Many [Tester] updates, crash resolution progress, hows the next campaign?

Been a while, let me catch you up on some things you might have missed over on the [tester] branch.

(Campaign progress at the end.)

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A reminder that the [tester] beta branch is available and regularly updated. If you want to help us sort out crashes, find issues, and test horribly broken campaign missions then swap over to [tester] and join the Discord to chat with us about your findings.

(Note campaign balance is broken due to a wide variety of fixes and balance adjustments.)

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v0.91 progress

I've been deep in the code jungle for the last few months. Owl has been working on general game balance, Apocrypha and the Vaalkorei. Aleks has been away but is now back finally.

I've been rooting out a rather massive set of issues and problems caused by our engine update. (Which was very necessary regardless of the price I've had to pay in sanity.)

A lot of crashes have been resolved thanks to our testing team and some new crash handling stuff.

There are still crashes - mostly down to there being too much ATS in our ATS. But I'm weeding them out.

However, it wasn't just fixing issues! We have a variety of new things that I've managed to fandangle for us. As mentioned in the last update, our rendering setup can now handle lovely damage visuals for all our ships, drones, structures, and even matter rocks. As well as correctly handle the team-recolouring of subobjects (turrets) along with their glows AUTOMATICALLY. Previously we've had the rather sad tech limitation of not being able to turn off glows on turrets or subobjects and having to manually specify which materials would be recoloured or glowified by our system. (I ran out of time on this feature and still had the rest of the game to program). Which means we couldn't have spinny bits or moving parts on structures and units because if they turned off, the still-on glowy bits would be obvious and confusing. And if the team recoloured, they wouldn't be either. Now that can change.

So not only have the Kontaalen now received a rather large volume of moving bits and pieces on their structures but a number of ships have had their turrets painted up in team colour. Additionally, Tychon - whom have always had more glows than we could support recolouring and disabling - is now able to disable all their structure and unit glows when they die or go offline or become [($ (#@)(&$@#].

Other cool recent things.

Vaalkorei have also received a new defense structure; The Nanite Tower which is able to repair units as well as send out area-of-effect murder swarms.

Tychon is also busy being worked on by Aleks with a large set of balance changes and finalisations. (Yes this does mean Owl and I need to rebalance every missions that has the Tychon in them, don't remind us...)

Capital ships across the board have received increased health, armour, weapons, and more to help them feel worth their cost.

Next Main Campaign Progress?

We've been too busy sorting out this engine update and trying to improve balance and fun. So we've not had the time to get to work physically on the Vaalkorei campaign "Fortune's Progress". It's story is done - yet to be refined in the fires of actually making the maps - but done as is the whole story ATS. As usual our main issue is manpower to get work done. However...

Side Campaign Progress

The side campaign Apocrypha is coming along well and has undergone a number of remakes in accordance with tester feedback and enjoyment (or lack thereof) so it is likely that you will be able to get your hands on it soon enough. Owl wants to finish this first, before we start work on Fortune.

Kreydell Difficulty Levels and MISSION 14?!?!??!??

So once I finish fixing the last of the crashes and tidy up a few other things, I'll have time to finally get all the difficulties done for Kreydell as well as work on general precieved difficulty and player-training. I know there have been complaints about mission 14 from people, but the issue is rather complex. Different players handle situations differently and learn different lessons. Much of ATS can be brute forced (by design), but this means a decent set of players don't gain the skills in actually handling a rather complex mission like 14. Which is more of a puzzle than a regular mission. The problem lies (probably) in how I fail to train players up to that point, or in how overwhelming the mission is to people that see it for the first time. It's my fault to fix, but I still want mission 14 to be a genuinely mindful mission that takes a degree of careful planning not brute force. Nothing insane, but more than usual.

Okay I think that's enough of an update for the moment, see you later I have work to do.

Luke