The first ship upgrades have been added to the latest release (v1.0.44). I'm hoping this will add a new strategic element to the game, and help people develop their own style of playing. Let me start from the beginning.
The ships you are flying are all the same (for now and the foreseeable future). To differentiate your ship's abilities, and thus your fighting style, I've introduced the concept of "devices" or "modules" (I use the terms interchangeably).
Modules are things that you can install into your ship, to gain special abilities, or to improve the performance of existing abilities. For instance, if you install a "Shields Module", your ship will have the ability to generate a protective energy shield, to help deflect incoming damage from weapon fire.
Different devices use varying amounts of power when installed on your ship. The amount of power your ship can generate limits the number of devices you can install. For instance, if you ship generates 16 units of power, and Shields use 8 units, and Side-Thrusters use 8 units, then after installing Shields and Side-Thrusters, no additional devices can be installed as your power generation capacity is maxed out.
What this boils down to is that you cannot install ALL the different devices on your ship at once. You must pick and choose the devices that fit your playing style, while sacrificing devices that you think you will not need.
For this release only three devices are available. They are shields, cloak, and side-thrusters. I will discuss the specifics of these in a bit.
Normally, the devices would be installed when you dock at a "ship-yard" facility in the game. Unfortunately, I did not have time to create this aspect of the game for this release. To make things simple for now, every time you spawn, you will just get any 2 out of the 3 devices at random. I've made every device use 8 units of power, and the ship maximum be 16. This way any 2 devices can fit on your ship when your spawn.
DEVICES
Energy Shields
Shields generate a protective barrier between your ship and any weapons fire directed at you. Simply put, when your ship gets hit by a bomb or canon fire, the shields will take the damage, instead of your ship hull. Once activated, shields provide additional protection to your ship 1.5 times greater than an unprotected ship alone. The shields continually dissipate, providing less and less protection, until they reach 0%, when they provide no protection at all and automatically turn off. Once the shields are turned off, they will recharge until they reach 100% efficiency again. You can turn shields on and off at will (more on controlling devices later).
Strategic Analysis: Defensive. Shields greatly increase your ability to take damage, giving you a chance to respond in kind.
Cloaking Field
A cloaking field is an advanced form of stealth that renders your ship invisible to the naked eye and to radar sensors. Once activated, the field takes about 1 second to engage, after which you become completely invisible. The field rapidly uses energy and will automatically disengage once this energy runs out. Once the field turns off, you will become visible again. While you are invisible, you can still take damage from weapon fire. Additionally, the cloaking field is fragile and will collapse if you take any damage, or if you attempt to fire your own weapons while cloaked. Beware, that while your opponent may not SEE your, they will HEAR you, if you use your engines in their proximity.
Strategic Analysis - Offensive/Defensive. Use cloak to sneak up on your enemies and give yourself a first-strike advantage, or alternatively, use it to run and hide when things are not going your way.
Side-Thrusters
Side thrusters were available to all ships in the previous release, but they have now been made a separate device. The thrusters allow your ship to accelerate and decelerate SIDEWAYS (use keys Z and X), instead of only forwards and backwards. In skilled hands, this gives your ship a huge advantage in maneuverability. Once installed, the thrusters are always available, and never need to be turned on/off to use. They never run out of energy.
Strategic Analysis - Offensive. Use the additional thrust to run circles around your opponent, and execute complex maneuvers impossible to match with conventional engines.
USING DEVICES
AS I mentioned earlier, your ship will spawn with two random devices pre-installed. All you need to do is use them! Here's how.
Each device is installed in a "device bay". The bays are numbered 0 through 9. Each occupied bay is represented by a round icon on the right side of your screen. The icon graphic identifies what type of device is installed (I hope they are pretty obvious, but if not - experiment!). The bay number (0, 1, 2, so on) is indicated next to the icon (to the right and above).
To use a device, hit the bay number on your keyboard or number pad. For instance to use the device in bay 0, hit the '0' key on your numpad. To use the device in bay 1, hit '1', etc...
When a device is in use, its icon will light up green. If the particular device uses energy, a percent indicator immediately to the left of the icon will start counting down, showing you the amount of energy remaining for this device. If the device requires no energy, it will say "Inf." for infinite. Such devices (such as side-thrusters) never need to be turned on, and will be lit up in green automatically.
So to sum it up, to use shields, find the shields icon (if you have it!) and press the key number thats shown next to it (0 or 1). The same for cloak (if you have it). To use side thrusters (if you have them), just use the Z and X keys on your keyboard - there is no need to turn them on.
Because the devices you get are randomized every time you spawn, take care to check which ones are now available and which bay they happened to fall into, so you don't try to use the wrong device in the middle of battle.
Well that's enough talk, downloaded the latest release (1.0.44) and see you all at 7pm!
http://www.solarisgame.com/
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