@Hurikane211 Yeah I've seen that mentioned a few times, and to be honest I don't think it's a big deal right now as it only gives scrap and a very small amount of upgrades. I know of another cheat/exploit where you can get 10,000 upgrades and 100,000 scrap within a couple minutes. I've mainly used this to experiment with builds and test weapons at full upgrades to see how they balance against other weapons. I'm not going to mention how to do this though as it's something that you'd likely never find unless you looked for it, and it's kind of useful too
Unfortunately for our testing, it seems like that exploit got patched. I was enjoying it, too - it very much accelerated the trial and error phase of playing with new toys.
One thing I STILL haven't seen, which I would be very very interested in, is to see alien hangar bays dropping and sold at stations. Some of those missile ships, and the squishy little swarmers with pea shooters and larger squad sizes . . . I'd LOVE to tinker with some of those.
It would be nice if we could set up fighter behaviour, perhaps within their upgrade screen - defensive, to keep them close to screen missiles instead of chasing fighters, and offensive, to see them running off to hunt distant enemies without my instructions, would be nice.
I don't know if it's just me or has this been talked about but I find the "damage number popping" everywhere so annoying. It ruins the visual experience of the game and its not helpful at all I guess because the hull and shield number of the "ship" is not present in the screen while battling. And its just a quick stand off against the enemy anyway. The last thing you know your dead or the enemy's ship has exploded. The meter and with the red color on the sides of the screen works fine and is enough *for a phone phlatfrom
*Maybe you could just use that on the PC version
I have to agree - the numbers are rarely needed. Sometimes a point of hull damage goes missing, but I assume that's a rounding error somewhere. The only other instance this is useful is when you penetrate a shield, but it doesn't fully stop a projectile, and only partial damage is done to the hull. This, also, is rarely useful information. It's nothing that will change my battle strategy or change the outcome of a battle.
It does, however, illustrate to the player how damage behaves in the game . . . it might be useful to include the option to display damage numbers, but default it to off.
Love the update, it really does add an incredible amount of depth to an already brilliant game. I would, however, like to be able to buy more stock human turrets from the standard list, rather than having to find or buy them from stations. Perhaps having them cost 6000 plus?
Thank you everyone for the fantastic feedback. It's so awesome to have such a lively discussion going on here at the forums!
We will patch the game as much as we can and fix the biggest issues before a Christmas break. It has been a hectic year for us, thank you for being with us.
Oh, and do keep on giving feedback! Never stop.
Some more play, some more observations.
Have the frequency of the drops changed? I have not seen a Mega-Plasma in days, where once I'd expect to see them in station inventories, dropped off ships, or in crates once per game at least. In fact, I'm mostly seeing lousy unmodded energy cannons these days. Crates don't seem worth the risk anymore... unless this is just Revenge of the Random Number Generator, and doesn't reflect a change.
The game has been incredibly stable for me with my Moto X and Android 5.1. other than one update breaking my save game (expected in a beta), I have had no crashes, and few bugs.
One bug I ran into was a targeting issue with a shield de-energizer. it worked fine, and then sort of got stuck, and always fired uselessly at a 30degree or so angle. Stopping the game, closing it out, and then restarting seemed to fix it.
Currently, I'm finding both missiles and rockets very very ineffective. They moved from my first picks to almost never picked if I have a choice. I'd prefer a modded projectile cannon with something that strips shields over the missiles. They're so slow that unless you have lots of them with burst, the enemy point defense just wastes them, and they're not great against fighters. Missile bombers suffer some of this, though their ability to hit vulnerable angles helps a bit. I think both missiles and rocket cannons cost too much given how well they function right now against point defense. Lasers on the other hand are gorgeous, and I find myself using them more than ever. I can stick with basic human laser cannons through most of a run, and do quite well. The effectiveness of the rocket weapons is probably about right, but they're way costly given their DPS against anything with point defense (which is everything).
Nuke cannons though, are just useless. They're the big newb trap on the gear list right now, possibly beaten by repair and regen drones, but only a little. Those slow nukes get wasted by point defense so easily and fire so slowly they hardly ever matter for anything but a brawler ship that jumps in right on top of an enemy, inside point defense range, and unloads - taking lumps, but hoping to kill the enemy before dying. Brawler ships are pretty fun, but I've found not an overall good strategy. For a goof, I used the quit game exploit to start out with mad scrap, and I loaded a capital ship up with gats and five nuke cannons. I got slaughtered within three systems of start. Nukes are sort of terrible.
Bolter drones are still king, even at their higher cost. Fighters are a good starter, as you can usually get three of them launched before leaving the starting system, but upgrading to bolter drones ASAP is never a bad idea. Cost is about right, I think. I played with laser drones, and they're alright, but I'm not seeing a huge advantage there over the cheaper fighters. Likewise, missile bombers are very pricey, have a slow regen, a low fleet size, and the missiles get eaten by the more effective point defense. In terms of DPS, I think they lag behind bolter drones pretty badly. They to be less limited at that price, or maintain the same limits and be cheaper.
I've been playing a challenge mode - trying to see how far I can get with a single Nightingale. I can get to the fourth galaxy on Easy, the third on Medium, but only the second on hard (where I was almost immediacy wasted by a flak cannon). It's a good challenge to play in, and really forces you to evaluate the weapons and tactics you use, swap them out regularly, and make careful decisions about the hanger you use. Bolster drones all the way for this mode of play. The numbers, nimbleness, and squad size beat everything else.
We have buffed Nuke speed and laser drones in the newest update.
Those really effective turrets, like mega plasma, were ranked as medium turrets earlier. It was an error obviously
It meant that in first galaxies ships could pop up with them equipped. Now they should only be more present in the later galaxies.
Great job with the Nightengale challenge!
Great job on the last few updates, balance feels a lot better.
Really like the new little alert symbol to let you know that there is an item in the system, feels a lot more intuitive!