Progress update - 11/17/17

[Stellar Tactics]

Lots of progress this week, primarily on the chaff system, directional shields and planetary effects.

https://youtu.be/qHi5nfcJuBg

Chaff system - The chaff system is complete. You can purchase chaff from any ship equipment vendor. Your ship holds a total of 50 chaff modules which can be deployed in combat to confuse enemy missiles.

Directional shields - This system is complete now and includes some changes to the way shields work. Your combat shields take damage until a shield is depleted of energy. At that point, you start taking damage to your secondary shields. If you your secondary shields are depleted, any combat hits making it through depleted directional shields apply damage to your hull armor. You can select a facing shield to receive extra recharge energy. See the video for details.

Target micro menu - The target micro-menu is finished for now. You can select any ship and a popup menu will allow you to scan or approach that target. I'll likely be adding other features to this menu in the future.

Planet visual update - I've been wanting to do this for a while so I took a break from AI and other coding to update all the procedural planet atmospheres - I think they look a lot better. It's hard to tell in the screenshot though in the game it makes a big difference.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1203708864

That's it for this week. Thanks everyone!

[murkki017]

Looking good.
Will player ever fight alongside friendly AI ships?

[Stellar Tactics]

murkki017 - Yes - There will be faction warfare all over the universe. If a friendly ship (marked in green) is in a fight with an enemy ship, you can join in and gain faction bonuses and tokens. Sometimes ships will send you messages asking for help.

[nobrien]

good stuff,

[chookahead]

Directional shields are looking great. I also like the micro-menus. Keep up the good work!

[Order / BigBoxEnthusiast]

Glad to see this is coming along nicely =)

[Lex]

Better and better. Good job.