Attention big, mean, hostile alien vessel hovering overhead in an obvious attack posture!
We are chipping away at additions to diplomacy and the various faction-specific mechanisms, but this week's update has a few new features in addition to a few fixes. As always, we thank you for your Early Access support and for your helpful feedback and suggestions. Keep them coming!
Patch Notes for 16 November 2016 (ver. 18177)
Changes and Additions
- 'Star Harpies' will now spawn in new maps. These are packs of space monsters that will attack any ships that disturb their activities.
- Added the 'Ocean World' planet type. These are worlds with surface water that is hundreds of kilometers deep and which have no dry land or even shallow water at all, only deep Ocean and Vents biomes.
- In new maps there is now a functioning Ancient Stargate in orbit around Ashdar Prime. Ancient Stargates reduce one-way travel time to any system within range to 1 turn.
- The old Stargate passive (instant pop transfer time) has been removed.
- Added an option to Advanced Map Setttings to disable the undo/redo buttons, for the hardcore players who don't need no wussy undo!
Bug Fixes
- It should no longer be possible to use the 'embark colonists' button to steal colonists from other factions.
- Fixes for some problematic interactions between the production queue and autobuild features.
- Fix for a bug that could be triggered by reverse engineering captured missile cruisers.
- Fix for a bug that could be triggered by scrapping an outpost.
- Spice mongers should no longer populate colony ships, even if they're the most populous race on the planet.
- Added some missing technology, hull and component descriptions.
(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)
In the Works: Super-Dreadnoughts
Some of you may have noticed an unimplemented technology called "Super-Dreadnoughts" deep in the Construction branch of the tech tree. I can now reveal to you the truth! It will unlock a shared late-game super-ship hull with a few special features that will be of interest to galactic tyrants who need something to tide them over on the long road to Dread Stars. We have completed the hull design work, and it will be in-game before long.
The super-dreadnought is an ancient design used in the Great War many thousands of years ago. Aside from its impressive size, it includes lost technologies that give an aspiring admiral everything he or she could want in a capital ship, including fighter bays and power infrastructure to support Orthin-style superheavy weapons. Because of their extensive automation, a few ancient, crippled examples of these ancient warships, their crews long dead, remained active during the long night following the Great War. Trapped in remote systems by the collapse of the warp lanes, they lay dormant for millennia. Now with the warp lanes restored, these ancient super-dreadnoughts are again free to wander from star to star, but what will their moldering automatic systems make of the modern galaxy?
Factions who run across one of these relics -- if they can survive the encounter -- may have the opportunity to capture or reverse-engineer it and its advanced systems, before rival factions eventually learn to develop one on their own.
Goodbye for now, Hunam. I hope you aren't eaten by monsters.