Hey everyone! Patch notes are at the bottom, but here are the highlights:
Sabre Heavy Fighter
The Sabre has been part of our testbed for improvements to smaller ship combat, and you can expect a number of improvements to trickle down to all the other ships in the coming weeks.
Specifically the Sabre fills a critical gap as a dogfighter that doesn't rely on auto-aim for it's primary weapon. It features a new missile lock-on mechanic that will be coming to the Talon in the next patch and an improved distance-based aiming reticle that should greatly improve capital ship aiming in the near future.
Tactical Map
Fleet management features have been highly requested, and the ability to give basic orders, request healing, and AI improvements to take the load off the player in singleplayer are coming. In the meantime you can now press 'm' to bring up a mothership focused view of the battlefield, this screen will be going through a number of iterations before we're done with it but we hope it'll help make sense of the fray.
New Buy Menu
The buy menu has been overhauled with new art, animations and sound. The old menu wasn't able to provide feedback when navigated with a controller, so this is a big step forward on that front. Improvements in the future will include illustrated descriptions for the weapons and abilities on each ship, so stay tuned.
Camera Improvements
Improvements to flight experience are an ongoing process, we've tweaked the camera system for all of the smaller ships to make them feel more dynamic. Head over to the Steam Forums and let us know if you think things are improved and especially if you have specific ideas on changes you think still need to be made.
More to come
Moving forward our highest priority is getting out rebindable keys and full controller support, this will be a multi-week process so expect regular content updates as we chip away at it. We'd like to thank each of you who has decided to support us in Early Access and encourage all of you to hit up the forums with any ideas you have for how to make the game better, if you have a cool idea for a ship we want to hear about it . Thanks again!
Update notes:
- Added Sabre heavy fighter
- Pressing 'm' now brings up the new Tactical Map
- New art, sound and animations for buy menu
- Mule miners now auto target the nearest resources when you take control
- Fixed target UI getting stuck when taking over a ship that already had a target
- Fixed sync issues for late joiners
- Disabled shadow casting for lowest graphics setting
- Ice Ships freed in Stage 4 will no longer be deleted going to Stage 5 (thanks Banana)
- Disabled self destruct debug command
- Fixes to Refinery thrusters not firing/updating
- Computer players in campaign mode will now upgrade their ship even if they are in combat
- Escape menu now pauses the game in singleplayer
- Adjustments to the cameras for all strikecraft, expect additional refinements in the future
- Increased flak damage from 3 to 4
- Increased Talon health from 68 to 70
- Reduced cost of Raven, Talon and Boxer from 200 to 100
- Reduced Zeus cost from 450 to 400