Hello, commanders!
It's been a really exciting two weeks since Dust Fleet's release! The community has been so helpful and I really do appreciate all your support. Thanks to everyone who has been sending in suggestions and bug reports, it was incredibly useful in getting those early bug fix releases out. It's also been really helpful in helping to understand what features I should prioritise next. So let's talk about the future!
I've used your feedback to help put together a plan for Dust Fleet's first updates. Here's what's coming in the weeks ahead!
[h2]Update 1: Quality of Life[/h2]
This is being worked on right now, and will be the next update.
[h3]Active pause[/h3]
I've heard you loud and clear! Active pause is definitely something you want to see, so it's coming to Dust Fleet.
[h3]Movement and formation[/h3]
Currently, when you issue a move order, ships arrange themselves into a wall formation based on the size of the biggest ship. So if you include a carrier in there, your wall could end up being enormous. I'm looking into ways for ships to organise themselves a little better in these situations. I'll also clean up some unusual behaviours, like when a ship lags behind the others.
[h3]Group by type[/h3]
Ship selection was a common topic. Once you get a large number of ships, the ship selection bar becomes less useable. So, with this update, ships are going to be stacked by loadout. You can expand a stack at any time and assign to groups just as you can now. So selecting all your drilling barques will be as easy as a single click.
[h3]Keep what you capture[/h3]
Ships captured during battles are currently only usable during the battle. This update will allow you to keep them afterwards!
[h3]Toggle overlay[/h3]
A toggle for the the green overlay icons.
[h3]Balance updates[/h3]
A rebalance of ship hull strength, with the aim to make ships last a little longer in a fight. Also, enemy difficulty will be tweaked to give a better challenge in late game situations.
[h3]Carrier manager improvements[/h3]
Easy fighter selection when you have multiple carriers selected.
[h3]More...[/h3]
You'll also see a number of smaller improvements and bugfixes.
After that, looking further ahead, we have more updates planned! More details about these will be announced in future posts, but here's the headlines.
[h2]Update 2: Strategy[/h2]
This will be a collection of updates to improve your strategic options.
You'll get more ship management options, including the ability to upgrade and scrap ships. You'll also be able to promote them to improve their stats, and see the improvement in new stat graphs for each ship.
Rally points for each station will make it easy to get newly built ships to your front line.
These are just a few of the changes planned for this update.
[h2]Update 3: Tactical[/h2]
This update focuses of the real time battles.
Your ships will gain the option to to engage at maximum weapons range, to make better use of beam weapons on mixed loadouts.
Destroyed turrets will be able to be restored during battles, depending on the situation.
In-battle rally points will be added, so newly built ships can immediately move in to a battle in progress.
There'll be more detail about these and other changes for this update as it gets closer.
[h2]Future updates[/h2]
As these updates evolve the game, there'll be more to do and more to improve. I'm looking forward to seeing what suggestions come out of these updates, and will use them to plan the direction of Dust Fleet's future updates.
That's all for now, see you in space!
Keep what you capture: Any non-station ships you capture during a battle can now be retained after the battle instead of being scrapped.