Hello scavengers!
Here are highlights of what you can expect in this Major Update:
Station Objective Overhaul
The station objective [old quest UI] which was more of a temporary solution anyway, used to be dull panels, with text slots listing whatever jobs the station had open. Now interactive Space Lounge scene appears where player can pick up a job by talking to characters present there.
The depth in this space lounge scene comes from four stacked art layers, the background, balcony, bar, and front table. Each one is a separate set of sprites with a parallax factor setup. It reads the mouse relative position to pan scene left or right with varied speeds individually, to feel things far or near.
Damage Type System
Damage is no longer a single value, by default that's Kinetic. there are also Heat and Acid that deal damage over time.
Heat spreads to neighboring parts or dissipates, but begins dealing damage once it crosses a specific threshold. For example, a RdcDroid beam deals Heat damage, while a single RdcDroid may not do much, a swarm can kill you instantly. Acid stacks per part and eats hull over time, that's the slugmite spit. 
Ship Physics Reworked
The old setup was hold to move, release to stop, stiff and locked to the camera center. Now the ship is a free-floating physics object, every input applies real force, and momentum carries you. The camera got a look-ahead system, it leads based on your input and velocity instead of fixed center follow, and it reacts to mouse position too.
The nebula got star streaks that flow with your motion, so speed actually reads visually. Bullets shove things around now, and the feature I wanted most: slam into something at high velocity and both of you take damage. Velocity is a weapon and a risk.
Change Logs:
- Improved movement system with ship velocity and mouse offsets.
- Free-floating physics calculations for a ship with force-based input
- Velocity-based collision damage, both ship and object take damage
- Bullet knockback and impact force.
- Asteroid split motion fix
- Jump gate pull-in motion improvement.
- Nebula shader star streaks effect.
- Damage typed framework: with Kinetic, Acid and heat type damages.
- Added spit bullet for acid damage.
- Added laser beams for heat-damage. continuous type bullet.
- Heat damage: grid propagation, mass-based thermal inertia and red glow shader
- Acid damage: per-part stacks, DoT, green glow shader
- Parallax lounge scene with 4 art layers
- Quest screen reworked to dialogue format.
- Random Chatter character in space lounge.
- Ship builder UX improvement
- NPC behavior system reworked for an easier-to-configure state system.
- Drone (Echo19) behaviors system reworked.
- Removed the Addressables system and replaced it with a faster asset loader.
- Unity Engine updated to 6000.5
Note that save might affected by this update possible lost of item or complete reset.
And as always, we’d love to hear what YOU think about this update, or even what you'd like to see next.