SPL is back! Gameplay has been overhauled

Hi.
It's been a while since last update. I had to recharge my creative batteries and take a few steps back to have a better look at the game.
The idea was to make a final decision on the course SPL should take and then commit to it - for good.

[h3]Looter shooter[/h3]

• The attribute based progression has been removed from the game.
  
• You can now equip up to 4 weapons and 3 ship upgrades.
  
• Items drop randomly from enemies with random tiers ranging from Damaged to Legendary.
  
• Any weapon combination can drop from any enemy, if you like your Trident Deathray it may just drop from the first enemy.
  
• Higher tiers have greater number of item modifiers.
  
• Items also have a level: for weapons it's power level, for ship upgrades it's resilience level.
  
• The higher the resilience level the more resistant to damage you are.
  
• The higher the is the weapons power level, the higher is it's damage
  
• To determine the ships resilience level average resilience level is taken from all ship upgrade slots. So if you have only a single ship modular with level 300, your ships resilience will be equal to 100.
  
• By beating tougher enemies the level of the loot drops will increase.
  
• You can earn a multipurpose resource - rift dust by defeating the enemies.
  
• You can scrap items to gain rift dust.
  
• You can fuse a selected item with some other items. The main items type and rarity is retained but the level is taken from average of all items. This way you can re-roll your Legendary items or fish for specific ship upgrades and weapons.
  

[h3]Death is not final[/h3]

• Dying doesn't end the game.
  
• All your ships equipment is lost with the ship's destruction.
  
• You can expand you subspace stash and store items there. These precious item slots are retained after death. Even if you die you can have good loot saved after you respawn.
  
• The enemies will still drop items with level as high as before death, so you can quickly bounce back even if you have no items left.
  

[h3]Encounters are no longer random[/h3]

• Each hostile encounter has been designed and is no longer random.
  
• Enemies can now use any one of 63 weapons.
  
• Enemy waves are designed with enemy tiers, weapons, upgrades, formations to provide a unique experience in each encounter.
  
• Boss fights are a fixed sequence: Forgotten Hero, Mother of Many, Nexus Zero. In the future this will mean three tiers of boss fights. So when new bosses are added Forgotten Hero will still only appear as first boss fight.
  

[h3]More varied combat[/h3]

• Flying quickly is as viable defense as dodging, the enemies will most often miss you if you keep moving. This promotes more aggressive tactics where you approach or rush the enemies instead of sniping from afar and dodging away from danger.
  
• Some weapon types have been reworked to provide unique gun-play.
  
• The boss fights are more deadly.
  

[h3]New direction[/h3]
SPL will focus in future updates on:

• Loot: Improving looting experience
  
• Loot: Adding completely new item types with new purpose
  
• Combat: Adding new encounters, enemy types and boss fights
  
• Combat: Adding interactive arena elements and environmental traps to enhance combat
  
• Combat: Adding synergies between enemies
  
• Visuals: Making the sceneries more varied in shape and colour
  

[h3]Score[/h3]
The in game score (fame) has not been perfected for the new gameplay. The leaderboard has been temporarily hidden and the score will likely get wiped soon.
I didn't want to hold the release for another week for the sake of this feature.

[h3]Other improvements[/h3]

• Added volumetric fog and lighting.
  
• Improved SFX.
  
• Greatly reduced save game size.
  
• Fixed numerous crashes.