Hey folks! Here's the first large update since launch! I've been shipping a lot of smaller updates to try and fix up some of the critical issues as quickly as possible but I've been working on this chonky update at the same time.
On that note I just want to say I'm very sorry about all the bugs you may have encountered! I don't really have a good excuse other than to say that the end of Early Access there was maybe 2-3 people playing the game per day and very few people reporting critical bugs. When it goes from that level to nearly a thousand people playing per day it's going to highlight some things I missed myself. I'm disappointed in myself that I let so many go live and I'm hoping to improve my processes so that so many don't slip by in future releases.
I'm going to try and make sure big versions go up on a test branch for at least a week before I release it so that people have time to report bugs to me before I ship it. Hopefully this and more people playing the game will help me catch things earlier.
Quality of Life changes
Enemy Health bars + Weapon Details
I've seen a lot of confusion about how weapons work so these two improvements are meant to help weapons be a bit more transparent. Health bars have options if you want to turn them off but at the base level they are will only come on if an enemy actively is taking damage to reduce clutter as much as possible.
Improved Saving and Loading
I've seen a lot of frustration with the way the current system saves only at the beginning of the system. I've decided to bite the bullet and build out a save system that tries to keep up with the pace of the game. This was pretty difficult to do and may still have some small bugs here and there but I hope I've ironed out most of them. There's a pretty high chance your 1.0.7 version saved run will not work well with the 1.1.0 version so I'd highly advise finishing that run up before updating. I did everything I could think of to make sure it transfers over smoothly but I just want to warn as many people as possible.
Other Improvements
- System augment details
- Gamepad remapping options
- Settings menu reorganized
- More UI scaling options
- Final Encounter Improvements
- Added a tooltip to doors to help folks know what to do when they get to that point.
- Boss scales slightly with amount of waves spawned in the game, should be relatively unchanged for most but if you take an exceptionally long time to complete the regions you may have a pretty tough boss fight.
- Adjusted part armor values so that it's less likely you'll have two open doors at once.
- Inside space is a bit roomier for more space to play in.
Balance changes
Over the course of I added more difficulty levels so I gradually tuned down the base game to be more accessible for those that just want to enjoy the story. Problem was there was a certain play style: basically picking low # of inhabited planets, shielding the first planet immediately and then quickly shielding the second to avoid any attacks and then farming to full before the next system and doing it again. This playstyle side stepped a lot of the "good" parts of the game in my opinion. Additionally it lead to knock on effects where you could go through the entire region without fighting some of the most challenging enemies AND enemies wouldn't scale up very well so they felt very easy as you progressed in the run. Most of the balance changes address this play style in a variety of ways.
- Travel costs - Systems with lots of inhabited planets will have a lower travel cost (% of your total resources).
- Region travel costs, when jumping regions you will use 100% of your resources to travel.
- Wave changes:
- If you shield the final planet while planet attacking ships are present the wave in the next system will spawn significantly faster.
- After all the shields are up you'll have about a minute of "free" time to do whatever you want. After that the attack countdown will start for the next system you go to.
- Angry alien from the egg is much more deadly. It wasn't really intended this guy could be easily killed. He's now faster does collision damage and more agile.
- Mega cannon got a buff for it's final charge shot.
- Traveling traders have a bit more health to make sure they don't accidentally die in cross fire.
- Revertor changes:
- If you recover armor with this ship's ability the cooldown will be significantly increased
- You can no longer indefinitely rewind health for the station upgrade gamble.
- Upgrade where you gain fire/speed has a different tradeoff instead of removing armor pickups
- Payday loan's collectors are slightly more forgiving. Collections amount is decreased from 20 credits to 10 credits per system.
New Content
Wanted to help players feel like they have a bit more control over their ammo so I made a couple of items and a station that can help "redistribute" ammo you currently aren't using into ammo you can.
- 2 consumable items (Small/Large)
- New station that will let you recycle as long as you have the funds
- 2 new surge levels! Up to 12 total!
Bug fixes
- Fixed a crash when dying with the nugget item
- Fixed a crash when continuing the game space dust might try to draw a nine slice
- Gave appropriate ability preview for Slicmorph
- Fixed some sound levels that were a bit too high
- Fixed and audio sync issue
- Made a new icon for Arty models so they can be visually distinguished.
What's next?
I've got some plans for the next update: rework all ship abilities. I really want to add a layer of depth to ship's abilities that currently doesn't exist. These will probably be taking the current ability and adding a way of "charging" the ability through skilled use (i.e. hitting enemies with your drones stacks charges that increase their power in fun ways but the stacks decay over time so you'll need to continually hit to keep up with the decay). I'd love to build in a lot of synergy between these enhanced abilities and upgrades that can be utilized and bring a lot more interesting choices to your builds.