This week we would love to tell you not only about two very important updates, which involve detachments and character progression, but also mention some lesser improvements we are working on thanks to your help during the open test:
Extended Character Progression system
New Frontiers test has brought you a great feature - special fleet skills for the MMO mode. And it was just the first step to the extended character progression! Now we are going to bring more awesome abilities along with the new system: you will get new "talents" with each level - active or passive abilities, which give certain advantages during the game in the MMO mode.
The first level up. You start without action slots at all, but with time you get more of them until you reach a maximum number. Action slots are used to equip special fleet abilities.
It means that there will be a wide variety of different abilities available, which gives you a great option for fleet customization. However, the maximum number of abilities you can use at the same time is limited to 6 (can be changed): you will have to choose, if you want to make a nice scout fleet, explore deep space, quickly escape enemies or going to hunt for enemy fleets. And it's definitely a great idea to gather a party where all Commanders will have a complementary set, allowing you to make great things together!
And that's definitely not all the info we would love to share with you about this awesome system - expect more information about new character progression and available skills in the next articles!
Getting detachments
Detachment system has already made a long way through reworks and improvements in Starfall Tactics and, as we hope, became even better than before. Still, as character progression system gets significant update and extension we've described above, detachments can't find a place as a reward on level up anymore.
Not actual set of detachments. WIP.
In exchange, new detachments become available once you create the next Warp Stabilizer and get new access level. This way, you can concentrate on getting to the next portion of star systems and building ships, while all detachments you need in battles against stronger pirates will be available from the start. And, well, there is a cool animation for each new access level ;)
Other improvements
As it was mentioned in the beginning of this news article, along with implementing all the planned features, we are also making some lesser improvements, based on the results of the past test and your feedbacks. And here is a short list:
- Repair all button is now available in the Shipyard - now you won't need to manually push this button on each ship if you want to get all of them back.
- Filters for Mothership inventory - we've decided to add the same equipment filters as in the ship editor in Shipyard, so now you won't get lost in hundreds of different things you have.
- Weapon groups - this improvement will make your ship panel take less space by hiding weapon icons when you select ships if there are too much of them. For example, instead of 10 auto gun icons, it will only show one icon with the number of guns installed.
- Disabling cargo boxes and mining resources on minimap - now you can hide cargo box and resource icons from the minimap.
- Ability to see layouts of unavailable ships - now you can check the layout of all faction ships which you don't have yet.
- Move a full stack of items by pressing a single combination of buttons - with SHIFT+Right Click.
- And more.
Assault Muramasa layout
New options
Great, isn't it? And well, that's just a start - there are some curious improvements we will announce later - check out next WIP articles ;)
