After another week of testing, 1.203 End-Tech is now available for all you aces out there. The update largely revolved around item concepts I had in my backlog for a long time now. Among other things, in End-Tech you can:
-Get more effective wingmans than those flimsy drones
-Attack from within a jump, or have all your shots go into hyperspace when you dodge, both massively amplifying your attacks
-Make your melee deflects more effective than actually attacking
-Create dedicated boss-killer builds that work best against things larger than you
-Put armor on your shields
-Defy death
-Gain limited control over the content of a chest?
A whole bunch of the items are unlocked from the start and will show up in your loot pool immediately, but most of them are late game unlocks but. Almost all of them require a win at least. The entire MK1 jet line has unlocks for reaching endless wave six, which now makes this a consistent thing across all jets.
Another big set of unlocks is gated behind Technophage wins. Additional wins with these challenge passive also net you new mastery unlocks after six Technophage wins with various jets of your choosing. The Technophage unlocks all require playing with a single phage only, multi-phage runs don't count. But hey, you don't need me to tell you this, you can just look it up in the cloud:
So yeah, the new items aside I also finally figured out a robust way for adding an unlock menu to the game. The new "Data Cloud" can be accessed at any time from the pause menu. It shows you previews of all the items in the game, except a couple secret ones ;), and gives you hints on how to unlock them. Item tooltips and descriptions also become available in the cloud, after you have collected the item at least once during a run. Jets variants and zones got completely new descriptions for the cloud.
Alongside the new content you also get the usual load of bug-fixes and quality of life tweaks. There is a new, larger mouse reticle that should be easier to track in case that is an issue. Shot impact text has been cleaned up, with guaranteed procs no longer overwriting damage numbers. There is also a small vfx addition in the form of new hitsparks that appear on impacts and collisions and even get affected by shot procs and opponents armor. Full change_dog is available in here.
Please note that Hyperspace Dogfights is a complete commercial failure, but is being update regardless. Version 1.203 End-Tech did take about a month to make and is free for everyone who owns the game. I you want to support the game's continuous development, you can become a deck crew volunteer. A big thanks goes out to the community and everyone who shared input, gave early feedback and did test runs on the beta branch.
See you in the doomed blue skies!
Stefan - Sleeper Games