Pool's Closed

welp it's the 15th and no beta.

Ahem, so yeah, we were pretty tired after coming back from Japan /excuse.

Actually, I ended up doing a lot of things which created more work so the beta's going to take more time to make. We can't push this one out like the last one because there's actually no new story content in this beta, but the new battle engine will finally be turned on, and the placeholder battles in the beta will be replaced, and new side missions will be added.

I added a bunch of new hirable merc ships... Eh so far, there's a big Mining Union super-battleship asteroid crusher which is one of the biggest rank and file ships in the game. It's got a giant version of Claude's gravity gun mounted on its nose to suck in asteroids which can also move around other ships, and powerful frontal lasers which can cut apart asteroids and ships alike, along with enough kinetics and assaults to keep pirates away. You can also recover an ancient Ryuvian destroyer, which is swift and nimble, with fearsome kinetic and pulse weaponry. For fire support, you can now also call upon recommissioned Cera gunships, which can shred ryders and missiles with guns. But then I wasn't satisfied with that and I asked myself, if the Sunrider still has space in its hangar, why doesn't it also fill it up with merc ryders? So now I want to add merc ryders too.

And of course, the battles are going to get too easy unless there's a bunch of new PACT units as well... So the strategy where you clump all your units for overlapping flak and shield coverage worked way too well in MoA, eh... Well, that strategy now has a counter in the form of the PACT Destroyer, which fires torpedoes which deal SPLASH damage. So either fan your units out, or get hurt. I'm also thinking that the full leeroy strategy of flying right into a PACT fleet and pounding it with kinetics will get an additional counter in the form of PACT Fast Cruisers. You'll think twice about coming in close now, because these ships have small profiles, good maneuverability, and decent kinetics, so they can poke holes through your hull while dancing around your cannons. So more things to make...

And then I forgot, I wanted to completely remake the FIRE THE VANGUARDS sequence with all new visuals and music... And god knows how long that'll take.

And of course, all this means that there will be many, many more units on the field, meaning the game engine has to be recoded so that battles don't become a tedious slog of watching attack animations for two hours during the enemy turn.

I think finishing the new units will take just a few days, but as for the new Vanguards sequence, that's honestly an unknown. :\ It really depends how elaborate it ends up and right now I haven't begun working on it.

I think the new stuff should be worth it though. The Union battleship, Ryuvian destroyer, Cera gunship, and PACT Destroyer are almost done at this point, while the other stuff still need to be made. (Basically hirable ryders, the PACT Fast Cruiser, and the new Fire Vanguards sequence, as well as setting up the battles and recoding the game engine to support all this.)