I've been waiting for this one for over a year ever since Tks appeared last year. 
I probably won't be trying it until tomorrow evening when I get back to my desktop, but I'll definitely be looking  forward to that, and unless the game is hugely horribler than it's documentation suggestions I'll likely be buying it as well .

Jeremy Here:

The major difference between quick mode and normal mode is that quick mode does not integrate as many of the system interactions that occur when a system is damaged.  In quick mode, damage is more a matter of concern primarily with weapons systems and critical systems.  A few systems, if damaged, have obvious negative impacts: engines for instance.  However, overall, quick mode is much more forgiving than normal mode.  I just played a game in normal mode where my deflector, port engine, and particle beam were all destroyed in the same level.  The deflector being destroyed meant all damage was directly applied to the system aimed at.  The port engine not only impaired my chances of evasion for repair, but also impaired my chances at gaining the initiative.  The particle beam being destroyed was worrying because I was low on rockets, and my nutrino cannon was also damaged.  Before I could replace destroyed systems and repair I had I believe 8% on my electrical system which impacted weapons strength for the energy weapons, 3% on the navigational computers which impacted how well I could maneuver toward or away from the enemy, my targeting computer was damaged which impacted my accuracy, and my reactors were damaged which impacted my energy output.  The point defense was at 2% which meant rocket attacks became even more dangerous.  Overall, it was scary:)  In quick mode, most of that would have been scary, but less so; the reactors, electrical system, and navigation computer would all have ben critically damaged critical systems.  The other systems would not have impacted play as much as they did in the normal mode.  I hope this helps to explain the difference.  For those of you who wonder how the game turned out, I managed to replace all destroyed systems, repair to almost new condition, and survived long enough to beat the game.  I ended with a score of 275,000 points. 

The randomness comes in four major places:

First off on each level, except for levels with special ships, there are random numbers of fighters.  This is actually also true of the level including the command and control vessel.

Second, except on some levels early in the game, there are random chances to get different types of fighters.  Once you reach higher levels of the game, the chances are weighted more heavily toward manned fighters; early on it is weighted more heavily toward drone fighters. 

Third, any ship in the game can appear with damage already inflicted, presumably by other interceptors in your fighter wing.  These sometimes present opportunities for quick victories.

Fourth, the damage to systems changes from game to game. 

While the basic factors of the game are always the same, those four random factors make each game quite different.  I've been play testing the game for three years, and have worked out, what is to my mind, an optimal strategy, and I still routinely die playing the game due to random chance.  I also routinely beat the game, due to my knowledge of how to minimize the randomness.  I still find it an enjoyable game though, and it has a lot of potential to grow.  One long term plan, mind you we have no date for this, is to introduce mission based interceptor or perhaps mission levels into a revamped interceptor.  We have notes for the missions, information about rewards, perks, and other things to make the missions worth while.  That's a ways down the road though.  We want to update our free game TKS this summer, and then begin work on a larger project.

Hope this helps to clarify, if not, continue asking questions, we'll be happy to respond.

Jeremy

I was going to buy this last night, however online services appear to hate my new card.
I also really hope this client takes off.it has fantastic potential.

Yep, well it only took me one round to decide I fancied the game :d.
An alpha got me in basically one hit where all of my systems were at %80 or higher, which was irritating, indeed I think I'll need to check the docs and think about stratogy sinse I didn't seem to do much good against the alpha.
Btw, is it me or is the particle beam really weak? I assumed it was there for if you were too far away for the neutrino cannon, but it never seemed to do much by way of damage.

Either way, I got a couple of one hit kills and I did a tanker which isn't bad for a first go:

Statistics for Playthrough of the Interceptor Game, on Version 20 (quick mode)
The game lasted 47 minutes and 8 seconds and ended on Saturday, July 11, 2015 at 9:49 AM - The player lost!

7 epsilon, 1 delta, 0 gamma, 0 beta, 0 alpha, 1 tanker, 0 command and control and 0 mother ships were destroyed, for a total of9.
The interceptor destroyed 3 vessels with just one attack, and 2 with two. It fired 33 shots and 2 rockets.
The interceptor took 35 turns, traveled 476850 meters, consumed 1722 energy and it's reactors produced 1035 energy. Opponents took 23 turns.
Final level reached: 7, final score: 48000!

hi.

Yep I read the tips and tricks section of the manual, I was just surprised that the particle beam was less damaging than I thought.
That game was whacky, everything was going very well until a hit from a gamma  meant my droid went boom, and the delta pilots then did exactly what I would've done in that situation, taking pot shots and running away to repare, the Douchemongers! ---- when I do it it's clever, when they do it it's scummy .

Still game was fun, and I got to see some gammas that time as well .

Statistics for Playthrough of the Interceptor Game, on Version 20 (normal mode)
The game lasted 37 minutes and 4 seconds and ended on Saturday, July 11, 2015 at 10:47 AM - The player lost!

3 epsilon, 2 delta, 5 gamma, 0 beta, 0 alpha, 1 tanker, 0 command and control and 0 mother ships were destroyed, for a total of11.
The interceptor destroyed 4 vessels with just one attack, and 2 with two. It fired 36 shots and 7 rockets.
The interceptor took 44 turns, traveled 296350 meters, consumed 1871 energy and it's reactors produced 1297 energy. Opponents took 32 turns.
Final level reached: 6, final score: 63000!

Jeremy here,

Sneak,

It's good to have finished the game.  I didn't look at the mode you were in but i'm guessing from the low number of ships you probably were in quick mode.  Either that, or just got extremely lucky/unlucky depending on your point of view.

Generally for a successful game scores I've seen have ranged from about 250,000 points to around 330,000 points.  A lot of it depends on ships destroyed, what sorts of ships they are, how many bonuses you get, etc.

The more manned fighters one faces, obviously the score increases.  The number of one attack or two attack kills can run up bonus points as well.  If you can get away without repairing your ship you can get bonus points at the end of even numbered levels by refusing replacements.  There is a large bonus for a high number of ships destroyed.  If you can destroy the tanker, command and control vessel, and mother ship in the fewest shots possible you get large bonuses as well. 

I know this is rather vague, but I don't want to completely rob the fun of other people in discovering where and how to rack up bonuses.  However, I'd say 279,000 is good, but not the best you could probably manage.

Further, for those of you who have tried quick mode, normal mode is a slightly different experience:)  There's a lot more possible ships for instance. 

HTH,

Jeremy

@Jeremy, Yeah, normal mode is tougher but imho more fun, albeit that last game was a doozy, sinse again it was going rather well until that great mother put the mockers on it .
I'm going to have to think out stratogy for that thing, sins I tried getting in close and personal, then I ran away and did some quick repares and tried to chuck rockets at it, but they didn't seem to hit very much while the mothership had lots of long range weaponry.
On the plus side, I've found how to deal with alphas now, though admitedly that is mostly due to me getting how the  evasion business works and not letting them run away .

Btw, the shortcut keys don't work at all, which is a pain sinse I keep having to go and look at the distance menue to see how far away the enemy is, also I can't check number of moves  left.

Still, I'm pretty pleased with the score, especially the number of  one and two hit kills, though it seems that getting a one hit kill on any ship with a deflector is impossible to one shot, indeed you always seem to need to destroy the deflector directly first before doing any even vaguely sygnificant damage to other systems.
I usually go for electrical, but that is because  if I don't destroy the enemy in one hit it's more likely they'll  attack less effectively next turn, going for reactors doesn't seem to hurt their abilities at all, likewise I've  not noticed they take significant  hassle from less than perfect  cocpit, waste or life support systems either.
btw, sometimes it seems the enemy get more  actions or less, which is odd, particularly on higher levels, also sometimes I seem to get fewer, which is why I'd like to check the number of actions I've got if possible to know more easily what is happening.

Statistics for Playthrough of the Interceptor Game, on Version 20 (normal mode)
The game lasted 1 hours, 49 seconds and ended on Saturday, July 11, 2015 at 3:58 PM - The player lost!

8 epsilon, 4 delta, 4 gamma, 4 beta, 4 alpha, 1 tanker, 1 command and control and 0 mother ships were destroyed, for a total of26.
The interceptor destroyed 8 vessels with just one attack, and 12 with two. It fired 56 shots and 5 rockets.
The interceptor took 53 turns, traveled 989225 meters, consumed 4189 energy and it's reactors produced 1655 energy. Opponents took 34 turns.
Final level reached: 10, final score: 203000!

That is a good point Sightless combat, particularly sinse there is a good chance someone will finish the first level just fighting one epsilon ship which is a pretty easy kill and thus the game as you said be over in seconds.
The second level would at least introduce the possibility of more fights, indeed I believe deltas have a chance of showing up at that point though I could well be wrong.

I think adding of paypal will be up to Dentin with the guide dog client, though I agree it'd be far better to have, indeed I'd probably have used paypal rather than my credit card just because paypal already has my credit card details and it's easier to just enter my very long paypal password than all my card details into the form even if the funding source is the same .

also guys is it possible to target certain areas of the opponents to destroy them or is it pot luck what i hit when? i agree level 1 not showing nothing regarding resource management; indeed i can't even see at the moment although it has been explained on here of course, what the difference is pertaining to the 2 modes

As I said with Tks, I personaly like the fact a game actually speaks a lot of info for once, it's a nice change as opposed to listening to another synth voice and anyone who wants can always speed the speech up or play with  the speech delay options to customize things, indeed as with when I'm reading fiction I'd personally always take a human over synth speech any day of the week.

@Avidgamer, the difference between quick mode and normal mode is explained in the manual.
Basically in quick mode you don't actually get the  effects of different systems destroyed, so if the enemy damages your targeting computer it wont make your weapons less accurate or similar.
I also believe there  is a more varied selection of ships on quick mode, though I'm not sure sinse I've spent most of my time on the normal game.

Jeremy here again:

Sightless Kombat Said
I must admit that while I've tried the game and enjoyed it, the demo is severely limiting and subjectively speaking not going to sell the game that well.  This is simply because you can get the first level, in normal mode or otherwise, completed in roughly a minute.  I think adding the second level, which I've heard is harder and takes significantly longer to complete, would allow more of the resource management aspects to be taken in during normal mode and the fun factor to be driven home in quick mode.
Additionally, I believe that if you can add paypal support it would be of great benefit to those who can't (for whatever reason) use a credit card with your system.  I mean having a credit card is fine and all, but Paypal and other equivalent systems will probably be a better alternative to offer to people.
I do like the game, but implementing the above suggestions if possible I think would convince me to buy it outright, whereas I'm currently sitting on the fence.

As to the demo mode question, we're not planning on expanding it right now.  We might revisit that decision in a month or two.  Dark's point about getting lucky or having fewer ships on level 1 is valid, but since you can restart the game and replay a number of times, it's not insurmountable.  Also too, the 2nd level, while you can encounter Delta class fighters is much like the first.  Aaron and I just didn't feel it would add significantly to the experience of the demo.

As to the Paypal issue, it is currently being worked on by Dentin.  It's apparently very complicated, and involving a lot of work on his part.  We hope to have that ability soon, but how soon soon is, we're not sure.  Dentin's in the midst of real life changes that may disrupt things for a while.

HTH,

Jeremy