[General Battuta]

Right now we're trying to offer two choices in Act 1, all-Maul or Vulcan/Scalpel. The Dirk's seen some love and should hopefully be a better option for head to head/antibomber.

I'd also like to give the Vulcan and Maul enhanced longevity in the later acts. I'm thinking of giving each of them an interesting standalone perk. My thought for the Maul is that it will do massive bonus damage inside 100 meters.

I'm not sure what to do with the Vulcan...

[AdmiralRalwood]

There's really no reason to ever link your banks in a 4-2 layout fighter.

Higher alpha damage, which is not inconsiderable depending on your piloting style/skill.

[-Norbert-]

So is just a rough idea and I don't know if it would even work out in the game... or if it's even worth it, but how about making a weapon that's especially good for bomb interception?

A high RoF and a certain degree of scatter might do the trick. Of course the RoF would have to be high enough so that the entire field of fire reached by the scatter is saturated with enough shots to quickly bring down a bomb, but since most bombs need only one hit, that shouldn't be a problem.
The vulcan would be a natural candidate for this kind of thing.
With it's comparetively short range, the scatter won't make it worse against fighters and bombers, but against something as tiny as a bomb, it might make a difference.


If someone's not too good at aiming for bombs, it would make a good backup weapon for interception missions.

[Riverstyx]

Right now we're trying to offer two choices in Act 1, all-Maul or Vulcan/Scalpel. The Dirk's seen some love and should hopefully be a better option for head to head/antibomber.

I'd also like to give the Vulcan and Maul enhanced longevity in the later acts. I'm thinking of giving each of them an interesting standalone perk. My thought for the Maul is that it will do massive bonus damage inside 100 meters.

I'm not sure what to do with the Vulcan...

Just throwing randomly this out there, what if it briefly weakened enemy fighters' armor, causing it to temporarily take more damage the longer you keep it on target?  Seems like a suitable effect for a fast-ROF weapon like the Vulcan.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Sounds like a complex feature, how would one even go about it?

Run a script on weapon collision to detect whenever a ship is hit by a specific weapon? Once you have that, you can change the ship's armor class, then have another script running on regular intervals to restore it back once the debuff duration is expired.

[FrikgFeek]

Just throwing randomly this out there, what if it briefly weakened enemy fighters' armor, causing it to temporarily take more damage the longer you keep it on target?  Seems like a suitable effect for a fast-ROF weapon like the Vulcan.

It should also restore 15 mana on hit for each hit on a debuffed target while reducing the cooldown of your secondaries by 0.1 seconds. Freespace mobafied should probably be saved for the next JAD though.

[Riverstyx]

Sounds like a complex feature, how would one even go about it?

Run a script on weapon collision to detect whenever a ship is hit by a specific weapon? Once you have that, you can change the ship's armor class, then have another script running on regular intervals to restore it back once the debuff duration is expired.

True, Like I said, I just threw out the suggestion at 2am without really considering the implications.

It should also restore 15 mana on hit for each hit on a debuffed target while reducing the cooldown of your secondaries by 0.1 seconds. Freespace mobafied should probably be saved for the next JAD though.

All joking aside, this did give me another idea for it.  (Again, brainstorming, may or may not be a completely stupid suggestion.)  Remember the Lamprey and Leech cannon and how underused they were?  What if the Vulcan had its own leech effect?  It fits my original idea of making hit targets more vulnerable, but it wouldn't be as much of a pain to code since the effect is already in the game.  And, since the Vulcan already does a decent amount of damage, this one might actually see use.

[General Battuta]

The Scalpel picked up the leech ability for the next release. It's pretty fun to use now and will occasionally cause targets to 'stall' cause they run out of AB.

[Riverstyx]

The Scalpel picked up the leech ability for the next release. It's pretty fun to use now and will occasionally cause targets to 'stall' cause they run out of AB.

Ah, nice.  I've always thought the anti-subsystem primaries were fun to use so this is good to hear.

[General Battuta]

October 2 2015

Huge amount of cool **** got done in the last couple days.

• Simms can now die if you abandon her to the Nyxes in 'The Intervention.' You need to stay in the fight.
• Scripted wingmen in some Act 1+2 missions can now be knocked out of action, causing them to lose weapons and gain a stealth buff so the Tevs stop shooting them. They spend a little while knocked out, then repair and come back to the fight. This is a more elegant solution to scripted invincibility than 'lol, I can absorb infinity damage.' It will make your life harder, sorry.
• A LOVELY aesthetic touch which the MVPs and mods should really adopt!!! Pulse weapons and other blobs now play their impact ani when they run out of life. Instead of winking out, they flare up in a cool little blast or pop of energy. Will look at adding this to more weapons, like railguns and mass drivers.
• The Maxim, Paveway, and Maul all got spruced up. The Maxim now requires ammo, as a slight strategic nerf and fluff touch. The Maul is now a crazy bit of tabling involving three dummy weapons: all to make it do bonus damage inside 150m. You'll see a flare-up effect when it can do bonus damage, and then it'll die down to the normal effect after 150m. The slightly OP Paveway bomb has been tweaked, to the joy of Tevs. The standard, stealthy, unkillable Paveway approaches the target to 700m. It then dies and spawns a Paveway#visible, which moves twice as fast (you can see the engine flare up) but can be shot down. We fluff this as the Paveway's stealth coating failing at 700m or so, causing it to go into terminal attack mode.
• A huge overhaul of Tev tactics in The Plunder. This is a showdown between two Karunas + air wing against two Hyperions, a Chimera, and their air wing. Previously, the Tev warships approached at full speed while beaming, then went into a ****ty turning engagement until exploding.
  
  Now, the Chimera halts at long range and starts picking off the Karunas with beam fire. The Hyperions take up closer station to draw torpedo fire and make quick volleys with overheated Thorn Lances. If its main beams are destroyed, the Chimera signals to rig for gun engagement, pushes power to the five Riptide turrets, and closes. The Hyperions form up north and south of the Chimera to screen it from fighter attack while the Chimera chooses the most damaged frigate and follows a dynamic waypoint path to broadside it and maul its engines.
  
  The Tevs are also making better use of tactical jamming. Pilots will have to pick off Auroras and sensor subsystems to let the Karuna torpedoes engage effectively. Each jammer taken out improves accuracy and rate of fire. The Simms buddy system in this mission was overhauled to be more reliable and readable. I'm guessing nobody used it much, since it had a book that could make you permanently invincible!

[Riverstyx]

Great to see so much progress being made.  Can't wait for the release.  I'm excited to try out the new Maul.  I always preferred the Vulcan, personally, but this buff might change my mind.

[Mars]

I hope something cool happens with the Vulcan, I always wanted to like it. I also hope that the Balor has some sort of perk over PromS in whatever Tev fighter missions there are.

[General Battuta]

The Vulcan's 'perk' right now is excellent synergy with the Scalpel. They really make a cool power combo.

[crizza]

Sounds great, any chances to see the glorious finished Erebus?

[Darius]

The Erebus emerged as a dream ship, poised on the edge of nightmare.

[T-Man]

A genuine hats off to Aesaar. That has got to be one of the best looking Terran ships I've ever seen, especially with the lighting effects . Have been massively impressed with his stuff for BP so far.

I liked the tech description too; you get the impression it's been a bloody long project building that ship, and it was a nice touch having the uncertainties with some of its equipment. Nice one!

[Cyborg17]

Love it!   

[Lepanto]

October 5 2015

Updated the Atreus mission with (hopefully) functioning missile ammo, beam toggling, and WiP heat management.

Added TerPulse#Huge#Command variant, for capship control missions.

[niffiwan]

*glee*

Ever since I saw that Blueplanet badge popup next to your posts I was hoping that it signified you taking on the Atreus capship command mission.  Wheeeeeee!

[Lepanto]

You betcha.

Working with the BP team has been a great, though intellectually challenging, experience. *fanboy squee* We've been brainstorming cool ideas for the mission, and have some basic plans for structure and cool Atreus abilities and stuff. The finished product should exceed anything I've done (mostly) solo.