Naikari 0.7.0

It’s been another unusually long wait for an update, this time moreso because we were preoccupied with other matters than due to the scope of changes. Still though, this update is nothing to sneeze at, as it takes significant steps toward telling the stories we want to tell. In particular, the story of the Coming Out campaign has been heavily rewritten, and the Empire Shipping campaign has been scrapped entirely, replaced with the start of a campaign against the pirates in Hakoi.

This release also includes a change that was honestly long overdue: fuel regeneration. As of this release, all ships come with fuel regeneration as standard, meaning it is impossible to get stuck in an unwinnable situation by running out of fuel; even in the worst circumstances, you can recover fuel simply by waiting, although for a long while.

There are several other improvements in this release as well, including mission tweaks and quality-of-life improvements. See below for a full list of changes.

We hope you enjoy this release as much as we do. If you don’t, though, please let us know! All feedback is highly appreciated. And as Naikari’s logo lights up red, from a proud autistic plural system, happy Autism Acceptance Month!

Major Changes

• Engines now come with fuel regeneration as standard.
• Replaced the Sightseeing mission with a new “Cruise” mission, where you take passengers to a destination and can stop by at attractions along the way.
• Replaced the Empire Shipping campaign with a new campaign investigating the appearance of pirates in Hakoi. (The first two missions in this new campaign are finished as of this release.)
• Rewrote the story for the Coming Out campaign and removed the fifth and sixth missions in it (to be replaced by missions that relate to the story we’re building up). The story always had some level of focus on bigotry, but it’s been made more central to its plot, and now involves the Soromid government. This modified Coming Out campaign will serve as a path to join the Soromid.
• A limited selection of AI pilots will now perform the Escape Jump maneuver if their armor drops to a certain threshold in battle. The AI pilots that will do this are: the player’s escorts, civilians, traders, and miners. (All other AI pilots intentionally will never perform the maneuver, since this could be annoying to a player trying to do things like hunt bounties.)

Other Mission Changes

• Changed the OSD titles of Cargo and Rush Cargo to not say “mission”.
• Renamed the “Empire Shipping” log to “Empire Recruitment” (to adapt it to the new Hakoi pirates campaign).
• The Space Family mission no longer permanently goes away by destroying their ship, and has a higher chance of appearing after the first time.
• The Reynir and Teenager missions now have a 100% chance of showing up as long as their requirements are met.
• The Teenager mission has been revamped to be more thorough in its teaching of how to disable and board ships, and is now given by Terra instead of a nameless NPC. It now requires completion of Terra’s Cargo as a prerequisite.
• Adjusted text to better interweave the Reynir missions with missions preceding and following it.
• The Shadow campaign now requires a Mercenary License before you can start it.
• The Baron Comm event has a higher chance of happening and doesn’t intentionally delay itself like it used to.
• Removed the minor Cynthia campaign.
• The FLF Diversion mission no longer requires landing on Sindbad to collect your pay.
• The Commodity Run mission now waits to mark its corresponding system until after the required commodity has been obtained.
• Improved the prefixes of Cargo and Rush Cargo missions so you can more easily tell them apart at a glance.
• Added highlighting of some key words in the Terra’s Cargo mission.
• The leader in the Trader Convoy mission now has a maximum speed of 80% of its own speed or 80% of the player’s speed, whichever is lower. This ensures that all ships involved have a relatively easy time catching up.
• The Baron Prince mission now only spawns hostile artifact hunters in the artifact systems, and in the system Flintley is in.
• Adjusted the Trader Convoy AI to make them a little better at staying close together. (This reduces, but does not entirely eliminate, a tendency for the following ships to break formation when a dangerous pirate is nearby.)
• The Commodity Run mission now prevents multiple Commodity Runs from being accepted at the same planet at the same time.
• The Trader Escort mission now unmarks escorted ships if you abort while out in space.
• Removed generation of “Pilot’s Manual” log entries by the introductory mission (Point of Sale).
• Fixed the first Coming Out mission selecting planets that might be unlandable.
• The third Shark mission now utilizes standard mercenaries to create danger for the player rather than spawning its own.
• The Warlords Battle event has been touched up: the engagement starts earlier, failsafes have been added for anomalous conditions, and a warlord’s team is highlighted and visible after the warlord dies.
• Chelsea’s speed in the third and fourth Coming Out missions is limited to no more than 80% of the player’s speed.

Other Changes

• You can now preemptively quit the game while it is still loading (instead of needing to wait until loading is finished).
• Attempting to quit the game from the main menu with the close button no longer asks for a confirmation (making it behave the same as the Exit Game button while in the main menu).
• Doubled the heat reduction of Forward Shock Absorbers and Targeting Array to make them more appealing.
• Removed the dependency on GLPK (which Naikari wasn’t actually taking advantage of).
• Added a “Current Missions” button to the Mission Computer, which opens the Missions tab of the Ship Computer (showing your current active missions).
• Changed the default controls:
  • “Target Next” is now bound to the “T” key, rather than “Target Nearest”. (“Target Nearest” is now unbound by default.)
  • “Autoface” is now bound to the “E” key under WASD and ZQSD.
  • “Escape Jump” is now bound to the “Q” key under WASD, the “A” key under ZQSD, and the “E” key under arrow keys.
• The “Target Next” and “Target Previous” keys will now target the nearest applicable target if you are not targeting anything, and then cycle through all of the targets like before. This makes these controls a little easier to use.
• Mercenary Llamas now come equipped with Photon Daggers.
• Music now fades out rather than stopping suddenly when music needs to change due to landing on a planet.
• The AI is now more robust against cases of having the afterburner on when it shouldn’t (which could occasionally mess with things like maintaining formation or landing).
• Enemy Presence, for the purpose of deciding whether to reset time compression during autonav, now considers only the player’s exact range as a factor, rather than the player’s range plus a buffer. This reduces the occurrence of unactionable slowdowns. Additionally, the check is more strict with what enemies it considers to be dangerous, for the same reason.
• Changed Mizar’s nebula hue to the default.
• Fixed several instances of planets that had been missed during the universe overhaul in version 0.5.0.
• Removed the CPU cost of Forward Shock Absorbers.
• Fixed the Race2 mission having an error when attempting to proceed after loading your save.
• Moved the armor regeneration stat of bioships to bio-shells and made it gradually increase as the shell levels up.
• Changed the Time Constant of the Fidelity and Brigand (setting it to 0.875 for both, the same as the Shark and other light fighters).
• Bioships now gain XP from mining in addition to getting paid.
• Unguided rockets will now auto-aim at asteroids, just like bolt weapons.