It's been over a month since the last post, most of the work done since then has been mostly behind-the-scenes but there have been a few things that may be of note to players:
- Factories now have an industrial catalog terminal that allows you to purchase packages of materials and components to save you time and effort in exchange for cold hard cash.
- The pre-assembled models of modular chassis starships are almost all done (the five dreadnought variants have yet to be fitted) and are available for purchase.
- Life support modules are now mandatory for space travel without an EVA suit, non-chassis starships are fitted with one by default.
- Changes to the 'gear' command; all uncovered body parts are now displayed, weapon attacks show what damage type they do and weapon attacks show the duration of the attack.
- Improvising with a material now shows only one of each type of material and chooses the highest quality piece of a material available.
- Various vehicles got a speed increase.
- Battlegrounds got some attention- they now clean the battlefields properly, store people's equipment properly, last longer, had the loadouts changed, no longer trap you in the battleground forever and now no longer mysteriously eat people's equipment. They also got a helpfile too.
- Sector centers got a helpfile and some commands to help you round up and manage your civilians.
- Purchases made at NPC-constructed randomly stocked buildings will now pass half of the price of any items purchased there to the owner of the sector center on each daily income tick.
- Robots had some adjustments and new commands to allow players to make them perform actions which didn't work with robots.
- Wildlife (including robots) now have an 'attack' command to make the play as wildlife feature easier, no more having to wait for that muta-chicken to attack randomly.
- Large pirate bases got some new goodies inside them (including large cred-vaults and lockboxes which drop more and rarer gear) to make up for them being so large and awkward to travel through.
- The algorithm behind applying the 'superior' bonuses to weapons (the (!) suffix on weapon's name) has been fixed, it would previously only allow bonuses up to 'level' 4 and now allows bonuses up to 'level'6.
- Putting all of our armor, weapons or gadgets into a container now ignores the items you are currently wearing or wielding for sanity's sake.
- Starship parts and various other components were assigned relatively sane weights and values (in most cases the value is increased significantly, they have all mostly been described too.
- Dismantling buildings will now return the components to you, but will only return around 50% of components if you lack the Crude Planning skill.
- Bleeding is now also caused by bullet/slug shell damage.
- Crafting tools will now check for materials and components lying in the room the user is standing in, this makes the now quite hefty starship parts much easier to use when crafting and can save effort in some cases.
And for new content:
- Black Markets with randomised shops, the shop types are determine upon placement and can be one of six types: Implant, Munitions, Superior Equipment, Starships, Medical or Robots. All of these shop types provide at least some items, objects or vehicles which cannot be found elsewhere.
- Warp-class modular-chassis destroyers, frigates and dreadnoughts, which come pre-equipped with a warp drive as well as the standard weaponry, power, scanners and engines loadout for similar vessels.
- Burns, which are caused by thermal, laser or plasma damage. They will persist for five minutes and are slow to decay, they have a stacking stamina and aggression dice max detriment as well as a stacking reduction to dodge and defense rolls, they can be treated with fungal salve, burn salve or burn patches (in increasing order of effectiveness).
- Implants which provide either static bonuses, damage resistances, actions or the capacity to release a drug are now available from the black market, some require reroll points to install and most will be damaged every time you die and are likely to be left on your corpse when you die. Examples of implants are the Hack-pro implant which increases hacking rolls, the Subdermal impact dissipators which provide damage resistance to impacts and explosions, and the Hemostatsis coordinator implant which can be activate to release a drug that reduces bleeding quickly.
- Various new ammunition packages to be bought from black markets.
- A few new robots to be bought from black markets, a few new control pad commands for robots ('clear' to cancel actions as an example).
- A few new wildlife types to get eaten by.
- A few new artifacts.
- New food and drink items, all older food and drink items have been described and given values.
- New containers in large pirate bases which can drop some interesting equipment.
- Several new fish (some of which are pretty high-value).
- Some new jobs for achieving milestone goals (such as building a sector center or making your first warp jump).
- Food pills and donuts, both with random flavors.
- Throwing wild eggs at people splatters them with egg and reduces their clarity and to-hit.
- Some new modular-chassis starship components.
And one the side:
The player helpfiles available in-game can now be accessed via the website in the guides section, it includes all subjects currently written (and some unwritten).
No pictures so far this month, but if any good shots turn up then they'll be posted here.
