Did some more adjustment to the horizontal flare textures. For a balance of thruster glow and warp-in/out effect (which uses the same texture), here's my latest, which a few players of the game are liking so far:
There are a lot of features which set this apart from Elite-based games. I'm really liking it.
There's virtually no limit to the ship and weapon varieties, for you can design and modify things in the Engineering Lab, Weapons Lab and Shipyard. So, if you want a missile that travels at a higher speed but doesn't do as much damage, you can make one. The ships are built around "frames" (like a chassis). Each frame has a set number of component slots that you can assign (crew/passenger slots, weapon slots, cargo bays, energy production, etc.). Then you add engines, wings, resistor packs (for defence against beam weapons), hull plating, etc. -- and for most of those you can set their position, size and shape on your ship to really make it look how you want. Each type of engine, wing etc. will affect the ship performance in different ways.
Your primary weapons are of two types that you can switch between or fire both together (which isn't ideal). The beam weapons primarily wear down shields. They travel at the speed of light. The particle weapons are what do the most damage to a ship's hull. They travel fast, but not at light speed, so you have to lead your target (targeting computer is handy). In the Weapons Lab you can design your own types of each to your own specifications. You can target specific subsystems on your enemy, which is mostly useful when attacking the large capital ships. You can choose to take out individual gun turrets, their engines, their shield generators, etc.
Ships have four shield zones instead of two. You can route shield power to any side to protect vulnerable spots. You also can give levels of energy priority to weapons or shields for when you're on the offensive or defensive.
The system economy types are more diverse: General, Agriculture, Industry, Technology, Bio Research, Energy Production. Market conditions are fluid and affected by player and NPC activity. (Allowing asteroids to smash into a planet has a negative impact on production as well.)
The universe has a fair bit of uncharted space to start with. There are just two space-faring races: Humans (two factions at war with one another technically), and the hostile Vonari (similar to our Thargoids, though the Vonari do have a home planet). The building and destroying of stations and other items in a system can change the geopolitical landscape. When you start a new pilot, you can choose which human faction to align yourself with. You'll be restricted to docking at stations controlled by your faction, and will have the opportunity to work for the military of your faction. If you want to focus only on trading, there's an Independent selection which makes you neutral across both factions, but also means you won't be offered any combat missions.
Multiplayer servers, like the offline mode, can have the faction control of systems altered by player activity. When someone accepts a contract in a sector, any faction members in that sector can help to accomplish the goal, and all members share in the reward. (You can choose which faction, if either, to play as when you connect to a server -- so for example, you can play as Alliance on your own offline game, but that same pilot can join a multiplayer server as a member of the Federation instead.)
A lot more besides. Here's an online version of the manual, which can give you an idea.
https://spacegamejunkie.com/files/Evoch ... tions.html
Well, no … but possibly we might find playtested ways of implementing some of them!