Drox Operative 2 patch 0.912

[Shadow]

Patch 0.912 of Drox Operative 2 is now available. Changes can be read here.

This patch makes races care how you treat your crew, adds lots of new quest connections, adds the last of the required icons, increases the player ship's base thrust, and fixes several more minor issues.

[ScrObot]

I started a new game in the latest beta and played up to level 24 so far, things are looking a lot more polished! A few items:

Bugs:

Map screen -- When bound to the "tab" key, you cannot switch between the system and sector map with tab as the tooltip says, it just closes the screen. Should "Switch between System and Sector Map" be a configurable keybind? (Personally I think tab should be the default keybind for map, I hate having keybinds for just about anything on the right side of the keyboard since my right hand is on, you know, the mouse.

Drox quests window -- solve button appearing on top of accept button: https://www.scrobot.com/drox/drox2_9...ng_buttons.jpg

Opening the map when near a jump gate shows a bright flash from the jump gate on the minimap. (Then a much smaller one when going back to the game screen as well.) https://www.scrobot.com/drox/drox2_9...gate_flash.jpg

Minimap -- The wormholes that can be "not on the edges" don't persist on the edge of the minimap like the "normal, edge of the system" wormholes.

Minimap -- If you buy planet data from a race, planets which are now known to you act like unexplored planets on the minimap (show on the map from really far away).

Missing translation: QuestEventUprisingDestroyed

I was at war with Brunt and destroyed 3 or 4 ships surrounding a planet then the planet itself. Somewhere in there, I got a Diplomacy Request from Brunt offering me 215 credits. Clicking Accept or Reject resulted in "We don't need it" and the request persisting, and I couldn't get rid of the request. Exiting the character and re-loading did get rid of it.

Shipyard -- All of the race entries have "Danger Level: ##2##"

Full Help Topics -- The hoverable area is static within a column and inconsistent with the text length -- either make it span the full column width (easier), or match the text length.

Full Help Topics -- The Marines entry mentions the Invasion of the Ancients expansion.

Journal -- Most of the tooltips just repeat the label text and should be removed (or fleshed out, though the vast majority of them are pretty self explanatory).

Shown in console: Couldn't find Sounds/secretFound.ogg

There's a medieval helmet status icon that has no name or description: https://www.scrobot.com/drox/drox2_912_helmet.jpg

There are still some pretty visible seams on some of the (otherwise beautiful) backgrounds.



Suggestions:

There are way too many crew drops currently, particularly early on -- especially with the increased variety of items in the game now, crew are dropping left and right and I'm finding myself struggling to find specific types of components. There seems to be a number of scenarios that guarantee or heavily favor getting a crew drop, and those are fine (and predictable, which is good), so maybe lower the crew drop chance from the general pool?

I love the sorting for the inventory, however I would guess a lot of people are like me and have stuff they keep around all the time (consumables, some crew, some extra components, whatever)... I'd love to see a toggle-able "unlocked"/"locked" icon on each cargo bay to prevent the items in it from being sorted/rearranged at all.

Tactics/Skills needs a help topic under Full Help Topics. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out where command was set now.

Tactics/Skills screen - make the component slot icons a smidge smaller and centered so you can see the slot color outline INSIDE of the yellow "purchased" outline and it doesn't look like the already purchased ones are all medium slots at first glance.

Maybe show the command stat in the Character window (where it used to be under Computers) with a link to the Tactics/Skills screen rather than a plus icon?

(The item after this is a better suggestion!) I love the automatic placement of the consumable items in slots 7-0, however with the slot number, the consumable tier number, AND the item count all on the icon, it's a mess that's hard to read on the toolbar. The tier number isn't really that important -- it's not like you're carrying around a vast majority of different tier consumables at any point (I assume most people just sell their old tier and buy the new tier once available). I'd recommend making the tier number a lot smaller and putting it in the upper right of the icon, which would prevent overlap with the other numbers.

OR, let's just lose the consumable tiers altogether. (I actually strongly prefer this once I thought about it for a bit.) Let it be based on your ship level (or maybe command level). The buy price and stats would go up with that level like normal, but you wouldn't ever have to deal with "well I have 10 tier 3 shield boosts and now tier 4 ones are available, I guess I have to sell all the tier 3 ones and buy tier 4 ones now." -- that's just busy work. There's no benefit for this extra layer. They are so cheap anyway, it's not like you're "breaking" anything by letting the user stock up on "cheaper" ones at ship level 9 before the price and effectiveness slightly raises at the next tier level. This is one of those minor quality of life things that would go a long way I think.

The patch notes mention that you can automatically "salvage" items and get 5% of their sell price in return... I'd love to see that option in the inventory window somehow -- perhaps hitting "space" when you're not at a vendor? I end up dropping so much crap in space and I hate seeing it sit there (especially with the longer "(identified)" labels) when flying by.

Minimap -- A (hopefully?) relatively small change that would make a huge difference here: Raise the z-level of the starlane/wormhole icons, waypoints and unexplored planets on the minimap so they're on top of the circle "frame", and push them out a little so that items that are "further away" than the minimap can show are on top of the frame edge while other things like planets still go "under" it (crude mockup: https://www.scrobot.com/drox/drox2_912_minimap.jpg ). (Also maybe make the starlane icon the same purple swirly as wormholes rather than an orange dot? Or a variation of the purple swirly?)

The screen seems to shake when you land a critical kill(?) (or maybe a "high value" target?) in addition to when you take a critical hit(?). I really wish it only shook when taking damage, and never when dealing damage. (Maybe a new option?)

Diplomatic Win (and Military win maybe) tooltips should note that only non-primitive races count. (I think that subservient races are in the same boat too, e.g. Vassals, even if they're a mature race.)

Full Help Topics -- May want to note that you can't put biological beings into the stash/shared stash. And/or note it in the Crew item.

"Nexus" stations should spawn an enemy ship every ~5 seconds whilst being actively attacked, or occasionally shoot a missile or something -- right now you kill the 3 or so ships around it and then they just sit there passively waiting to die. The occasional ambush is really good, but once they're dealt with, it's still a sitting duck.

I feel like there are a bit too many anomalies right now as well.