Hello everybody.

It's been a while since anything was posted here. But I've been busy.
There is now a version 0.97.1 alpha demo available.
I will now only be creating Linux and Windows versions. Mac isn't playing nice with my machine.

Lots of stuff has been updated.
New perks.
Perk data updated.
The UI has been improved.
Hacking and module targeting improved.
A Sav egame feature has been added, although it is a work in progress. May not work completely.
Modules and ship data updated.
Price for modules updated, etc.
Factory function added. It allows the player currently to manufacture ammo for cannons, missiles etc.
Player can now change his character name and image.
Various fixes to station trade.
Random encounter generation.
Cinematic camera feature. Instead of grabbing your camera. The game will now display a small window to show you items of interest.
Added key binding at the Ceres configuration screen.
Follow order added to Quick GUI. This allows you to order your ships to follow one ship. It works well if you want to control just one ship and make the others in your fleet follow it.
The follow order works for both friendly and hostile targets although Issuing a follow order on a hostile ship will order your ship to attack the target.
Radar range has been changed. Its been extended to a factor of 3. Various scenes now affect your radar range. The Khaos could for instance reduces your radar range by 66%. Clouds can also reduce is even further.

Fleet view updated. You can now control your modules in detail. Turn them off or on or change their power usage.
Tactical view has been changed. You now cycle through 3 views. First is ships, second loot, and third both.


Whats next? 
Improve the save game load time.  
More content is being added. More ships, more modules, etc.
Work is progressing on creating new scenes. New missions and interesting stuff.
Game tutorial improvement. I know the game is a bit complex to get into. As the designer it's quite easy to play. This is needed!
A.I window will be changed. The Attributes will be removed and replaced with A.I. info window.

A faction window will be added. Here you can see each faction hostility towards you. You will also be able to change their disposition towards you by paying a fee. This should allow you to stop the Terran Alliance from destroying you... 
This will also work with the pirates, although only temporary. A fixed no fire time. 

The game is about to reach a feature freeze stage. That means I will stop adding new features, unless something fun and interesting or vital will appear of course, that won't take too long to implement.

The one thing about the game that is bugging me the most is the formations function.
Its use seems to me be a bit limited.
Currently you just create formation that you use with a created group. Select the group and select the formation. Issue a move order and a formation plane will appear and all ships will move to their placement.

What I would like is that the ships would use your player ship as their leader, place themselves into their formation position to him. That way the ships would follow you and try to stay in formation.
This is probably something that is needed.

-Tryggvi Hákonarson
Lead designer.

Save your game!
Unity asset store offer a variety of save game products to buy or download for free.
One has peaked my interest. 
http://whydoidoit.com/unityserializer/
This free plug in looks like its quite robust enough for my needs. 
I need to save a lot of data about each ship in the game. Its just not the position, rotation, rigidbody velocity or structure. 
I need to save dozens of arrays, integers, floating point values. Armour values, structure points, primary targets, range, status of this and that. 
Each ship is broken down into many objects and all those objects need to be saved. 

The unity serializer does look to be simple, but I can say from experience that is rarely the case, at least not when I get my fingers on it.

I've been thinking about having a autosave feature. One that activates at the start of every combat. This game has a bit of a steep learning curve so its good to have a save game before your where blown to pieces. 
The game will implement a standard savegame feature, at the players discretion. 

If the unity Serializer does not work for me, hopefully there are other that will. I'm not very keen on writing a new one from the ground up, Its time consuming and I would rather spend time on the game mechanics. 

-Tryggvi.

Here are some future updates mixed with my rambling thoughts.

Game AI.
Currently the ships use a rather simple AI when dealing with hostile ships.
Each hostile ship reacts on its own.
The base AI for Non Player ships is that it detects a hostile ship within range, then it will check how aggressivly it should behave. Go in close, or stay away. Most ships now have a simple random movement positioner that tells it where to position itself close to the enemy or orbit him.
The ship would allways target the closest one and attack him relentlessly. Thats not good.
A ship attacking the player would currenly then move to a position near the player, orbit the player or stay put, but always try to attack him with his weapons.

The turrets on Non Player ships have their own simple AI. They will always seek to target ships hostile to its base ship.
A turret that can't target its current target will seek a new one within its range.
So a Non Player ship can in effect target multiple targets at a given time.
The player turrets had this ability before. But we thought that with automatic targeting, the player would just be an observer rather than a participant in the combat.

Also some ships with repair system would start repairing their vessels if a certain criteria is met.

New Combat game AI
We are now currently updating the Non Player AI.
Each combat will have its battlecommander script to control the actions of the hostile ships.

This new script will control the actions of the group of ships under its command.
It will issue movement orders and attack orders and allow us to create unique attack methods for various factions.
Some factions prefer formations, other small groups, some just break up their grouping and attack randomly.
No longer will the closest ship be attacked first.
The script will prioritize its target list based on how much a threat the hostile ship is to the group.
Threat will be based on numerous factors. Such as size of ship, distance, turrets, and how much damaged it has delt over a given period.
So if we have 3 player ships. A, B, C. A being close and heavily armed. B far away and Heavily armed. And C lightly armed but close.
Ship A will be targeted first because its overall threat level is higher than player ships B and C.
After ship A has lost its primary power plant and all her guns have gone silent the script will lower ship A threat level and Target ship B because it now registers higher on its threat list. Ship C still registers lower even though its closer. The turrets on the ships in the AI group might still target ship C if they can't get a fix on Ship C, but the AI ships will move to attack ship B.
Its a bit of a hassle to program a AI thats not a game breaker. We don't want it to be too intelligent or too aggressive, but at the same time it must be challenging.
I'm not planning on creating an overal complex AI system. I did study AI neural networks in school.. but no.

Ship hacking
We will be adding ship hacking to the game.
An AI will be added to the ships, this AI will see to all the base functions of the ships.

With the addition of the AI, ship hacking will be available. This could for example allow the player to damage hostile ships, limit their radar range, access their radar or even take the ships over.
The hostile ships would be able to do the same to the player.
Special external modules would be needed to begin hacking hostile ships.
Internal modules will be added to increase defence against hacking.

Ship Stances
We will be allowing the player to change his ships combat stances.
Changing the stance will change the turrets to and from Point Defence mode.
currenly we are working with an idea of aggressive, neutral and defensive.
Aggressive will toggle all turrets to Non point defence.
Neutral will toggle half to point defence.
Defensive will toggle all to point defence.

Neutral stance will select the ones based on the size of the turrets. Larger turrets have slower rotational rate and that makes them less effective as point defence systems.

We've been toying with the idea of allowing the player to control each turret individually, but thats a whole new menu added to the game. It has enough menus. It might be added as a option.

Missiles can in theory work as a point defence system. Proximity explosion to destroy incomming projectile. This could also work for incomming cannon fire.

New GUI
Work has begun on a new GUI. More accessable and a cleaner look.
This gui will allow the player to control the thrust of his ships directly with a throttle.
The drone section will be updated to accomidate the new attack drones.

-Tryggvi.