Sector 4 is finally here. Well, the first phase of it.
I wanted to get as much content into the final part of the storyline as possible, so it has been split into three phases focused on charging the Singularity Key. This phase brings new ships, weapons, enemies, achievements (one hidden), and a couple of bosses waiting for you when you arrive.
Alongside the new sector, this update includes a stack of fixes and balance changes based on recent feedback. The damage cap is still in place but has been adjusted, slow ships are no longer unintentionally slow, debuffs now work properly on multi-part enemies, and almost every sprite in the game has been increased in resolution.
Sector 4 - Phase 1
The end of Sector 3 now leads into the beginning of Sector 4. Expect new enemies, two new bosses, some new elites, and a range of supporting ships. There are also three new story achievements and one hidden achievement to track down.
Completing Phase 1 unlocks the ability to use Species-XI parts in your own ship designs. Phase 2 should not take nearly as long, and the storyline up to the finale is already written and planned out. If you decide not to wait, New Game+ remains available at the end of the current content.
If you pushed ahead into New Game+ instead of waiting at the end of Sector 3, you may notice some sector levels have shifted slightly. Once you reach the end of Sector 3 again, Sector 4 will be available on your second, third... or twentieth playthrough.
Damage Cap Rework
The per-tick damage cap exists to stop you being one-shot by overlapping hits, but it was causing two problems. First, it applied to telegraphed attacks you were meant to dodge. Second, it did not scale with damage difficulty, so high-difficulty runs were capped the same as low-difficulty ones.
Both issues are fixed. Attacks you are meant to dodge now bypass the cap entirely, so positioning matters unless you are a tank. The cap now scales with encounter and sector damage difficulty. Combat should feel sharper again.
Slow Ships Fix
If you have been in a busy fight and noticed enemies crawling at a fraction of their normal speed, that was a real bug. It has now been fixed, so expect some enemies to come in fast again.
However, there is now a deliberate slow effect. Frozen ships have their thruster power halved, making cold damage weapons more useful.
Higher Resolution Assets
Lower resolution ship parts, items, and other assets have been removed. Everything now renders using higher resolution sprites that scale down with mipmaps as you zoom out. If you zoom all the way in, the game should no longer turn in to pixel art.
Forbidden Legacy Design by Entity (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=83)
To offset the increase in resolution without increasing build size, the duplicate low-resolution sprite sheets have been removed. Background, UI, and weapon textures have also been moved to BC7 compression. The result is better visuals, lower VRAM usage, and a smaller download.
Next Update
The next update will focus on adding more Secondary Classes. The plan is mostly in place, with new classes designed around different damage types. This should open up more playstyles and give you ways to deal with resistances and debuff immunity when specialising in a single damage type.
There will also be some interactions between damage types. For example, Frozen enemies hit with Burning will emit an explosive cloud of steam that damages nearby enemies.
Plenty more in the patch notes below. Enjoy!
Patch Notes
New Features / Content
• Sector 4 - Phase 1 is now accessible at the end of Sector 3.
• Added 2 new bosses, 2 new elites and various other new ships.
• Added 3 new story achievements and 1 new hidden achievement.
Balance Changes
• New Game+ encounter levels adjusted to make space for new sector.
• Player damage cap now scales with encounter and sector damage difficulty.
• Weapons you're supposed to dodge now bypassing the per-tick cap.
• Species-XI Internal Shield hull reduced by 33% on most NPCs.
• Removed Internal Shield from some smaller Species-XI ships.
• Damage debuffs now spread across all segments of multi-part bosses.
• Frozen now halves thruster power so ships feel slow.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
• Ship parts and items now render at higher resolution in-game.
• Hull damage now spans adjacent ship parts so scars look continuous.
• Increased size of radial displays in HUD by +25%.
• Improved artwork of gateways and obstructions.
• Ancient Architect technology got a new color scheme.
Performance
• Dropped duplicate low-res sprite sheets to cut VRAM and build size.
• Background, UI, and weapon textures now use BC7 compression for less VRAM.
• Enemy ship repulsion now runs as a burst job to free main-thread time.
Bug Fixes
• Fixed enemies moving at a fraction of their normal speed in busy fights.
• Boss segments and armor layers no longer grant XP individually on death.
• First-phase bosses no longer grant XP; only the enraged form does.
• Fixed ship silhouette still showing through nebulas when invisible.
• Errors that repeat each frame no longer cause out-of-memory issues.
• Long modifier lists in the assembler no longer trigger memory errors.
• Fixed hyperdrive jump-in trail zig-zagging from origin to landing point.
• Camera now recovers from rare bad frames instead of breaking the HUD.
• Save data is now automatically recovered after an interrupted save.
• Failed saves no longer leave save files in an unreadable state.
• Older game versions can no longer overwrite newer-version save data.
• Save recovery now works correctly when Steam Cloud syncs files.
• Fixed enemies sometimes staying invulnerable after dodging.
• Core Navigation panel now shows a full enemy list instead of live state.
• Broodnests no longer block rescue ship escape or elite/warzone clears.
• Fixed total damage counter wrapping to a negative number past 2.1B.
• Fixed mod sprites leaking into the avatar selector and other lists.
Modders
• Removed EquippableItemBase.gameObjectSprites; use factionImages instead.
• Removed EquippableLegendary.gameObjectSprites; use factionImages instead.
• Removed ConsumableItemBase.smallImage; use factionImages instead.
• Removed ShipPart.highDefSprite and AlternateSprite.sprite fields.
• FactionImages now drive in-game sprites (except Shield/Thruster/Passive).
• Item and ship-part big sprite sheet PPU bumped from 330 to 660.
• UI layout uses a fixed reference PPU, so import PPU changes don't shift it.
• Counter.value, Counter.Increase and IncreaseCounter now use longs.
• ModContent.LoadAll now filters mod assets without resourcePath by path.