Release notes here. This is a big one, in terms of having a lot of items. They fall into six main categories:

• Continued UI polish.
• Some experimental changes to group-move from a new volunteer dev.
• Tweaks to the Intel screen and some new beginner objectives for ARS, GCA and flagship capturing to teach people that those are critical early objectives.
• Continued balance work, including making AI homeworld assaults harder and adding a new "Turret" tech.
• Owning Major Data centers now causes Exos against the player for higher difficulty games, in the ongoing arms race between very skilled players and developers.
• Lots of other bugfixes and balance tweaks.

There's stuff from three sources beyond the usual developers and volunteer devs: donblas, Eagleheart, and StarKelp have all made notable code contributions in this one. There was a bit more of a gap between this one and last one because I was sick AGAIN last week, this time with norovirus that landed me in the ER. I'm all better now, but it managed to get everyone my kids and my fiancee as well in the end (though not as bad), and we had to skip the Thanksgiving gatherings to not infect others. Fun times! But good grief, coming back to to see what everyone had been up to, after monitoring some of it off and on during the worst of my illness, it's quite shocking just how much was done. It's got me itching to get some more changes of my own in there. Beyond that, let's talk about some other specific items from the release notes:

• Wormhole invasions have been nerfed, so that they don't hit you so hard.
• A bunch of fleet designs have been tweaked or improved, as have a number of ship designs.
• Hey, you can upgrade battlestation/citadel fleets via spending science now, just like you can planetary fleets!
• Bounty Hunters are now far more interesting.
• Pulsar Tanks are now far more frightening.
• Spire Frigates now perform better (StarKelp's improvements) as well as being more dangerous in general. Please check how the balance of this kind of beam weapon feels now.
• Alarm posts now actually work -- yet more danger for you.
• Drones now work better and are reabsorbed and after battle.
• You can see AI Eyes on the galaxy map, for easier planning of routes, now.

Please Do Report Any Issues! If you run into any bugs, we'd definitely like to hear about those. We're also really keen on your feedback in general, as the last couple of releases hopefully demonstrate. I've got a shortlist of items to work on from Badger, and hopefully I can get to the achievements and whatnot sooner than later. I then need to really get a move-on with the first alphas of the multiplayer for people to playtest. One thing at a time! The release of this game has been going well so far, and I think that the reviews that folks have been leaving for the game have been a big help for anyone passing by who's on the fence. At the moment we're sitting at Overwhelmingly Positive on the Recent Reviews breakdown, and have been for the last three days, which feels really good. If you've been playing the game and enjoying it, we'd greatly appreciate it if you'd drop by and leave your own thoughts, too. More to come soon. Enjoy! Problem With The Latest Build? If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire. The Usual Reminders Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do. Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support. Enjoy! Chris

[ 2019-12-03 22:31:13 CET ] [ Original post ]