Space Pirates and Zombies 2 News

Hi all,

Here's what we have been working on for the last couple of weeks. We have been trying to tie up as many loose ends as possible before we make the engine upgrade to support multiplayer in v0.9.0. We hope you like it!




You can now intercept escape pods on the starmap and then do terrible things to them. Messing with escape pods is considered taboo in the galaxy, so expect any witnesses to be unhappy about your pod fishing.

Re-education (lobotomy)
- Costs more scrap the higher level the enemy captain
- Gives the captain the “passive” trait (lobotomy)
- Captain loses all hostile traits.
- Resets the relations to 0
- Only seen in neighboring provinces, so do somewhere secluded
- Good way to install a leader who is neutral toward you (will also be a passive leader)
- Medium relations hit.

Execution
- Is free!
- A new low level captain with a blank slate will spawn elsewhere in the galaxy, same face different captain. (prevents depopulation)
- If the captain was a faction leader that hated you, this can improve faction relations if the new leader doesn't hate you as much.
- Capital will move to the new leader's starbase if you kill the leader.
- Only seen in neighboring provinces, so do somewhere secluded
- Good way to get revenge and be rid of some troublesome captain forever.
- High relations hit

Cure
- Converts a zombie back to being human for a lot of rez
- Everyone in the galaxy likes this. (everyone hears about it)
- Cured captain is very happy with you
- Vaccinated against re-infection for a while (3 starmap minutes)




When faction members are defeated in battle, if there are no remaining starbases from their faction, they will become neutral. This means that you can now wipe out a faction. Kill the starbases, then kill the captains so they can't respawn into the faction.




Starbase bounties were far too low, allowing players to wipe out empires far too easily late game simply by using scrap. You can still do it, but it will now be a lot more expensive so you will need to strategize more in how you spend.

The minimum starbase bounty is calculated based on the owner's tech level and the starbase's size.




We have added what we call the chipper on the inventory screen. You access the screen from the starmap in the bottom button array.

If you want to be rid of parts and don't want to drag them to a starbase to sell, you can chip them on the spot. You will get 50% of the scrap price that you would have gotten at a starbase, so hauling is better. But if you don't want to haul, and don't want the parts to weigh you down, then chip em and make your own scrap.

Select the parts that you want to chip and transfer them to the other side of the inventory screen. There you can either chip them, or drop them into space as before as a scavenge field (good way to get pursuers off your back sometimes, especially zombies)

Infected parts are special, since they have zombie goo all over them, they give you Rez instead of scrap when chipped. So now you need to decide if you want to clean that infected part, or convert it to some much needed Rez.




When we added the chipper, we also added a much simpler way to clean your stored parts. The Disinfector works just like the chipper, but in this case, you can transfer your stored infected parts and then disinfect them by spending goons. This means you no longer need to attach a part to your ship to clean it of infection.




We have changed Battle Wagon's target acquisition logic based on used feedback. So how it works now is that Battle Wagon's guns will prioritize shooting at your contextual target (E), then your locked target, and then anything it can possibly hit.

So Battle Wagons tries first to kill what you told your fleet to kill, then it will try to kill whatever you may be looking or shooting at yourself, then it will scan for anything it can hit.

The reason this works so well is that if you are actively shooting, you override Battle Wagon mode so you will always be hitting what you want if you are pressing the fire button.

A neat side effect of this new system is also that Battle Wagon can now shoot asteroids and junk if you target them with (E).




Fighters now work like a swarm of angry bees and instead of needing to be directed, fighters will now seek and destroy enemies within their attack radius. Their target acquisition also takes hints similar to Battle Wagon. So fighters will prioritize your E target, then whatever you are pointing at, and then anything in range.

Some effects are that you no longer "need" to use E to send fighters after enemy ships, which will then allow you to keep your Carrier strike craft our of weapons' range more easily.

If there is no (E) target, fighters will automagically sweep to whatever you are shooting at. So if you start shooting at a ship or an enemy strike craft, you will notice your swarm of angry little bees swarming to that target naturally as well.




So the Mining Op was underwhelming resource wise vs. time required to mine. We are hoping these new changes will make mining op's more of a treat to try when you see one pop up.

- There are double the resource rocks in the Mining Op now.
- Each resource rock contains double the amount of Rez.
- We added a second tractor beam to the mothership to make pickup faster.
- Rez drops from rocks come in larger denominations, now in 1,2,5,10 (was 2,5)
- Resource rocks won't drop explosive wisps anymore (so you don't risk breaking the rogue miner crates, causing an unwanted battle.




Strike craft will now play their proper role in threat level calculations. Large ones in particular will make a big difference, and now the threat levels should be much more reasonable, at least when it comes to a fleet's strike craft factoring in.




We noticed a reoccurring problem with players not realizing when the final battle was ready to start, or not knowing what they had to do to start the final battle. We have made this a lot more explicit. Now when the final battle is ready the helper tip tells the player to kill the capital base, there is a callout indicating readiness (also in sandbox which had nothing)

But most importantly we have changed the war meter once the final battle is ready. Once you achieve the threshold for the final battle, the war meter will stop counting and will instead tell you to go fight.




A great player suggestion came up to add command points to the prestige system, so we did. Command points are now infinitely leveling. This means that given a high enough level, you could now field four large strike craft. Prestige command point levels will give you 2 points instead of the usual 8 for main levelups.




- Fixed stash showing values with markup

- Fixed long profile names warping in trade window

- Torpedoes and Bombs (and all missiles) got a health boost. Bombs and torps got a bigger health boost.

- Flak cannon damage down 20%

- AI more willing to accept peace if losing badly in a war

- Fix for autosaves being blocked for 15 seconds after a battle.

- Autosaving is forced to happen on game exit regardless of timing of last autosave.

- Accept/Decline on quit to main menu and quit to desktop.

- Large Bounty Hunter engine received a dispenser slot (hangars/krule)

- Fix for possible control lockout when restarting a single player game from in game.

- Increased medium bandit hive threat from 35->40

- Increased large bandit hive threat from 45->55

- Special twiddling of phase 2 final fight ships if > 11 cores. Was causing unwinnable scenarios.

- Fix for non progression if complete final mission without starting a faction

- Small strike craft health + armor up 50%

- Hammerhead has a higher banking angle when turning.

- Clear to spine, and clear ship in the inventory menu don't make a noise anymore

- The following mothership parts now support small turreted weapons.
- Science --Large Nose: Flat Deck
- Civilian -- Large Engine: Camel Back
- Militia-- Large Engine: Horizon Back
- Miners -- Large Nose: Foundry
- Hunter -- Large Nose: Sting Nose

- Added Ion barrels to the final mission in cease players need some extra shield popping potential.

- The whole reticle turns red when a target is in range now, to make it more obvious.

- Player core in scan view will show both total ship stats and core stats.

- Lots of improvement with the controller in menus

- Zombie Capital threat now shows as ??? since it is outside the usual threat assessment system and also MYSTERY wooooh...




Next, we will be working on v0.8.5 which contains mostly tuning and bug fixing tasks to get us solid for our extended work on v0.9.0.

Version 0.9.0 will be the big engine upgrade and multiplayer rewrite required for Unity 5.5 (We are currently on v0.5.0.2)

Once we upgrade the engine, we will need to rewrite our multiplayer back end to comply with the major multiplayer changes in Unity since v5.1. That upgrade will take us offline for a while, but we will have more details upon the release of 0.8.5.

We don't expect that it v0.8.5 will be ready before January due to us taking a little time off to be with our families over the holidays. We will be pushing fixes to v0.8.4 though as needed.

We look forward to seeing you all again in 2017!

Andrew (Blorf) and Ricard (Narlak)

Hi Everyone,

We have just released v0.8.0 and it is our biggest one yet. There are quite a few major changes in this update. Lets dig into the details.




This update was huge. It deserved a video, and here it is. Please give it a watch to provide context to what you will read below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUz1HE2IdYs




This one was a major player request. People wanted strike craft to matter more and be configurable. We heard you and here is what we did.



The Hangar System

The mothership now contains up to 4 hangars (start with 2, unlock 2 more.) These hangars can be used to build multiples of any strike craft that you can afford, up to the command point maximum. The hangar menu has replaced the strike craft menu.


Command Points

Command points dictate how many total strike craft you can build. Different sized strike craft consume different numbers of command points. So command points dictate your strike craft reserve while hangars dictate how many you have active at a time.

Command points are increased through the perk system.


Hull Selection

Once you select a hangar, you can then select the hull to place in that hangar. Hulls are unlocked through combat using a blueprint system similar to SPAZ 1.


Weapon Selection

Once you select a hull, you select the weapons for that hull. All the strike craft have had their weapon mounts totally redone. Each strike craft has its own unique set of mounts and it is up to you to pick the mount config that best suits the weapons that you want on the strike craft.




Its back! So now when you kill a strike craft there is a chance that a blueprint will drop. These blueprints first unlock the strike craft as a hull that you can build, but over time, they are used to improve the hull as well.

So as you pick up blueprints, your strike craft hulls will gain stars which boost their stats significantly. As strike craft get more stars, blueprints for those hulls drop less frequently since they are getting harder and harder to improve upon.

If you had a game in progress, we estimate what your blueprint progress should have been, so you don't need to restart unless you want to.




Strike craft now come in three sizes.



Small

These are the strike craft that you are used to. They drive their weapons off of their reactor (so no reloading) and don't have shields. They are very fast and pack quite a bit more punch than they used to. They are also pretty inexpensive so are great if you are on a budget or want to flood wave after wave at an enemy.


Medium

These strike craft are quite a bit larger than the smalls, and some of our old craft have been scaled up to fit this new role. They can field medium sized weapons but are still able to drive them off their reactors (this means no reloading.) The medium strike craft also have weak shields. Mediums can do quite a bit of damage but can't soak nearly as much as their bigger more expensive siblings.


Large

These strike craft are behemoths and can take on smaller motherships by themselves. They use large sized weapons and as such also need to use a reactor and capacitor combo like a mothership. This means that they need to reload and sometimes cannot fire or boost their shields, just like a mothership. By the time you face these strike craft, your mothership better be of a decent size or they will take you apart. Large strike craft have strong shields and can soak a lot of damage.


Junk Class

There are three scrap class strike craft. One for each size class. These are always unlocked and are cheaper than their non Junk counterparts. They also take fewer command points to field, so are sometimes a good option if you need strike craft to distract an enemy. They also get blueprint upgrades and can become quite powerful.




The new strike craft size system meant we needed some new strike craft. There are 6 new larges, 1 new medium, and 1 new small.

The Short Bus (Small/Junk)
Our beloved bus is back from SPAZ 1. This is the cheapest strike craft in the game and a great bullet sponge.

The Mule (Medium/Junk)
Also making a return from SPAZ 1 is the Mule, the old mining ship. It fields two small launchers and 2 medium turrets.

The Freighter (Large/Junk)
Another SPAZ 1 alumni. This ship is bristling with small turrets and small launchers.

The Star Spot (Large)
You may recognize this as well from SPAZ. It is a heavily modified Sun Spot, turned on its side. 4 omni turrets for defense as well as a large turret and large dispenser mount.

The Gold Digger (Large)
This is a new beast. It is a heavy carrier capable of carrying two large fighter hangars (or Krules if you roll that way) Up front it has 2 omni cannons and there are 2 small turrets in the back.

The Shatter (Large)
The Shatter is the Bounty Hunter's newest strike craft. It supports 4 medium launchers and 2 medium turrets. It is a dedicated launcher platform with a couple of defensive turrets for anyone getting to close.

The Hammerhead (Large)
Most peoples' favorite ship from SPAZ 1. We had to bring it back. It is a turreted monster as it always was. Two large turrets in the front, and 2 medium turrets in the back. It is just a big pile of nasty.

The Star Cruiser (Large)
You can't have a Hammerhead without a Star Cruiser. So it is back too :) The Star cruiser is the only strike craft capable of fielding warheads, and two of them at that. It also supports two small launchers (put fighters in there) and there are two turrets mainly for point defense.

And the Rest
All the strike craft have had their weapon mounts/stats overhauled as well, so none of them got away without an upgrade. Some also got a size upgrade. The Triglave for example is now a lot bigger and beefier.




In Combat you can now use the Tactics Panel (TAB) to call in your strike craft.

Hangars have two modes now, auto deploy and manual deploy. If you set your hangars to manual deploy, then in combat you have total control of when your strike craft arrive on the scene. This can allow you to sweep enemy strike craft from the level and then call in your fleet when you are ready to concentrate on the enemy mothership.






While we were working on the strike craft upgrade, we realized that some mount types did not have enough weapon variety to make the certain strike craft viable/interesting to configure. This plus a few beers lead to a burst of new weapons, because instead of just solving the problem we decided to go to town a little bit. Weapons are fun to build.


The Particle Hose

We didn't have an Uzi, now we do :) That was pretty much the conversation there. It is a really fun bullet hose style weapon. The bullets do not do much damage individually, but there are a whole lot of bullets. The particle hose is a medium sized weapon so it will only appear on medium and large parts.


Micro Hangars

We really wanted to support people having fighters earlier on in the game. Some people love fighters, so holding them back until large parts appeared wasn't fair. So...

There are three new micro hangars. Small launcher mounts can now fit a tiny hangar that holds two zappers. Medium launcher mounts can hold a hanger that holds 4 zappers or shooter fighters as well.


The Flak Cannon!

It has finally arrived, four years too late for SPAZ 1, but it is here. We now have a turreted version of point defense to complement the minigun. Flak cannons are long range defense systems that will try to pop slow moving targets at a distance. They create a large cloud of flak and can sometimes pop multiple missiles at once.

Flak cannons are not great at short range defense and the flak puffs will not explode too close to the ship as to prevent damaging themselves.


The Cloud Torpedo

The Cloud Torpedo drops ion bomblets as it flies. This serves two purposes. The bomblets fly ahead of and around the torpedo to soak up point defense fire instead of the torpedo, and those bomblets that do hit do ion damage to lower enemy shields before the torpedo impacts to wreck the hull. The Cloud Torpedo is best used at long range to give it the maximum time to deploy all of its bomblets.


The Ion Shotgun
The Ion Shotgun fires long range and somewhat tightly grouped ion projectiles. Its purpose is to take down shields at range. It is a small turreted weapon so it is a great early shield popping solution. Note: The Ion shotgun fires blue (Ion) projectiles whereas regular shotguns shoot red.


The Mac Hammer
It is a medium sized assault shotgun that says go away... loudly. Very high damage and high spread but with a short range.


The Plasma Dispenser
Take a pulse cannon and turn it up to 11. It shoots a multitude of very slow moving and very long range explosive plasma charges. Each plasma charge also explodes on impact causing splash damage. It is a devastating weapon. It only appears on large parts and is quite rare... Thankfully.






We had to capitalize that one. It is the number one requested feature that we have seen. We resisted at first because we felt that it went against the scrounging/empire building nature that we wanted to build for SPAZ 2, but SPAZ 2 is a game about building, and tying your hands is really not fair.

So... Here's how we tie your hands... Custom Order parts are expensive. The most effective way to build your ship will still be to use what is available in the stores and adapt to that. Later, once you have an empire of your own, take territory that best will produce the parts you want. That will always be best.

However, now there is a new custom order panel in the catalog. How it works is whatever you search for in the catalog, if it can be built, someone will be willing to build it for you, but at 5x the cost. late game, when you are swimming in money, this allows you to upgrade more freely, but early game you really need to think about that extra expense.

Sometimes the custom order criteria will come up blank. For example if you ask for a small wing with a chainsaw beam on it, that can't exist so it won't be built. If a custom part can be built though, it will. There are actually over 3000 part/weapon combos it has to search to determine viability of a request.

When custom ordering a part, it will always be built at the space station that has the lowest markup. This means that you will get the best price possible, and it is always delivered (there is no extra delivery charge in this case)

You can set the number of stars you want on a part as well, but it will become very expensive, very quickly.




Thanks to everyone with your patience waiting for this update as well as your great suggestions. As you can see, we hear you and we are all making SPAZ 2 better together!

For those of you with games in progress. You should not need to restart. We refunded the price of all your current strike craft as scrap so you didn't lose anything and we also tried to figure out a reasonable blueprint progress for your saves.

For everyone else. This update was major open heart surgery on the flow of the game so there may be issues, especially balance issues. We look forward to hearing from you about them and will tune/fix as quickly as possible.

Now get in there and try this new stuff out! :)

Andrew(Blorf) and Richard(Narlak)


Details:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/252470/discussions/0/215439774876341308/

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