Stellar Tactics - Ship Vendors Update

Stellar Tactics latest update focuses on ship vendors.

Progress update - 11/3/17

This week was all about ship vendors. Still have a little work to do on swapping ships and a bit of cleanup work on the UI. See the video below for details. Please excuse my monotone - I need to catch up on some sleep - coffee and Red Bull's aren't doing it anymore…

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Ship vendors can be found throughout the universe and they all carry fixed sets of ships that they sell. Purchasing a new ship requires that you either store your current ship or trade in your current ship for a cash credit towards the price of your new ship.

One issue is that your equipment, because it is ship specific, cannot be swapped between different ships. To make things easier, the merchant gives you credit for each item currently equipped on your ship during the trade in. The value generated is the current market value of your equipment + the current trade in value of your ship which is credited towards your purchase. Your charisma affects the trade in value of all items.

If you choose to store your current ship, it will remain on the station until with all of it's current equipment until you come back for it. I'll make sure there is an easy way to see where all your current ships are stored. The ship storage menu in the video is still a work in progress. There will be more information available that is visible anywhere, anytime. For example, the ship list will provide two lists - the first is a list of all ships and their locations in the universe and a second list displaying the ships currently on the station you are visiting.

Regarding cargo - if you have more cargo in your cargo hold than the new ship will fit, you will need to sell your cargo before purchasing the new ship. The hamsters in the cargo bays will go on strike and the ship vendor will reject the purchase. The rule is that the cargo in the cargo bay of your current ship needs to be less than or equal to the maximum available cargo on your new ship.

As you explore, you will loot ship specific equipment. If you plan in advance, you can horde items for that future ship upgrade and after purchasing your new ship, slot those items into your ship.

One last note: On the ship info screen you can see an area for "MISSILE MANAGEMENT". This will eventually bring up a menu that lets you fit various payloads on your missiles and tweak their subsystems for range, avoidance and a few other things. Missiles come in one main variant and you can adjust them for various purposes and damage types.

That's it for this week. Thanks everyone!

More information.

I hope the actual space flight is fun. He said he is modeling it after Star Wolves, which was pretty spiffy. I hope he doesn't rely too much on portals, since I would prefer something like a free form super cruise with no "gates" to act as bottlenecks. In the version I played (a few months ago) there was also no verticality to space flight, which was disappointing. Even our own solar system IRL is theorized to have planets with some VERY vertical orbital trajectories that have not yet been discovered with a telescope.

Not sure yet on whether you can buy a carrier and have your party members fly smaller ships that dock inside. (This was how Star Wolves worked.)

I hope to try this out eventually.