So uh, more than a year and a half since the last update...
Not a lot happened for a long time outside improving the story and writing down ideas here and there but some weeks ago I picked it up again and it's been fun to renew the inspiration.
Looking back at the old style and layout of for example the inventory screen, I am glad I did the change a couple of years ago - see the screenshots of the very first and current inventory screens attached. There's been some cleaning up of the code, I added a character creation system which is already finished, though I will add some more character portraits later on. To answer Mic's earlier question, NOW you can actually use XP to improve NPC characters attributes, skills etc and have complete control over them. The idea is that some NPCs are your personal contacts and you can swap them in and out of your crew in the contacts screen - but you also will have a changing list of NPCs for hire who are professionals with potentially higher stats but also come at a higher price - depending of course on your Charisma + Leadership skill.
In order to try to add some strategic perspective to the combat and character development, all skills are tied to different attributes and to e.g. increase a Logic based skill to 6, the Logic attribute needs to be 6 or higher and hence functions as a skill cap up to the maximum rating of 10. Furthermore, all skills have 3 special abilities (perks if you like) that become available when the skill rating increases. For example, when your Small Firearms skill rating is 4 or higher, you can perform a Targeted Attack and select body location when taking aim in combat - the attack is performed at 50% of your standard attack pool but depending on the location chosen, you may cause extra damage, inflict bleeding or for example cause permanent injury to opponents which in turn could reduce their initiative or attack pool for the remaining combat rounds. The non-combat skills such as Hacking, Intimidation and Leadership to name a few, also have combat usage through the special abilities - a Leadership skill rating of 3 unlocks the Inspire perk which allows you to buff up your other party members and thus the player character can be built more around Charisma and other non-combat attributes and skills if you so wish.
One of the latest additions has also been different types of ammunition for different types of firearms. For example, a heavy pistol type weapon can be loaded with 11mm regular ammo or for example 11m hollow-point ammo which has a lower armor penetration but inflicts higher damage - excellent against anyone with light or no armor but nearly useless against droids and more heavily armored troops. Already a functioning feature, you can reload and change ammo types simply by dropping the ammo item on top of your weapon in the inventory screen - in combat there will be a quick function for this but the idea is the same.
The story has been revamped somewhat and to be honest, the whole premise of the game has expanded from the very early days when I initially intended to just make this a very short game, max 20 boards or so. Let's see how that works out, perhaps this is yet another infinity project but so far so good - and it's FUN!
Anyway, /rant. See you in another 1.5 years if anyone even reads these anymore...