The factions in the OP marked with [+] automatically enable themselves, if I'm correct.

Also; bug report: some of Major's bombs explode in the buy menu because of their height-trigger script. Use separate entities for display, perhaps?

Yeah, all factions with [+] mark shoud work out of the box if they're installed.

4zk, on which ships the explode? I'm testing with Lynx and it works fine.

There are multiple ships? :o

I dunno, the default ship? It's the only one I've seen so far.

EDIT: Actually got into playing this activity. Man, this is amazing.

Will there ever be mission-specific music? You know, like crab boss theme when an attack happens? I'd enjoy it a lot.

I'm having trouble figuring out how to use my brainbot properly. Where's the PDA menu, and how do I access it? Also, I'm not sure if this is just because I'm just starting out and I don't have any skills yet, but using the Skills button on my brain's pie menu just freezes it in place; No menu appears.

Choosing the skills thing also spams an error in the console.

There's a bunch of info on the brain stuff in the OP. I haven't tried out any of the skills though. Upgrading your brain bot can be done through the navigation menu when you have your brain attached.

Anyway; I've played this for like 3 hours straight now, it's pretty nice.

I really hope it would get more challenging over time, I mean, more challenging that it already gets. I'd figure, if you constantly complete missions with no casualties, the progression would get harder - as in harder/better/faster/stronger invasions from enemy factions.

About the brain - the telekinesis is either broken or a whole load of bs. It affects my own units every time I move close to the brain, making my units aim up and fire.

Is it just me or do you get every single stray weapon on the battlefield in your storage after a mission? It's kind of frustrating with the storage getting cluttered up.

Also - I haven't seen any Reavers yet. When are they supposed to appear?

Do you know of any way to fix the "HoldTimer" issue? It must've been working before.

As 4zK said, it gets quite annoying when your storage is full of worthless pistols. That's what the tradestar is for I guess, but it'd be nice to get a dialogue at the end of a mission letting you choose which items you want to bring back. With the larger ships/upgraded cargo it becomes a non-issue later on though.

I'm at the point where my reputation with myself is enough to buy me every item of my own faction.

What is there left other than just doing missions and upgrading the brain and the ship? How do I win?

4zk, it's always a problem to find some mission-specific music, so this time I've decided to stick with default music. But if you have any, it can be easily coded in. And make sure that you're using the latest version of Major's bombs, I'm pretty sure they won't explode anymore. Reavers are a random occasion, if you fly much you'll eventually encounter them. Make sure that you have MZR.rte installed.

4zk, Shuzup, If you have any problems with PDA please send me your save files to check everything. I've tested everything before release, but I obviously can't check all combinations.

After the battle (and when you launch a counter attack) ALL items are collected, so you don't need to walk and collect them yourself. If your storage is full you can either sell items at tradestar, or throw away in open space if you're somewhere else. Just cycle through storage using LEFT\RIGHT and when it's red, then you're in sell mode.

Currently you simply can't win, you can just fly and do stuff, but there are no any global objectives. I've intended to build in some kind of campaigs on top of this 'world' but it probably won't happen.

Dude, check the Base.rte\Music\dBSoundworks folder!

For starters, you could use the skirmish building music (ccambient4.ogg) for when you're inside your own ship, the Mother Crab theme (bossfight.ogg) for intense enemy invasions and attacks, and of course, have the victory and failure music play where they should. Last Man and the other track are good for neutral situations, have them play when on the planets surface.

Also, the scout/attacker spawn rate & speed should get faster the more the attacking faction hates you. At the moment I can defend pretty much everything by moving a guy with a digger next to the spawn marker.

Oh! And for a victory, maybe make final "HQ" missions appear once you've harassed a faction enough, it could be extremely hard with the CPU faction's best forces and complex bunkers, or maybe a mothership? The conclusion would be complete elimination of that faction, provided that they lose.

The final missions could consist of multiple objectives, such as eliminate forces/destroy relays/capture HQ/defend from bombardment or ion cannons/final fight with a swarm of CPU drop ships/eliminate commander brain.

Once you've eliminated all the other factions, you are crowned the supreme ruler of the entire galaxy. How's that sound?

Evething sounds feasible

UPD:

Fixed that HoldTimer bug.

I'd love to see a higher incidence of defence missions. It'd also be nice to have a reason to build bases, somewhere for all this surplus gold to go towards. As I mentioned earlier, I'd also like to see user controlled craft, necessary for mission deployment. If you lose all your craft and don't have the gold to replace it, a surplus one could be provided, but it'd be something terrible like a Dummy rocket, limiting deployment capacity.

Here's another idea - Supply drops. Sometimes your equipment gets destroyed and what's available from dead enemies is inadequate for the task.
Your ship would have capacity for a number of drop crate/drop pod type craft (This would be defined somewhere), and you can add anything in cargo, to one of these crates. Max number of supply drops per mission, and on-board crates would be defined by a ship stat.

Perhaps even allow the insertion of reinforcements from clone storage through this method.
This would all be done from the "LZ menu" from which you can order airstrikes etc.

If this were to be implemented, I don't think the starter ship should have this capability (For dropping actors, at least). That way, the longer you've played, the more expendable your troops become. So to balance this out, later missions should have a lot more enemies present, maybe even 2 hostile factions.

I have to re-iterate the fact that I really want to see the air support mod implemented too. If you're up for doing that, I'll start doing some sprites for faction specific gunships but it'd take a while, since I've not sprited anything in years.
Air support would be ridiculously expensive, and also ideally not possible with the starter ship (At least not without an equally expensive upgrade) and there'd be a maximum number of runs by those craft too, again defined by a ship stat, which should be easily facilitated since they have limited ammo.

Oh, and before I forget to mention it again. Please make the cursor in the "main menu" navigable with the user controls (Up, Down, Left, Right and Fire). I had to switch to mouse control which I really wasn't, and still am not used to (If Airsupport is to be implemented, this is pretty much essential since they're screwy with mouse control).

I like the idea of having at least some kind of reinforcement options when on the surface. I don't have any problems surviving with salvaged weapons, though.

At some point I thought of coding a throwable flare that would after a period of time spawn a drop crate to land from the top of the map near the flare, but never got to making it.

I like the idea of a purchaseable ship add-on craft dock that could support like a drop ship, a few rockets and some crates. The docks should be expensive to purchase though, and the craft use limited.

Thanks for your ideas. Crafts are always a complicated matter, I dont even know can I extract the contents of it's inventory when it's orbiting. Need some more research and thinking before doing anything that big. The other problem is that I got rid of dropships and added teleporters instead. Why would anyone use dropships instead of teleporters? Unless they are somehow short range, and that's why they're used during ship assaults. And I guess that initial deployment and evacuation with dropships is just a waste fo time and onother layer of micromanagement and complexity. But reinforcements sound feasible.

For now I'll start with smaller things, like music, fixing mining mission, fixing ship levels and keyboard/mouse controls detection in UI's (if it's even possible, I guess it is).