Watch Mark and Chris walk you through all the updates that made the Alpha 2 drop - an update so large that it has precisely equivalent mass to Sagittarius A*.
We sketch out the plan for new game modes, take a deep dive into industry and manufacturing and cover ship to ship transfer, docking and more!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rJVuS6CfH0
Our plan is to release a free update to TLS every 6 weeks. We'll release a YouTube video and follow up with a livestream AMA on steam. We need your help to make our vision a reality, so please, like, subscribe, tweet @IVSoftware, post in the steam forums, contribute to the Wiki, wishlist, tell your mates, put up posters in your neighbourhood and get your local politician to play - TLS Gamers of the world UNITE!
FULL CHANGELIST
Industry
New industrial equipment has been added to the game, permitting self-sufficient creation of many critical resources. New resources have also been added, with new methods of gathering those resources
- New Resource : Metreon Gas Clouds - found randomly across a sector, and visible from the map
- New Resource : Metallic Minerals - found in asteroid belts
- New Resource : Hyperspace Isotopes - gathered when in Hyperspace
- New Equipment : Gas Collector => Metreon Gas
- New Equipment : Hyperspace Scoop => Hyperspace Isotopes
- New Equipment : Refinery
- Metreon Gas => Refined Metreon
- New Equipment : Chemical Lab
- Refined Metreon => Fuel
- Refined Metreon => Explosives
- Hyperspace Isotopes + Refined Tilium => FTL Charge
- New Equipment : Munitions Factory
- Metal Ingots + Explosives => Cannon Shells
- Metal Ingots + Explosives => Bullets
- Metal Ingots => Railgun slugs
- Smelter
Metallic Minerals => Metal Ingots
Scrap Metal => Metal Ingots
Tilium Ore => Refined Tilium
Precious Ore => Precious Metals
- New popup panel for all Industrial equipment. Right click to access.
Shows the process underway and the status of inputs and outputs.
Allows for changing the Recipe if the equipment supports multiple recipes.
- All trade prices rebalanced to ensure the market is sensible.
(Roughly 100% markup for each stage of production)
- New Production Mission
You will be asked to produce X stacks of a specific resource.
You are free to buy or gather or refine the resource through any means.
The buyers will pay a premium of around 30-50% over the market price.
Intership Logistics
You can now transfer resources, crew, drones & equipment between your ships
Click on the 'Logistics' button in the main toolbar (Available once you have two or more ships)
- Drones will perform the requested transfers, if both ships have functioning Drone Bays
- Can be enabled / disabled in the Fleet Orders list
- Ship Docking : You can now dock your ships together by aligning their docking ports in Tactical View.
- Once docked, you can use the same Logistics menu to transfer items and crew between docked ships
- Loaders can now be configured to run in three possible modes. This allows you to extract resources stored in tanks into carryable containers, then use the Logistics System to transfer those containers to other ships.
LOAD : The contents of the container are pumped into the pipes (previous default)
UNLOAD : Containers are filled from the connected pipes
STOP : Don't do anything
Game Modes and starting conditions
You can now select the game mode when creating a new game from the main menu.
SURVIVAL - The previous game mode - stay ahead of the Anomaly
FREE ROAM [NEW] - There is no Anomaly to run from - a more chilled experience
CREATIVE - Unlimited budget and instant construction
- You now start the game with $150k cash
- You automatically receive a delivery of equipment worth $450k :
Engines x 2, Reactor, FTL drive, Fuel x 2, FTL charges x 2
- You can start in any saved ship (community, steam workshop, or your own creation) with a value up to $1M
- The game will also let you start in any ship hull, so long as the hull value is less than $1M.
All equipment and cargo will be removed from the ship when starting a game this way.
In this scenario you will also start with $150k cash and $450k equipment delivered.
Performance
Lots of big rendering performance wins - the game will now render much smoother when in a busy system.
Fixed serious frame drop when loading in a big ship for the first time (generating exterior panels)
Large improvements to rendering performance of ships
SMALL CHANGES
- Creative Mode: When using the SPAWN tool to create equipment and items,
you can now Right-Click on any equipment or item to instantly destroy it
- Creative Mode: You can now 'Import Friendly' to add a saved ship directly into your fleet
- Trade screen now shows 'out of stock' items (greyed out) at the bottom of the list
- Rescue Mission removed from the Mission lists, and changed to a 'Distress Call' visible in the sector map
- New graphics for Comets, Asteroids, Minerals, all new Industrial equipment
- New exterior view graphics for engines, drone bays, thrusters, docking ports
- You will now receive an alert when there is no available storage for an item that is blocking equipment
- Damaged armour is now automatically added to your ship editor plan, so you can easily repair it at the next shipyard
- Volume settings in the Main Menu are now saved
- Equipment will now power down and stop working if its position is invalid. For example if a Gun Turret becomes blocked by a wall.
- In the Tactical View, the maneuvering controls widget now allows for finer grained control of the thrusters (no longer just on or off)
- Armour made more resilient against Gatling Guns, but less effective against Railguns and Cannons
- Fuel usage has been roughly halfed across the board:
Reactors now use half as much fuel (1 fuel/sec for 100Mw max output)
Reactors can now idle at a low of 2MW, wasting much less fuel (previously 10MW minimum)
Engines now use half as much fuel (2 fuel/sec at max thrust)
Engines now require half as much power when idling (2MW)
(Nb. Engines still require 40MW at max thrust)
- New community ships:
Tokelvian Starbase - Johnny Struggles
Starbase Callisto - Johnny Struggles
Elara Shipyard - Johnny Struggles
Inverse Mk1 - Ed the Loon
Meteor - Ed The Loon
Vork Maraug - Brot Groggers
Goteque Imperial Luxline - Brot Groggers
BUG FIXES
FIXED: Empty ship layers (created in the Ship Editor) will no longer prevent your fleet from doing an FTL jump
FIXED: You can no longer apply modifications to your ship using the Ship Editor when in Hyperspace
FIXED: Using the Destroy tool in the editor would cause equipment in the removed area to become broken and bugged
FIXED: The Nomad special mission was paying out 10x the desired amount. You will now received a $10k bonus for the first 10 crew.
FIXED: Crash bug in the Mission List if you had no ship selected