Hey Space Travelers!
We’re happy to announce the first major Stardeus update since its launch to Early Access. Although it’s centered around Derelict Ships, there’s so much more to it that we’re going to dig into.
Existing saves will work but may feel off-balance. So if you haven't played for a while or got to the late game, it's a great time to start a brand new Wrecked scenario and experience the refreshed and rebalanced version of the gameplay.
If you want a quick (but incomplete) tour of the new features, check out this video:
Derelict Ships
Derelict ships were the most voted feature, and it was the main focus of development for the last couple of months. Here’s how it works.
Once you start a new game with the Wrecked scenario, you’ll notice a wrecked ship in the background.
Once you restore your ship to a point where it can move, you will be able to approach the derelict. A new quest will guide you through the procedure.
It will spawn in your game map once you do it. Then it’s up to you to choose what you want to do with it - reel it in and attach it to your ship, scrap it for raw materials, or just grab the valuables and abandon the rest.
You will encounter more derelicts during your adventure. Each derelict ship will be procedurally generated using one of a dozen templates, and it may or may not trigger various events.
As with almost anything in Stardeus, Derelict Ships are moddable, and new generation templates can be added through Steam Workshop.
Precision Thrusters and Local Maneuvering
You have been asking for an advanced winch, and for a way to recenter the ship on the map. Precision Thrusters will allow you to do both! It works like this:
Once you unlock Local Maneuvering in the Research Tree or perhaps scavenge a set of Precision Thrusters from a derelict ship, you will be able to plug them into a power source and let them recharge. Once the charge is full, select the thruster, go to the Engine UI, and use the controls to push the section (or the whole ship!) with high precision.
You can use this tool to attach derelict ships, recenter your ship, and even evade incoming asteroids or breach capsules. The thruster will have to recharge to be usable again.
Oh, and Precision Thruster devices also serve as conventional ship engines!
System Scanning and Starmap Improvements
Finding the required resources was a bit of a hassle before. You would fly from planet to planet with hopes of finding that precious Oil or Uranium deposit. You could use Probes, but they are single use, and not available early on when you need certain resources the most. Now once you have a Radar, you can actively scan the surroundings for specific resources of your choice!
And it gets better, when System Scanning is unlocked, you can also search for derelict ships and planets with anomalies.
Finally, Starmap will now display informational icons next to identified and visited space objects. You will no longer have to rename planets to mark them as fully harvested, that information will be available at a glance!
Ship Building
At its core, Stardeus is a base ship-building game. There were a bunch of improvements added since the launch to make this aspect more pleasant. Let’s take a look at some of it.
Auto Rebuild
Yes, now when a meteor shower harms your grand design, the destroyed parts will automatically create tasks to rebuild anything that was destroyed. You may want to adjust the rebuild task priority afterward, so as to not interfere with other tasks too much, it will be the lowest by default (1 out of 9). TIP: Hold Shift and click+drag the priority adjustment tool to set the task priority to the maximum for multiple tasks. Holding Ctrl will set it to the minimum.
Ship Preview in New Game panel
Sometimes starting with a nice ship design is all you need. You can now preview what ship you will get before starting a new game. The Wrecked scenario will deal significantly heavy damage to that ship, but it should still be recognizable.
Original Ship Design Plan
Before the starting ship gets wrecked, the game will capture a detailed ship layout plan. You can choose to rebuild your ship the way it was before it got wrecked, or scrap the plan and make one of your own.
Multi-Actions
You were asking for Factorio-style templates (blueprints). This is a big task, but here’s a “poor man’s” version of it. You can select multiple objects and then move or copy the whole selection.
Choose “Relocate” or press O to relocate the whole selection:
Choose “Build a Copy” or press B to order building a copy of the selected objects:
Abandoning Unwanted Sections
There may be situations where you will want to abandon a few sections of your wreckage or leave a crawler-infested derelict ship behind. You can do it in Sections overlay with a click of a button.
New Objects
Adding more types of devices, materials and species wasn’t the main focus, so it’s not much, but it’s honest work. This screenshot contains most of the items that were added within the last 3 months:
- Quantum Ship Computer - more powerful, and 3x3 for perfect symmetry
- Freezer - large version of the Refrigerator
- Small and Large Pantry - for storing raw ingredients
- Rubber Tree - for producing natural rubber
- Caoutchouc - natural rubber
- Leather - don’t ask where it comes from
- Leather Sofa and Armchair - for putting that Leather to use
- Orbotron - a powerful drone from the Virus faction
- System Scanner - an advanced version of the Radar
- Floor Vent - don’t open it when someone is walking above
- Auto Pilot Upgrade - because humans can’t be trusted
- Memory Compression Upgrade - for having less Memory Modules
- Jukebox - for your colonists to dance (and leave their Starcreds) at
- Reinforced Vent and Wall Socket - for more resilience and consistent looks
In addition to everything above, there were hundreds of small changes, QoL, UI, balance improvements, and bug fixes.
This is it! Keep an eye out for the new feature voting round, as it will be the time to recast your votes on the refreshed version of the roadmap!
The full changelog: https://stardeusgame.com/changelog
Search for v0.6.103 (2022.10.11) and scroll up to read through what exactly has been done since the game was released to Early Access. It will be a long scroll.
Follow the Development
- Official Website: https://stardeusgame.com
- Join Stardeus Discord
- /r/stardeus on Reddit
- @StardeusGame on Twitter
- @dev_spajus on Twitter
- dev_spajus on Twitch (live development streams)
Get Stardeus
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1380910/Stardeus/