TLF Version 1.003 Released (Permadeath Becomes Optional )

Version 1.003 is now out, and is another biggie.  There are a couple of new features today, instead of just one:

1. Permadeath is now optional, and off by default.  Instead you "narrowly escape" from battles that you would otherwise die in, and it gives you a time penalty in solar map months.  This is a nontrivial penalty, in that things on the solar map may get out of hand -- so just fighting until you die still isn't the best idea; withdrawing is better. However, if you do wind up making a mistake that gets you killed, it's not just something that encourages savescumming by putting its boot in your face.  This was a common request.

2. Being "kited" by the Velociter flagships was a huge complaint, and something that has been addressed.  But while we were at it, we also split the Velociter into Type A and Type B models, with different attack patterns that are interesting to deal with.

3. The (arguably) most common remaining combat exploits are now dealt with, although there's still more to do.  The big thing is that you can't cheese docking missions anymore, and you can't grind burlust duels.  Burlust duels themselves still need work for the actual battles themselves, but either way the results of their battles are now more interesting and also non-cheeseable.

Then there's a bunch of other fixes and improvements, including but not limited to:

* Holy smokes there was a bug that was causing your health and shields to be way lowered in combat at various times, mainly when loading a savegame taken in the middle of combat.

* When a race takes over a planet, the RCI values are now closer to a clean slate rather than something that gets increasingly war-torn like in the last version.  That didn't work so well.

* The everpresent complaint about the missing Boarine federation deals is now addressed; thanks for your patience on that one!

* Races were -- sigh -- not unlocking any new hull types that they didn't start the game with.  No racial flagships, no expanded turrets, no expanded hydral tech, nothing.  That's now fixed.  So in effect there are now a bunch of "new" ships for players (at least those that were not in earlier versions of the alpha).

* You can now see what is going on with the ground troop numbers attacking and defending planets right on the solar map, which is kind of a big deal!

Today continues our releasing at least one new free feature (or in this case three) everyday of the work week , thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had.  Seriously, this is now our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees.  We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff.  You guys are all awesome!

After this week, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer.  A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something.  We'll vary it up, and make it fun.  I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is.  Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.

More to come tomorrow.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you.  To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.