This is part 2 of an announcement. You can find part 1 here.
Cannon and Beam damage rework
Since now every block counts in terms of a ship taking damage, the missile seemed really superior as while it has similar total damage, it just takes out blocks a lot faster.
Cannons now do damage to multiple blocks by default. The more damage a projectile has, the more blocks will be affected. Starting at 100 - 900 damage goes one block deeper per 100, from 1000, every 1000, and so forth.
The damage is then distributed so that the first block hit will take the most and the last one the least damage. Accurate numbers can be looked up in the structure panel.
A beam will do the exact damage no matter if the block got taken out or not (what in the past the piercing effect did), but it is stopped by any block that provides armor HP.
The cannons has to take out a block to get to the next one, so if the damage of 1 block deep is not enough, the damage that would go in the second block will be used on the first until it is taken out. Any damage more that it took to take out a block is however still lost. Overall this still means a lot less damage is lost from cannons and more blocks are taken out per shot.
All values are of course still not in a final state and are available in the config.
New tools and boarding mechanics
Two new tools have been added and are now available from the shop keeps. These keeps can now also be respawned in the middle of the glass area of Shops that had them.
Grapple Beam
This beam aligns you to an object on a very far range. It doesn’t automatically reel you in (yet), but you will have time to get to the object before the grapple expires. This makes it possible to get on objects from a good distance and board them.
Torch
This useful tool does little damage but has a very distinct advantage: It bypasses armor and shields and throws the pilot out of the core if the core was brought down to 0 HP with it.
This means you can use the torch to take over enemy ships. Be warned though: The pilot will receive a warning if a torch is being used on his ship.
New Turret AI option
Since with the new mechanics, you not only have to defend your ship from the outside, but also from the inside. This new AI option makes turrets only target astronauts.
Ship info window now customizable
It is now possible to resize and move the ship info while holding control in build mode. You can now also change the size of the text so it is much easier to read on higher resolutions. A general size option will also come later for all menus.
Multiple weapon hot bars
Another requested feature was the addition of more places to put weapons, especially with inner ship logic now being a thing, so we added 9 more hotbars. There are multiple ways to switch through them.
- Pure mouse scroll: upon going to the end of a hotbar you will switch to the next one. This can be disabled in the ingame options.
- Control+Mousewheel switches through hotbars
- Control+number selects a hotbar directly (with ‘0’ being the 10th)
Additional Chat Controls
More chat options have been added to enhance the experience.
• Client-side ability to ignore other players
• Admin Mute Command
They are usable via the right click context menu.
New bug tracker
We switched to a new bug tracker, which will make tracking a lot easier and streamlined with the development process.
Colored Missile Trails
The trailed of colored missiles are now also colored.
Bug Fixes
A lot has been done since the last update. Thanks to all the testers!
One thing to note is that missile turrets have been upgraded to now being able to hit missiles a lot better. Turret rotation is now mass based, so smaller missile turrets are better in aiming and leading a target. Also the “aim at selected” AI option has been fixed.
- T255 can't load old templates
- T253 Old docking system makes astronauts stop moving
- T213 Numpad Enter causes newline in dialog, instead of "submitting" the value
- T196 Blocks dropped on death do not spawn properly
- T184 Diaply.Hide Help Screen typo
- T160 TAB + F8 nullpointer
- T155 texture faces are rotated
- T139 Damage Pulse modules listed as "beam unit" in Weapons menu
- T132 Hotbar indicators are missing
- T131 Selected waypoint sometimes wrong color after closing Navigation menu
- T130 Cannot access ship storage after removing named chest
- T127 "Killing" the ship core kicks pilot out
- T125 removing blocks as astronaut doesn't update ship or armor HP
- T123 Destroyed entity will cause you to go back to where you got in.
- T114 blocks discarded on deletion as astronaut when not enough inventory space
- T112 HP System - tiny ships and cores cannot be killed
- T110 shooting factioned planet with missiles crashes all players not in that sector
- T88 Area triggers are invisible
- T77 escape key does not close options menu
- T60 Inner Ship Remote labels don't work until weapons menu is opened
- T58 Joining a faction when not being in one causes all factionless players to recieve a " has left your faction" notice
- T49 Crash when holding weapon menu items in your cursor and opening inventory
- T48 rail basic acts like turret axis block
- T38 Faction systems do not work for all 12 planet segments
- T35 Scan history nullpointer
- T31 Oculus Rift DK2 Error
- T30 Anti-missile turrets ineffective
- T23 Station not saving
- T21 /explode_planet_sector explodes planets in all loaded sectors
- T15 Serverlist ping-check only trying TCP
- T13 Ship HP damaged systems does not change anything
- T12 Rail turret blueprint and nullpointer issue
- T10 Rail entities are not properly synced across clients
- T7 Ship always inherits faction after reloading sector
- T5 local rail blueprint errors with multiple chains
- T3 Require auth + not uplinked does not show a clear enough error-message on connecting
Music
We're currently looking to create SFX and a soundtrack for the game, if you're interested and have the skills, please send an email to [email protected] with some samples and info about yourself. We're aiming for orchestral, classical and ambient elements, however any sample you think will impress us is fine.
Coming up
There is a completely new launcher nearly done. It will be built to make the installation of java for the game absolutely obsolete. It will also eliminate any java version problems, as well as add a lot of other features. It will also be the starting point for finally having an ingame menu, as well as ingame server switching (which are easy to do but held off for solving other problems around the game). Also, work on the creature system will now switch into full focus.
Thanks for playing StarMade,
- schema and the Schine Team