Rejoice, Atirans!
The Weapons Update - our biggest so far - is out!
This post will be very long, as we have so many new systems and things to cover, so I'll skip the theatrics and just get right into it.
At the bottom of this post you can watch a Hype Trailer for the update and a long Overview video covering all the new stuff. This post is basically a written version of the Overview video
Here's a list of all the major new features, and keep reading for a detailed breakdown for each:
Hotjoining / Instantly Rejoining Lobbies
Reworked Looting, Upgradeable Modules, Blueprints
3rd Player Ship, Hammerhead
Reworked Ship and Crew Life System
Improved Ship Combat
New Guns
Enemy Changes
Hotjoining / Instantly Rejoining Lobbies
We wanted to start here, as it's been a common painpoint for players for months.
Getting disconnected sucks.
You have to wait in a loading screen until your crew makes a jump to another level before you're allowed to join, and worst case scenario - you miss the Finale and the mission completion rewards altogether.
No longer!
You no longer have to wait when connecting to a lobby, and spawn immediately into the ship mid-objective.
We have more of these big Quality of Life features on the roadmap coming soon, like Offline Mode for the solo players.
Speaking of, we're currently making a sort of auto-save feature, that lets the lobby host resume a mission from the last ship jump. For when the game and lobby crashed completely, or if you needed to take an emergency break and left the game. This isn't quite ready yet but we'll share more info in the future update when this feature actually gets added.
Reworked Looting, Upgradeable Modules, Blueprints
Strap in because this segment is huge.
Our second most common feedback is players wanting to save their favorite gun, "make a locker for weapons!"
So we are doing that, but so much more.
MK system is scrapped - upgradeable weapons and components with Modules are in!
All weapons and ship components in the wild will now have full stats displayed, rarities, randomized color scopes and most importantly - Modules.
Modules are random perks and modifiers that can be upgraded with different Ingot types, to take a weapon to its maximum potential.
Modules do A LOT of different things, like purely increasing stats or applying status effects onto enemies.
There are some seriously crazy combos and effects you can get, but I won't spoil the excitement of discovery here.
More difficult missions will have higher chances of spawning higher rarities of a weapon, which have more modules. There are Standard, Refined, Advanced and Superior rarities.
The Ingots needed to upgrade weapons and components are gained through loot salvage, mission rewards or buying them from the Hangar with credits or other Ingots.
So the flow of acquiring new guns and components is like like this:
You find a cool thing during a mission, and scan it by holding E.
A scanned item gets added as a Blueprint that you access through the Assembler.
Upgrade or craft copies of your weapon or component at any time through the Assembler.
This is how we've chosen to solve the demand for storage for weapons, and we think it kicks ass.
Players' old stash of MK2/MK3 player weapons and ship components will be converted into a Refined/Blue rarity equivalent with random Modules.
Each player can hold 4 different Blueprints per item category to start.
So 4 guns, 4 Engines, 4 Pilot Weapons etc.
By spending Credits you can upgrade this to 6 slots, for now.
This new looting system also applies to every category of ship component, each with their own set of Modules.
Blueprints can also be renamed to whatever you want. Please use this responsibly.
Grenades, RPGs and consumbles are unchanged with no Modules.
Same goes for the Multi-Tool, but only because we have special plans for it in the future. So look forward to that.
Some important notes about this Blueprint upgrading system:
- In case you forgot to scan something during a mission, you can view a "Loot Log" in the Assembler which lists all loot found by anyone in the same mission as you. From this list you can retroactively scan something to add it to your saved Blueprints.
This means you cannot get a Blueprint from a friend's weapon that they found separately in another mission, because you weren't there when it was discovered. But your friend can craft copies of their weapon in the Assember to share. That copy will last as long as you play together in that current lobby.
- You can't currently change or swap around Modules, colors or scope between weapons. What you see is what you get for that particular item when it was discovered. If players really want us to expand this in the future to full gun customization, we shall consider it.
This system is real deep, and there's more nitty gritty details that would be too long to cover that you'll discover as you play. We look forward to seeing what crazy gun combinations you find out there.
3rd Player Ship, The Hammerhead
Alright let's talk about the Chunky Lad.
This bad boy is well-suited for a full crew, and is slightly larger than the Catamaran with more vertical space. It's slower but has the most Health, and:
- 0 Pilot Weapon slots
- 4 Special Weapon slots
- 2 Gunner Seats
- 25% Reduced Damage from Enemy Ships
- 25% Reduced Ammo Consumption
This is the ship to pick if you want a tank that can soak up damage and dish it back out with crazy firepower.
4 Rotary Cannons at the same time? Go for it.
We've also added 2 new Special Weapons that are perfect for the Hammerhead, which we will show off further down in this post.
Reworked Ship and Crew Life System
While talking about player ships, we have to dive into the new systems for health, repairs and lives.
We've remade the HUD elements and several mechanics, so let me break it down what this all means.
The red dots (3) represent Core Lives, meaning Iris and her ability to keep the ship alive.
The green bar is the classic ship health. When this hits 0, one Core Life is consumed to restore parts of the ship health.
The green figure icons represents the crew/players, and how many times you can die. Dying and being forced to respawn on the ship will deplete one "Crew Life". Once all Crew Lives are spent and a player respawns again, one Core Life will be consumed to restore Crew Lives. If a player is downed once, they receive a debuff which makes the next down into an instant death. This debuff is removed by using the Med-Station onboard your ship or in some on-foot segments in sectors.
The blue segmented bar is the old ship Shields, with some small tweaks. The Shield Component will automatically restore shield bars, and the old Shield Unit will repair a bar of the shields in case it gets too damaged and starts flashing red. While Shields are up, ship hazards like Fires will not happen.
Having the Shield Component installed will give Pilots the ability to deploy a Front Shield, blocking all projectiles. This will reward good piloting against those pesky Sniper ships and homing missiles.
We think this system is more fun and fair to keep you alive longer, while adding some stakes to continously being downed as players down in the on-foot segments, but we're keen to hear your feedback.
Core Lives can be restored, but only by finding Core Life Kits as loot. For now.
The Hull Repair Tool
Now we wouldn't just take away your ability to heal the ship HP!
We may have turned the old Core Repair Kits into Core Life Kits to serve another purpose, but instead we've given you the Hull Repair Tool!
Ship health is now restored by physically repairing damaged points that will spring up all over the ship hull with this tool.
Think of it like the Fire Extinguisher, but it restores health and has charges, to balance things out.
While it can be beneficial to repair a little during combat, we don't want that to be a necessity all the time. So most of these repairs can be made at your own pace after combat is over.
Improved Ship Combat
Following last update's improvement to ground enemy behaviour and balancing, we've now done the same to Enemy Ships and Ship Combat overall.
First off, the Catamaran and Hammerhead now have these manual terminals next to each Special Weapon, allowing one player to manually control that weapon.
This means you can effectively be 2 gunners on the Catamaran and 4 gunners on the Hammerhead, controlling one Special Weapon each.
Enemy ships have been rebalanced, and will now perform more evasive maneuvers to make shooting them not feel so... static. You'll now see these aiming reticles to hit, which will score critical hits.
Gunship will drop these Radioactive Bombs, which will trigger the Radiation hazard on your ship if you fly into it. So watch out!
Corvettes and their loot has changed a little, to tie into the new component-blueprint-rarity system. In the future the Corvettes will be remade further to act like a proper boss, and be way cooler.
For player ships, max range for all weapons has been increased but with damage fall-off at longer ranges.
We know some of y'all have wanted the Lance Railgun to get its sniper range back, so here you go. Nice!
New Guns
For player weapons, we have the Minigun and Stinger SMG.
The Minigun is another consumable weapon like the RPG with limited ammo.
So when you get lucky and find this, send those machine scum to Robo-Valhalla expeditiously.
The Stinger is a normal, permanent weapon like the other guns.
Now the two ship Special Weapons I mentioned above; there's the Vulcan minigun and Thunderburst cannon.
These provide a more consistent rate of fire, similar to pilot weapons to compliment the Lance and Missiles Launcher. Perfect for a well-rounded loadout for the Hammerhead!
For a demonstration of how satisfying they sound, check out the videos for this update.
We've also reworked the Pulse Cannon pilot weapon into the Reaver
Enemy Changes
To compliment the addition of Modules and varying damage stats, ground enemies now have a health bar and displays status effects affecting them. Same for ships.
To ensure a fair and flexible enemy difficulty, Elite enemies are now split into two groups with different colors. Yellow Elites are the usual ones, while the white ones are like, "Elite-Elite".
Weapons Update Launch Trailer:
Overview video explaining the new content in video form:
Release Notes:
New:
Joining lobbies mid-mission is now instant, without needing to wait for a jump to happen.
MK system for player weapons and components has been remade into the Blueprint and Module system.
Materia Ingots has been split into 5 variants for Module upgrades. Player's stash of old Ingots will be converted into the first Green Ingot variety.
Player's old stash of MK2/MK3 player weapons and ship components will be converted into a Refined/Blue rarity equivalent with random Modules.
Major changes to Assembler and added several Blueprint-related menus.
Added 3rd Player ship, Hammerhead
Major rework of Ship Health, added Core Lives, Hull Repair Kits to all ship interiors.
Catamaran and Hammerhead Special Weapon mounting points now have a manual terminal next to them for manual weapon control from the outside.
Added Expendable Minigun and Stinger as player weapons, and Vulcan Rotary Cannon and Thunderburst Cannon as Special Weapon ship components.
Pulse Cannon pilot weapon has been reworked into the Reaver Cannon, and Bolt Accelerator ship weapon has also been reworked.
Most enemy ships now make occasional evasive maneuvers.
Enemy gunships can now drop Radioactive Bombs as an additional attack.
Elite ground enemies now appear as either yellow or white depending on their elite-eliteness and power.
All player ship weapons have increased range.
Enemy ships have been rebalanced in some way, Corvettes now contain components with Modules.
Changes/Quality of Life of Note:
Taser drone has been nerfed, both with shorter stun and reduced health.
Ship emergencies like fires etc, no longer occur while you have active bars of Shield protecting you
Artifacts have been rebalanced across the board to align with the new weapon Modules and higher level of power.
Players can now crawl around in the downed state. Added the downed debuff as described in the Crew Lives segment above.
To accomodate both pilot abilites of Front Shields and Engine Flares, the keybind to active these abilities has been changed slightly.
Bug Fixes:
Too many fixes to mention.
Situations of ground enemies clipping into walls might still appear.
Enemy ships flying through geometry can still appear, we are aware and it is a larger problem that takes more than a bug fix to resolve.
Please let us know of any major and disruptive bugs that hinder progression or seriously affect balancing, and we will fix them post-haste.
(Update June 26th: We are aware of a bug affecting the fire spiders appearing upside-down in some circumstances. Will be fixed with the next hotfix ASAP)
Woooo! Guns!
Enjoy the update, and don't miss that Jump Space will be 20% off during Steam Summer Sale between 25 June — 9 July!
As always, thank you so much for playing our game and supporting us. We've got plenty more to add from the our Dev Roadmap, and we're not slowing down.
We're looking ahead to our 1 Year Early Access Anniversary! Maybe that's when we drop the next update, together with other cool stuff to celebrate one whole year of Jump Space.
We'll give you more info when it's time... But first, summer vacation!
Fly safe, Atirans.
- The Keepsake Crew