Release notes here.

Reminder: to play the beta, you MUST go into your Steam properties for the game, go under the Betas tab, and choose the "current_beta" option.  Otherwise you're going to be stuck on the pre-fleets version of the game.

If you don't know what I'm talking about regarding fleets, then reading this link is a really good thing to do or you are likely to be mighty confused.

So what's new in this build?  This is obviously an incremental one, headed towards the non-beta full release of 0.900 that we're aiming at in the next... weeks?  That timeframe is unclear, and will be based on testing feedback, which has been rolling in well so far; but there will be loads of incremental beta releases during this period.  Anyway, what's new:

• This took WAY longer than expected, but that's because we veered into fully redoing the lobby, at long last.  There are still some bits that are todo noted here, but it was getting into things that were smaller to fix than was worth making you guys wait any longer.
• With the lobby being completely redone, this means you can have arbitrary numbers of factions now, and there have been a ton of other improvements and fixes.
• The Nanocaust has gotten even bigger and scarier.  Some of their weapons weren't even firing properly, but they now will.
• Knockback is a huuuuge new thing that WeaponMaster has added to the game that we haven't had since the first game, and it's a lot more functional and fun here.  It can be used in a variety of ways, including sucking things inwards rather than pushing them away.  Thanks also to AnnoyingOrange for a bunch of math suggestions here, mainly for using a "baricenter" method for calculating when a bunch of knockbacks are happening on a ship at once (or many ships at once).
• Along with making the Nanocaust scarier, Badger also went in and made the AI Overlord battle way more intense on difficulties 7 and up.
• Puffin has been up to a lot with the balance, in adding a bunch more tweaks and changes to mines, giving translocation (knockback) to a number of ships and structures now, and so on.
• The AI planets are no longer able to get turret reinforcement boosts from having guard posts, since that was causing players to have to rush around to avoid that happening.  Instead there is a bonus strike craft increase a bit heavier, which is less taxing.
• And a variety of bugfixes from Badger and WeaponMaster, ranging from the minor to some fairly major ones.
• It's worth noting that now that I've done all this lobby work, the other interfaces that I have to work on seem waaaay less intimidating, so hopefully those will go more quickly.  Nonetheless, there's no other area (aside from maybe the tutorial, or the addition of multiplayer back in) that is so monolithically huge.  But those won't delay the intermediate releases of the game, since they don't actually replace anything from the existing game as it is this build.  So... yay!  Hopefully the last of the releases that are quite this huge and spaced out.

More to come soon.  Enjoy!

Problem With The Latest Build?

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options.  You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back.  Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc.  Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.

The Usual Reminders

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page.  If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games?  It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen.  Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!

Chris