Hi everyone,
Welcome to patch 0.432.00,

Over the past several months I have taken on board a lot of the feedback I've been getting and the general consensus was that the UI was a bit hard to use and didn't make sense. So I’ve tried to make things simpler and easier to understand by integrating elements from other RTS games to help with familiarity. Other concepts of the game have been streamlined such as the defence status and coolant so they make more sense. I hope you will be spending more time enjoying the game and less time fighting the UI.

Below is a list of concept changes.

UI update
The UI has been totally updated to be easier to use with all the menus accessible from the RTS screen rather than a separate operations screen. Also building is now done directly from the command screen, along with hot keys and unit grouping like every other RTS game.

Coolant
Coolant is now used to boost your stations systems when you need to speed up research or starship construction. The more coolant you mine the longer you can maintain the reactor boost. However if it runs out the reactor will eventually overheat resulting in the station exploding. So either stay on top of your stockpile of coolant or use the override sparingly. Think of it like the Protoss Chrono boost from Star craft 2.

Red alert
Primary and secondary power modes have been replaced with a more simple red and green alert system. Switching to red alert will turn on the station defences and shields, while green alert will switch them off.

Unit load outs
Units have now been categorised to make designing them easier and also to allow for more interesting ship types and strategies such as scout and long range ships.

Research tree
New researchable tech has been added and the whole research tree has been rearranged to cater for the new unit designs as well as new weapons.

First person changes
Z11 bots now have primary and secondary weapons as well as limited firing so you need to reload now, this is to help with some of the new weapons such as the bazooka, flame thrower and sniper guns.

Base shield upgrading
To address the issue of people just sending in large fleets and trying to win without trying ground assault, I have significantly made the shields much stronger on stations. Ground assault should now be a more important aspect of the game. The station shields now have 3 levels, blue level shields will stop basic attacks, where as red level shields should stop almost all attacks unless the opponent has a very powerful armada. You will still be able to win by bombarding the station with your ships, but this will take much longer. A wiser strategy should now be to try assaulting the stations with your troops. Note gateway probes can pass right through shields.

Frames per second increase
I have streamlined a lot of the scripts especially the turret and star ship scripts to help increase the games performance.

Full list new features

• New load out system - so you can pick what task you need the ship for and the appropriate researched hulls and tech will appear in the list.
• Coolant no longer drains unless you overcharge the reactor, think of it like a station boost when you really need it.
• You can now buy basic tech from trader which you activate in the resource menu.
• FPS robots now have 2 weapons, a heavy one and a pistol
• Currently Excecutrons just have pistols but will be changed later.
• When piloting a starship, light weapons will still auto fire but heavy turrets will be controlled by you.
• You can now upgrade turrets on outposts as well as the shields, all defence upgrades happen across all your owned structures.
• You can now upgrade internal turrets, this again happens across all owned structures.
• Units now have a flashlight
• Infestors now appear on derelicts
• Outposts now have internal defences.
• Optimised turret system for big frames per second increase.
• Primary power mode has been replaced by red/green alert for ease of understanding.
• UI has been updated across the board.
• Bot weapons and ship weapons are now separate tech.
• Ships now tilt and billow smoke
• Mouse speed reduces when zoomed in.
• Mining ships/cargo transports can now be told where to go by simply right clicking on what you want it to mine or which station you want them to return to.
• Units can now be grouped using Control number and added with shift like most RTS games
• Subsystems (Turret and door control) no longer need shift, you simply hover over the turret/door
• Escape will exit most things.
• Hacked doors now remain open for 30 seconds
• When aiming a gun at something a green ring will appear to show its within range.
• Experience now gives units +2 damage per star rating
• Station segments can now be auto repaired from the defence screen
• Music volume has been balanced better.
• Can now go straight to the trader from the message.

Things to add

• I would like to make the AI stronger and attack better as currently it doesn't seem to attack with the latest tech or strong ships.
• AI should respond faster to ground assaults
• AI profiles will be added such as Rush, Balanced, Space, Turtle etc.
• Would like to work on the galaxy map generation for fairer maps and eventually lead to a custom map generator.
• You may notice that energy weapons have been removed from ground assaults, I would like to bring them back in.
• Would like to improve the defence against ground attacks and work more on making that aspect of the game more exciting with things like garrisons, traps and better AI
• Allow Executrons to carry more variety of weapons.

Please read the updated manual in the game as well as the quick help (TAB) to familiarise yourself with the new features whether you are a veteran to the game or not.

Remember the game is still in Early Access and this patch will still have issues which I am looking forward to hearing your feedback on. Patches to this update should take a lot less time so if you see something that is wrong please report them using the in game bug system (which button has now been moved to ` which is usually left of the 1 key or Z on a mac)

Thank you again for all the help and feedback and for supporting the development of Executive Assault 2, we still have plenty more work to do.

Cheers,
Rob