Patch 0.8.0.0 Notes: Ship upgrades and custom loadouts

Patch 0.8.0.0 ( Saturday December 19th 2020 )

Hey everbody. As you can see, we've increased the major version number for this patch. That's because this patch is probably the biggest/most complex of the year, and brings the long-awaited ship upgrades system and custom loadouts into play.

The implementation required some huge code refactoring so it is likely to have stability and balance issues, especially as we haven't been able to test all the combinations of ships and upgrades yet. Remember that this is only the initial implementation.

We'll add new upgrades and weapons on a regular basis in the coming months. We'd love to get community feedback on the new system: is it working well, is it confusing, is the loadout customization interface too complex or intuitive to use ? Are there upgrades which you find useless, or overpowered ? What other upgrades or weapons would you like to see ?

Let us know on the forums or on Discord and see you in game !

Upgrades, loadouts and ship menu

• Introduced the new ship upgrades(/components) system and its UI. The main idea here was to extend the hardpoints system not just to weapons, but also to internal hardpoints. All hardpoints are now restricted to a category of components that you can mount on them. For example, a "structural" hardpoint can only mount structural components, and not weapons or sensors. Some upgrades have size/class restrictions as well and might not be avaialble on all ships
• The list of components available to your ship and their categories is displayed on the right-side panel
• A "show mounted only" checkbox is also available next to the categories. The upgrades panel will only show components currently mounted on your ship's loadout
• Hardpoints are now displayed on top of the 3D viewport. They can be hollow (hardpoint is free) or filled (a component is mounted on it). The icon can be a small circle for internal hardpoints, or an hexagon for external/weapons hardpoints. The color is green (hardpoint is free), red (hardpoint mounted) or yellow (selected)
• Components can have dependencies on other components (requirements or incompatibilities). Components that are currently mounted are displayed in green. Available components (but not yet mounted) are in blue. Finally, components which you cannot mount (due to a dependency issue for instance) are displayed in orange
• When hovering over a hardpoint in the 3D viewport, or a component in the upgrades list, the details/information about the component or weapon statistics gets displaying in the information panel at the bottom-right corner of the screen
• Components have tech levels. These are currently only for information purposes only, however we're currently evaluating the possibility of introducing technological research done at military bases that would unlock new upgrades for your whole team
• A loadout management bar is available at the top-right corner of the screen
• The icons in order are: save loadout to disk (this will make the loadout available in future play sessions); duplicate the current loadout into a new one; rename the loadout; undo/revert changes to the loadout; reset/empty the loadout to a fresh start (all hardpoints become empty); and finally: delete the loadout (including from disk)
• Note that default loadouts cannot be deleted. They can be temporarily modified, but if you do any change to a default loadout, make sure you undo/revert the changes if you're not satisfied with them. If you're happy with your changes and want to save the loadout, you'll have to duplicate and rename it first before the "save" option becomes available
• In terms of content we introduced about 25 upgrades and components. These range from familar components (flight assist, targetting assist, warp jammer, repair and resupply fields etc.. ) to new upgrades that modify your ship's statistics (ex.: feather weight reduces its mass, giving more mobility at the expense of a hit points reduction). Storage upgrades provides extra ammo/chaffs/missiles. Weaponry provides upgrades to the ship systems in general, or a sub-category of weapons in particular (ex.: faster turrets rotation or increased AMS laser damage). Some categories are currently empty as we haven't implemented upgrades in them just yet (ex.: no propulsion upgrades are available yet)
• We also introduced 2 new weapons: the Halcyon and the Plasma cutter. Both are converging weapons, which means that the weapon will no longer auto-aim at the target like the standard guns/blasters. As a converging weapon however, it will automatically adjust its firing angle towards the "depth" at which the target currently is. Those weapons require more skills/precision, and as a result have a higher DPS than the standard gimbaled weapons
• Ship's 3D model now correctly displays the team's skin
• Ship's 3D model now renders the loadout's selected weapons on the hull
• Chat box is no longer visible on the ship or team menus anymore (for layout/lack of space reasons)
• Updated ship statistic bars and values to show how the current loadout positively or negatively affects each attribute (ex.: +10% mass, -15% hitpoints etc..)
• Added more statistics (ex.: recharge rates) to the ship statistics panel

Music and assets

• Introduced new musical tracks in game as they were too repetitive, especially in battles. The amount of music in game was doubled (6 new battle tracks, 3 new ambient tracks, 2 new danger tracks). Credits and thanks go to our compositer, Markus Zierhofer (http://markus-zierhofer.com)
• The music system now randomizes the order in which the tracks are being played (previously: it was sequential)
• New station asset (a new docking bay module) for haulers
• Loads of new icons for the new upgrades system

HUD and general UI

• Updated layout of deployment panel: the design is now more compact and top 3 missions list was removed
• Revamped locking system when a missile/torpedo launcher is selected: the 'aim' circle now dynamically changes it size based on the alignment angle towards the target. The new system takes into account your velocity and the target's velocity and distance, to show you a spinning 'lead' indicator/reticle. Orientating your ship on this reticle will maximize your chances of the missile/torpedo hitting your target. An arrow is also displayed on the aim circle to show you in which direction you should fire your lateral thrusters to compensate the target's relative velocity/direction
• Revamped team scores in tab menu: removed the progress bar, now the scores appear on the left/right sides of the menu tabs. Icon is bigger, and the name of the team is displayed
• Fixed "make target" bug in mission panel that sometimes didn't change the HUD's primary target
• Closest spawn point button on starmap screen (while having opened the menu in game, not at spawn) now selects the corresponding base in the map or missions list panel. This button also becomes automatically disabled if the closest spawn base is being selected in the list
• Fixed a clipping bug that stopped rendering the HUD radar ring or missile aiming helper when it's partially out of the screen (but should still be partially visible)
• More HUD icons shoould have a black outline for readability over bright backgrounds
• Fixed a refresh bug that still showed the base having deployable spawns in the star map after it got destroyed
• Fixed a bug that caused ships standing in their spawn to display the hangar's spawn marker as valid (green) despite belonging to the enemy team
• Nearest hangar's text marker helper on HUD now stops showing as soon as its base gets destroyed (previously: the marker only disappeared after the hangar module gets destroyed, which could be a dozen seconds later)
• Scrollbars now appear thinner
• Fixed last death position incorrectly appearing at (0, 0, 0) with a red icon the first time the player joins a server (hence never had a 'last death position')
• Fixed Windows focus event that could result in accidental UI clicks (now, if the window does not have focus, the first mouse click that gives the focus to the game will no longer result in an in-game click)
• Fixed truncated right & bottom borders around some UI panels/windows in resolutions <= 1080p
• Fixed various UI layout bugs related to list boxes

Bug fixes

• Fixed instant action deploy system which listed an AI ship that the player couldn't afford to take over due to not having enough credits (it was possible to click on the button, then the action got silentely denied by the server..)
• Fixed carrier that couldn't spawn at large stations anymore
• Carrier now spawn at station docking bays instead of thin air/far away in space
• Fixed a bug that auto-repaired some modules (defense turrets, hangars..) right after they reached 0 hitpoints, forcing them to stay alive despite the base being destroyed
• Fixed a bug that caused some far-away modules (like defense platforms) to stay alive despite the base being destroyed
• Fixed random client crash bug related to HUD indicators getting deleted at the wrong time
• Fixed an issue that prevented the closest resupply ship to appear outside the (close) visual range
• Fixed FMOD crash due to listing and try to get driver information from disconnected/unplugged audio devices
• Fixed a crash bug when mouse clicking right as the application is starting

Known issues

• Ships have gravity issues on planets ( even the interceptor ). We added a ramp-up factor so that ship's don't instantly accelerate, but this results in a loss of sufficient anti-gravity acceleration to compensate for gravity on planets. We'll revamp the ramp-up factor to take gravity into account
• UI and HUD icons are messed up in low quality texture mode. As a workaround, you can increase the texture quality to medium or high. We'll work on a hotfix asap
• The prices of ships and their loadouts has inflated. We adjusted the economy in consequence, but this hasn't been throughly tested. It might be more difficult to earn enough credits to afford the better loadouts or capital ships than in previous versions. Feedback on the economy ( are you having difficulities with it, or do you find it more challenging in a good way ? ) is welcome
• station/base defenses no longer fire at enemies. This is also a high priority for a hotfix
• on custom loadouts, the weapon groups are automatically assigned and might not be in the ideal order (for example, you could have multiple groups for the same weapon.. )