Hey everyone!
The Horatio update is nigh, kinda like a certain science guy! What a great pun. Wish we'd come up with it for the tech tree blog yesterday. Anyway, the space battle changed. What's new? Quite a few things. Let's get started!
First off, deck building has changed somewhat: there are now 16 battle play cards in the game. Players start with 5 cards unlocked, 3 of which make up their starting deck. Deck size can be increased through research, and more cards can be unlocked through both research and hero skills. Card effects have changed for more complex effects, which can be useful or not, depending on the situation. Deck cards can be changed for free every ten turns, otherwise it will cost you influence to do so!
Another big feature that's been requested quite a bit is the possibility of moving ships across flotillas. Want all of your heavy hitters to be on the flanks? That's now a possibility! Simply drag and drop your ships between flotillas, with a lower CP requirement to unlock additional flotillas. Fleet configuration will be saved between battles to reduce hassle, as well as three presets to sort your ships in flotillas by range, put an equal number of ships everywhere, or mix ranges for all three. You may now also compare the two fleets using one of three buttons, to check their respective: military power, energy/projectile ratio, range mismatch. You'll also have noted that icons now represent ship roles more accurately.
Because of these changes adding immense amounts of combinations, we've had to remove the simulation of the opponent's plays, but added instead the last 3 plays used against the player by this opponent. This way you'll be able to mislead your enemies during unimportant fights, to reveal your real strategy in the ultimate battle!
There are also a few changes happening during battle, such as firing ranges being fixed by phase, and an improved, brand new scan view! The ship labels are now displaying damage taken (with misses, shield damage reduction, and hull plating) on the left side gauge, and damage inflicted (with misses, shield damage reduction and hull plating) on the right side gauge. The shield gauge now surrounds the HP gauge. The flotilla is labeled when the camera is far away from a ship, and trajectories and targeting are shown on the galaxy floor (this bit is still WIP). Flotillas themselves appear on the HUD, with a list of ships per flotilla (with HP state displayed, and more detail to come in the next update).
The free cam is improved, too, with left shift to accelerate camera movement, and left-clicking to lock a camera on a ship, then using arrows or left click to rotate, and mouse wheel to zoom.
Finally, under the hood, we reduced the "hard counter" aspect of energy vs projectiles, so that shields now also slightly stop projectile weapons, and never completely stop energy weapons), and increased defense module efficiency. One of the purposes of these changes is to create a choice between taking into effect the range intentions of the card when choosing a play, or the effects on the card themselves!
Of course, this isn't a final version and we're interested in your feedback on visuals and gameplay feel, so please leave your comments both now and once the update releases and you've had a chance to try them out!
Come back tomorrow to learn more about another feature of the Horatio Update... the Horatio!
I NEED THIS! 
