SPL: Skilled Pilots Live News

Hi there,

[h2]Native Nexus[/h2]

• Third boss fight is available
  
• Native Nexus can be defeated in a direct fight, but without understanding it's behaviour it might be difficult.
  
• It's the most fragile but at the same time deadly Nexus from the three
  
• This boss excels at long range combat and summons deadly minions to help in the fight
  

[h2]Narrative[/h2]

• Added missing radio chatter for Natives and Starborne, now all species will talk to you during combat
  
• Different enemy tiers have something different to say
  
• Enemy chatter should give you a better idea on what's going on in SPL world, if you take a careful notice of what they're saying
  

[h2]Upgrades[/h2]

• Added new weapon keyword: Dooming - it will reduce heat cost of weapons by 50% or 100% if taken twice. The amount reduced will damage your ship.
  
• Balance changes to some of the weapon keywords
  

Have fun!

Hi there,

[h2]Narrative[/h2]

• Added Journal accessible via Inventory screen or by pressing 'J' button.
  
• Some encounters will unlock journal entries.
  
• First three part mini story has been added. More will come, hopefully every week.
  
• Added radio chatter, the Terran enemies will communicate with you. Messages from Natives and Starborne coming up next.
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• As the game starts with a weapon choice and free upgrade, new tech levels are leveling up 50% slower. It was observed that you can very quickly get a crazy amount of upgrades in the first chapter.
  
• Enemies will prefer now to fight at a much shorter range. Sniping with hailgun shouldn't be the easy default tactic anymore. This also makes Terrans and Starborne much more deadly but Natives easier to kill.
  
• The enemies will get more deadly, the more of them are in your close proximity, their aggression and accuracy will increase.
  
• Starborne will now be much more defensive by default and fall back to using shield instead of blindly attacking. They are the slowest and biggest target and it made them very easy to kill. Flanking should be now the default tactic when fighting Starborne.
  

Hi there,

[h2]New death mechanic[/h2]

• If you get defeated by another ship they will steal all your tech progress!
  
• The enemy that defeated you is marked with purple colour on hud and has purple electric discharge VFX
  
• You can get back your lost progress by defeating this enemy
  
• Progress will be retained if you crash in a collision with a static object or during boss fight.
  
• Consequence of death for will be specific to a given boss fight, starborn nexus will respawn one yellow shell and terran nexus will regenerate a large portion of it's armour
  

[h3]Gameplay changes[/h3]

• The AI director will now do a better job of scaling the AI difficult in larger fights. Decreased AI aggression and accuracy when fighting multiple enemies while retaining difficulty of smaller fights
  
• The enemies will defend - deflect or dodge more often
  
• Combat encounters with threat above 100% will become significantly more difficult
  
• Gold tier enemies will spawn more often
  
• Silver enemies will use shield counter infrequently
  
• Gold enemies will use shield counter quite often
  
• Enemies that can counter will do it only if they clearly see the projectile coming, you should be safe from counters when flanking or shooting them in the back
  
• Countering now instantly fails if you got recently damaged or received a shield hit
  
• Failing a counter will render the shield inoperable for a short while
  
• Countered projectiles are much more accurate
  
• Enemies won't intentionally deflect or dodge incoming countered bullets, making counters more effective
  

[h3]Encounter changes[/h3]

• Doubled the size of the smallest iris rings, tpp camera made it hard to fly through, resulting in frustrating collisions and deaths
  
• A hud indicator will now point at the next iris ring - most of the players got lost or had trouble fiding the last few irides, especially after crashing and dying
  

[h3]Gamepad improvements[/h3]

• Analog stick rotation is much more precise
  
• Added analog stick acceleration, quick turns during a flyby are now possible
  
• The reticle becomes sticky when using gamepad, it sticks to hud targets making it easier to aim or pick fast travel targets
  
• When shooting the reticle will quickly start pointing directly at the enemy
  
• The whole UI is again fully supported and usable via gamepad
  

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• Limited the maximum length of enemy health bars. If the limit is exceeded the bars will get thicker
  

Hi there,

[h2]Terran Nexus [/h2]

• The second boss fight is available!
  
• The Terran Nexus is a slow turning, bulky but very powerful cruiser. It knows how to dodge, and use it's shield well enough to counter your shots. Unlike Starborn Nexus it can be defeated in a direct fight.
  
• The game will now finish after both fights have been complete.
  
• The icon next to the nexus arrival bar tells you which boss you are going to fight in the current chapter. At the moment the boss fights come in random order. If you want to specifically fight the new boss, just restart the game once or twice and make sure you see a Terran species icon.
  
• Boss fights now scale according to threat level. If you constantly pick very difficult fights, the nexus encounter will get more difficult but succeeding will yield much more fame.
  Nexus fights below threat 100% will be accordingly easier.
  
• Finishing the first nexus fight will replenish 50% of the elapsed time.
  
• The game will now increase the combat pacing if you are doing well.
  

I will be focusing next on making the death mechanic more meaningful and interesting.
Also as the game gets longer the next design goals are to make the mid game more varied and interesting: A new tier of elite enemies will appear at least once each combat, they will drop a 5th resource, used to unlock Perks.

Hi there,

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• As a test made targeting enemies more challenging with fix weapon variants (Trident, Auto, Scatter).
  
• Turret mounted weapon variants have been slightly improved
  
• Fixed a bug that weapons could scale VFX and SFX without limit, so for instance shooting a phasebolt in a large fight would make you blind and deaf.
  
• Balanced Starborne Nexus fight, the phasebolt doesn't guarantee a easy win anymore. The boss will use Starlance and Deathray weapons in different fight stages.
  
• Enemies will change acceleration and trajectory much smoother, this addresses the auto-aim jittering.
  
• Enemies that fly in formation (including Starborne nexus shells) will have much less erratic trajectory if the player aims at them.
  
• Balanced some of the new weapons
  
• Greatly increased Native's armour regeneration cooldown after hit, they were almost impossible to kill with slow shooting weak weapons.
  
• Fixed a couple of random crashes
  
• Made the game leaner, reduces the size by 200MB
  

Have fun!