Upcoming changes, fixes and improvements

Hi sports fans! I know some people were disappointed with the game breaking bugs, and had a few great suggestions and bits of feedback. I've taken it all on board and am pleased to announce the following changes which are in the process of being implemented:

• The "Synchronise" ability is gone, and the game no longer uses the Brave Turn Battle system. It now uses Standard Turn Battle, and dual/triple techs are accessed via the "2 Star" and "3 Star" skill types. Star Arts now use SP (Star Power), which also builds up Synch(ronicity), the resource used for multi-character abilities. In addition to their elemental ability, each girl will have a unique mechanic: Gemina can create a duplicate of herself for a short time in exchange for half her max SP (which can also do dual/triple techs with other girls), Tauria can taunt/provoke enemies, Sagittaria gets two standard attacks with her bow and has the highest raw attack power, and Piscia can place a damage-absorbing bubble on allies in addition to healing them, which allows for pre-emptive shielding. There may be other abilities added in future updates but that's the plan for now.
• The stat distribution of the girls has been more carefully tailored to give each one a particular area of strength, a particular area of weakness, something they're decent in, and the rest slightly below-average. This should prevent them from feeling too homogenous.
• The party starts at level 5 to reflect that they've been a team for a while.
• The bots will have the same treatment to ensure each one has a defined role in the troop, along with a unique set of abilities to help it perform that role.
  
• Removed about a quarter of the encounter events from the city streets map. They will be slightly harder but fewer in number.
• Max of 4 bots per randomised troop, down from 6.
• Will either add an event outline when the player/enemies are behind the foreground layer, or remove that layer entirely. Haven't decided yet, as the streets scene might be getting completely replaced with a bigger, explorable map rather than a hallway.
• Ancient Automaton battle will have its difficulty significantly increased, with a proper set of abilities.
• The Gentleman and Widget battle will be added
• Significant changes to the cutscene following the battle with The Gentleman and Widget. The girls won't be so abrupt to dissolve the group any more; the end of the scene will be a bit more open-ended.
• Reducing the time skip to 10 years rather than 20.
• Significant changes to the police interrogation scene. Louise will no longer have an outburst that reveals who she is, and will instead provide these details while monologuing to her cats afterwards.
• Will make the lighting effect on the doll during the night scene much clearer, and fix the colouring on the star pendant so it's clear what's happening as this confused some players.
• Will expand the recruitment process for Jane, Anna and Tigerlily to include gameplay segments with some additional puzzles and a battle sequence where you have to successfully babysit Anna's kids while she practices archery.
• Will add The Gentleman's lair and the final battles, finally providing the intended ending.

And as for bugs, here's what I intend to have fixed for the next version:

• One of the girls doesn't move in the school hallway scene after they transform and are heading out
• The Gentleman's dialogue has a couple of stray spaces at the beginning of lines
• New battle starts immediately when you run from one (will implement invincibility frames)
• The BGM changes when fighting bots (it should continue playing the BGM from the map)
• Ancient Automaton fight plays standard BGM instead of boss one
• Bots other than Enforcer don't give exp
• Currently the only dual tech that works is Volcano (with the changes to the battle system, all will be selectable from the actor command menu as long as the girls involved have enough Synch and can act)
• Louise's cats still show sleeping balloons in the morning after the night scene
• Anna's house cutscene doesn't start because the autorun event was changed to action button
• Louise doesn't have a sprite when going to Jane's house
• Tigerlily's house soft locks because of a tileset passability error

There's probably gonna be a bunch more stuff that comes out during testing, but those are the big ones currently. Lots to look forward to when the next version is done, so I hope people will enjoy it!