Special thanks to Clécio for his live playtest during his Godot educational livestream. His testing gave me some excellent ideas for new player quality of life improvements. If you enjoy indie game development or Godot, check him out. Clécio, obrigado!
-Updated the controller helper (H key by default) to be more useful.
The tutorial now forces the control helper open for your first fight, but you can hide it at any time. Also added as a button upper right by the Codex, and a hint in the tactical pause menu.
-Updated intro text in the tutorial to explain some core mechanics of the "Age of Sail" genre.
Clarified that default controls are W/S (Forward, reverse), A/D (Rotate left, right), and Q/E (Strafe left, right).
-Added weapon arc visuals to the V key toggle, in addition to the aim lines. This is also forced on for the first tutorial mission, and can be toggled at any time.
Added a new keybind option for weapon arc hold-down. By default it's unbound, hold to toggle, rebind V to the hold-down instead under settings -> keybinds. Or find a free key and have both! (Good luck finding a free key. This game has a lot of buttons. I'm already having anxiety about trying to pass "Great on Steamdeck" verification...)
-Updated the hostile info panel to mirror the player's ship status UI for clarity. (The entire tactical UI is getting a ground-up rebuild before we leave Alpha, but these changes will help make learning Infinite Empire more enjoyable!)
Health percentages now read a proper 100% on an untouched ship, on both panels.
-Lowered music volume default slightly.
-Added a prefix to auto-saves created during a tutorial run.
-Changed default weapon group bindings from 12340 (0=all) to 12345 (1=all).
And two unrelated items crammed in because they'd passed playtest so why not:
-Fixed a bug with the auto-framing camera that wasn't always smoothly re-framing to your new target after destroying the current one.
-Up to two of your own allied captains can now join your fights as long as they're in the same sector when you engage. The two captain max is temporary until I have more time to playtest some balance considerations.
Captains that are with you for a victory earn a little experience.