This patch was a tough one. I've been grinding on this for the better part of this last year. Leaving this game in silence for a year was not a conscious decision but life mandated it.
After a merciless year I am glad to have been able to improve this to the point where I feel comfortable to let out another update, striking some goals out and leaving space to head for the rest of them.
There have been a lot of improvements, which I will try my best to document bellow and hopefully those that manage to try it will enjoy it.
The card fight has received alot of improvements, mostly under the hood but also managing to elevate the visuals quite a bit.
To start light, the visuals have been upgraded to make the battle feel a bit more real.
The ships on the last patch where completely static during the card fight making them feel completely lifeless. They served their purpose of representing all the ships in the battle but made no effort to make them feel alive.
The weather of the overworld (more on that later) now its reflected in the cardfight showing more or less clouds based on the forecast and changing the light situation based on the time of day.
Ships now move in the arena and react to being hit while also sometime playing animations on certain cards making the feel more real.
Card textures have also been reworked
Now to the changes to the actual fight. The issue with the last patch seems to be both the time the card fight took to complete, AI logic, too many options at the start of the game and lastly minor confusion about certain card effects.
There was an attempt to address all of those.
First of all improvements have been done on the UI/UX to speed up target selection. Dragging a card over a ship will instantly play that card while targeting that ship. This speeds up target selection by alot since previously the player had to wait for the card insert animation to play to pick a target wich slowed down everything by alot. On top of that some effects have been sped up and also the amount of energy each ship has per turn has been reduced. In essence instead of playing alot of cards with small effects it felt better to play a few cards with more severe effects on them.
For the enemy AI improvement have been made to be able to distinguish the best targets for their cards so they can be competitive while still providing a fun and fair experience to the player, they will now try to target the strongest ships of their team to buff, the weakest to shield and in a similar fashion pick enemies for their attacks, while adding some randomness in there to keep it fun.
Improvements have also been made on the AI logic for picking a card to play allowing them better strategic judgement on whether it makes sense to play a card or not. No more picking energy dependent cards with close to none energy or setting themselves on fire or bashing enemies while on low health.
The too many options issue was addressed in the first part by trying to reduce the options while making those options more impact-full. This was done by reducing the amount of cards some ship parts provide. This in turn made decks of ships much smaller.
On top of that the hand is cleared when a ship's turn finishes and new cards are drawn at the start of the turn. This pushes the player to improvise on the spot instead of trying to hoard cards on their hand.
The confusion over some cards was one of the biggest problems. For that tool-tips have been added on certain keywords and are displayed when hovering over those cards. This will hopefully help a bit with the on-boarding of new players until they start using those cards more.
The need for some more mechanics in the fight was felt so trying to improve the complexity a bit power cards where introduced. Power cards work as passive powers that stay with the ship during the fight and provide certain effects on specific "triggers". Those triggers can be when a card is drawn/discarded, when fire is applied on a ship, when a ship dies and many more. This cards provides many more options for build variance.
Disposition is a new system that was put in place in an attempt to add some more variety on builds. Disposition works similarly to how the djin worked in Golden Sun for anyone aware of that system.
Each ship part provides some disposition on the ship. Based on that dispositions certain cards are provided to that ships deck. Allowing certain cards to show up in 2 builds with different ship parts and providing the player with an certain options that they have no direct control over like the cards provided straight from some ship parts.
The amount of disposition towards a certain "branch" the more cards of that branch are added to the ship's deck, giving the option to the player to focus on one branch and get the strongest cards of split their disposition for more synergies.
The overworld has gotten alot of attention in an attempt to complicate game-play outside of the cardfight and give some more strategic choices to the player.
With that, also some UI improvements where also on the plate. While still not final, an attempt to make thing more organised and more readable was done and the results are pretty good.
This changes include
Wind
Elevation
Forecast
Aerosonar
Wind is a feature that I felt lacking. Its implementation at first was simple as it just included a simple direction and power value that as time progresses change. But the more systems were built on top the more complicated it got. Wind needed to interact with ships in a way that mad sense so wind now is applying proper forces on ships causing them to go slower when going against it and faster when going with it providing certain option or obstacles to the player. Wind will also affect missiles so aiming them can be proven an issue in longer ranges while certain more expensive models will provide wind correction.
Wind will also now play an effect in the cardfight as it will provide a speed buff on each team based on their direction to it when the fight started.
How it works
The wind is described by 2 values. Direction and Speed. Each of those value affects the ship's speed and can affect its trajectory. On the pilot's dashboard a new switch can be found called "Wind Correction". This will will improve the ship's handling by completely eliminating the drag the ship would receive from the wind with the added price of some extra fuel consumption. This will not be able to help when there is head wind and the ship's speed is lowered.
This one is a cool one for me. It probably took most effort than any other feature in this update as it required changes to most systems, as the game before this feature was completely 2D, trying to add a third dimension to it was hard.
With it done tho we can talk about what it provides.
Radar obstruction
Missile Obstruction
Wind obstruction
Since now mountains exist obstruction is a logical step. Being able to use the elevation as a hiding spot, both from enemy radars but also from wind is a super useful tool to those that want to take advantage of it. Hiding from counter winds will provide you with better fuel efficiency and allow for the campaign to move further.
In the pilot view an Elevation lever exists allowing the player to control their elevations. Keep in mind missiles need to match the target's elevation to hit, use that to your advantage.
Storms now exist in the game providing certain obstacles for ships. From damaging radar ranges to affecting cruising speeds and fuel consumption. Avoiding storms is always useful, while they can also be used to loose an enemy squad.
You can use the forecast visualization in your pilot view to see the forecast and it's direction. As time progresses, the storm will be carried around by the wind forces which makes them a bit predictable.
Effects
The storm can affect ships in multiple ways. The most major one is visibility. Both radar range and visual range are reduced inside heavy storms. When traversing through storms fuel consumption is also increased, making it even more costly to fly through them.
The aerosonar is a new passive detector that attempts to provide a low price alternative to the ELINT. The aerosonar works as a passive detector catching sound signature of ships in the perimeter. Each ship has it's own Sound Signature stat now that contributes to how much the aerosonar catches it. Certain engines provide less sound signature penalties while other more, but in general bigger ships will generally have bigger signatures, while having alot of ships together makes their signatures combine, making bigger squads easier to detect.
In general alot of improvements have been added that don't have a big feature following them so I will try to list them here.
Seeded randomness. While results were random before, the results were really uncontrollable. Now the randomness is controlled meaning seeds can be fed to the game and the same 2 scenarios will be played out in 2 different machines. This option is not yet exposed to the players but will be in the future.
Right clicking now set's a target on the controlled ship and it steer and accelerate to the destination until reached or our of fuel
Map markers can now be placed easily by clicking on the screen with the Map Marker editor on instead of being confined to the editor's controls
Ship sprites have been reworked
Recruits have been added to towns that can be bought and added to your fleet
Can play missile command when landed in towns
Settings have been improved added Sound sliders, MAX fps options and more, while also being saved between sessions
Simulation buttons have been changed to toggle-able buttons, also hotkeys have been configured to them
Fuel storage now shows refuel time when buying fuel and also shows neighboring fuel storages
Upgrade times now show in Hours/Minutes instead of just minutes
Missiles now start a card fight instead of just inflicting damage
Many many more small stuff that I hope you will appreciate.