The trading system, the infrastructure of which we have been building for a long time, is now actively working in the developer version. The interface and final tests for the update are nearing completion.


If all goes well and the tests show no problems, we plan to release the update this week.


Our new development plan includes the implementation of equipment other than weapons. Engines, combat computers, technological accessories, mods, armour, etc. This equipment will give both the mothership and the fighters very different tactical capabilities.

For example, we are aware that many of our players complain that the Father moves "slowly". In this case, you will need an engine that will give this giant body more thrust. In fact, in later updates, you will need to find the right engineering officers to make your engines more effective and develop them through training.

Or, if you complain that your mini-turrets are slow to fire, a skilled Tactical Officer who can modify them to fire faster can make your life a lot easier during conflicts.

In Pirate Patrol, which uses procedural generation technology, it is up to you to come up with creative solutions to every problem.

Thank you for your support during the game's Early Access period, which gave us the courage to create an extraordinary and immersive tactics/strategy game.

Everyone's play style is different, and of course each map will have its own unique details and require different strategies. However, this short video may be useful as an example of the general concept of the game.

With the v.0.6.3 update, Pirate Patrol now encourages players to explore.

On the game's battle map, you can find asteroids, abandoned space stations that have turned into ruins, or old spaceships that have been defeated in battles and lost in the darkness of space.

Scanning all of these items will give you XP, but you can also find useful technology from the debris.

Scanning asteroids is also important for understanding the movements and orbits of these giant rocks in the mothership's path and avoiding collisions. The Father will no longer collide with scanned asteroids.

Logistics issues
All weapons in your cargo now have a recycle value. You can send these items for recycling by pressing the recycle button on The Father's configuration screen, and the useful materials obtained from recycling will be stored in The Father's logistics hangars. As you know, these logistics warehouses produce ammunition for your turrets and fighters. So it would be a wise move to recycle unused loads to keep your warehouses ready for battle.

Damage control and repair
In previous versions, we could only repair damage done to The Father when we entered a planet's orbit. You can now initiate a repair operation on your ship at any time using the icon that appears at the bottom of the bridge panel.

However, this repair will be done using materials from your logistics stores, and will not be as effective as a full repair in planet or station orbit. However, being able to repair your damaged main ship after heavy clashes is a very important strategic advantage.

There are now space stations in the game, and you can repair and resupply both in planetary orbit and in space stations.

Control Interface
At the request of our players, we have also made some changes to the game's control interface.

We can now give collective attack/scan/move orders to the ships we select by dragging with the mouse.

• All fighters can be selected and released using keyboard keys 1-5.
  
• All turrets can be selected and released with SHIFT + 1-5.

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If you want to select multiple ships on the fighter panel and give them collective orders, simply press the sections on the panel to turn the selection light green. From now on, when you give an order (attack/scan/move), all ships with a green selection light will obey your order.

Enemy ships
We did not diversify the enemy ships enough in the previous part of the alpha phase. You will now encounter a large number of enemy fighters with very different characteristics. Here are a few examples:

And leveling up
The leveling mechanism has been in the game for a long time, but we never announced it to the players. We tried to make the leveling system different from the usual classic systems. However, our most observant players noticed that as they fought enemies, they gained XP and their level in the character panel increased.

Currently, we define the level system as the degree of operational security that the Federal Intelligence Service provides to the player. As your level increases, you will be able to integrate more effective combat equipment into your ship and combat gear. For example, the armour and weapons of your fighter ships will become stronger, etc. We will continue to develop this system and present it in its full form in the game. But for now, you can get approval from the FIS for higher operational contributions by earning XP when you fight the enemy or conduct reconnaissance.

With our new update, we have disabled the "icon" clicking issue that caused problems with Scan and Loot. Now all you have to do is select the fighter to scan or loot and right-click on the shipwreck to be scanned or the find to be looted.


With this update, you can now select fighters and turrets with the number keys.

To select fighters, you can use the 1,2,3,4 and 5 keys. This order depends on which BAY the fighter is assigned to. Number 1 for fighter in BAY 1, number 5 for fighter in BAY 5... Also, during combat, you can see the pilot's name and BAY number of the fighter under the Fighter sprite.

To select the Turrets, you now had to press the Turret number with the +SHIFT key. In previous versions, Turrets could only be selected by pressing the 1,2,3,4,5 keys, but after the auto-fire feature, the fire control of mini turrets was largely automated. You can use combinations of SHIFT+3 for the Large Turret and SHIFT+6 and SHIFT+7 for the Missile launchers. You can also select these turrets by left-clicking on the Mothership, or you can open the Turrets panel and click on the relevant turret's panel. This way you can select them and have them ready for target selection.



Among the fighter control buttons, there is now a "Recall All" button in the 3rd row to call all fighters in space to the mother ship at once. When you press this, all fighters on duty in space will return to the mother ship. We believe that this is a button that will make the job of our players much easier after conflicts and collecting loot.

As our experienced players will notice, there are no Scan and Loot buttons in the button row anymore. As we explained in the first title, you can now automatically start the scan and loot process by right-clicking on shipwrecks.

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Some small reminders:

Level:
We see that some of our players have not yet noticed the Levels of friendly and enemy warriors. The game awards XP to Captain Lionheart and fighter pilots every time you destroy an enemy ship. This is not yet noticeable, but in the following battles you may encounter enemies of much different levels. You can see the Levels of your friendly warriors at the top of the fighter sprite. If you are going to attack a very high level enemy, we recommend that you organize your fighters as a team, because high level enemies can be strong enough to cause heavy damage even to the mother ship, and of course, they can cut your fighters's armors like paper.

Pilot priorities:
You should not expect the pilots under your command to strictly obey your every command. If these NPC pilots, under the control of artificial intelligence, sense an emergency, they may decide to abandon their mission and intervene in this emergency. For example, you may have tasked a pilot with scanning enemy debris. However, one of his comrades may have been under heavy enemy attack at that time. In this case, the NPC pilot may choose to abandon the scan mission you gave and run to the aid of his friend. In many situations like this, you may witness pilots leaving your command by analyzing the situation around them. Don't panic, you can try giving orders to your pilots until they accept your authority. But we don't know if it will work. Artificial intelligence's mind can work differently.


We wish you hours of fun in the game and we welcome your feedback.

You will now be able to use The FATHER's missile system much more effectively. The Missile Control System update information we previously published is now fully valid. We recommend that you read this update as well.

Here: https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/news/app/2339490/view/4186736071077631092?l=english

We've noticed that some of our new players are not seeing the option to launch the Tutorial in the Settings screen.

That's why we've now placed the Tutorial option on the home screen.

We also found that new players did not realize at the beginning of the game that they could select The FATHER by right-clicking. So in the first mission, we created a priming message that appears at the top of the screen.

We hope that with these changes, our new players will adapt to the game faster.

With the new update, we have released the core of the Missile Weapon System, which will add significant tactical richness to the game.

This update brings the following changes to rocket weapons

1. New vertical missile launchers

We have updated the mothership missile launcher. Instead of the 360-degree rotating ground attack vehicle type launcher on the FATHER, there is now a naval vertical launcher.

2. Launching many missiles at once

You can now take advantage of a "multi-barrelled" missile launcher when launching a missile attack from the mothership. It is possible to launch up to 5 missiles at the same time. You can adjust this using the + and - buttons on the missile launchers in the turret panel.

If you set the number of missiles to be fired to 0, the launcher will stop firing at the target, but will continue to track it. This is particularly important to avoid wasting valuable missiles on enemy ships hiding in the dense asteroid field.

It is important to remember that missiles are expensive weapons. You can quickly deplete your ship's ammunition by firing large numbers of missiles at worthless targets, making you an easy target in the middle of a battle with weapons that cannot fire.

However, high-level, especially heavy-class enemy drones are capable of inflicting serious damage on both the Father and your fighters in a very short time. As a practical option, you may want to consider sending multiple missiles at once to quickly destroy these heavy enemy fighters.

4. Enemies hunt missiles!

Enemy ships now have the ability to destroy incoming missiles by shooting them down. This can mean that your valuable missiles are easily destroyed. So if you are launching missiles at enemy ships, you may want to try to catch them in positions where they cannot hit the missiles.

5. Missile attack with fighters

In the previous update, we reduced the number of fighter missiles from 30 to 16. Missile attacks on both motherships and fighters now have an ammo cost. Missile attacks on the mothership will consume ammunition from the mothership's depots as soon as they are fired. Fighters, on the other hand, go on missions by loading their missile weapons. When they return to the hangar, the missing missiles are replaced, using up the resources in the mothership's ammunition depot. Meanwhile, missile attacks by fighters are less costly.


We look forward to hearing your comments.

As developers who spent our childhoods reading sci-fi novels such as Randevous with Rama, Dune, Starship Troopers, The Martian Chronicles, in the years before the Internet was discovered, we were aware that we were embarking on a difficult path when we started developing Pirate Patrol, and we have not regretted it, we have enjoyed every stage of this work.

Of course, when we come across a fantasy RPG, we enjoy swinging swords and throwing fireballs, battling dragons in Skyrim, replaying Divinity Original Sin 2 with different teammates, reliving the excitement of building a kingdom in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, or we never get tired of boarding our sailing pirate ship and boarding enemy ships in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire...

However, when it comes to sci-fi, things stop for us. Although we are aware that science fiction is possible with a creative imagination, we are among those who believe that the "science" part of the work imposes a responsibility on any science fiction work.

To take a very simple example, a fantasy roleplaying game wouldn't question the wizard's ability to create and throw a fireball in the palm of his hand. However, if a character in a science fiction story creates a fireball in the palm of his hand and throws it left and right, the science fiction reader/player will want to see a scientific explanation for this. So science fiction stories explain that characters can create a fireball by drawing energy from perhaps another dimension, perhaps with the various accessories/devices they wear. Of course, this is one of the simplest examples...

As we develop Pirate Patrol, we keep in mind our goal to appeal to science fiction fans. At the same time, we want you to have fun playing the game we have created. For this reason, we apologise to our players who are tired of seeing long texts in some parts of the game. This is partly due to our "sci-fi" obsession and our desire to get the story straight to the player.

With the new update, which will be released in the coming days,[/url] we will now be able to configure fighters and remove the long text sections at the beginning of the game, allowing the player to quickly get into the game and the action. The "long text at the beginning" that some of our players complained about has been spread out so that it appears in different parts of the game, bit by bit.

On the other hand, we would like to remind you that Pirate Patrol is actually a tactical RPG designed to be played "slowly".

Although it is not a big problem to play the game "fast" at this stage, our players will notice that the features we add in each update make tactical control more important in the game. In the final version, our players will have to make critical decisions in conflicts by pausing the game or reducing the speed of the Neural Network to "tactical" level.

For example, while fighters are out in space scanning for new technologies in enemy debris, there is a risk that flying asteroids will come fast and hit the debris, destroying it. Therefore, the player may need to protect these debris piles and hunt for asteroids with both the surrounding fighters and the mother ship's weapons.

Especially after the introduction of the fighter configuration update, making tactical decisions in the game will become even more important.

For example, the missile you load onto a fighter can reach much higher speeds than normal missiles. Since the missiles fired by other fighters will not be able to hit a very fast moving robot fighter, you may want to order the fighters you have specially loaded with "fast missiles" to attack this "fast" enemy.

Let's take another example. Soon enemy ships will be launching missiles, and enemy missiles will pose a great risk to both fighters and the FATHER.

The FATHER's point defence weapons will be able to destroy these enemy missiles, but if there are a large number of missiles, your fighters may need to hunt them down. In this case, if you have assigned your fighters to pilots with very strong piloting skills, who can move very fast and have powerful engines, and if you have equipped these fighters with long-range weapons that can fire very quickly, your job will be very easy. So you need to pause or slow down the conflict and choose and assign your "suitable" fighters.

For players who don't want to bother with these tactical decisions, the game will continue. Artificial intelligence pilots and officers will still find a way to destroy the "fast" robot ship. However, in the meantime, your mothership will have taken more damage, you will have burned more ammunition, your resources will have been more depleted, your valuable fighters may have taken more damage and will have to return to the mothership for repairs, leaving you vulnerable for a while. Each choice will have a different outcome.

To sum up, we put a lot of effort into making Pirate Patrol a game that offers a lot of options for sci-fi lovers and has a solid logical infrastructure. We are having a lot of fun and hope you enjoy the game. Thank you all for supporting Pirate Patrol during this development process.