What's New

Quite a lot is new this week. Novarus is in, with new factions, submarines, gun turrets, torpedoes, and stations. There's a new docking tower model, bringing them up to the standard of the rest of the Hudson station modules, lots of bug fixes and tweaks, and major gains in performance. To repeat from last week, the full new tally of content is:

• Five new stations belonging to 3 different factions
  • Novarus itself has 3 stations, including the largest station in the world set in a massive cave
  • The NDF (a local rebel group) has a station hidden far to the north
  • The Red Reef Pirates have a station on the eastern border.
• 7 newly available subs
  • The Valiant, previously available (before the station rework) from Hudson pirates has now been given to the NDF as a home grown sub design.
  • The Czar, Hammerhead, and Frigate were previously only available in the battle modes. Now they form the core of the Imperial Navy.
  • Three fully new submarines.
    • Mule - a light transport
    • Patriot - an escort sub based on the mule, and now found among many pirate groups
    • Ox - a heavy transport featuring fore and aft turrets for defense, currently the largest cargo capacity in game
• 4 new turrets
  • Two turrets firing jetshells in three round bursts
  • Two new railgun turrets. They are slow to turn, but hit instantly. Damage reduces with range.
• 3 new torpedoes
  • 1 new conventional torpedo
  • 2 new rocket torpedoes. These are blisteringly fast, but have limited turning ability.
• A new style of station architecture.

Patch Notes

• New module sets for hudson pirates and novarus.
• New bastion model for hudson pirates.
• Models for novarus stations.
• Novarus factions and stations.
• Models for Novarus Mule, Patriot, and Ox subs.
• Novarus engines, torpedoes, turrets.
• Novarus agent definitions.
• Railgun type weapons, two novarus railgun turrets.
• Two novarus rocket torpedoes.
• Buffed Hellstorm turret to better match "faction specality" weapons like the Novarus railguns.
• Old code / scene / resource cleanup.
• Added support for trade and security subfactions
• Fixed trade and patrol missions making paths through solid ice
• Made Valiant, Frigate, Czar, Hammerhead, Saber available in the campaign
• Fix station camera center not being saved properly.
• Change how cave stations load tower positions.
• Give Hudson Republic an agile engine in default loadout.
• Allow spawning from worldgen test again.
• Change environment when moving camera to cave stations.
• Reduce max station tower height from 8 to 6.
• Reduced frequency of AI sonar checks (big performance improvement)
• Increased visibility volume for all torpedo and projectile trails
• Improved diver navigation around subs.
• New docking tower from OtterAlpha
• Adjust vertical height of docking tower and dock points.
• Work on preventing invalid dock placement, and generating docks for The Wall
• Added filters for torpedo sonar contacts.
• New roof shader that fades emissivity off in the distance.
• Tweaks to docking tower model.
• Reworked docking sequence.
• Tooltip fixes.
• Fix for security missions not spawning enemies after game load, due to influence not being calculated.

What's Next

For the next week or two I'm going to take time to catch up on small issues that have escaped my attention until now. Quality of life things,  some bugs, and general small improvements are all on the table. Hopefully I'll be able to really nail things down before I start work on yet another big feature. Speaking of which: 

Big Things

There are quite a few big features that I have planned, each of which is probably several weeks of work just in isolation. The below list is in no particular priority order, though I'd love to hear feedback on what strikes the most interest.

Henchsubs

Add NPC mercenaries to the world that can be hired from stations to act as escorts. For now this will be limited to small-medium battlesubs, who will follow your submarine around and attack anyone who attacks you. Henchsubs will handle their own repairs and resupply, but can be given some orders.

Dynamic Factions and Events

One of the major benefits behind the new procedural station system is that it forms the groundwork for a dynamic world. This would expand upon that, adding systems for dynamic world events ranging from production changes, to medical emergencies, to border skirmishes and wars.

NPCs

Right now the procedural stations don't have any NPCs. This renders the world somewhat empty, and makes some narrative or gameplay avenues impossible. To add NPCs to the new procedural stations there will need to be significant work done allowing for NPC locations to change, and even procedural generation of the NPCs themselves. 

Mining Gameplay

I have some plans for mining gameplay, involving several stages. AI subs would also engage in mining, sometimes coming into conflict with your own mining operations, and offering an opportunity for the less scrupulous to swoop in and steal valuable minerals. In brief, these steps would be:

1. Find mineral nodes with sonar, specialized sonar sets are better at finding minerals, at the cost of being less effective in detecting submarines.
2. Send prospector divers to analyze the mineral nodes to determine what ores are present.
   1. Ore presence will be driven by the same logic currently driving station mine production.
3. Build a resource extractor on the ore node.
4. Wait for the extractor to finish.
5. Collect the resource extractor and all of it's harvested minerals.
6. Sell the minerals for profit.

Scandav

Scandav is a nation to the south-east of Novarus. They feature a specialty in sonar and sonic weapons, and are notable for having more torpedo launchers than is typical. They will be a faction on par with Hudson, with 4 or so stations, and a full fleet of domestic sub designs. They are the third and last major country in the central playing area.

Gennis

Gennis is a tiny nation sandwiched between Scandav and Novarus, dating back to the Redeemist crusade of the early 600s. They hold only two stations, and are prohibited by treaty from warship production. As such they are in an interesting position, and have fully embraced minisub technology to give them an edge. Their immediate neighbors are antagonistic towards them, but they have a friendly relationship with Hudson, and offer clandestine support to rebel groups in Novarus.

Principalities

The principalities are the fourth major country, and are situated far away from the other three. They operate in a legal grey zone, so far from outside eyes they can deal with pirates and outlaws to an extent not possible for Scandav, Hudson, or Novarus. That said they do engage in substantial trade with the core nations.