KickStarter Stellar Tactics, a sandbox sci-fi RPG - now available on Early Access

[HeatEXTEND]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/465490/discussions/0/1699415798765087152/

HOTFIX and progress update - 2/2/18
I'm patching a few last fixes before I fully branch off to work on combat changes. I wanted to get these out before I dive into the next set of changes.

FIXED: 1 hand blunt weapons will apply Venom and other perk effects
FIXED: Nano's now equip to melee weapons
FIXED: Haft mods now equip to melee weapons

I spent most of this week fixing a few last bugs I felt needed to be resolved (above), looking into a few other issues and revising the way movement and blocking work in the game. These changes are on a separate code branch that I've been working on for a few weeks now. The next few weeks will be focused on:
--Combat movement
--Blocking and making sure enemies do not encroach into areas that should be blocked
--Handling fleeing enemies so they cannot just run through areas that should be blocked
--The addition of several new end-turn options:

• Wait - You will be able to pass your turn if you have not expended any AP - this will place you just after the next team member in the combat order. This is useful for cases where you may need to move another team member out of the way.
  
• Defend - Will have an AP cost (likely 2 AP) and you will gain immunity to the next attack - or possibly absorb a large portion of that damage. I'll need to see how this works when playtesting.
  
• Guard - Again, something I'll be prototyping and playtesting - it is possible this wont make it if it is OP.

Following that, attacks of opportunity will go in.

From there I'll move on to a few more enhancements and the combat power system. I'll likely roll out the changes above before moving on to powers so I can gather some feedback on the changes.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

 

[HeatEXTEND]

must.not.play.yet

 

[StellarTactics]

Yes, there are a few recent lets plays on Youtube, though these do not show a number of improvements I've published over the last few weeks. Most notably load times, border highlights and a long list of bug fixes. Load times are now down to 5-10 seconds on most systems.

All of the latest changes can be found in the patch notes on the Steam forums.

I'm now working on enhancements to combat as noted in the post above - thank you Taka-Haradin!

 

[DarKPenguiN]

Yes, there are a few recent lets plays on Youtube, though these do not show a number of improvements I've published over the last few weeks. Most notably load times, border highlights and a long list of bug fixes. Load times are now down to 5-10 seconds on most systems.

All of the latest changes can be found in the patch notes on the Steam forums.

I'm now working on enhancements to combat as noted in the post above - thank you Taka-Haradin!

You're doing an amazing job with this game and its one of the better EA titles ive bought into- I'm personally holding off playing until its finished but I played enough to know that even in EA this game is really good...And that was before these recent enhancements.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Are there plans for a Linux build? I saw activity on steamdb.
Either way, works great in wine.

 

[Elex]

must.not.play.yet

it can potentially be a game i’ve deamed for years: so if not satisfy me the result will be devastating.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I have a good feeling about this but I've learned again and again (and again) that getting your hopes up is never a good idea.

 

[DarKPenguiN]

I have a good feeling about this but I've learned again and again (and again) that getting your hopes up is never a good idea.

Yeah me too but the thing about this particular game is that its good right now- It isnt one of those "it has potential" games because its already good and has the potential be be great.

So my hopes are already pretty high- Its like the worst thing that could come out of this is still good.

 

[Infinitron]

Gonna add this to the Codex curator soon, any particular points that must be mentioned in the description?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Gonna add this to the Codex curator soon, any particular points that must be mentioned in the description?

Whaddaya got thus far?

 

[StellarTactics]

rusty_shackleford - Yes, a Linux version is planned. No ETA right now. I do have a working version, however, it's not ready for prime time

Thank you DarkPenguiN!

Elex - I'm working hard to add new content, features and implement community suggestions where they make sense relative to the vision of the game design and mechanics. I hope you will enjoy the game when you decide it's time to jump in.

HeatEXTEND - I get that - I feel the same way in many cases with games I've bought that have not turned out well. I don't want to over-hype ST - I realize there is no way I can compete as far as content and quality with much larger studios. I am committed to making this the best game it can be.

Let me know if you need anything for the Codex curator. I'm happy to provide screenshots, logo's, feature bullets etc.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

its good right now-

Shut up ffs I'm trying not to install the damned thing

I am committed to making this the best game it can be.

Godspeed good sir.

 

[Zanzoken]

Saving this thread so I'll be notified when the game releases -- best of luck!

 

[StellarTactics]

Two more off the top of my head, and thanks for posting that lets play - I really enjoyed watching the one you posted. I always end up finding things I want to fix or change after watching these



And one more:



With so many updates and patches, the early episodes are quite a bit behind, however, still fun to watch.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://store.steampowered.com/news/externalpost/steam_community_announcements/3263292131056575967

Patch 0.126 - Combat Update #1
16 FEBRUARY - STELLAR TACTICS

Hi all - Lots of changes in this patch - see the video for highlights and details below:

YouTube™ Video: Stellar Tactics - Patch 0.126 - Combat Update #1
Views: 1
Video showing the highlights of this patch. There are quite a few other fixes and changes in the patch notes which can be found here:


COMBAT CHANGES:
ADDED: End turn options. When ending your turn you will have several new options to choose from. This options menu is only displayed if you have 2 or more AP left over when ending your turn. If queuing attacks, your turn will end as usual if no AP is left over. You can cancel out of the end turn menu by pressing the escape key.

• WAIT - Wait requires a full bar of AP and allows you to skip your turn, adjusting your position in the turn order. This is handy for cases where your team member may be blocked. When selecting this option, your position in the turn order is adjusted after the last team member in the turn order.
  
• DEFEND - Defend requires 2 AP and has a small chance of avoiding a single attack while waiting for your next turn or mitigating a portion of the next attacks damage. The cost of 2AP is a choice balanced against reloading your weapon or setting your team members in a defensive posture while in combat. Defend is applied after armor, shields and any other damage mitigation. You can see which team members and enemy combatants are defending by rolling over them with your mouse. The status bar at the top of the screen will show a defend icon in cases where combatants are in defend mode.
  
• END TURN - Ends your turn with no ap cost or further action. Any remainig AP up to 2 points will be rolled over into your next turn as it has been in the past.

ADDED: Attacks of opportunity:

• Only combatants with a melee weapon equipped and selected can execute an attack of opportunity.
  
• If a combatant is in range of a melee opponent and they move, the enemy will get a free attack.
  
• Combatants get a single chance during any round of having an attack of opportunity applied.
  
• Combatants get a single attack of opportunity per round of combat.
  
• If the enemy misses you, you will continue to your selected destination.
  
• If the enemy does damage, your move will be interrupted. You can choose to heal, attack or move as usual after the attack.
  
• Combatants can only be attacked once in any round. That includes instances where the closest enemy combatant has already dealt an attack of opportunity.
  
• Status effects have a chance to apply any status effects as normal.
  
• Stunned combatants cannot make attacks of opportunity. However, they do remove the moving combatants chance to receive an attack of opportunity for that round.

Combat navigation and blocking has been overhauled. The goal was to improve the way blocking works so it is fair for both the player and the AI. Characters now have descreet blocking areas that work much better than they did previously. You should notice that AI can no longer move through characters when retreating or if blocked in areas by your team members. Enemies also do a much better job of keeping their distance from other characters with this update. You also now have the option to "Wait" in cases where your team members are blocked so you can make adjustments to positioning. I'll be continuing to improve on this system over time.

GENERAL FIXES IN THIS PATCH:
FIXED: Adding and removing armor with stats (+STR - +END) now correctly update the display of HP in the character info and inventory screens.
FIXED: Bleed resist display in character info screen
FIXED: A number of rounding errors for weapon damage in rollover info, character information and inventory areas.
FIXED: Projectile impacts and damage display are now timed based on range to target
FIXED: Grenade throw animations from crouched position.
FIXED: When swapping weapons, border highlights now updated correctly.
FIXED: When mercs were recruited, they were given 4 less intial stat points than they were supposed to recieve. You are now credited 4 stat points the next time you attack in combat.
FIXED: An error in the trade in value for ships based on charisma.
FIXED: An error in the display of values displayed in trade menus when items had a value of 100,000 credits or more.

UPDATED: You can no longer select team members other than the selected active combatant with the F1-F4 keys and by clicking them while in combat. This was confusing players because they were unable to end their turns if they inadvertantly selected another team member.

UPDATED: Missile launcher damage toned down a bit.

UPDATED: Adjusted mini-gun damage up a bit.

UPDATED: Damage modifiers to burst and full auto - you should see a significant damage boost to both of these fire modes bringing them somewhat in line with the use of ammo and AP expenditure. Burst and full-auto do have a damage penalty to reflect accuracy when firing with these modes. You will deal and receive more peak damage now and will need to mitigate this with healing, especially at higher levels. Time to start using those med-kits. This will be balanced a bit more with the introduction of First-Aid related powers/devices. "Medic!"

UPDATED: Heavy weapon damage increased - should give you a reason to use heavy weapons a little more often now. You are going to want to focus fire on heavy weapon enemies and get them out of the way as a priority. A critical with a heavy weapon is devastating!

UPDATED: Reduced the amount of ammo used for full-auto attacks for rifles, smg's and pistols from 12 to 8. Damage for this fire mode was just too high with the changes above and ammo use was excessive.

UPDATED: Removed level based attack bonuses which were skewing damage. Note that rollover info for weapons is just an estimate based on your currently equipped base weapon damage, equipped mods and a bunch of other factors. Breaking out a calculator is not likely to result in exact damage values. There is a lot of voodoo going on in the background of damage calculations including ranged falloff calculations, stat modifiers and more.

UPDATED: Floating fonts for combat and comments.

UPDATED: Melee received a boost in damage. With the addition of attacks of opportunity, melee team members also gain an additional boost to damage in cases where combatants try to leave the area of influence (see above).

PATCHES SINCE THE LAST ANNOUNCEMENT:

HOTFIX - 2/2/18 - 0.122
FIXED: 1 hand blunt weapons will apply Venom and other perk effects
FIXED: Nano's now equip to melee weapons
FIXED: Haft mods now equip to melee weapons

1/28/18 - 0.122
UPDATED: Load times for all ground based area transitions are now greatly reduced.
UPDATED: Exiting the game and transitioning to the main menu are now much faster.
UPDATED: Minor stability fix.

1/27/18 - 0.121
FIXED: Ammo looted from space loot crates is now correctly displayed in cases where multiple crates are looted.
FIXED: Ammo looted from ship cargo crates now adds to your total inventory correctly
FIXED: A bug with skill gain from incursions
FIXED: Experience from space combat no longer increments the secondary skill counter
FIXED: Rounding errors in weapon rollover UI related to weapon damage
FIXED: Rounding errors in information UI's related to weapon damage
FIXED: Frequency modulator mods for melee weapons can only be equipped to melee weapons
FIXED: Stuns once again work as intended both for ranged and melee weapons
FIXED: A material blending error with overhead grids in the facility
UPDATED: Bonus damage from damage mods is now applied to all attack types - single, burst and full-auto and applied after damage calculations
UPDATED: Increased the cash rewards for facility missions to bring earnings in line with space combat

1/20/18 - 0.119
FIXED: When queuing attacks, the attack cursor stays visible
FIXED: In some rare cases, a quicksave could be requested at the exact moment combat was being started. Loading that quicksave could lock the game up the next time you entered combat.
FIXED: Melee weapons no longer incorrectly display ammo info and fire-modes on rollover.
FIXED: Scavver enemy types occasionally disappeared in combat when they should be in LOS. I'm hoping this patch fixes the problem.
FIXED: Display of correct damage values related to damage scaling adjustments in the character info screen. There are still a few rounding errors that I'll correct soon.
UPDATED: Shotgun range for newly looted or purchased weapons increased. This change is not retroactive and only affects new items that you loot.
REMOVED: Removed verbose debug log data.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/465490/announcements/detail/3106794648546793067

Hi everyone. I thought I would post an update that covers what I've been up to for the last month since the ground combat patch. Check out the video above for details.

-New top down radar system for ground exploration. The radar system is designed to be expanded on and tied to your electronics skill. As you gain more skill in electronics, perks will be available for exposing other object types on the map like loot, mission objects and at a very high skill, enemy positions (assuming they are not using stealth).
-Completed modeling and lighting for all procedural ground based locations for the universe
-Work in progress for object placement in the procedural mission locations
-Crushed a number of bugs
-All character animations are now being adjusted and polished

I'll be working my way through the items on the "What's next" list posted on the forums. Next up, is the crew management system.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/465490/discussions/0/1318836262672874191/

Have a great weekend and thanks as always for supporting Stellar Tactics!

 

[veevoir]

Gonna add this to the Codex curator soon, any particular points that must be mentioned in the description?

How about "Game from a dev who woke up one day and made space combat 3d"?

I just fired it up for the second time after having it for at least half a year.. oh boy the improvements

 

[Agesilaus]

To play now, or wait for the release version...

 

[veevoir]

Try now and give feedback, there is not much story to spoil.

My feedback, mostly user-friendliness:

• It is slow. On the ground there is an urgent need for out-of-combat and in-combat speed slider. Once somebody puts a few hours into any TBS the first thing they want is to speed up turns
  • There is actually one thing needing slowing down in combat - movement command. It should be one click to move, then choose facing, second click --> actual move. Currently moving and turning is wonky and whats worse - easy to misclick the move without confirmation.
    • Speaking of which - why I can't change facing without moving? When I try to rotate it on the spot where character is standing I get "blocked".
• Responsiveness of left click is weird. Sometimes I must doubleclick on container/thingy to make it work
• Teammembers blocking each other - at least out of combat they should be nice and step aside from the controlled character when doing leftclick actions
• Team members starting moving from the back of formation (?). This is utterly frustrating - what is the point of formation and puting the doorkicker up front (which at this point is also not possible - cant change who is 1-2-3-4) if someone else is running faster and triggers the combat? That said - running does not keep any formation so it sometimes end up with characters standing on to of each other.
• Missing keybindings, specifically:
  • For end turn with action points options. End turn has a key, those do not Those options need keybindings as well, otherwise it is extra unnecessary mouse movements. Especially the "yes, really, I mean it, end turn!" button needs to be bind to space as well for a nice doubleclick ending of turns when remaining AP >=2
  • For start/end turn based (did I miss it somewhere?)
  • On/off use for currently selected grenade/medkit
  • For all 3 equipment slots
  • For take all when looting (the modern invention of area looting would also be nice)
  • Conversation keybindings - I know this is not much of an RPG (right now?) as conversation usually have "Go on" and "tell me more" otpions - bout it would be nice to have those options binded to 12345 when talking, as in any RPG.
• There is initiative in game. What is my initiative?
• • 
    
    Cool.
    So what is this leadership and what's my initiative?
• What is SP and EP? I know those are shield points and energy points, but everything in character screen has description except for those two
• It would be nice to sort inventory the same way as stash
  • Same for shops. Also telling if a weapon has a slot or not without checking each one separately (maybe colored names by rarity?) would be great
• Removing mods from weapons and firing team members would also be a cool thing
• And on the last extra nice things wishlist - characters skipping dauntless are 2-3 levels behind, at least be merciful and give them more XP and skillpoints at creation

 

[rusty_shackleford]

• It is slow. On the ground there is an urgent need for out-of-combat and in-combat speed slider. Once somebody puts a few hours into any TBS the first thing they want is to speed up turns

I end up using cheat engine for speedhack in most games because of this.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Removing mods from weapons and firing team members would also be a cool thing

http://steamcommunity.com/app/465490/discussions/0/1318836262672874191/?ctp=5

Repair system for both space and ground. The ground repair system will allow you to remove mods from your equipment. The space repair system will allow you to assign crew members to ship repairs. You will of course still be able to pay for repairs on stations.

Crew management system - the ability to add and dismiss crew members and perform other tasks. The current system is very basic and I had always planned to expand on it. Before opening the FTL gates, this needs to be improved on and refined.

 

[veevoir]

BTW, speaking of FTL gates - can I travel to another system or this one, with only 2 pre-set crew members that can be recruited on the station - that's it?

 

[StellarTactics]

Hi veevoir - Thanks for the feedback.

I'm working on the crew management system this week. Hope to have that in for the next patch. For now, there are 4 NPC's that you can recruit on the trade station so you can fill out your entire team. I'll be adding 2 more mercs for the next patch, 1 male and one female.

As far as speeding things up, I have a animator working on a second pass of all combat and movement animations. It should improve the pace of combat. For now, you can use the combat queue (shift click to queue attacks and then spacebar to unleash all queued attacks).

You should be able to rotate in place without any blocking. The rotate icon on the tool bar should handle it. I'll take a look to see if something is bugged.

I'll be working on "side-step" when out of combat or at least remove the blocked areas.

I like the idea for end-turn - someone else mentioned this too.

Area loot is on the futures list.

I could expose initiative - I realize it's not directly displayed anywhere.

Inventory, vendors and stash will be updated with the UI overhaul with full sorting and color coding etc.

Next patch will let you add/remove weapon mods on demand.

The radar system will be in the next patch and a few other QOL improvements.

As far as formation when first entering combat, I have some ideas to improve this. Several - let team members move to formation before starting combat - the second is to let you place characters when combat starts. I'll likely go with the first.