I know I said I was planning on finishing up my end of game UI and moving on to the Play Menu UI last week, but I ended up just working on getting my game into a solidly playable state. I was crushing bugs like an exterminator last week, and the game is much less likely to crash or error out now. I also did a bunch of number crunching on the balance side of things. I changed around the masses and engine thrusts of all the ships, and rebalanced the mass of passive systems and turrets as well so that ships are closer to their original maneuverability before all the mass changes (which means they’re a bunch faster than they were!). I also looked at each of my turrets and figured out what their maximum dps is (if it was firing constantly all the time) and it’s minimum dps (the max DPS when non-firing time is taken into account). Playing around with damage per shot and the firing type statistics allowed me to tune the turrets so they are all similar in DPS, but some burst and others sustain. I also did some of the work on implementing turret roles, so that Autofiring turrets with the point defense role will now shoot down enemy missiles and system effects, which adds some more risk to missile type weapons and certain systems. Here’s a shot of some laser turrets shooting down some missiles:
This coming week I’m going to be focusing on trying to get to the things I mentioned last week, as well as generally polishing several things and doing some planning work.