Patch if finally here!
What started out as a quick patch to fix a couple of issues turned out to be a fairly large content update. The big headliner is the ability to sort the device and bay modules with various criteria while on the edit fleet screen. Here are the details:
Fixed the bug where the players smart bomb would not go to the next turret when the previous turret was destroyed.
Added shield icons for both the enemy and the players ships when you mouse over them. This now displays a small shield icon with a timer showing how much time the shield has. This was done for the fighter squads and missile barrages too. But at this time missile barrages don’t launch with a shield like the fighter squads do. This will be part of the new Rogue Officers DLC.
Also added shields to the ships in the players and enemy’s ships list so the player could easily tell which ships still have a shield on them. It basically places a yellow outline around the current ship icon in the list.
On the fleet edit screen, we removed the Crew Hold and replaced it with Reserve Crew. This now allows the player to move crew to and from the Reserve Crew at any time. The reserve crew starts at 75 and goes up by 25 each time you upgrade the Cargo stat and maxes out at 300. Thus you no longer need to go to the ship factory to access your reserve crew.
You can now also hire crew at the Military Academy and assign them to your reserve crew. And when visiting damaged or distressed ships, or purchasing crew from a star base, these can be hired to fill your reserve crew as well.
Fixed various typos found.
On all trade screens that allow you to buy and sell resources, we added green or red arrows indicating if the resource currently has an increased or decrease in its price. These arrows show up on each item to the right of the buy and sell prices. Also added a tooltip for the arrows that show the base price, current price and any adjustments that are made.
Fixed an issue where the time bonus when losing the game was being calculated wrong. It some cases it would end up a negative number.
Broken Room Icon is now 25% bigger and a bit less transparent. It will also turn Red instead of yellow when it gets down to the last 25% prior to destroying the room. This will help make it easier to detect while exploring a damaged or distressed ship.
During Combat the player and now press the ‘P’ key or the Gamepads Right Shoulder button to force the game to pause even while the enemy is playing. Keep in mind that this will only queue up the pause and will allow the enemy to continue their paused turn. If the enemy has more than one ship weapon or bay item charged on any of their ships, they will continue to fire until they can no longer take an action. This is basically the same as when the player has paused the game and can take as many actions as they want before they unpause the game.
Percussion Bombs no longer need a target to fire at. You can target ANY area within their range.
The audible message you get when entering the pre combat screen that lets you know you have ships that need to be repaired now is only given when your fleet has taken more than 25% damage to the armor. Prior to this it you would hear it when any ship and any damage.
The audible message you get from the energy detector artifact when entering a star system is now only given when you enter a new system. It no longer is triggered each time you leave an encounter from within the star system and then return to the system you are currently in.
Starbases have been added to the list of objects within a star system. This will allow players to select them from the list. This is useful if they are in a nebula or asteroid field.
Added new graphics for the asteroid fields and nebulas in the star system view. There is a much larger variety as well and they are a bit larger in area. This will allow players to get into more combats with them. The new nebula graphics also are used in the nebula encounters. This will give a much greater variety of cloud visuals.
Made the mouse dead zone around the planet lander about 50% larger. This will allow players to turn the planet lander without moving it a bit easier.
The jumping fish now jump back and forth, and with very little delay between jumps. This will eliminate the player having to wait for the fish to jump in order to fire at it.
Fixed an issue where the Fleet Stats Overview screen would show that you could not convert metals into anything when the level was maxed out.
Nebula encounters now have a color tint to the background stars to match the color of the nebula. Light blue, green and red are the 3 color tints. These have also been added to comet and asteroid encounters that are within a nebula.
There have been changes to the following encounters.
Comet and Sun Encounter: If the center of the comet or sun is within an asteroid field then you will get some asteroids. These will not spawn power crystals. If it’s in a nebula then you will get nebula lightning and these too will NOT spawn gas extract.
Nebula Encounter: If the center of the nebula is in an asteroid field then you will get some asteroids. These will not spawn power crystals.
To accommodate the new ability to pick up and move ship device and bay modules while on the edit fleet screen, you must now shift LMB click to upgrade an installed module. If you are using a game pad you can press the left trigger in place of the shift key. If you want to pick up a module to move it to another ship, you will now just LMB click on it. If you want to uninstall the module you can still RMB click on it. If you RMB click while moving a module it will go back into your inventory. If you pick up a module from a ship and you already have one in your inventory, then when you place it you will be able to place multiples if you want. You will need to RMB click to exit the placement mode.
The weapon for you planet lander will no longer reset to the main or stun weapon when you launch it. It will stay at the last selected weapon. It will now only reset to the main weapon when you first make orbit around a new planet.
When a pirate outpost or starbase launches fighters they now have a 50% chance to launch a missile barrage instead, and both have a chance to launch with a shield. There were also some changes to the calculations for determining a turret’s hit points and damage. This now gives more weight to the player’s skill level and the tech level of the race. This will make lower tech races a bit easier to beat. The size of the turret is still decided by the races current ship size range and uses the same percentages as those used to determine the size of the ships in a races fleet. This change resulted in pirate outpost being easier to defeat while star bases will require a pretty big fleet of ships to defeat, even the easier ones.
There is a know issue with the Variety Is the Spice of Life Achievement. The achievement itself is working, but is not showing which of the 4 parts of the achievement have been complete like the comet one does. So until ti is fixed, you will not know if you still need to win a battle is an asteroid field, ion nebula, plasma nebula or photon nebula. You will only know how many you are missing, not which ones. Now that the size of the nebulas an asteroid fields have been increased on the star system view, it should make these type of encounters for prevalent.
