https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3NFwnmX2zU
The latest patch is live and has so many updates that after including the patch notes there's not enough space left in a Steam announcement for us to say much else.
A brand new in-game help manual is included which can be seen in the above video.
Originally we wanted to leave the player to discover the depths of the game by themselves, and experience 'eureka moments' as they did so, but too many players had no idea that there was depth to discover or simply became overwhelmed and confused.The new manual solves this without holding the players hand while simultaneously giving new players a much better introduction to the game.
Two new hulls were added which replace the old M1 and F1 hulls. They can be seen below:
...and a whole slew of other updates and changes.
Build 0.935 Changelog:
- Massively improved and totally new Help/Guide/Manual added in-game. Broken up into Beginners, Intermediate, and Advanced it acts like both a getting started guide and a mini wiki.
- New hull models for the F1 and M1.
- Missiles now have new 3D sound effects allowing the player to determine their direction and distance more intuitively.
- Missiles now have new launch sound effects
- Missiles now explode at max distance rather than simply vanishing.
- Missiles now create reverse force against the firing ship in the same way that weapons do. Heavy hulls suffer from this less.
- Crippler and Disarmer missiles now have unique inflight sounds with sonar like beeps.
- Back end sound system improved to allow multiple notification and weapon launch effects simultaneously
- New sound effects added when entering/exiting interrupt mode
- All weapon sound effects have been improved.
- Plasma gun projectiles now grow in size during flight
- Plasma Gun and Inferno Gun projectiles now burst at max distance rather than disappear.
- Cockpit camera shake added when firing weapons.
- Shield Hit sound effect increased slightly and tweaked.
- Fan volumes increased slightly
- Inferno Gun projectiles redesigned and improved
- Inferno Gun impact effect replaced and upgraded.
- Fire patch effect improved
- Each missile debuff effect now has a unique sound effect while in flight.
- Player hit-notification sound replaced with improved clearer ping sound.
- Multiple upgrades added to the sound subsystem to better balance load during heavy firefights. This should help performance and reduce occassional popping audio artifacts on lower end sound systems
- Audio sub system improved to prevent most audio popping artifacts related to the player taking hits or damage.
- Camera shake added when firing missiles
- Fixed incorrectly positioned Kill Streak messages
- Kill Streak award threshold reduced to TL+1 from TL+1.5
- 'Experienced' difficulty is now called 'Normal' and is also the new default difficulty setting ('Recruit' difficulty soon became too easy for most players and they could lose interest). This change is not retro-active. You will need to change this manually if desired.
- Difficulty descriptions changed to reflect these changes
- Tweaks made to initial tutorial system for new players that tie seemlessly into the new help manual.
- Significant improvements made to the 'is a ship outside the station' detection code. This should dramatically reduce the frequency of seeing ships outside and those that still manage it will usually be teleported back inside much more quickly
- Added invulnerability for 3 seconds after spawning at a homebase in friendly space to allow players to escape respawn kills.
- Fixed bug that caused Docking Bay Service Buttons to fire twice when pressed (This caused the Teleport Home button to cost double)
- Camera orbit control disabled after death while Metrics panel is on screen.
- Fixed camera clipping into hull at high FOV when using D3 or D3+
- Improved GUI to allow for energy displays up to 9999 petawatts (Yes, terawatts were not enough in the late game!) This solves missing data in the stats screen.
- Tweaked Barrier shader to be more easily visible when pressed up against a Barrier
- Additional miscellaneous slot added to C3+ Corvette
- Gadget compatibilities tweaked for C3 and C3+ Corvettes
- Fixed exploit that allowed some gadgets to be activated without triggering their cooldowns.
- Fixed issues when unchecking 'Copy Current Upgrades When Swapping Hulls' on the hull panel. Incorrect code in compatibility testing would cause this setting to be ignored and would overwrite upgrades accidentally. You should now be able to swap to a different hull without causing upgrades to be copied over when this checkbox is unticked. Only core upgrades will now be copied over if any core upgrade on the target hull is no longer 100% complete.
- Fixed issue in Station7 Arenas where blocks could move to incorrect positions if they were colliding with the player when an arena event was completed
- New technique for dealing with loot pickup audio, and shield hit audio, to prevent audio popping artifacts when these sound effects are requested in quick succession.
- Fixed various minor issues with Ship AI that could cause them to fail to accept new orders.
- Invert Ship Colors is automatically enabled when choosing 'Yellow Hostiles' from the Customize panel.
- Fixed issue that caused some upgrade names to not fit the hover window while inspecting them
- Rotation limits removed from orbit cam at ship config screen. The camera can now rotate infinitely in any rotation direction.
- Combat Loot Multiplier cockpit display now pulses in size whenever a kill is made to draw new players attention to it.
- Tech Levels for enemy distribution tightened. This should make finding appropriate hostiles a little easier later in each station. As always, if you are unlucky and can't find an appropriate area, return the main menu and the station will regenerate with a new distribution.
- MouseSensitivity setting in Options/Controls now affects the orbit camera seen at Ship Config screen and death screen.
- Sensitivity slider minimum settings clamped to prevent zero.
- HUD elemental shield markers fade to lower transparency with lower elemental shield levels.
- Respawn button is now greyed out on the Metrics Panel (after death) until the system is ready to respawn correctly. Previously caused a camera glitch if pressed earlier than expected.
- FR1+ Frigate mass increased by 2, and it's description changed to reflect this and other recent changes.
- Maximum Field of View increased from 130 to 160.
- Fixed a couple of mesh errors that caused 'virus cubes' to poke out into the highway.
- Upgrade images now appear greyed out in the upgrade panel as soon as some code is discovered. They become full color once unlocked at 100% known.
- Blind gadget mass reduced. Blind no longer causes the target to become instantly hostile when the Blind effect wears off.
- Lightning gun energy requirement increased to 3.8 from 2.45. This makes the lightning gun the least energy efficient weapon in the game by quite a margin to help counter balance it's high damage output.
- Difficulty Rating added to Statistics/Metrics panel for increased pose factor ;)
- Added numerical sensitivity value to tooltips for all Sensitivity sliders in Options/Controls.
- Effectiveness of all elemental shield modifier upgrades increased.
- Effectiveness of omnishield upgrade decreased by 10%
- Orbit cam at Ship Config screen now automatically reorients to match the player's ship orientation.