Isaiah 188 news & patch notes

Alright friends and people who bought the game past the Steam refund window and are now stuck with it, not really any new content in this one, just an update to the game's systems. I like lists, so let's do it that way.

The turn structure now flips who goes first every turn. This should shake things up a fair bit.

Megaton combat has been fleshed out, with two targeting modes, two missile core options, and three megaton responses added. (Explanation after the list.)

Added an Orbital Precision Score which increases the likelihood megaton strikes hit, and grants weapon accuracy in regular combat.

Ok so now for the explanation for these things. I had a lovely discussion with the chaps and/or ladychaps on the discord about orbital combat, and I saw a few specific pain-points either directly mentioned or implied. One was that large fleets have no real drawback, one was that the megaton strike component of the game wasn't fleshed out, and one was that fleets should just go fast and that'll be that. Another was there's often little incentive to move fleets. I was pondering how to fix all of these things in a way that meshed with the game's semi-compromise on realism. Would a rock-paper-scissors fleet stance system punish not attending to your fleets? No, I don't want to punish the player A and B, it makes no real sense. How about class-specific ship bonuses? No, in what world does a corvette have a bonus against a battleship? Sure, railguns and beamers have different power outputs, but this is already modeled in the game, and a missile is a missile. Who launched it is irrelevant. So I thought, about it, and I came up with first and orbital stability score, and then fleshed it out into an Orbital Precision Score. Fleet formation size adds a penalty to your score, because even though ships are always varying their position in some way, the formation's average position cannot change that much. Fleet velocity plays a part too, because, well, momentum, but also because the faster your fleet, the more enemy fleet sensors it flies past or near, and the more observations are made of it. And also, of course, if you don't move your fleet at all, it becomes fairly predictable as the turns progress. Also, large ships have more momentum too, so larger ships add more to the ship score than smaller ones. Frigates have another purpose too, they reduce your orbital precision score. (Yay frigates!) I am sure this score will need fine tuning, but it's reasonable enough for iteration 1. And for the megaton changes, I thought about it long and hard, and I realized I wanted to lean into space combat having an implicit two phase structure. Phase one is this great cat and mouse game relating to when you use your nukes, and phase two is the "fly-by" swinging combat. So with the megaton target options, core options, and response options, there's now a lot more depth to how you interact with your friendly neighborhood sunbombs. --increased oiler bonuses to 13% from 5% --added space to skip ground combat animation, press SPACE --press R in orbital mode to show theta numbers for every 5th fleet zone, should help mental math --Added chevrons to show fleet orbital direction --Made it so ships display how many megaton strikes they have --Fixed who is an AI not getting set properly if you start an orbital mission and then start a tutorial --Fixed being able to put units in construction stations' queues that you do not own (with undefined build times at that) --Added reminder for rondels with multiple fleets that you must click the fleet itself to use the megaton strike --Improved ground AI calculation freezing in their most common actions: determining attack target, and determining move location (AI will still give your CPU heartburn in a few other situations, but it shouldn't be constant now) --If you have a ground unit selected, added a second info box of that unit on mouse-over of an enemy unit --Only display the bonuses the unit is actually receiving to reduce visual clutter a bit --Press M to show enemy move range on hover --Fixed the AI figuring out a sneaky way to get into the void parts of maps --Added range shadow indicator for artillery --Other fixes I no longer remember