Progress update - 11/3/17

[Stellar Tactics]

This week was all about ship vendors. Still have a little work to do on swapping ships and a bit of cleanup work on the UI. See the video below for details. Please excuse my monotone - I need to catch up on some sleep - coffee and Red Bull's aren't doing it anymore...

https://youtu.be/MkPl3R9sZg0

Ship vendors can be found throughout the universe and they all carry fixed sets of ships that they sell. Purchasing a new ship requires that you either store your current ship or trade in your current ship for a cash credit towards the price of your new ship.

One issue is that your equipment, because it is ship specific, cannot be swapped between different ships. To make things easier, the merchant gives you credit for each item currently equipped on your ship during the trade in. The value generated is the current market value of your equipment + the current trade in value of your ship which is credited towards your purchase. Your charisma affects the trade in value of all items.

If you choose to store your current ship, it will remain on the station until with all of it's current equipment until you come back for it. I'll make sure there is an easy way to see where all your current ships are stored. The ship storage menu in the video is still a work in progress. There will be more information available that is visible anywhere, anytime. For example, the ship list will provide two lists - the first is a list of all ships and their locations in the universe and a second list displaying the ships currently on the station you are visiting.

Regarding cargo - if you have more cargo in your cargo hold than the new ship will fit, you will need to sell your cargo before purchasing the new ship. The hamsters in the cargo bays will go on strike and the ship vendor will reject the purchase. The rule is that the cargo in the cargo bay of your current ship needs to be less than or equal to the maximum available cargo on your new ship.

As you explore, you will loot ship specific equipment. If you plan in advance, you can horde items for that future ship upgrade and after purchasing your new ship, slot those items into your ship.

One last note: On the ship info screen you can see an area for "MISSILE MANAGEMENT". This will eventually bring up a menu that lets you fit various payloads on your missiles and tweak their subsystems for range, avoidance and a few other things. Missiles come in one main variant and you can adjust them for various purposes and damage types.

That's it for this week. Thanks everyone!

[mm.324]

Go get some rest.

[chookahead]

^^ Haha, was just going to say the same thing :)
Coming along nicely...

[Lex]

Good news

Originally posted by mm.324:

Go get some rest.

Agreed :)

[nobrien]

yea go get some sleep P} i once new a programmer that accidently put sheep in the code because he was so tired lol.

[glen.w.kelly]

I know you just said that you cannot transfer equipment but will there ever be any rare ship specific equipment that you can find and would want to transfer between ships?

Being able to salvage crashed/abandoned ships for unique or better equpment would be great.

ie. some alien widgit that you found on a planet that is pretty unique and provides a bonus for the ship.

[Stellar Tactics]

Ok, I did get 9 hours of sleep last night! Ready to go again ;)

glen.w.kelly - Sure, you will be able to find all kinds of rare ship specific loot. You can always buy a cheap basic ship part of the same type and swap it out so that rare item is in your cargo hold before you sell your ship. The idea is that you must always have basic equipment on your ship before you trade it in.

So yes, you can keep those rare items, however, they are always ship specific meaning that any rare item will only work on a ship of any one specific type.

You will also notice in the video that every ship has three hardware mount points. These will be for things like chaff emitters, ECM, shield boosters, capacitor chargers, AoE defensive fields and quite a number of useful tools you can use in and out of combat. Those items are not ship specific and can be used on any ship. I'll be adding those in after the initial space combat patch.