Time for another update! This week we have the major sensor rework! The new cloaking device and the station shield! So without further delay let's get into the details...
First up, the new sensor rework. From now on when you’re flying around the galaxy you will see occasional signatures pop up. These signatures can be several different kinds of phenomena. From a ship dropping out of warp, to rich asteroids, gas clouds and more.
These markers become more accurate the closer you are, so you will have to fly to them in order for them to give you a more accurate location. This goes for all sensor contacts.
Using this new system it will make exploration more interesting as well as add more difficulty in tracking down players for those of you living the space pirate life!
That said there is a nice way to counter being found using sensors and that is the new cloaking device! The cloaking device will make it so nothing will show up on sensor contact until they are within 2 km of it. The cloaking device takes a while to fully enable and until it is fully on your ship will still leave a signature. Once it is fully enabled and it goes into deep cloak mode. It wont show up on sensor contacts anymore. You can’t kill what you cant find!
The cloak does have its limitations though, it doesn't function in warp and once you fire your weapons it will disable. This makes it a perfect tool for ambushing ships and hiding your large scale mining operations.
And lastly there is the new station shield!
This device will let you generate an invulnerable station shield on a ship or station located near a star. It's important to note that the station shield will only function if the ship is in orbit around the sun. It takes a while to activate, and once it is activated the ship cannot move anymore.
You are however still able to use the station or ships weapons. Which is important considering once the shield is active it will make the location of the station known to everyone in the system.
The station shield uses special crystals that have a limited duration, and once they run out the station shield will have to be rebooted again.
The station shield is intended for stations that players don't mind being found such as trade stations, or as a hub for your fleet or crew.
We’ve also added in the new HydroPEX fuel tanker made by EternallySlaying that will make periodic stops in every system. Also we tried to contact you EternallySlaying, to ask how you want to be credited, so please let us know.
For all other things in the patch, please see the details in the patch notes linked below.
As always, we’d appreciate any feedback you’re willing to provide, it will only help us make the game better. We have a fairly busy discord server which you can join!
Feel free to drop by and have a chat, we’d love to hear your opinion and feedback!
Thank you all for playing and see you starside!
-The Split Polygon Team