New Content
Ship Loadout Updates
Trailblazer (Frigate)
Swarm Missiles with Rapid Swarm and Shattered Shields.
Chemical Thrusters exchanged for Plasma Thrusters.
Ironhide (Cruiser)
Autocannon with Combat Catalyst and Nanobots.
Pulsar (Cruiser)
Standard Missile with Follow-Up Strike and Electro Reactive Armor.
Plasma Thrusters exchanged for Micro-Warp Drive.
Nemesis (Battleship)
Cruise Missile with Range Amplifier and Prime Condition.
Chemical Thrusters exchanged for Micro-Warp Drive.
Leviathan (Battleship)
Railgun with One In The Chamber and Reload Rush.
Victory Sequence
Victory Sequence: When the final boss is defeated, the camera circles the exploding boss as the world slows down (similar to the player death sequence, but victorious).
Performance-Based Enemy Spawning
Adaptive Difficulty: Enemy spawn rates now respond to how quickly you kill enemies for increased challenge and reward.
Better Spread: Enemies now spawn more spread out around the player rather than from one direction.
Visual Feedback Improvements
Player Damage Numbers: Red-colored damage numbers when taking damage (lasts 0.25s longer, no accumulation).
Player Healing Numbers: Green healing numbers are now visible on the player ship.
Warp Timer: New visual countdown timer that becomes visible during the final 30 seconds, turns red, and pulses at 10-second intervals.
Weapon Slot Progression
New 'Damage' Tree Skill: Unlock +1 max weapon slot for all ships.
New Augments
Counter Strike Protocol: New augment available on thrusters.
Evasive Fire: New augment available on thrusters.
Balance Changes
Augments
Major Functionality Changes
Sakashima Sundrive: Deals damage to nearby enemies while afterburners are active.
Range Amplifier: Now scales damage based on target distance.
Radiation Release: Now scales from Thruster Component Level.
Waste Heat Recycling: After Teleporting, spawns radiation clouds dealing damage (scales with Thruster Component Level).
Hardened Bullets: On Pierce, chance to increase Piercing Strength by 1 (available on all Projectiles).
Glancing Blows: On Dodge, chance to knockback nearby enemies.
Critical Support: On Crit, increases Critical Damage (resets on Reload).
Phase Corrosion: Now deals damage and applies a slow effect.
Plasma Aftershock: Now only triggers on weapon-kill.
Weapon Overclocking: Changed to attack rate gain instead of damage.
Follow Up Strike: Now has scaling damage, and missiles can crit.
Focused Fire: Changes Swarm Missile targeting to a single enemy with repeated strike damage bonus.
Booster Rockets: Increases projectile speed on Fire (no longer reduces fire rate or increases damage radius, resets on Reload).
Reactor Hit: Triggers on stun instead of one-shot kills (payoff for stun builds).
Heated Chamber: Only on Autocannon/Machine Gun, increases Pierce Chance on Fire (resets on Reload).
Rapid Swarm: Increases Fire Rate on Fire (resets on Reload).
Reactive Countermeasures: Triggers anytime the player loses health, mine damage scales with Hull Component Level.
Smart Rounds: Can trigger itself, uses pooled projectiles, proper projectile speed, can crit, 100% damage static, 90% max chance.
Shattered Shields: Now triggers on shield damage as opposed to shield breaking, removed slow, reduced cooldown.
Reactive Armor: When receiving Health damage, damages random enemies within range for a percentage of Max Health.
Stasis Explosion: Added chance to stun, removed plasma damage.
Thruster Targeting: Removed crit chance, added stun chance.
Recycled Ammo: Lower chance, cannot exceed Max Ammo.
Buffed Augments
Deathmark Tether: Tether spawn chance increased.
Radiation Leak: Base damage increased.
Repeated Rounds: Updated description and buffed damage increase.
Gravitational Thrusters: Pull increased from 800 to 2000, pulls every 0.5s instead of 1s.
Thermal Feedback Loop: Increased radius at level 5 for consistency.
Nerfed Augments
Reactor Breach: Removed pierce chance bonus.
Drop Pool Adjustments
Defense Protocol: Now available on all weapons.
Chain Reaction: Now available on all weapons, increased damage scalar.
Belt Fed: Now available on all weapons.
Relentless Fire: Now available on all weapons.
Perfect Shot: Now available on all projectile weapons.
Interactables
Beacons: Now a single press instead of holding to open.
Spawn Location: Can now spawn closer to the map center.
Increased Base Caches: Increased number of caches that can spawn to 6-8 caches (from 4-6).
Combat
Enemy Melee Rework (Major Difficulty Increase):
Previous Behavior: Enemies dealt damage once and immediately died on collision with the player.
New Behavior: Enemies now deal damage repeatedly on collision until either the enemy or player is destroyed. This significantly increases punishment for allowing enemies to reach you.
Final Boss: Now always aggroes the player. Difficulty continues to scale on the final mission.
Tier 1 Enemy Health: Reduced scaling to maintain fodder role.
Melee Enemy Damage: Reduced by 20-40% depending on tier to compensate for repeated hits.
Exploder Enemies:
Fixed Tier 2 ability range and movement.
Killing Exploder during ability triggers an explosion (damages enemies only, not the player).
Fixed activation range for Tier 2 Exploders.
Fixed explosion indicator offset.
Enemy Self-Destruction: Enemies no longer kill themselves when stuck (attempted fix for boss possibly despawning).
Target Death Fix: Enemies no longer get stuck when their target dies or despawns.
Dodge Cap: Player dodge is now clamped to 0.9 (90% max).
Ships
Cruisers & Battleships: Now stop more quickly when no movement is applied.
Missions
Engager Missions: Optional Engager missions are now activated by pressing a button, similar to caches, rather than upon 'capturing'.
Station Defense: Now spawns as a secondary mission.
Bounty/Ambush Missions: Removed Battleship enemies.
Mission Support Bundle: New rewards (50% Health + Random Upgrade) for Rescue Operation and Lone Survivor.
Currency
Enemy Currency Drop Rate: Reduced to 10% (from 15%).
Enhancements
Armor Enhancement: Removed temporarily.
Core System: Removed Pickup Radius (available through other enhancements).
Projectile Count Enhancement: Now Rare/Epic/Legendary only (removed Uncommon), reduced projectile amounts at higher rarities.
Pierce Enhancements: Updated description to include "of ALL Projectile Weapons".
Powerups
Thermoflux Projector: Reworked as screen-wide 'nuke'. Basic enemies take maximum health damage, and bosses take 30% maximum health damage.
Weapon Coolant Pickup: Removed.
Reinforced Plating: Removed.
Skill Tree
Max Weapon Slots Skill: New skill in the Damage tree increases max weapon slots by 1 for all ships.
Highest Skill Tier Cost: Increased cost by adding a credits requirement in addition to the artifact cost.
Removed Skills: Environmental Resistance and Augment-specific skills have been removed and will be replaced with future skills.
Visual Enhancements
VFX
Tether Laser: New material, improved rendering.
Reactive Armor Laser: New laser effect.
Radiation Clouds: Smaller plumes, thicker lightning. Dithered version for increased performance and visibility.
Shattered Shields: Updated for a more shield-themed and technical appearance.
Slow VFX: Now lasts 5s (from 2s).
Missile Explosions: Updated universal explosion for Cruise/Swarm/Standard missiles with color differentiation.
Upgrade Interactable: No longer spins.
XP Gather: Trailing XP VFX now stops properly.
AoE Hit-Reactions: Mesh shield now reacts more accurately to AoE attacks.
Enemy Explosion Indicator: Adjusted offset to more accurately display the effect radius.
Railgun Impact: Removed size scaling from debris.
Optimizations
Rebel Ships: Major triangle count reductions with new LODs.
Rebel Ship Colors: Updated to a lighter red for better readability.
Crate Textures: Reduced resolution.
Radiation Clouds: Significantly reduced bloom.
Ship Destruction
NPC Ships: Added destructible meshes for Civilian Escort and Merchant Escort (an awesome effect, but at what cost?).
Content Polish
Hologram Opacity: Increased for better visibility.
Upgrade Interactable: No longer spins.
Targeting Enhancement: Renamed to "Targeting AI" with updated icon.
New Icons: Counter Strike Protocol, Evasive Fire.
Updated Icons: Sniper Targeting, Spliced Thrusters, Sakashima Sundrive, Hologram Skin.
Asteroids
Spawn Delay: Removed asteroid field spawn delay
Max Asteroids: Reduced to 75 from 100.
Collision Destroy Delay: Removed for better responsiveness.
Interactables: Added measures to prevent interactables from spawning within asteroids.
Bugfixes
Alien Portal: Fixed an issue where the Alien Portal would become unkillable.
Weapon Firing: Fixed an issue with weapons not firing.
Ammo Consumption: Fixed single-projectile weapons not consuming ammo properly.
Ammo Explosion: Fixed infinite loop caused by augment triggering itself.
Damage Numbers: Fixed player damage numbers offset and mining text offset.
Cache Animations: Animation can no longer be spammed.
Tier 2 Exploders: Fixed not moving during ability activation and oversized ability radius.
Target Death: Fixed enemies getting stuck when their target died or despawned.
Reroll Currency: Fixed refund bug when pressing skip after purchases (no more free rerolls for you).
Session Stats: Now properly track between maps.
Experience Auto-Collect Skill: Fixed an issue where the auto-collect skill wouldn't trigger correctly.
Shop Costs: Fixed augment scaling costs being visual-only.
Blow Back Augment: Fixed making reload time slower instead of faster.
Overcharged Barrels Enhancement: Fixed not working.
Rifle Barreling Enhancement: Fixed not working.
Zone Control Sounds: No longer plays while the game is paused.