Since the last time I posted, I have finished weapon and ether reworks!

Weapons now modify ability stats and ability ether costs increase with level.

These changes have significantly improved quality of loot and variety of possible spaceships.

There are three weapon stats now: Weapon damage, cooling rate, and ether efficiency.

Relays increase weapon damage, which increases ability damage.

Pylons increase cooling rate, which reduces ability cooldowns.

Nodes increase ether efficiency, which reduces ability ether costs.

It's possible to focus on one weapon stat to make spaceship deal a lot of damage or have low ability ether costs or have low ability cooldowns.

Or anything in between!

For example, during testing, I have built myself a spaceship that reduced cooldowns of its abilities by 94%!

While it dealt very low damage, powerful abilities like Shards of Chaos, Swarm Control, and Entropic Missile had really low cooldowns, so I was able to spam them and it compensated the lack of damage.

It was really fun, and I can't wait to see what you guys can do with this new system.

As for ether rework, it made each ability point spent increase ether costs of all abilities by 10%.

This allowed me to make part ether properties scale with level, so now parts that increase ether are more rewarding than ever!

Now I will be working on making tutorial and introduction shorter and better, which should take about a week.

After that, I will work on story mission XIV.

ETA is back to 50 days, because I have added new things to the list and because there were all those reworks that created a huge delay.

Let's hope my calculations will be wrong again, but this time to our favor!

Completed:

• Ether rework: Ether properties now scale with level, ability ether costs increase with ability levels.
• Weapon rework: Nodes now reduce ability ether costs and pylons reduce ability cooldowns.
• Ability rework: Abilities now use same damage type and are unlocked as spaceship level increases.
• Relics.
• Mission XIII.
• Rebalanced ability points: 1 ability point per level.
• Mission XII.
• Mission XI.

Not completed:

• Mission XIV.
• Broken Infinity endgame activity.
• Restoration War endgame activity.
• Shared stash in Deep Path to transfer items between player characters.
• The Machines.
• New save system.
• 49 new achievements.

Completed – Minor changes and improvements:

• Fixed inventory leak.
• Adapted backgrounds to screen shaking.
• Improved dialogue avatars.
• Improved settings interface.
• Added button that resets settings to default.
• Added button that resets controls to default.
• Modular difficulty system changes: Flow Stagnation maximum level changed to 1, rebalanced rewards.
• Reworked Creation of Energy and Channel abilities.
• Improved achievement interface.
• Repositioned mission interface.
• Fixed weapon amplifying.
• Improved ability bar.
• Made better ability icons.
• Heavy Shield rework: Now called Power Shield, no longer slows down spaceship.
• Improved ability and effect icons.
• Improved Kithalia’s Blight set penalty
• Improved barrager.
• Toggle XP gain feature has been removed.
• Improved Sector transition cutscene.
• Improved pausing.
• Improved HUD.
• Improved ability level scaling.
• Improved item management and filtering.
• Repositioned item management buttons.
• Stat page improvements.
• Virtual and physical weapon clarification and stats.
• New part properties.
• Improved part names.
• Higher grade parts are now more common.
• Relic dismantling rewards.
• Parts give less damage reduction and reflect chance.
• Parts give less wave chances.
• Improved item generator: Now produces more random items.
• Item changes: Changed diode cost, changed certain item sprites, improved item use error messages, improved tooltips.
• Fixed story mission X glitch.
• Reworked phase break mechanic: Gain additional damage after taking certain amount of damage.
• Channel ability’s ether cost reducing effect now lasts 3 seconds, making Channel much easier to use.
• Cataclysm ability has been replaced with passive anti-shield ability: Breach.
• Renamed Phase to Phasse, to differentiate it from phase mechanic.
• Improved Aggression, Resistance, and Capacity: More powerful, more interesting, and consistent with other abilities.
• Decreased starter part limit to 6.
• Decreased starter maximum ether to 50.
• Starter engine now gives less maximum armor.
• Increased starter ability points to 10.
• While Guardian of a Thousand Worlds ability is active, Concentrated Fire recharges instantly.
• Improved alloy containers: New property, increased sell and buy price, reduced city stock.
• Removed filled alloy containers.
• Corrected W. warning button tooltip.
• Ability to decrease the level of MDS modifiers even while they are disabled.
• Fixed engine glitch.
• Improved missiles that appear when player's spaceship leaves enemy range.
• Guardian is now more mobile.
• Potentially fixed Black Rain projectile problem.
• Region update flashes are now brighter.
• Veteran's ballistic attack is now slower.
• Improved dialogue system graphics.
• Oesa's Radiance set effect changed, now base maximum armor is equal maximum ether.
• Damage bonuses now are applied to damage while Lodeon's Ultimatum set is active.
• Fixed and improved certain set descriptions.

Not completed – Minor changes and improvements:

• Sector map interface and map key.
• Improve the implemented Machines.
• Rework certain achievements.
• Rearrange achievements in the achievement interface.
• Level cap changes and game options.
• Side mission dialogues.
• Better default controls.
• Ability to toggle side mission dialogues.
• Fix stack buying glitch.
• Lock modular difficulty system if the player level is lower than 3.
• Holding shift button to dismantle and sell just one item from the stack.
• Looting improvements.
• Improve Techamer's cell.
• Rework loot box.
• Fix loot box stackable item glitch.
• Improve artifact carrier.
• Rework mission III. Again.
• Improve siege mission.
• Improve arena mission.
• Fix dialogue clash with HUD glitch.
• Expand dialogue box.
• Improve shield particles and animations.
• Improve MDS decorative map in mission select screen.
• Fix Lodeon's ship glitch when skipping intro cutscene.
• Intro logo skipping inconsistency.
• Improve mission I.
• Make Awakening of Inner Power support all missions.
• Rework contribution system.
• Improve text input.
• Character customization: Rename character and change avatar icon.
• Improve damage text.
• Cathode rework.
• Improve controller support.
• Rework tutorial and class select screen.
• Rework introduction.
• Optimize.
• Improve secured region interfaces.

ETA:

• 50 days.

Progress:

• 60% of the tasks completed.
• I’ll post again when the percentage will reach 70%.

Until then!