For this update we've gone back over all the feedback about the tutorial and initial experience and tried to make improvements based on that.
New Cutscene
The game now opens with a bit more excitement as there is an initial cutscene setting up our story.
Hyperdrive Jumps / Navigation
You can now only hyperdrive jump to encounters you've already visited so you'll need to use the gateways if you're going for the first time. To help with this there is a new option in navigation to highlight the gateway for the encounter you wish to visit.
New Tutorials
A lot more game systems should now be explained. New players will be shown how to collect missions and use the ship designer. There is also a lot of new pop up tutorials as you play. If you're an existing player choosing skip tutorial will stop all of this.
Existing saves that are still in the early part of Sector 1 may have some strange missions as the order has now been changed.
As always there are a host of bug fixes and other small improvements, full details below. Have fun!
Patch Notes
New Features / Content
- Added a cutscene of the fleet fighting Species-XI before the tutorial for new players.
- Ship select now reflects it's a choice of an abandoned vessel not your backstory.
Balance Changes
- Weapon drops will now be no more than 1 level below the encounter level.
- Weapon drops will now be no more than 3 levels above the encounter level.
- Radioactive debuff now goes through shields the same way electric weapons do.
- Hyperdrive jumping is now restricted to encounters you have already visited.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
- Some extra tutorials will pop up as you complete encounters.
- Added some extra dialog that should help explain what you're doing and why you're doing it.
- Tutorial now includes zoom in / out in control bindings displayed.
- The game can now be paused during the tutorial whenever dialog is not displaying.
- Changed the mission order so current goal is easier to understand.
- Analytics events now sent for level up and missions complete (if you opt-in).
- Use of developer tools that give an advantage will exclude a save file from future achievements.
- Players flagged as using developer tools will not send progress analytics events.
- Sandbox setup is no longer shared to Steam cloud.
- Added new dialog to explain that new slots must be placed on ship designs before they can be used.
- Notices and hyperdrive jump countdown moved to top of HUD so it's never behind dialog / banners.
- Skipping tutorial now skips all optional tutorials but will still play the intro sequence.
- Low pass filter is no longer applied to music when dialog is displayed.
- Mission collection is now part of the initial tutorial.
- New button added to navigation panel to highlight gateway to selected encounter.
- Added Mothership highlight arrow when told to dock with it in the tutorial.
- Added gateway highlight arrows when travelling to Novus Prime in the tutorial.
- Creating a player goes straight to difficulty selection and skips returning player list.
- Cleaned up controller navigation when going down from missions tab in core panel.
- Increased speed of hyperdrive jump animations.
- Added more detailed tutorial when first arriving at ship design.
Bug Fixes
- Camera zoom is now reset to default during initial cutscene at final sector boss.
- Fixed issue where camera zoom would get stuck when changing it with control bindings.
- Fixed text around gateways not zooming correctly with camera.
- Fixed issue where gateways would remain inactive if destroy command used to quickly.
- Fixed issue with sensor arrows sometimes being too big or too small.
- Fixed overheat warning sound playing multiple times on top of itself.
- Cleaned up some artefacts on sensor arrow icons.
- Friendly ships targeting the player will no longer pause game if dialog is displaying.
- Player list no longer snaps to bottom when a player save is deleted.
- Fixed description of shield resistance upgrade to say it's against damage not debuffs.
- Fixed display issue with beams when firing weapons at point-blank range.
- Fixed some spelling mistakes in tutorial.
- Fixed issue where controller navigation wouldn't work on first visit to mothership.
- Virtual cursor displayed with controller now adjusts size based on camera zoom.
- Fixed issue with some disabled buttons not being selectable in controller navigation.
- Loading the full version of the game will now update all the save data to the full version.
- Loading the free version of the game will not display full version save data.