Starship Builder - Ion Beams and Substructure

Another week, another round of improvements to Starship Builder! There are two significant new features in this week's build...

The most fun of the new features is a new type of weapon, the Ion Cannon! Ion Cannons are large, powerful energy weapons that deal great damage over time. Their disadvantage is that they consume very large amounts of ammunition and also can only fire directly forward. This means that it is much more difficult to target specific systems on an enemy ship, and they also may be less useful when built on larger, less maneuverable ships.

The other big new feature is less fun, but arguably more important: Substructure. I've done a number of playtests since adding multiplayer, and the biggest imbalance issue was that ships would break apart into multiple pieces too quickly. My solution to this was to add a layer of "substructure" underneath the existing systems. When a system is destroyed, it reveals the substructure underneath. The substructure itself can also be destroyed, but doing so takes longer, and the ship will not break apart until the substructure is destroyed. In this way, the substructure acts as a kind of glue, holding the ship together even under considerable damage. I'm still working out the exact balance between substructure and regular systems, but it seems to basically solve the problem.

Here's a screenshot showing both the new Ion Cannons and the exposed substructure. Click on the image to get a better view of the substructure.

Download this latest build for PC and Mac.