Release notes here.
I took a break from the tutorials work, and instead focused on performance when it comes to big background battles between warring other factions that you might run across.
There's more that we can probably make even more performant in that area, but we need to do more profiling and figure out things that we can spread out more across more sim steps in addition to what already is being spread. In case the new performance tweaks give you problems of some sort, there's an option in the Galaxy Options tab, under the Performance section, to turn that off.
At any rate, I want to see what happens with that as we're adding ever more stuff that might be fighting offscreen and out of sight -- it shouldn't be causing your main game to bog down like you were seeing before. But that's something we can definitely look into more on the new framework that now exists. I also wanted to get the new framework in sooner than later so that any bugs that are in it can be found suitably in advance of 1.0.
So, what else?
- Badger came up with the idea that certain factions -- right now the Devourer Golem, the Nanocust, the Human Resistance Fighters, and the Marauders -- can be friends or foes that you discover partway into a game even if you didn't choose them from the start in the "custom start" lobby (or if they weren't baked into your chosen quick start).
- Basically, this makes it so that as a game is going along, you can suddenly have a new wrinkle thrown in with one or more factions joining the party late... and likely making up for lost time, either to your benefit or not.
- I'm a big fan of this, as this lets you either customize things up-front, or change your mind and add something later if you think it will help (or might hurt the AI more than it hurts you, anyway).
- Neutral planets controlled by a non-player, non-AI faction now show with the colors of that faction. That's really helpful for Dyson Spheres, Nanocaust, and other things like that.
- Fixed a confusing thing with transports, which was causing some people to think they couldn't load or unload them. You should now find that it "just works" as you would expect, but let us know if not.
- We fixed a bunch of other bugs.
- Zenith Trader purchases no longer cost you AIP if you lose them, which mirrors how they were in the first game.
- Mercenaries now have much more varied units!
- Hacking is now something the AI responds more strongly to, and for superterminals they start doing exogalactic strikes against you so that you can't just blob all your ships on the superterminal world and ignore the rest of the galaxy.
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