Greetings fellow Captains! Apologies for the 1 day delay in getting this out to you, I was waylaid by offline life this week. Not to worry though, there has been plenty of work on the game in the meantime! After the extensive feedback on the damage/difficulty of the game, some adjustments have been made to keep it from feeling frustrating. It turns out that the game was treating level 7 and higher as CH13 for pirate captains, yikes! Sliders have been added for difficulty at world creation, as well as combat damage. Diplomacy has received some attention as well, to make it more impactful, and it now correctly impacts the price of ships, reputation gain, etc. To balance that, it's also been adjusted and scaled so that it's less effective as you become more powerful. Here are the full notes and changes from Aren:
**2014-11-06 - Now Live**
* When playing multiplayer, AI will now be controlled by the player with the lowest ping.
* Changed how damage gets applied. There can now be 3 settings: host (lowest ping player), source (whoever is causing the damage), and target (whoever is being damaged -- this was the previous default setting). I’ll be trying them out to see which one works best.
* Added some extra code to ensure that player characters get saved.
* Explosive ammunition now ignores the first 5 defense. Corrosive is still better with 15.
**2014-11-05**
* Mortar explosions should now affect buildings, and will do more damage.
* You can now remove the faction that started in the bottom left corner when editing your world.
* Swapped out the hand-written Pristina font with another one that supports Cyrillic characters.
* Added a difficulty slider to world creation.
* Added a slider that controls combat damage scaling to world creation.
* Mortar explosions are no longer affected by Defense.
* Added a Language selection drop-down list to the first screen.
* Made Defiance a lot more potent. It now raises hull by up to 300%.
**2014-11-04**
* Added a new item: mortar. Rare drop in higher challenge areas it’s the improved version of explosive ammo coating that also grants a new AoE skill.
* Fixed an issue with the “zone ID -1” when creating new worlds.
* Turns out Siege Towers had the same stats as regular guard towers. Ahem. Oops?
* Scaled damage down at higher challenge levels gradually. The effect will now be that at lower challenge levels, combat is as fast as in the previous update, but at higher challenge levels the damage scales down, giving you more time to react and adjust your tactics. This felt necessary because damage is already naturally higher at higher challenge levels.
**2014-11-03**
* Starting regions can no longer be contested/captured.
* You can now draw your own world maps.
* Fixed the game not loading the modded localization file on start and the language drop-down list not working properly.
* A random seed will now be picked at start when creating a new world.
**2014-11-01**
* Improved store itemization. You can now find higher quality items in higher challenge regions in large towns.
* Made Defense much more common in pre-Ch9 regions. Hull, crew and specialist can now all have some basic Defense.
* Maximum price towns will pay for goods is now based on challenge level as well.
* Price of ships is now affected by diplomacy.
* Diplomacy is now less effective than it was before, since it’s pretty easy to get it to a high value. It’s now shaped like a curve, with it being less and less effective the higher it gets.
* The value of all trade goods has been reduced by 50% to balance the profit margins.
* Hire ship gold value is now affected by both Diplomacy and reputation standings.
* Quest rewards are now affected by both reputation and diplomacy.
* Expanded the rumors page to also include demands into consideration.
* Diplomacy now correctly affects reputation gain, like the tooltip mentions.
* Pirate captains were using ch13 stats in challenge regions 7 and up. Ouch!
* Quest rewards are no longer affected by town size.
* Paint and dye generator should now create richer, more vibrant colors more frequently.
* Fixed Inferno’s hull damage. It’s much more potent now.