SPL: Skilled Pilots Live News

Hi,

the time-management mechanic didn't survive the test of time (haha), most importantly - it wasn't fun.
It took away meaning from dying and put unnecessary pressure on the player.



From now on SPL won't rush you. The perma-death is always on.
So is the game just harder now ? What about other time related gameplay?
Read below.

[h2]Last Stand[/h2]

• New ship ability, used via Left Ctrl or gamepad Y. Will heal you to maximum, knockback enemies and incoming projectiles - effectively saving your life
  
• Tied to new resource - Energy. It consumes 100% energy and requires 100% energy to use
  

[h2]Energy[/h2]

• Can be recover by flying through Irides
  
• Overheal decay recharges energy - if you are healed to 100% and you are overcharged, the disappearing extra health replenishes energy
  
• Purging tech progress recovers energy - 1 ship/terran/native/starborne point converts into 1% of energy
  

[h2]Perma death[/h2]

• Yep -it's always on. If you die - you die, game over
  
• You no longer can die instantly from a collision with a static objects (even when using jump drive), figured that dying from mistakes in combat is fun, crashing into asteroids ending in game-over is not
  

[h2]Exposure[/h2]

• This mechanic is disabled for now, as the timer is gone, looking for a new place for it
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Removed Expansion weapon mod, weapons still have 4 mod slots, however each slot can have unlimited quantity of mods of same type - so you can have 'Accuracy x5', 'Efficient x10', 'Anti-Armour x3' etc.
  
• Less enemy waves per encounter
  
• Less enemies per wave, this means that silver and gold enemies will be much more common above 100% threat
  
• Starborne will jump very close to the player, becoming a close-combat, almost melee opponent
  
• Nexus Zero spawns minions more often
  
• Overcharge decays more much more quickly (and converts into energy), if you are fully healed
  

[h2]Performance[/h2]

• GPU related framerate has gone massively up. If your graphics card wasn't enough, it should work much better now
  

[h2]What's next?[/h2]
There are two major priorities ahead:

1. New player experience - the game should be much easier to pick up and more fun from the start
   
2. Breaking the routine - add more game elements that will push the player to make a mistakes and die, but still holding the principle tough but fair
   

Hi,
A bit late with the patch notes today.

So you said that the ship is unresponsive and overheat is not fun?
Well I agree, it was!

[h3]Gameplay changes[/h3]

• You can recover significantly quicker if you press any key rapidly when overheated.
  C'mon, star... start working damn it! Hit that space!
  
• All ships have now twice the acceleration and maneuverability.
  
• Player ship has higher turning rate compared to AIs to allow easier flanking.
  
• In the light of new, crazy velocities the aim assist has been tuned up. Now the player has the same aim assist accuracy as the AI. Shooting was never really about aiming but timing and positing so it's all for the best.
  
• (Prototype) As a request from one of the players holding SHIFT now activates auto-look-at-lock-on camera. We'll see how it lands. On gamepad this is turned on via Right Thumbstick press.
  
• Intuitive gamepad mapping - to fly according to Left Analog stick. Left analog now accelerates forward, left, right, backward.
  LT, RB are up and down acceleration. Braking was remapped to A.
  
• Disabled the ability to select empty weapon slot, as it didn't serve any purpose but could confuse new players.
  
• Doing all the tutorials is mandatory now if you start the game for the first time, but each tutorial objective has been significantly shortened. This way we ensure the new player will learn the basics but not get bored by tutorial length (hopefully!).
  

Have fun, and let me know what you think!

Paweł

Hi,
so the first patch for the released game is here!

[h2]Gameplay[/h2]

• Enemy attack broadcasts are now much more visible
  
• Bronze Tier enemies and Bosses will no longer have perfect accuracy
  
• Explosions caused by death of enemies defeated by the player no longer harm the player
  
• Maximum enemy wave size reduced to 5, while the enemy wave size difficulty remained the same
  
• The game will restricts the number of enemies that can attack the player at one given moment.
  This means that it's less likely to encounter huge wave of very easy enemies. Silver and gold tier enemies should appear more often
  
• Reduced the time needed for the boss to appear each chapter
  

[h2]Other[/h2]

• Improved UX of the starting loadout screen
  

Hi,

so the game got released to Early Access!
It's been a while since the last update announcement. I was too busy bugfixing!

[h3]New features[/h3]

• Every object in game (asteroid, megastructure cube etc.) is now physical and many have angular velocity, which means they rotate. This is the first step to make the sceneries alive.
  
• Due to some mysterious presence all megastructures deteriorate while the game progresses
  
• Added two new megastructure sceneries
  
• Each weapon has been limited to 4 weapon mods. Mods don't stack anymore by default (see below)
  
• New weapon mod - Extension. If equipped the next slot has 3x capacity. So if you use it, in the next slot you can put 3x Accuracy mods instead of 1x Accuracy mod
  
• Added a new game settings: Invert Pitch and VSync options
  
• Improved death mechanic: After respawn if in presence of the nemesis te time is consumed quicker. So you need to kill the enemy that bested you or the exposure will kick in quicker. The weaker the enemy that killed you the stronger the drain. If you were bested by a tough enemy the time consumption multiplier will cap at 120%
  

[h3]Tutorials[/h3]

• Added new information when the player finishes all the tutorials, giving few more tips.
  
• After the player finishes the first tutorial they are now encouraged to get into an easy fight to teach the player that the tutorials are optional and can be revisited
  
• Combat tutorial has been reworked.
  

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• Nerfed Starborne Nexus. It's using sentinel deathray and scatter starlance in second phase. Greatly reduced rotation rotate so it can be flanked effectively. It's overheat time is much longer giving more time to catch breath
  
• Nerfed Native Nexus. It can now overheat. Greatly reduced it's rotation rate to enable flanking
  
• Native Nexus will now dodge and be overall annoying as the rest of the natives.
  
• Time flows when inventory is open
  
• Irides are now much evenly distributed in the 'Relics' encounter
  
• Gamepad has much stronger autoaim now
  
• All enemies try to approach the player even closer, each species has even more distinct defense/dodge/parry behaviour.
  
• Silver and gold enemies are much more challenging
  

[h3]Performance[/h3]

• Fixed performance drops that often occurred during combat and caused unfair deaths
  
• Disabled framerate smoothing - this feature caused momentary performance last longer
  

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• Break to match velocity mechanic was broken most of the time which was especially dangerous in the combat tutorial
  
• Fixed bloom glitches causing graphics artifacts during fights and greatly reducing visibility
  
• Fixed numerous bugs with gamepad and UI interaction
  
• Fixed a bug where when fast travelling with inventory open the jump drive would accelerate the ship in opposite direction than desired
  
• Fixed numerous bugs with scenery displacement. These issues were haunting the game for more than a year. Megastructure elements ended up in wrong spots. This was especially bad in the 'Relics' encounter, where Irides were spawned inside level geometry making the encounter impossible to finish
  
• Starborne Nexus physics glitching when consuming red shells
  
• Fixed numerous bugs with collision avoidance logic. These caused enemies to eventually die due to collisions without any shots fired
  
• Enemies will no longer chase you if you jump drive. This chasing effectively locked the player in encounter and made escaping fights impossible
  

Hi there,

In this patch two new crowd control mechanics have been added:

[h2]Kinetic blast[/h2]

• Full shield has been improved with new functionality!
  
• When activated it charges with incoming bullet kinetic energy
  
• Once released it explodes with the stored energy knocking back everyone around
  
• The more massive the enemy the less affected they are, the fragile ones will be hit most hard
  
• Can be life saver if you find yourself overwhelmed by the enemy numbers
  
• Can be used to smash enemies into asteroids or other static objects
  
• The kinetic blast becomes weaker with distance, having no effect at 4km, with biggest kick at point blank
  

[h2]Explosions[/h2]

• Staggered ships (glowing in yellow) explode when destroyed
  
• When performing glory kill you are immune to this explosion
  
• The explosion strength is proportional to the ships health bar length
  
• Only regular stagger-able enemies explode, lesser minions and bosses do not
  
• As with kinetic blast the explosion strength depends on distance from the epicentre, fading completely at 4 km
  

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• Dynamic objects like destructible asteroids or Irides were sometimes not stationary and flied away when the player arrived at the scene
  
• Scenery static elements like megastructure parts or asteroids would occasionally pop out of place when approached