Starcom: Unknown Space has just gotten a significant update including dozens of new anomalies, several new side-quests and regions, a few new techs and modules and a bunch of fixes / QoL improvements.
Some of the more significant non-spoilery changes in this update:
New Anomalies
There are two dozen+ new anomalies, including a mix of procedural and story-related.
New Missions
There are several new minor quest lines, which I'll leave to players to discover on their own. (See the Existing Games notes below.)
More Guidance
Some of the existing main-storyline missions have gotten a little bit more guidance and hints where players have reported getting stuck.
Trading Change
By request, trading now tracks "fractional" resources during the same trade exchange, so the "spare change" from different resource transactions is combined in the final reserve currency delta.
Plasma Autofire
As an accessibility feature, plasma cannons now have an auto-fire setting in the ship systems so players do not need to hold down the autofire button. Related to this, higher Tactics skill will improve target selection with your plasma turrets more likely to choose targets that pose a greater threat and less likely to oversaturate low-health targets.
Saucer Bridge
A slightly smaller alternative to the Dreadnought, it's lower cost with a slightly lower max size but a higher built-in support crew limit.
Full Kepler 21506-7 Change List:
- 25 New anomalies
- Several new regions
- Several new side quests
- Several hint prompts in places where players reported getting stuck
- Several new proc planet visuals
- New "saucer" bridge module
- Added "rename ship/commander" button to Ship's Log
- New thermal visualization system, fixed heat not displayed for some modules
- Trading now combines fractional values across resources
- Steer to mouse bindable hotkey
- Rotate to mouse bindable hotkey
- Resume autopilot bindable hotkey
- Plasma autofire setting in ship info
- Changes to some AI targeting values
- Changes to plasma autofire: higher tactics skill improves target selection
- Added lower particle count versions of Havok and Shroud bursts if graphics settings below "high"
- Fixed reference issue possibly causing bugs with reloading the latest save
- Fog of exploration "refogging" if a region is added to an already explored area
- Fix for faction disposition not decaying if faction not loaded
- Fix for possible rare soft-lock after Celaeno or Aletheia are destroyed
- Fix for proc anomaly addition sometimes overwriting existing anomaly
- Modified fixed gun cycle calculation to ensure fire rate is reached
- Map color legend for interaction "rings"
- Player damage now correctly preserved in saves
- Change to VFX object pooling behavior
- Various minor mission changes
- Various code refactoring
- Hovered module build selection now shows details (including for controller)
- Fixed numerous missing minor localization strings
- Added MIT attribution for Newtonsoft JSON library
- Added "DebugMapCoord(string)" command line (shows map coordinates of persistent by id)
- Several typos corrected
- Volunteer provided improvements to ML Russian localization
- Enabled third-party download of Steam Workshop items (for GOG players)
- Missile speed techs
- Kinetic (collision) resistance tech
- Angled kinetic armor module
- Once the player has researched the Gravity Gun, a small cluster of unstable cores are added near the Chariot
- New RP sources added periodically during the game to ensure the player cannot exhaust them before story-critical techs
- Prevent one of the final showdown Devouts from spawning atop the player
- Guild envoy not showing correct Iridium pricing for Sepharial info
- New region now set as Emissary target
- Warping now cancels autopilot, like other steering commands
Existing Games
This update is compatible with existing saves, so you do not need to start a new game to experience the new content. Although depending on how far along you are in the game, you may be less likely to encounter it "organically". Also, the more of the universe that you've explored, the less likely it is that you will encounter some of the new procedural anomalies.
I will give one low-spoiler hint for players who have completed or mostly completed the main storyline:
One of the goals of the new content is to guide players to revisit the Guild, who are necessary for two important main-story quests. In order to kick-off one of the new quest lines, you need to trade with the Guild, return to Celaeno, then talk to the Guild again.
These changes have been in testing for a while by opt-in beta testers, so I feel pretty good that there's no major new bugs introduced, but there's always the possibility that something was missed since opt-in testers are a small percent of total players. If you encounter a bug, please report in the discussion forums. And a big shout out to the beta testers!
Thanks for playing, until next week,
- Kevin