This week I have added two new awesome abilities and began tweaking game difficulty.

Since the new combat test release last Sunday, combat test version has been downloaded about 50 times!

However, only few people have given me feedback about new combat system.

This is what information I have received:

• New combat is harder than the old combat.
• New combat is easier than the old combat.
• New combat is better than the old combat.
• New combat is slower than the old combat.

I have decided to make combat faster and by doing so, made combat much harder.

Now even I have problems passing the introduction mission.

Since I began to mess with the game difficulty, I have stumbled upon old problem.

The picture above shows how game difficulty depends on the amount of the weapons you have on your spaceship.

Red is too hard, green is too easy.

​Since player starts with two sockets, it's hard to pass the first mission.

​The weapon problem is very old, it's there since the beginning of the game.

Game is very hard, if you don't have enough weapons, but it instantly becomes too easy, if you add more weapons to your spaceship.

Also, there's another problem that comes with it.

About 50% or more of parts received from the part safes aren't weapons, which means they are pretty much useless.

This vastly reduces fun of getting new parts.

So, the solution is to limit how much weapons can be added to spaceship, to keep difficulty between too hard and too easy.

My idea is to make ability cooldowns 100% longer, if your spaceship has more weapons, than non-weapon parts attached to it.

For example, since at level 1 part limit is 7, you can only equip 3 weapons. If you equip another weapon, ability cooldown will be doubled.

For those, who are skilled enough, that can fight with reduced amount of weapons without any problems, in future there will be modular difficulty system.

It will replace current hard mode.

When you will choose mission in map grid, you will be taken to mission overview interface.

There you'll see detailed information about the mission, enemy types that will appear during the mission, lore about the region and other things.

But the most important part of that interface will be difficulty modules.

The more modules you enable, the harder game becomes.

Here are the examples of difficulty modules:

• Double/triple enemy armour.
• Double/triple enemy damage.
• Enemies will appear in large groups.
• Destroyed enemies will repair nearby enemy armour.
• Destroyed enemies will shield nearby enemies.
• At the end of the mission, suzerain will appear.
• Tactical bombardment station will be spawned somewhere in the region, which will bombard your spaceship with missiles every 30 seconds until it is destroyed.
• You will lose all gained experience if your spaceship will be destroyed.
• You will lose all gained parts if your spaceship will be destroyed.
• Your spaceship parts will be destroyed when hit if spaceship armour is lower than 50%.
• Some enemies will be replaced with bosses.
• Part safes will remove 5% of maximum spaceship armour when picked up.
• Repairing abilities and alloy containers will also repair enemies.
• Your spaceship will lose 5% of maximum ether when hit.
• Your spaceship will lose 5% of maximum alloy container charges when hit.

And so on!

Obviously, some of those might never appear in game.

To make things even more interesting, there will be rewards!

They will be based on amount of modules selected.

For example, if you will enable all modules and to win, you'll receive Radiari circle!

It will contain mythical/etalon grade parts and access to hidden Radiari region.

As you probably have noticed, there are no screenshots in this echo.

This is because my computer screen didn't turned on this morning, so I didn't took screenshots.

I hope I'll get my screen back soon, because newest Sector Six version is stuck in computer without screen, so I can't work on it.

But, because I couldn't work on Sector Six, I have managed to write this long and, hopefully, interesting echo.

So, until next week!