Over the last couple of months a lot of new features have been added to Stellar Warfare. Think of Unit Veterancy, Superships and Overshields to name a few. Bugs have been fixed and more quality of life features have been added. But best of all: you can now also fly and fire your spaceships! [b]Inspiration[/b] Games like Men of War and Dungeon Keeper have gone a step beyond and made it so that you could also fire units in these alternative camera modes. Perhaps that gave me the idea to also add direct fire to the bridgecam and give players a more direct control over their spaceships. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35421124/aa9ad3a08b7a55543a60b0c64bbced0aad9935ce.gif[/img] This does not make the game unbalanced however. Its a fun gimmick for fun-factor purposes most of all. You must remember that while directly controlling a ship you can't build economy structures (unless already queued) or give orders to the rest of your fleet. So even with the extra firepower and the benefits this might have it is not a game-breaking or overpowered feature. [b]How does it work?[/b] Select a ship and press B to enter the bridge camera. Move the mouse to look around. Use ASWD to move the ship. Hold left mouse button to fire your ships forward guns. Harvesters and Surveyors have been excluded from this functionality. All other ships have new weapons added based on their armor types. Light ships fire anti-medium rounds from the forward guns. Medium ships fire anti-heavy rounds and Heavy ships now fire anti-building rounds. The fire rate depends on the type of ship as well. The lighter the ship, the higher the firerate (but the less damage as well). Your regular weapons still fire automatically if they have an angle which means you'll become a true force to reckon with! [b]Kamikaze![/b] Ships in direct control mode can now also serve as kamikaze pilots! Brace for impact! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35421124/6f8f4119692fa078cd6bb8130911343a50c56c85.gif[/img] Doing so will deal damage equal to the health of your ship to your target, and vice versa. So lets say your ship has 50 health of its 100 health left, and your opponent has 100 of its 100 health left. Then after colliding into eachother your ship will be dead while your opponent his ship will have 50 hp left. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35421124/895ed99cb13a1be251e51c5fb0161eee6b259c7f.gif[/img] I have also updated our youtube trailer. You can find the updated version here. [previewyoutube=3BZ8coYpWig;full][/previewyoutube] In addition to the above we have also: - Tweaked escalation structures - Implemented and tweaked Steam Achievements - Updated visuals - Added a third GUI menu - Fixed a victory on gameleave bug - Improved Zabu resource generation (about 30% extra resources) - Decreased Escalation Building effectiveness (from 50% boost per escalation structure to 33%) - Hitting asteroids in direct control mode now kills the ship - Asteroids now block projectiles - Added new circular ships - Added new superships - Rearanged menu buttons - Updated the GUI - Added a wave number indicator - A number of things covered in previous updates - Much, much more