new custom order panel in the catalog. How it works is whatever you search for in the catalog, if it can be built, someone will be willing to build it for you, but at 5x the cost. late game, when you are swimming in money, this allows you to upgrade more freely, but early game you really need to think about that extra expense. Sometimes the custom order criteria will come up blank. For example if you ask for a small wing with a chainsaw beam on it, that can't exist so it won't be built. If a custom part can be built though, it will. There are actually over 3000 part/weapon combos it has to search to determine viability of a request. When custom ordering a part, it will always be built at the space station that has the lowest markup. This means that you will get the best price possible, and it is always delivered (there is no extra delivery charge in this case) You can set the number of stars you want on a part as well, but it will become very expensive, very quickly.

Final Thoughts

Thanks to everyone with your patience waiting for this update as well as your great suggestions. As you can see, we hear you and we are all making SPAZ 2 better together! For those of you with games in progress. You should not need to restart. We refunded the price of all your current strike craft as scrap so you didn't lose anything and we also tried to figure out a reasonable blueprint progress for your saves. For everyone else. This update was major open heart surgery on the flow of the game so there may be issues, especially balance issues. We look forward to hearing from you about them and will tune/fix as quickly as possible. Now get in there and try this new stuff out! :) Andrew(Blorf) and Richard(Narlak)

Note: v0.8.2 now released to tune the large strike craft, also syngeries.

Details: https://steamcommunity.com/app/252470/discussions/0/215439774876341308/