This week’s update is going to detail a pair of new skills that will offer some much requested bonuses to Transwarp devices, some updates to the Weapon Effect system as well as a new Fleet Commander class super item! Keep reading to find out more.
Transwarp devices were added with our last universe reset and they offer players a very convenient way to traverse the vast distances between galaxies. Based on the feedback so far, I think it is safe to say they are very appreciated means of travel. The only complaint I’ve really heard is that some people feel the cooldown is too long! To those of you who feel that way, I am introducing some new Transwarp specialty skills! Very soon I will be adding two new skills to Beta Antares; Transwarp Turbocharging and Advanced Transwarp Nagivation.
Transwarp Turbocharging will increase the charge rate for transwarp devices by 20% per level. This skill has a maximum of five. That means maxed out, this skill will reduce your transwarp cooldown to five minutes! Advanced Transwarp Navigation will increase the jump distance of your transwarp devices by 5 per level, up to a maximum of 25 extra jumps. Both these skills will require a new commodity called a “Transwarp Coil” that can be built from a blueprint in Beta Antares. Like the Bar Skills, these specialty skills are rather pricey, but for the added convenience, I am sure some players will find them worth it.
This past week I also made a few changes to some of the effects in the weapons effect system, notably the Ricochet and Chain Bullet effects.
Currently the Ricochet effect works by ‘bouncing’ a projectile off your target at a random angle in a 180 degree arc towards your ship. This means that unless you are threading the needle between two ships to hit one behind it, the device is largely useless. Using a little trigonometry and some physics, I’ve changed the way they work to be a little more natural and predictable. Now the bullet will ricochet at an angle based on where you shoot the target (it reflects the bullet’s velocity across a vector drawn from the center of the object hit to the impact point). This means if you shoot the target dead on, the ricochet will come back towards your ship; but if you hit the target at an angle, it will bounce at an angle. This will allow ‘trick shooting’ with these devices which I think is extremely cool.
The Chain Bullet effect has been updated as well. There were a few bugs in the implementation. Firstly, it wasn’t properly inheriting the auto-aim (or tracking) from it’s weapon. Secondly, a slow moving projectile with the effect did some interesting and unintended things if you fired it and warped into another galaxy. This has also been fixed. Finally, there has been a slight mechanic change. Currently when you fire a chain bullet weapon at a target, if it can’t locate other available targets, it won’t bounce at all. It’s been updated to bounce at a random angle away from the target hit regardless of if it finds a target or not. This is a pretty useful change since it means the effect isn’t dead, it can still hit something that might wander into it’s path and get another bounce.
Finally, the new Fleet Commander class super item! The original design for class super items called for the Fleet Commander Squad Transwarps to be one of the special items obtained by doing the Crucible. However, they were way too cool an item to hold until the class rebalance was finished. Instead of that item, the Fleet Commander’s third super item is the Dirty Bomb.
The Dirty Bomb item is a low cooldown radiation damage explosion that will hit all targets within its range. It can be used to finish off larger enemies or completely destroy a group of smaller enemies. The idea behind this item is that with the newest changes to irradiation (irradiated AI will now activate their space break) a medium damage, AoE radiation device could make it a lot easier to get a large group of wild slaves quickly!
So that’s it for this week’s update. I’ll be back again with another update next week, until then, feel free to post your questions, comments and suggestions in the forums!
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