This months work will be split between getting in some miscellaneous combat mechanics and tentatively focused on minor improvements to combat visuals and UI, mainly from a technical perspective. I'll try and sneak in a new faction I've been working on on and off behind the scenes, but no promises. I already added in two of their weapons in this month's update which wasn't *supposed* to happen. Oops 😛

Finally, this will likely be the last combat focused update for now as I close out the combat overhaul started in June. Most of my primary goals with this series of updates have been met and then some with respect to establishing a strong foundation I can build off of in the future, and I'm happy with how things have progressed.

Combat Mechanics

Multi Round Combat

As combat is intended to take place over multiple rounds, I wanted to add support for keeping track of which round it is, which ships were deployed in each round, and the previous winner/loser. That will allow me to plug it in to various perks and hullmods.

Retreating

I'll add a region on each side of combat. Entering the region will allow the ship to retreat, removing it from play. This will mainly be for ships that are out of stamina or nearly dead.

Status Effect Improvements

Status effect will be receiving yet more work this month. September established moving status effects from being instantly applied into gradually applied, and streamlining old systems like ion damage under it. This month will push the perk handling system into newer and even more whacky territory. The plan is to make it so perks can modify status effects(which are themselves perks). This will allow me to do things like have hullmods/perks that grant partial resistances to effects

Combat UI

I'll be improving the weapon display on the combat HUD a bit. Mainly trying to make it more compact and aligned properly

The plan is also to make status effects display build up icons when you select a ship.

Aesthetic Improvements

Weapon Barrels and Animations

I have some ideas in mind for reworking weapon emitters and animation states of weapons. A lot is still up in the air but the plan is to do a better job of unifying weapons.

Escape Pods

I'd like ships to eject escape pods from them when the blow up in non-simulated combat. Would be a fun little addition that shouldn't be *too* much work.

Venting Ports

Up until now I've been using a really generic looking effect to show venting, which I didn't really care for. One of my favorite sci fi concepts is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_droplet_radiator, basically cooling ships by dispersing liquid metal around the ship to maximize surface area for radiation, then using a magnetic field to collect it. I won't be doing that just yet (not sure how exactly to make it look), but I will be working towards at least getting basic data set up. I'm thinking it'll be like a line/stream effect that flows from one part of the ship to another, with vent speed determining the attributes of the line, not sure.

Misc:

Minor fix for mouse input handling in combat. Ships shoot when you click to switch ships and I'd like to prevent that.