Major Update- 2 Months in Early Access!

Howdy folks!

Today we celebrate 2 months in Early Access! I really wanted to make update 40 extra special so I tried my best to make it as feature rich with the things most heavily requested by you folks.

Manage Settlement

Some great progress has been made on the Manage Settlement feature - this was one of the most heavily requested items and has been in planning for a long time. I've managed to get a few sections of this ready, and made some great progress on the overall system. In this initial version, I've added some functionality allowing you to assign armies and defense fleets, change the tax level, production and some other small pieces. This is still early days on this functionality and I'm looking forward to the feedback, things are going well so far!

Customize Difficulty

Another heavily requested and discussed features is the all encompassing difficulty settings! This includes scaling, balancing, and means so many different things to different folks. As its such a polarizing item with so many clashing opinions on how things should be, I've decided to take an approach that I hope will cover off all the various types of player we have by adding customization panel for new campaigns. Options are limited for now, but with many more planned.

You can change these difficulty settings at any time using the new button in the Pause menu of the Campaign. As we progress through development - more options will be available as I release patches, so you'll be able to take advantage of the changes by choice during your playthroughs - without having to start over.

Auto-Range

For this patch I've also added a nice QOL feature, which is enabled by default for all campaigns. Auto-ranging is now available during battles. This feature can be toggled on and off at any time while in the sailing mode. It allows you to fire at ships without having to worry about elevation or powder settings to range them. The ship will automatically work these out and you'll have a good chance of landing some hits. You can still hold right click to switch to the old aiming mode for when you need full control. You can turn this feature off in the "Campaign Difficulty Settings" if you'd prefer not to have it, or just not use the J key.

Localization

Some more localization coverage was added but a quick reminder that Localization was never meant to be focused at this stage of the development and coverage and accuracy are very limited. Treat it as an experimental feature that you can enable/disable - I only hope it enables some folks to enjoy the game who couldn't previously.

Localization will be focused on in the future heavily during Early Access and will roll out gradually.

There has been a good few bug fixes and improvements across the board also. I'm glad folks seem to be enjoying the Letter of Marque updates & recent patches and changes. Thank you to everyone reporting in on these with issues and observations.

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Thanks to everyone sharing their screenshots on the Steam community & Discord!

Here is a full list of all changes this patch:

New

• Manage Settlement progress:

  • CosmeticGovernance/Change Tax Level, View happiness and effects, Assign Mayor / Governor (Locked until Mayors/Captains update)
  • CosmeticDefense/Manage Armies, Fleets and Coastal Defenses

• Updated the main menu Version display for default and test branches.

• Difficulty Customization (Early pass)

  • Hit the