(Last week I forgot to post the update to the blog and just posted it to the discussion forums. You can find it here.)
As I posted last week, Cassiopeia has been made available for opt-in beta testing. There have been no major issues reported with it so far, so if you are just starting out, you may want to consider switching to that branch, which has some improvements and additional content compared to the default Betelgeuse. This past week I’ve continued working on a set of changes that began with Cassiopeia intended to improve two areas:
First, is to have more of the regions discoverable organically. In Betelgeuse, most of the story regions are unlocked via Celaeno missions. I’m changing several of the mid-game regions and adding some new ones to be set at start in positions that the player is (hopefully) likely to find as a side-effect of missions and normal exploration rather than explicitly as mission goals.
Second is to increase the opportunities for combat in the current mid-game.
Besides those two areas I’ve done the following:
- New early/mid region, anomalies
- New space artifact
- Various combat, balance changes
- Change to mission timing logic
- Refactor mid-game regions, placement
- Misc changes to mid-game anomalies, convos
- Change skill check animation to percentile “dice”
- Work on mission test automation
- Nerfed lasers ability to instantly shoot down missiles
- Minor Cassiopeia fixes
I don’t have an ETA for the next opt-in beta yet; I need to finish implementing the new content, then do a full playthrough and see what areas need more work. I should have a better sense by the end of next week.
Thanks for reading!
— Kevin