Since last week's update at least two dozen players have made it to the end of Kepler's content and there have been no major new bugs reported. I've also deployed several patches to Kepler, but these are fairly minor. Assuming no major issues appear, I plan to promote Kepler to be the new default build in the next week.
If you're about to start a new game, you may want to switch to Kepler, as it has the most content/improvements, but is not save compatible with previous named builds (Opt-in instructions here).
Also, I recorded another brief dev video last weekend. This one is about my favorite bug.
Here are the changes relative to Jupiter (the last opt-in beta):
Non-spoiler changes in Kepler:
- New side-quests
- 27 new anomalies
- Additional void regions
- Changes to existing missions
- Difficulty / skill roll modifiers now in 5% increments
- New alien
- Several changes to late game
- Player drones
- Ability to toggle mission goal tracking
- New music tracks
- Three new achievements
- New analytics tracking for various progress metrics, localization
- If anomaly image changes during anomaly, the last image will appear in the log
- New enemy weapon
- New ship modules
- New technologies
- New achievements
- Numerous balance changes
- Changes to fighter sounds, trails
- Changes to enemy AI
- NPCs now automatically aggro'd by attacks to their allies (unless also allied with aggressor)
- Refactor fighter drone logic
- Various performance optimizations
- Various UI fixes
- FPS limit option
- Priority mission identification
- Fixed transient objects, screen shake persisting after game load
- Added discovery sounds/tier labels
- Block players from interacting with cloaked ships
- Fix several minor anomaly bugs reported by players
- Fix for potential soft-lock in late game
- Fix for null reference exception
- Added some missing gamepad UI indicators, controls
Known Issues:
- Loading a game during a transition (such as a wormhole) can break the game camera
- Player drone behavior/balance needs some work
Until next week!
- Kevin