Special thanks to the Void Crew community who has already helped us improve the game with invaluable feedback!
Arc Shield - Part 2/2
METEM Pixelmancer staff have concluded their work on Shield UI Displays - for the time being. This means that interfaces displaying Energy Shields will have more clearly defined "layers" of protection and visualization of Shield Recharge rate. This should make it easier for Pilots and Engineers to see the status and efficiency of shipboard Shields.
However, all this work spent on the Shield screens meant that the hitpoint max of the shields was reduced by 50%. And also the shields were too good. Like, by a lot.
KPD update
In addition, the METEM department of Defense felt a much needed bump in the standard issue Kinetic Point Defense modules (KPDs) was needed. After some tinkering, KPDs have been tuned to prioritize guided torpedos/missiles when acquiring a new target. Acquiring a target has also been drastically improved for each mark, so don't get your hopes too high for the mk I. Bullet consumption are now: KPD mk I: 10 bullets, KPD mk II: 20 bullets, KPD mk III: 25 bullets.
General Balancing / Tweaks
Balancing is an ongoing process, and thanks to players we found a bunch of issues. A few noteworthy changes:
- Player shields max hitpoints was reduced by 50%, and battery consumption adjusted accordingly.
- Improved physics so players now inherit the ship’s speed more correctly, should now be possible to exit the ship while the ship is flying
- Re-enabled quick warnings
- Updated collision of frigate and destroyer, should make it easier to shoot belly guns
- Optimization - Player ship occlusion culling was improved
- Update to defect icons, now showing their debuff type
- Improved lighting on characters
- Added sticky scanning - when scanning, target's marker should be forced visible
- Collectors should now roam correclty around the sectors
- Pressing P while having logbook opens, now closes it
We’ll evaluate these balancing tweaks and continue to fiddle with the numbers.
We're fixing bugs as quickly as you guys can report them (We wish). Keep those bug reports coming, and we'll keep the fixes flowing:
- Fixed an issue where if the guest joined while the ship was in movement, they could end up spawning outside of the ship
- Fixed an issue where the codex layout would change depending on chosen tab
- Fixed misc telemetry issues
- Fixed weapon mods information formats
- Fixed misc audio issues
- Fixed auto turrets breaking with host migration
- Fixed the jetpack ui showing up while the player is piloting
- Fixed a layering issue of breach indicator on ship hud
- Fixed quick warnings appearing every time an unscanned enemy is hovered
- Fixed missing geometry on the player ship Frigate
- Fixed several cases of wrecks or objectives spawning inside asteroids - especially in the Bravery system
- Fixed ship hud appearing in the HUB
- Fixed the HUB elevator sometimes failing
- Fixed the issue where sending a message would unmute the player
- Fixed enemy shield desync between host and guests
- Fixed icon for thrusters ("fire" icon was misleading)
- Fixed engines appearing odd from behind
- Fixed “no pattern” from being rewarded as cosmetic reward
- Fixed pattern masks on characters (Edit: This means the patterns and colors applied to characters might look different than before, but should be more consistent across various skins.)
We are aware of the issues related to desync and locked carriables (two separate topics). Unfortunately these fixes are not ready yet. We have reworked some of the related systems from scratch and we are in the process of testing these changes in a parallel track. This means as soon as these changes are ready, we will get them out. Thanks for your patience!
If you want to know more about those issues, the technical background and how we're working on it, we've published our first dev blog, "Hutlihut - Space Log #1: Carryable rework" where our team talks about this more in depth. Check it out!
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Thanks for your time, and we can’t wait to continue this journey with you. Do join Void Crew Discord for more news and good times!
