Greetings playtesters! We have been hard at work and have produced an entirely new version of the game for you to try. We have tons of new features including a new ship editor, steam workshop support, and a ship library full of amazing community ships. Almost every aspect of the game has been improved. Give it a try, and let us know what you think.
We are now working towards an Alpha1 build, which will be released in Early Access (hopefully) in Feb. This is the full game as we plan to release it, without any sector limits or hidden content.
Here is the full change list since the last update:
NEW CONTENT
= Ship Editor
An entirely new in-game ship editor that allows you to change your fleet ships, or desgn and build new ones.
You must be at a shipyard to commit any changes, but you can make design changes at any time.
You can load any ship directly into the ship editor from the Main Menu.
Any ships you create with a value of less than $1M will be usable as New Game start ships
Ships can be exported locally, or uploaded to Steam Workshop.
= New Ship Library
- We now have a library of ship designs, including many sourced from our talented Playtest community.
- When you visit a shipyard, you will find many ships for sale, including those designed by the community.
- Some ships for sale will be just the empty hull. Others will be pre-equipped and ready to fly, if you can afford them.
- Any ships you subscribe to from the Steam Workshop will be automatically included for consideration
- Any ships in the library with a value of less than $1M will now be available to start in the New Game menu.
- Ships you create are added to the ship library and will be available for purchase in game, at shipyards.
= Steam Workshop integration
You can now share any ship you create from the main menu, by clicking the "Upload To Steam" button
You can subscribe to any ship on the Steam Workshop, and it will be included in your game world via the Ship Library
You may encounter that ship as an enemy vessel, or as a ship for sale.
= Combat encounters improved
Combat encounters now use the Ship Library to create suitable enemy forces.
You will now encounter a much larger variety of enemy vessels.
The enemy forces will scale in difficulty based on the capability of your fleet, and your combat rank.
Sometimes you will face just one or two very powerful enemy vessels. Other times you will face a large fleet of much smaller ships.
Enemy ships have been given a rudimentary pilot AI, but this will improve in future
- The old boring combat mission has been removed
- It has been replaced with a sector-wide objective to eradicate all hostiles, which resets after each sector.
- You can earn big money by cleaning up each sector this way.
= Evasion chance
During combat your ships now have a chance to evade incoming weapons fire
- This is based on the incidence angle between the ordnance and your ship
(head on into fire gives no evasion chance. Side on (travelling fast and close to the enemy turrets) gives max evasion chance
- The faster you are travelling, the greater your evasion chance
- The faster you are turning, the greater your evasion chance
- Small ships gain the most from this. Large, slow heavily armoured beasts gain the least.
= On-screen award system
Completing any mission or objective will now show an on-screen award
The award shows your money earned, as well as any XP points gained, ranks increased etc
= Compass widget / detach camera control
There is a new compass widget at the top of the screen, that shows the direction the camera is facing.
You can click it to toggle if the camera is attached to the current ship, or moving freely.
This is very useful during heavy combat where you can detach the camera from any one ship
= Settings menu (Main Menu)
- Controls for UI Scale
- Controls for Sound Volume
(More to come)
= Lots of new artwork
= Lots of new audio
= Equipment resizing
Lots of placeholder artwork has been replaced with final art, and some equipment has changed size.
- Thrusters are now 3x1 and sit entirely within a wall
- Engines now resized to 7x4 to better fit their sprite footprint
- Docking Ports are now 6x2, to better fit their sprite, and to give more delivery space
SMALL CHANGES
- The visualisation when placing equipment is now different, and is based on the normal view rather than the schematic view
- The basic Praxis starting ship now has a Small tank and a Medium tank onboard
- You can now repair structural damage from the SHIPYARD menu (when at a shipyard)
- FTL Charges now come in a stack of 1 (previously 100)
- FTL Travel has been sped up
- FTL drive now draws 80MW of energy when charging, instead of 100. (So as not to shut everything else down)
- Void Collapse slowed down and made to start further away in each sector, so you have longer before it arrives
- 'Weapons Free' and 'Exterior Work' are now enabled at the start of a game by default
- Passengers will now sometimes stay on deck during transport
- Travelling in hyperspace 'through' the void now causes structural damage. Be careful!
- NPC miners will now leave after mining a small amount
- Ice Comets are now shown in the sector map
BUG FIXES
- You can no longer 'turn in' the flight ready mission
- You can no longer turn in an industry/mining mission unless you have enough ore
- The Void Collapse predicted size is now accurate when in Home Sector
- Drones will no longer continue repairing a ship that has been destroyed
- Drones will now properly deactivate when their home ship is destroyed
- You will no longer receive CO2 warnings from enemy/neutral ships
- NASTY BUG: You will no longer lose tons of money sometimes after completing a mission (happens when revisiting previously visited star systems straight after)