Hey Folks!
Ostranauts v0.11.0.10 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.
This is a hotfix to our recently released "Pistols & Punches" update that fixes several bugs and issues reported by players. Several of the fixes involve AI, and particularly police AI. It also includes a number of improvements to the UI for socializing with NPCs. Plus several bug fixes.
Saves from v0.11.0.0 and later should work. If you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.
- Added the ability to preemptively surrender for any crimes to law enforcement and port authority agents, without requiring them to arrest/fight player first.
- Fixed a bug that allowed traders to let you buy things from your own barter zones, which makes them disappear.
- Fixed a bug that made AI unlikely to ever accept player surrender.
- Fixed a bug that could cause police to stand around and not do anything for too long during a boarding event.
- Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to walk off during conversations.
- Fixed a bug that could cause officers to shout Hey criminal over and over at player after player surrendered in combat.
- Fixed a bug that caused officers to not arrest a Public Enemy after they surrender.
- Changed the name of certain social moves to mention whether they are GAMBIT or BASIC moves.
- Added new info to tooltips for social moves that tells the user what a GAMBIT or BASIC move does.
- Added new info to tooltips for social moves that tells the user what emotional effects it might have.
- Added new info to tooltips for social moves that tells the user what emotional state is required for GAMBIT moves to work.
- Changed the MegaTooltip "Stakes" section to more clearly tell the player which emotional states will fail the current conversation, if any.
- Fixed a null exception that could occur during encounter screens, and could cause them to get stuck.
- Fixed a bug that caused career UI to get stuck in some cases when a new player is choosing a ship.
- Fixed a bug that caused Quick Action Button hotkeys to trigger while typing the name of a new save file.
- Fixed a bug that could cause officers to ignore arrest warrants when in combat cooldown period.
- Fixed a bug that could cause missing social moves for a while after surrendering to police.
- Fixed a bug that could cause some attack moves to start when too far away from the target, and fail.
- Fixed a bug that could cause an NPC's log message to be missing if it was broadcast to the room, but target was not in that same room.
- Fixed a null exception that could cause saving the game to fail.
- Fixed a bug that would cause an "Event Store Full" error due to too many low pressure/proximity alarm alerts.
- Removed a debug text element that appeared in the top right corner, overlapping other UI elements.
- Fixed several duplicate and missing data entries in game files.
- Removed several parts of the code that generated unnecessary spam in the game's log files.
Several of the changes in this patch address issues with the AI. The police, in particular, were having trouble prioritizing their actions when boarding the player's vessel, and/or in situations where they had multiple directives to arrest, fight, and question a target.
This patch tries to clean up that behavior, plus several of the behaviors that would cause any AI to interrupt or abandon conversations.
Another significant series of AI fixes includes surrendering. Previously, it was impossible for an AI to accept player surrender in combat. And police AI might not acknowledge "Surrender to Officer" soon enough to be useful. Both of these have been addressed, and AIs should now be more willing to accept surrender, and honor it when done.
That, and AIs should once again be honoring the zones in the game. So no more AIs wandering in player ships or their dorms.
The UI also had a batch of work done to it, to help players better understand the situation during conversation. Especially high-stakes conversations, like police interrogation, gaining the fixer's trust, etc.
As you can see above, we now show much more info in the tooltip for social moves. On the left side of the image, it now shows which emotional states are required for the move to work or fail, if any. As well as the emotional impact of this move, if any.
It also now explains what a GAMBIT or BASIC move are, which are sort of like finishing moves and weak/unskilled moves in conversations, respectively.
The right hand side of the image shows a slight change to the "Stakes" section of the MegaTooltip. This area now uses more clear language about the emotional states that lead to failure, linking the stat names to the up and down arrows in the tooltip.
Hopefully, this info should restore some of the useful info that was lost when we removed the full-screen conversation UI.
And, of course, we included several bug fixes in this patch. Fixes for getting stuck in career generation, null exceptions, traders selling the player their own stuff, and even save games not working.
As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems!
Best,
Daniel Fedor
Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC