Approaching Infinity News

[p][/p][p]Cryo weapons now have a base 25% chance to freeze enemies! Anything that resists cryo is immune to this effect, and so are all creatures on frozen planets. The Transmutor skill "Elemental Trigger" adds 33% chance per level. Hitting frozen enemies with smashing/blunt , sonic, or explosive does double damage ;)[/p][p]Have fun with this one![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]We're not waiting for the end of away missions anymore...[/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]There are a lot of changes for this:[/h2]

• [p]Injuries immediately disable passive skills.[/p]
• [p]Injury over 25 disables active (cyber) skills too.[/p]
• [p]Minor injuries heal 1 per turn (or more with skills/powers/devices), but...[/p]
• [p]Injuries over 150 do not heal on their own![/p]
• [p]Injuries of 100 or more slow the away team by 25, and 350+ slows the away team by 60![/p]
• [p]Injuries greater than 250 get worse every turn! (They heal naturally on the ship.)[/p]
• [p]Max injury is 500[/p]
• [p]Regenerate power (and med kits) speed up the healing of these injuries while on away missions.[/p]
• [p]Med kits can now be used to treat individual injured officers, both in space and on away missions, removing up to 200 injury.[/p]
• [p]There is a new help page explaining this: Options => Help => Skills => Injury[/p]

[p][/p][p] [/p][p]If you've repaired a shipwreck to take over and use as your own ship at least once, you will now have the option to auto-repair a fully-explored 3+ deck ship with the push of a button![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Auto-Repair is activated at any repair terminal, once you've fully explored the ship, and if you have all the necessary items. The resources are consumed upon exiting the ship, and only if you choose "use it as my own ship". [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]People have reported some problems with the Nanopocalypse quest line, but I had no idea how many issues there were until I played through it, fixed a bunch, played through it again and fixed more.[/p][p]Wow. Sorry. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]People have requested that I bring back my developer play-through video series on Youtube so I present to you "The Marshal, the Quartermaster, and Crafting", 8 episodes where I unlock 2 of the alien officer classes and mess with the crafting system. New videos will release every 4 days, with the final installment coming out August 30th.[/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p][h2]Everything Else[/h2][p]There are always lots of little changes going on, here's the list:[/p]

• [p]In station pawn shops, selling multiple copies of the same item (machine gun, rock plow, etc.) reduces the sale price by 10%, to a lower minimum of 25% of value. A sonic SMG won't affect the price of an incendiary SMG, but trying to sell 10 eviscerators will have diminishing returns.[/p]
• [p]This "sales memory" is tracked per faction (selling to bankers doesn't affect price at gruff stations, etc.), and will clear over time, deleting the first 3 items on the list after every warp.[/p]
• [p]In the pawn shop, art is now arranged by faction, starting with the faction who owns the station.[/p]
• [p]Races with faction power less than 50 don't spawn random ships in a sector. They can still have ships related to a given event or quest.[/p]
• [p]Races with faction power less that 30 no longer spawn embassies in new sectors. They are effectively removed.[/p]
• [p]Large faction ships (size 3) have a minimum faction power of 75%, and huge (size 4) have a minimum of 100%.[/p]
• [p]I reduced the price scaling of crafting parts: it got WAY out of hand in high sectors.[/p]
• [p]The inventory screen now tells you what furniture items (if any) a crafting part or gadget can be extracted from. It also tells a little more about gadgets in general.[/p]
• [p]Syndicate bases (loot stockades / "many small structures") will now usually contain 1 random gadget.[/p]
• [p]Virtual University (asteroid base room) now allows training of all 6 officers with much less conversation annoyance.[/p]
• [p]In stations, if you have more than 10K data, it will now ask you how much you want to sell.[/p]
• [p]You can now long rest in space to heal injured officers.[/p]
• [p]Hills block sight unless you are standing on hills or mountains. (This has actually been true for a while now.)[/p]
• [p]You can only de-grok each monster once per game.[/p]
• [p]The transmutor skill "elemental trigger" now increases the chance that stun and tangler weapons will affect the target.[/p]
• [p]Ion weapons now have a 25% chance to stun robot enemies, and that is +33% per level of "elemental trigger".[/p]
• [p]Shipwrecks with 3 or more decks will now have more "vital systems", so you don't explore a whole ship and get the "not enough vital systems" message.[/p]
• [p]David gave me new tiles for basic lands on planets, so now we have greater variation. He also made a new galaxy sprite for the warp screen.[/p]

[p][/p][p]If you haven't explored the Approaching Infinity universe yet, now is the perfect time: the game is 20% off until Monday.[/p]

[p]Things have been great since the official launch back in April, the game hit "overwhelmingly positive" and I've enjoyed having a stable build up for the past month. But it's time for some updates! Everything here is released for all players today in version 2.0.16c (now 'd', see below).[/p][p][/p][p]When there are 14 different officer classes (including the new alien officers) to choose from, and only 6 officer slots, it can be hard to decide who to have on your team. In the past, you had to dismiss an officer to hire someone new. That changes now with...[/p][p]The Cryo-Chamber![/p][p]It needs to be unlocked through a quest chain, and it'll be easier if you have asteroid bases unlocked... Anyway, once you have 5 or 6 officers, if you touch a cryo-tube in a cave or shipwreck, one of your officers will come up with a brilliant idea... and the quest for the cryo-chamber will begin.[/p][p]It's optional, of course, and once you're completed the quest in one game, it unlocks cryo-chambers for sale in future games. They're expensive, and there's no reason you couldn't do the quest again. It's up to you.[/p][p]Freeze & Thaw[/p][p]Using the cryo-chamber now costs 1 essence of ice to freeze someone, and 1 essence of heat to thaw them. I was originally planning on higher costs, but for now, these token costs are fine.[/p][p][/p][p]And speaking of 'costs', I know that the prices of some items get way out of hand in the higher sectors... like $53 MILLION for a knife. So I did a few things to make prices more reasonable. This should help keep trading relevant, and money in general too. [/p][p]I also made it impossible to sell an item for more than you bought it for (this used to be exploitable with the greed inducer or salesman skill). Crafting parts will also be more expensive in the later game.[/p][p][/p][p]It was pointed out to me that the new Limoquee Marshal's "Arrest" skill wasn't nearly as cool as I thought it was... Sure you can take certain enemies out with a single melee attack, but you had to get close first, and you would take too much damage getting there.[/p][p]So now that skill works by distance, and the distance is equal to the skill level. So at level 3, you're arresting all criminals within 3 tiles every turn. Goodbye syndicate![/p][p]If you don't have the new alien officers yet, I encourage you to complete the quest lines of the Pirates, Gruff, Limoquee, and Sigorn. They can be game-changing.[/p][p][/p][p]Someone else pointed out to me that even though it's a powerful limiting factor at first, in the late game, planetary environmental damage becomes a non-issue.[/p][p]So now, enviro-damage continues to scale with sector, like most things. Terran planets are unaffected, frozen planets scale the least, and dying planets scale the most. I've now seen planets with over 3000 environmental damage per turn. And since dying planets are so very dangerous, I've made it so that natural resources (ore, transuranium, gemstones) found there can appear in stacks, not just single units.[/p][p]So of course, your suits' resistance now continues to scale as well. And there's a skill that used to give you +5 environmental resistance. Now that skill gives +5 or +5%, whichever is higher. So if you're in the 1000's, you get +50, etc.[/p][p][/p][p]What?![/p][p]So "grokking" a monster is to fully understand it and get a 25% chance to score critical hits on it. This is tracked in the bestiary, you can spend data to learn it, and there are some achievements for grokking lots of monsters.[/p][p]But now the Tentaculons have come up with a way to suck that knowledge out of your brain (and computers). Of course they'll pay you for such valuable information. You even get to choose from 6-8 different rewards, and the stronger the monster, the bigger the reward![/p][p]But "grok" is across all games. If you 'spend' the info (and crit chance) now, you won't have it later until you've shot that monster with lots of different guns, or collected its DNA many times.[/p][p]Still, it's a fun new thing to play with, and the really powerful monsters grant some insanely high-powered weapons.[/p][p][/p][p]Everything else I've done since the last update, in semi-chronological order. Like I've said, I don't plan on stopping. Approaching Infinity will continue to grow.[/p]

• [p]There are now random modifications for missile weapons : hardened, heavy, light.[/p]
• [p]Ship weapon modifications can now randomly appear during crafting (heavy, rapid, light, etc.).[/p]
• [p]Shields that reduce damage of certain weapon types (cannon, beam, missile) now reduce that damage by 50%, not 30%.[/p]
• [p]I modified crafting recipes (mostly making them more expensive).[/p]
• [p]I tried to make it so that items that don't have recipes can't be salvaged (for example tac-nuke grenade and ion storm cannon).[/p]
• [p]I fixed the math in the "oxygen conservation" power and added to the description: " Chance caps at 90%."[/p]
• [p]I added some descriptions for monsters that didn't have one.[/p]
• [p]You can no longer research creatures you haven't met yet (in the beastiary).[/p]
• [p]The cryo zapper now automatically freezes liquid terrain you try to move into.[/p]
• [p]I tried to fix naturalists petting bunnies.[/p]
• [p]I added rep and faction power to the top of station displays.[/p]
• [p]When looking at Commodities in the inventory, it will show you which races affect the price of each commodity.[/p]
• [p]Ammo Belt skill no longer selects nano-bullets.[/p]
• [p]Bartol Grimes now admits there is a way to get rid of radiation on shipwrecks.[/p]
• [p]High-Gravity planets also have stacks of resources, but half as much as dying planets.[/p]
• [p]I tried something else to prevent entering whitespace from destroying the sector [/p]
• [p]I randomized some base stats of newly created items (in stores, crafting, etc.)[/p]
• [p]Star Temple quests now have an XP reward! (they didn't?!)[/p]
• [p]The total armor of Ablative Armor is now reduced every time it is damaged.[/p]
• [p]When Limoquee scan you and detect illegal items, you immediately go into red alert (so no last-second docking!)[/p]
• [p]I improved the spawning of certain secret cave levels...[/p]
• [p]I improved the usage of consumables on away missions (UI issues).[/p]
• [p]I added extra sounds and visual effects when the away team gets hit.[/p]
• [p]I am allowing the "Identify Artifacts" process to be carried out on away missions. LMK if there is too much weirdness about it.[/p]
• [p]Spelunker level 2 will always detect caves from orbit, and level 3 reveals their final depth.[/p]
• [p]Medical Bay device now doubles the speed at which you recover from cured diseases.[/p]
• [p]I created a new type of quest: the "Shopping List". It requires you to gather up a list of a specific number of crafting parts, gadgets, commodities, rare plants, consumables, and/or essences. For example, maybe the Vordalene need 100 raw ore, 200 wiring, and 1 repair kit to complete a project. That could be a quest.[/p]

[p][/p][p]I'd like to point out just how many of the above changes have come from player feedback both here on Steam and in our Discord. I can't think of everything, but with your help, we get a lot done! Thanks ːtentaculonː[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Saturday morning update:[/p][p]Some users were experiencing a loss of sound when the away team was attacked (I just put in some new sound effects for this). So I tried to fix that (please let me know!), and I also tried to improve the internal logic when repairing shipwreck floors (it won't always be a wall now, and sometimes it will ask you "wall or floor?"). Version is now 2.0.16d.[/p][p] [/p][p] [/p][p][/p][p][/p]

[p]After a week at the beach, and before 4th of July, I addressed some issues, added some features, and tweaked some numbers. This is released for everyone, version 2.0.14a:[/p][p][/p]

• [p]I fixed a lot of issues with mutated diseases. Sorry about all that![/p]
• [p]I fixed a bug where scanning or boarding certain syndicate shipwrecks caused a hang / crash.[/p]
• [p]I put in more checks to auto-complete the quest in sector 7.[/p]
• [p]I fixed a visual bug in classic UI mode when exiting stations.[/p]

[p][/p]

• [p]The captain's log no longer auto-formats your messages with capitals and lowercase letters.[/p]
• [p]Bandit machines (slot machines) now payout stacks of Commodities instead of just 1, and they only give certain Commodities.[/p]
• [p]Bandit machines can now pay out consumables (like squik poison and porta-doors).[/p]
• [p]Banker Soldier attack range increased to 7.[/p]
• [p]Ship classes that don't allow built-in devices (like the cruiser) will no longer show built-in slots on the inventory screen.[/p]
• [p]I refined the saving/loading of settings a bit more.[/p]
• [p]Diplomacy officers get more XP for large trades. Profit and distance traveled don't matter. Number of items and total sale price do.[/p]

[p][/p]

• [p]From the inventory, you can now learn price grades of Commodities by spending data.[/p]
• [p]I created a one-time popup explaining that your crew does not need FOOD.[/p]
• [p]If you have the "classic plus" DLC and your ship is one of the standard types (not custom built from a shipwreck), you can change back to the stock image for that ship type.[/p]

[p][/p][p]"Wonder" from the Discord has started to put together a wiki! I've been helping out by exporting game data according to templates, but there is still lots of work to do. Check it out here:[/p][p]https://approachinginfinity.fandom.com/wiki/IBOL:_Approaching_Infinity_Wiki[/p][p]or here, in this add-less mirror: https://approachinginfinity.antifandom.com/wiki/IBOL:_Approaching_Infinity_Wiki[/p][p][/p]

[p]Now that there are 14 officer classes but only room for 6 at a time, I'm finally experimenting with a long-time player request: a place to "drop off" your officers so you can hire someone with a certain set of skills...[/p][p][/p][p]For now, it will have no cost. In the future there will be quests to obtain it and freeze/thaw costs in essences every time you use it (ice to freeze and heat to thaw).[/p][p]If you want to play around with the cryo-chamber, make sure you have the latest version (2.0.13e) and enter the code "Cryo-Chamber". It unlocks on a per-run basis. Remember: it's free right now for testing but that won't last forever.[/p][p]You can still only hire one of the new "alien division" officers at a time. You can't cheat with the cryo-chamber. Death or dismissal are your only chances to get another.[/p][p][/p]

• [p]I fixed a serious bug that made the final monk quest un-complete-able![/p]
• [p]I fixed a bug where the uniform achievements were only triggering in permadeath. That was not intended![/p]
• [p]I've set the Nanopocalypse achievement to trigger if you beat it in any way, not just through the quest line.[/p]
• [p]I fixed a bug where you couldn't use gel from the inventory screen.[/p]

[p][/p]

• [p]During new game ship selection, if a race's special officer is unlocked, their portrait will show up when you choose their ship. If you start with that ship, they will offer to join you right before your game begins.[/p]

• [p]Officers for hire now start with significantly more XP, to make it easier to replace any losses.[/p]
• [p]You can now intentionally burn commodities in the reactor, from the inventory screen.[/p]
• [p]You can now sell alien art in station pawn shops. Bankers always pay less for art, and each art piece is valued higher by 1 faction, which is displayed in the inventory.[/p]
• [p]I added 6 new possible powers to legendary weapons.[/p]
• [p]Syndicate ships will now have a chance to create racial shipwrecks when destroyed![/p]
• [p]You can now spend data in the bestiary to learn resistances/weaknesses of individual creatures, in an attempt to grok them.[/p][p][/p][p][/p]

[p]Thanks again for everyone who left a positive review, it's now up to 96% positive out of all time! I love making this universe and I'm glad you're having fun in it![/p][p][/p]

[p]Sure sure, we already hit 2.0 and full release. But after 12 years, I CAN'T STOP! So here are 4 new officer classes you can unlock, and these are *special*. This is so exciting for me! I haven't designed new classes from scratch since the very beginning:[/p][h3]And they're not human![/h3][h3][/h3][p]Well, the Pirate might be, but barely. And the others, definitely not. That means they can't use human cyber-skills. And that means that their skills need to be really awesome. Well they are![/p]

• [p]The Pirate Buccaneer is all about illegal activity, like counterfeiting, extortion, and smuggling.[/p]
• [p]The Gruff Hunt-Leader carries a variety of ammo types and can tame predators.[/p]
• [p]The Limoquee Marshal can instantly arrest pirates, mercs, and syndicate members.[/p]
• [p]The Sigorn Quartermaster helps you store more of everything and get better prices for trades. But their best ability might be charging in to attack from 3 tiles away![/p]

[p]How did I choose these races? They're the 4 major factions that don't offer victory quests. Well now they have something else to give. If you've already done all their quests and gotten the achievement, they should unlock as soon as you visit their stations. Otherwise, you better get going on their quests![/p][p][/p][p]I had a great time making these characters and their skills: thinking about their personality and what kinds of unique experiences they could offer. I hope you enjoy them.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]At the time of this writing, Approaching Infinity is 3 reviews away from "Overwhelmingly Positive" on Steam. That's a huge milestone! And you, yes YOU, could make the difference.[/p][p]If you enjoy my game and haven't left a review yet, please, please, please do me that one small favor ːsteamhappyː[/p][p]Edit:[/p][h2]WE DID IT! [/h2][h2]Approaching Infinity is Overwhelmingly Positive.[/h2][p]Thank you so much![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]People keep wishing me luck on my future endeavors... I appreciate that, but I have so much more I want to do with Approaching Infinity. The Narcratu Invasion, the story of the Sil, commerce planets, the Pirate Bar, and more.[/p][p][/p][p]Join me on my journey as we try to heal the broken galaxy.[/p][p][/p][p][/p]