I couldn't find it in the text (sorry that I didn't read it all, only the most important passages) but is the robot raptor in the pics gonna be a playable raptor type/unlockable skin or is htis an enemy. Like the robots attempt to counter the raptor with his own weapons.
I wouldn't really call it a raptor, although it is vaguely raptor-ish. It's meant to be theropod-like, but more along the lines of a robot T-Rex. It's an enemy, and not playable.
In terms of skins, we will be doing a completely new raptor model in general (it's already mostly rigged, but not animated and all the blend weights are not perfect yet). Whether or not we keep the existing one is up in the air, but we probably will unless there's a reason not to (moveset complications, etc).
Also, since this is going on Steam first and will have a level editor: will you finally support Steam Workshop with this. I was happy that Starward Rogue had mod support and a level/room editor but was disappointed that you didn't include workshop for the Steam version.
I'm not a C++ programmer, and even worse when you're dealing with C++ it's something that has to compile on three freaking platforms at this point. The C# bindings from Valve seem completely useless to me, as they [redacted because of NDA, just in case]. There is Steamworks.NET, but I haven't explored the later versions of that too much. Earlier versions were buggy.
You really should consider it this time, makign a game modable or giving them level editors isn't enough anymore nowadays, people also demand an easy way to share their own designs. And a forum isn't really an easy way because you have to work your way through multiple threads and then download of a third person website which isn't always safe. Steam workshop gives customers an easy way to share their stuff and they don't have to worry where it comes from because everything runs through the Steam servers.
The purpose of the level editor, at core, isn't really mods -- for this game. Rather, it's a tool for making core game content. Rather than a bunch of workshop stuff, I'm looking more for people to submit things to us that we can build into the main game itself for everybody. That's what has happened with Starward Rogue, for instance: you've never installed a mod for that because there aren't any, but you've played tons of player-created rooms, bosses, enemies, etc, without ever knowing it unless you checked the game credits.
My estimate is that Steam Workshop support would take 1-3 weeks of my time, which is a huuuuuge undertaking. That's my pessimistic safe estimate, so it could be substantially faster, but still. There would have to be a lot of excellent traction on the game for that to happen, and that would have to be something people would want more than whatever else I could do in that same amount of time, OR the game would have to be making enough that I could hire someone else to do it while I do other things.