Update 28: Feeling Perky

Hello Miners,

Feeling Perky? Good, because UPDATE 28 is here to satisfy you with a meaty overhaul of our entire Perk System, the first part of the Space Rig redesign, as well as a very cool new addition to the way you can customize the look of your firearms.

The current focus for us here at Ghost Ship is to get the game ready for 1.0. Some of the ongoing tasks are a better onboarding experience for new players, as well as the upcoming Miner’s Manual which will teach you more about the game. And last but not least we’ll be doing a ton of quality of life improvements - but all that is for future updates, for now, we’re talking Update 28. Let’s dive in!

Cheers,
The Ghost Ship Crew

--- PATCH NOTES ---

PERK SYSTEM OVERHAUL

Perks can now either be Passive or Active. Passive Perks are pretty much what the Perks used to be. Equip one of these and you get a passive increase to a given stat. No activation needed - equip it and the benefit is just there. Active Perks, however, requires activation from you, and generally have either a Cooldown on their use or limited uses - sometimes even both! Their limited usability is compensated for by letting us make them more powerful.

With Update 28 we are also introducing a bunch of new Perks, both Passive and Active, and have tweaked the costs and requirements for pretty much all of them. This means that all Perk purchases have been reset, any spent Perk Points have been refunded to you, and all Perks need to be unlocked once more.

New Perks - some Active, some Passive, some are both

• Beastmaster

  Ever wanted to have a loyal Glyphid companion following you around? Well, this Active Perk lets you tame a Glyphid Grunt. Your loyal many-legged sidekick will help you in combat and keep you company during the quiet periods.

• Born Ready

  If you hate reloading then this new Passive Perk is for you. All of your weapons will automatically reload when not equipped for a few seconds.

• Dash

  This Active combat mobility Perk will quickly get you out of trouble with an extreme burst of speed for a short duration.

• Jump Boots

  Dwarves may not be known for their jumping ability, but, with the aid of technology, this Active Perk lets you soar through the air. Useful both in combat and for quick vertical traversal. Just remember: what goes up must come down.

• See You in Hell

  Go out with a bang with an Active Perk that lets you detonate a plasma charge after going down taking the bastards with you. For gameplay purposes, the explosion was made to trigger quickly, so you’ll have to do the Predator laugh yourself.

• Shield Link

  This co-op focused Active Perk lets you overcharge a teammate’s shield to 300% for about 15 seconds. It also has a passive effect: when you are close to a teammate it increases the shield recharge rate for both of you.

• Temperature Insulation

  Do you hate the cold? Is your Driller teammate constantly burning your behind? Do you want to see what is at the bottom of a lava geyser? Then get this Passive Perk and enjoy a large resistance to extreme temperature fluctuations.

• Thorns

  A Passive perk that will deal damage to any critter foolish enough to bite you. Especially effective against swarmers and other small nuisances, but keep in mind that it will not prevent you from taking damage from the attack.

Old Perks converted into Active Perks

• Active Impact Compensators

  We have transformed the old Passive Impact Compensators perk into something a little more powerful with fall damage reduction reaching 75% at Rank 3! As an Active perk, it now requires that you hold the Jump button while landing to activate the effect and there is a cooldown after each use.

• Berzerker

  Another Passive to Active conversion. This perk now greatly reduces your Power Attack cooldown along with boosting normal melee damage. It is no longer dependent on your health but is instead activated by doing two Power Attacks in a row.

• Field Medic

  The old co-op favourite is now an Active perk and it gives you the ability to instantly revive a teammate once per mission. The perk’s old passive effect of speeding up the normal revive process is still there along with the Fear AoE that triggers when you finish reviving someone.

• Heightened Senses

  We have expanded Heightened Senses to include all enemies that can grab you and it has become an Active perk with a limited-use ability to escape after being grabbed - killing your captor in the process.

• Iron Will

  This is now an Active perk that can only be triggered once per mission. We gave Iron Will a longer duration and it now grants a movement speed bonus instead of a penalty. The effect also gives stronger melee attacks, a faster power attack cooldown, resistance to slow-down effects and all of your weapons will be automatically reloaded when you activate this perk, so you get up ready to take names and kick ass.

Modified Perks - all Passive

• Friendly

  Formerly known as Loveable, now reduces both your incoming and outgoing friendly-fire damage. It still doesn’t completely remove it though, so remember to watch where you are shooting.

• Resupplier

  On top of the original reduction to the time it takes to resupply and the automatic weapon reload, this passive perk now also increases the amount of healing you get when resupplying.

• Second Wind

  A reincarnation of the Weekend Athlete perk, Second Wind is a Passive perk that will boost your sprint speed after running for a few seconds. Great for getting to point B faster or for making distance between you and the murderous horde.

• Strong Arm

  Now this Passive perk also grants a bonus to throwing heavy objects like Gems on top of it’s old bonus to throwing flares.

• Unstoppable

  We took the Strong Back perk and slapped on a resistance to all environmental slow effects. The result is a Perk that keeps you moving in all situations.

• Veteran Depositor

  We’ve given this old-boy an increase in the damage reduction radius and buffed the deposit speed to a maximum bonus of +50%.

We hope you’ll have a lot of fun playing around and experimenting with the new Perk System, and as always we’re looking forward to hearing your feedback.

SPACE RIG REDESIGN

The Space Rig is something we’ve wanted to update for a long time. It is, however, a large task, and we will be doing it in steps. The first and most crucial step is what we’re doing in Update 28 - the overall rearranging and restructuring of the place, and getting everything in more contextually sound and meaningful positions instead of just having rows of identical terminals next to each other. Work on the Space Rig will continue from now on and up until we end Early Access and launch the game fully, and will include full terminal overhauls such as how we’ve treated the Forge by giving it a fully custom model from the get-go.

PAINTJOBS & FRAMEWORKS [COMMUNITY REQUEST]

Sometimes good things come out of a bug! As some players have pointed out, a bug in the Equipment Terminal allowed you to merge some of the weapon skins together. We’ve decided to implement it as a full feature after seeing the response it’s been getting.

Weapon Skins are now divided into two distinct categories: Frameworks and Paintjobs. Frameworks change the actual model - adding or altering stuff on the weapon to make it look different. And Paintjobs is the overall coloring and texturing of the weapon. Making this split allows for a lot more combinations than were available so far, and should serve to make new Paintjobs feel a lot more rewarding to get than before since you can use it with any Framework. Every existing skin has gone through this revamp, and you get to keep anything you’ve already unlocked.

BLANK CORES VS. RESOURCE CANISTERS [COMMUNITY REQUEST]

If you have obtained all Overclocks you used to get a resource core in place of an Overclock. You now get a blank core instead. We agree with you that it makes so much more sense, though it will make you guys who play a lot, burn through the content that much faster.

QOL, BUGFIXES AND MISC.

• Lootbugs can now seek out and eat loose mineral chunks!!!
• Overhauled the damage direction indicator
• Added loadout selection to the Character Selection Terminal
• Added loadout selection to the Character Selection screen when joining a mission in progress
• Added new shield regeneration sound
• Added a new headbutt attack to the Glyphid Oppressor
• Added a new sound that plays if you have no flares when you try to throw one
• Resupply Pods are now on a shared (short) cooldown to prevent multiple people accidentally ordering at the same time
• M.U.L.E. and Bosco are now visible on the Terrain Scanner
• Dwarves are now less attractive to walking enemies and more attractive to flying enemies when using a zipline
• Added a first and third-person pickup animation to the Impact Axe
• Added a first and third-person pickup animation to the Satchel Charge
• Black Box objectives are now affected by gravity
• Golden Bugs now drop a chunk of gold when they die instead of just adding it to the Team Depository
• Space Rig: Fixed escape-holes around the window (shame on you!)
• Increased the volume of the battery sounds for Cargo Crates
• Improved the collider of the Cargo Crates
• Cargo Crate outline is now visible on hold Tab from when you insert the first battery until the loot is collected for the local player
• Fixed some networking problems with the Cargo Crate that made it have the wrong color for clients
• Mactera Grabbers and Nayaka Trawlers can no longer grab Spitball Infectors and Brood Nexuses if they have been hit by a Pheromone Grenade
• Fixed a bug that zipline can impact characters and enemies when it’s not supposed to, creating really short and silly ziplines
• Fixed “Lead Storm” Powered Minigun getting extra heat if you fire in small bursts
• Fixed Mactera Spawns not dropping Kursite if frozen
• Fixed a bug that made some Omen Modular Exterminator module combinations rarer than others
• Fixed Homing Drone modules of the Omen Modular Exterminator all tilting in the same direction when opened
• LMG Gun Platform: Changed the Manual Targeting mod to the Hawkeye System mod which increases the effective range of the turret(s) on top of offering manual target prioritization
• Proximity Mine now has a 3-minute lifespan after being triggered once
• Disabled dwarves being outlined when shouting
• Changed text from pickup to disarm when retrieving a Satchel Charge
• [Translation] Fixed Weakpoint Stun Chance / Duration could not be translated correctly
• Fixed a camera shake issue with the Resupply Pod when the terrain beneath it got removed
• Fixed a crash caused by the Pheromone Grenade
• Fixed a bug that caused a grenade to stick to the player's hands if you are grabbed while throwing a grenade
• Customizable HUD: Perk HUD icons now hide/show along with player health bar
• Loadout selector added to The Accessory Shop
• New Molly Waypoint markers with direction indication
• Chance to find an old Resupply Pod in the Salvage mission

KNOWN ISSUES

• Beer mugs disappear when thrown and reappear in the Drop Pod
• Some weapon paintjob/framework combinations are work in progress

EXPERIMENTAL BUILDS - CHANGELOGS

• Build 35867
• Build 35977