0.0.4 Changelist
Controls: 'd' by itself, without shift + ctrl, will activate deploy mode for the currently selected systems.
Optimization: Sprites for the battles are generated more efficiently now, allowing for larger battles.
Feature: Tactical Mode now displays under-the-hood information for the player. This should make it easier for a player to determine good strategy even if they haven't read my tips. Note that in the future, there will be many, many more events and modifiers which can influence tactical rolls, and the GUI there is a work in progress.
Feature: When all but one AI Empire factions have been eliminated, if the remaining faction has less worlds and ships than the player, they get a boost to reenforcement chance on all of their systems until they have the same amount of ships or the same amount of planets, at which point they go back to their assigned reenforcement chance. This ensures that there is often a "good fight" at the end of the game, but it won't always ensure that. Lore-wise, this is because they are making a desperate attempt to resist the player's domination of the sector, and it's reflected in a news blurb in the console log when it occurs. Like the invasion scenario below, this has been tuned to be effectively impossible to lose with competent play: when it triggers then you can always still win, but it may require you adjust your strategy depending on how cozy the remaining faction is.
Feature: Once the player has "won" the game, they are greeted with a console log blurb stating that an alien invasion of the sector is imminent. They will be alerted a short time in advance which side of the map they are headed for, to give them time to prepare a little. This war is different from the previous phase of the game in several ways: The aliens can't reenforce. When they conquer a system it is decimated: it is reduced to only 5% reenforcement chance and its visuals are changed. This reflects the fact that player and AI fleets do not bombard planets (lore-wise this is taboo), while the alien invaders have other ideas. They invade a given side of the map all at once, along a wide front, with numbers that are greater than however many ships the player has in total at the time (plus the number of ships remaining in non-FTL systems) -- but that's all the ships they have! The player will have to use the advance warning to set up an elastic defense, and then eliminate them from the sector. In the future, I'll add a "final level" where the player invades the alien home sector and very different rules apply regarding reenforcements for the player. But for now, this alien invasion is the "last boss" of the scenario. I have tuned the scale of this invasion to be effectively impossible to lose with competent play, but it is entirely possible to lose with bad strategy. Basically: don't put all your fleets on the front line, and don't put all your fleets in the very back -- try to mix it up a little and you'll be alright. Note also that off-map Pirate raids cease once this phase of the game begins, as losing a single large fleet to them could cause it to be unwinnable for the player under the right circumstances. Lore-wise, I suppose Pirates just know better than to come a-knocking when a sector is being overrun by invaders who are decimating every planet they come across. (note that if all Pirates have been eliminated from the map then when they do invade from off-map in the first phase of the then game then they will always have the "Charge!" bonus for that attack, making them very dangerous, as that is the only situation in the game where the attacker can get that bonus without being outnumbered)
Bug Fix: Incoming Fleet Overlay no longer showing fleets which were outside fog of war.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug with watch_mode toggle only partially un-toggling. Now works as intended.