Welcome back for another update. This marks the last major combat update for the time being before switching gears, so I tried to cram in as much as I could.

New Faction

The Reef

A nomadic faction composed of scientists, explorers, and those with nowhere left to go back to. The Reef makes their home amongst the stars, constantly traveling in search of new data and discoveries. Politically neutral, they prefer to leave the other factions to their own devices, though their tendency to strip locations of valuable resources with little regard for ownership has put them at odds with the Guild on several occasions. Their disconnected nature with the rest of the factions coupled with their many forays into the mysterious edge of the sector has produced a rather strange group of people both culturally and technologically. While welcoming to outsiders, it is wise not to ask too many questions when dealing with them. And rumors of psionic activity amongst the higher level members are dismissed as mere superstition.

Mechanically, the Reef is intended to be a subversive faction. Their ships tend to have paper thin armor and hull but incredibly strong shields. Many of their ships also have extremely high stamina, allowing them to outlast most factions while spamming abilities. Their weapons and ships trend towards universal and hybrid mounts, allowing them to adapt to many roles and use unconventional weaponry. Their design also focuses on the dodge mechanic, with easily maxable reactors (to get the +1 bonus) and hullmods that encourage it. Many of their ships are reasonably fast in the overworld and have good fuel economy.

Combat

A lot of work was poured into the combat systems this month, rewriting old systems and adding a few new ones.

Multi round combat

Combat can now determine what round of combat it is. The ships used in each round of combat is also stored, opening the doors for some new perks and hullmods.

Retreating

Ships can enter the edge of combat and retreat, taking them from the battle early.

Weapon Turning

Weapon turning logic has been rewritten to use fewer trig functions, so it should be more performant. The rewrite also fixed some edge cases and unintended behavior that the previous code had, namely that it'd get "stuck" if 180+ degree turns were needed, and that weapons will now rotate to be on the best side they can be to match targets outside of turning range.

Better Ship Input

Ship input has also been rewritten. Previously inputs were being handled in the physics methods, which was fine when those features were developed, but was becoming bloated and generally shouldn't be done there. Input polling now happens in Godot's dedicated _unhandled_input method intended for that behavior, which maps to input flags that are then handled in the physics logic. Consequently, this solves two problems. The first being that left clicking on UI elements was being received by ships regardless of click interceptions that UI should be doing, causing you to for example shoot when clicking on a button. The second is that, since inputs are essentially handled via a bunch of flags (eg: "turn left next frame"), this means I can more easily attach AI which manipulates those flags to control movement just like a player would. Combat AI is still a good while off, but it's one less barrier to accomplishing it.

Plate Shields

Plate shields have been completely reworked from the ground up both visually and functionally. They now act as an array of regenerating panels as a sort of futuristic disposable reactive-armor around the outside of the ship. This is much, much more in line with my original goal with them, though it took some work getting there.

Projectiles

I improved some of the code for projectile movement, making it more customizable. This has allowed me to add more behavior:

• "Physics" based projectiles which have steering and acceleration as opposed to simply turning
• Projectiles which can follow a path. This allowed for some new weapons, seen below.
• A drill type projectile, which will attach to a target and do continuous damage until destroyed by PD weapons.

Weapon Recoil/Barrel Animations

I was able to put together a pretty streamlined system for different glows and recoil animations. Miniguns spin their barrels, lasers glow, and turrets have barrel recoil.

Improved Ship Destruction

Ships will now play an animation as they're being destroyed, before fully blowing up.

UI Enhancements

Ship Editor

The ship editor's ship info modal now displays more ship stats

Combat

Weapons display better in the combat HUD. They're also sorted by weapon group and type.

Some work has been done to get status effects set up for displaying in the HUD, but remains unfinished.

Weapons

New Weapons

• Hotshot: Common pool medium energy weapon. Fires a large ball of plasma at high speeds. True to its namesake, it generates a ton of heat.
• Wave Crasher: Essentially a weaponized common system. Large Universal. Fires a burst of high energy waves at the target.
• School Microlaser Array: A short range array of many lasers for Reef. Does extreme damage to any fighters unfortunate enough to run into them. Small energy.
• Barnacle: A medium universal weapon for the Reef. Has massive amounts of armor and a slow turn rate, while firing a weak shotgun spread. Mainly used to beef up armor sections while still having an offensive option.
• Migrator: Reef Medium fusion weapon. Fires a stream of directed plasma blades which will pierce through a target and reverse course, potentially damaging the target from both sides.
• Wanderer: Reef Medium Missile. Fires a stream of missiles that generate heat but reloads quickly.
• O27 Repeater: Spin up small energy weapon for AFG.

Weapon Changes

Convergence Cannon: The weapon now fires 6 projectiles, which will travel in a wide 90 degree angle. It has received an updated look to go along with its new path based projectiles.

The Injector and Breaker have become drill weapons.

Hullmods

New Hullmods

• Hit and Run: Restores health and stamina upon retreating
• Hidden Compartments: Boosts Smuggling skill on the ship that equips it
• Assassination: Upon uncloaking, ships will gain a boost to damage
• Tungsten Bore: Enhances the damage and health of drill weapons
• Trajectory: Drastically increases turn rate of weapons when performing a dodge
• Glass Cannon: Doubles the damage of weapons under 700 range at the cost of stripping all armor
• Lethargic: Negative Hullmod. Slows the ship speed by 35% (The snail's name is Chester)

Hullmod Changes

Orbital Boosters has been switched to the Reef Faction

Misc Changes:

Added Smuggling fleet skill and icons. Currently does nothing.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed ship explosions doing damage, which had become bugged when messing with collision reworks last update.
• Strafing has been fixed so it doesn't freak out sometimes
• Status effects will no longer crash the game
• Perk icons in combat properly update when adding new status effects
• The container for weapon display in the combat HUD now grows properly