Today is the first update to Frontiers Reach : Battlespace in Early Access, and it's fairly big one but not necessarily a major update.
NEW PLAYER EXPERIENCE
First and foremost is that there is an updated new player experience. This new player experience is built not only as a story intro, but also as a means of easing players into the experience even more so. This change also accompanies another. The inclusion of Scrap Parts into upgrade costs. When you first start out you're going to be docked up at an asteroid station in a scrap yard and will be reliant upon the scrapyard for your first few upgrades. To facilitate this, a couple of key changes were made to how story content is delivered and that enabled a more robust means of creating a tutorial like experience in this early stage.
View game pageYou will need to create a new player profile in game as a result of these changes. Apologies for that, I'll do my best in future updates to reduce the necessity of creating a new player profile.
NEW HELM CONTROL PANEL
The Helm control panel has been updated for better visual appeal. This new presentation uses a map that helps show where you are at in the galaxy.
View game pageThis is accompanied by better indication of your current location.
TECH TREE ADJUSTMENTS
There is currently a more drastic overhaul of the tech tree in the works, but for this update I've gone ahead and made some key changes. First off is that some new technologies have been added to facilitate the improved new player experience. Additionally the new Scrap Parts currency has been added to the cost of every technology.
SCRAP PARTS CURRENCY
As you've seen mentioned above, there is a new currency type that has been added. That currency is called Scrap Parts. This new currency is required for all upgrades on the tech tree. One of the more important changes with the inclusion of Scrap Parts is that they can be acquired by the player when the Logistics Panel is unlocked. Further increasing the usefulness of launching the salvage fleet.
FIXES AND TWEAKS
Fixed a bug that could cause cargo in the logistics panel to go into the negatives and result in a broken save file.
Fixed a bug that could make upgrades accessible without a scaffold when they were supposed to require the scaffold.
Expanded player presence in story content. Player name, portrait, and vessel name will now appear in story content.
The second and third engine upgrades will unlock 2 locations each allowing for a slightly less linear path through the lesser southeast quadrant of the galaxy.
Fixed a bug that made background stars invisible.