<, relevart ecapS!
Welcome to the first of the two announced major updates.
It's been a year since the community expressed the desire for an alternative route in the Caduceus arc, and after putting in some extra work, we're finally presenting our biggest story addition yet. New players and brave returners now have the chance for an even more personalized experience: Follow Noob Henderson at the beginning of the game, become a Caduceus member and experience their side of the story – filled with 9 new chapters!
We've done our best to convey a sense of individual complexity, with plenty of gray between good and evil. On the side, we've also added some general features and polished up a lot of the content you'll see along the way of the journey. Don't want to start a new game? Don't worry, as we've hinted several times, that's far from it: This update lays the groundwork for the incoming second story arc - and the wait will soon be over! So get ready for our journey through space to pick up speed big time this year.
Thanks to the whole community on Steam and Discord, who keep providing us with important feedback. You rock!
Caduceus Arc 2.0
Your decisions have more impact than ever before – there are more alternative routes to discover, even up to becoming one of Mr. Shiro's most trusted guards. Follow Henderson in the beginning of the game instead of persuading or killing him to ENTER the new route.
- 9 new missions, dozens of new decisions and consequences!
- Save Lt. Devi before he gets airlocked by Heimwehr or arrest him yourself!
- Will you rescue Patient Zero or deliver him to his execution?
- Will Dr. Orish be able to survive the attempt on his life?
- Will the Neutral Colonies be spared?
The paths you choose within the Caduceus arc will drastically affect the story progression of all future expansions – so decide wisely!
Custom Turret Platforms
The first one comes with a custom CoC design (applied to all CoC station turrets) – but we plan to:
- individualize the platforms for each faction
- make them placeable and upgradeable by the player!
New portraits
Many more to be introduced with the upcoming Sphere arc!
- The Patient: Whether you get the homage or not, there's a new side mission around this guy!
- Belana: Bobby's mum no longer has to share a pic with random NPCs.
- Caduceus bosses: In order to efficiently individualize the bosses, we have created 3 customizations of Caduceus assistants for them.
- Aureus Statue: This one has actually been around for a while (see polished portraits below), but was never actually implemented, which technically makes it a new portrait! ;)
- New variations for random NPCs, e.g. Caduceus and FTA
- Caduceus Nexus air duct: Why would you talk to an air duct? It might have fatal consequences if you don't, though!
🇷🇺 RU Interface Localization
Ok, first we'll have to cool down the expections a bit: This is only about the basic interface for now – and, as no one of the team speaks Russian, done with the help of automatized translation tools. But since we've kept the RU community waiting for a long time (and introduced the fan-made Chinese localization last time), we decided not to wait until after the Sphere update as originally planned.
✔ What's included:
- 100% of the basic menu navigation
- Stats and tooltips
- Skill trees
- Planet names, moons
- Raw materials and basic crafting item names and descriptions
❌ NOT included yet:
- Majority of descriptions (of items, ships, landables, characters etc.)
- Any kind of dialog / story content
Further plans: We will keep adding parts step by step with a priority on interface content – like names, descriptions and anything necessary for guidance apart from the story. As dialogs are still too big to handle for now, any help is highly appreciated here!
Many new achievements
- "That Stung!"
- "Patient Zero"
- "Kill on First Sight"
- "Shiro-Nortnex Test"
- "Objection!"
- "Contract Killer"
Audio
- Many new sound effects added to new Caduceus arc special events, all for the drama!
- Waiting line music – approach your treatment with a jazzy vibe...
- Makeda Farm music – come dung fi badman sound!
Other
- Syringe location image
- Sphere loyalists custom faction logo
Ships
- Mr. Shiro's ship graphic polished in double resolution
- All FTA transporter graphics polished
- FTA Escort: prerotated weapons for improved aiming
- Also here: some in-progress stuff that you might already stumble across, but will be introduced with the Sphere arc update!
World
- Zion Field polishing and some other location improvements
- Many dialog corrections and improvements
- Improved Caduceus readables:
- Brochure content significantly pimped
- "Wanted" Poster image and layout
- Improved the autopilot evasion static repositioning
- Auto unpause after an auto fight paused dialog
UI
- Tooltips: Remove empty lines
- Chinese localization:
- Many new additions and updates – cheers to the GamerArk team!
- Headline font swapped with default font (+ size increased)
- German localization: Added some more interface translations
- Separate the selection arrows on autopilot + selection
- Upgrade window: Stats vertically centered, font size reduced
- Scanning: Show possible asteroid drops in the tooltip
- Support input shortcuts in loading hints
- Show the player health bar when regen is active
- Show the current values for controller threshold and sensitivity
Portrait polishing
(Click for a hi-res JPEG of the new versions)
Focusing on the main characters and really dated ones, for the first time over 40 portraits have been polished up in a single update! :D
- Minor adjustments / anatomy corrections up to complete overpaintings
- Merging of styles, compositions
- Color balance, vibrancy
- Backgrounds and vignettes for smoother embedding into the UI
Other
- Appearance of some weapons updated (graphic & sound assignments)
- Some SFX volume fine tuning
- Increase the number of audio channels to 64
- Credits screen: partial reformatting
- Tutorial drone doesn't respawn if destroyed by non player damage
- Disable the automatic savegame ("Autosave Land") when Start_Docking() is not cancelable
- Passive devices don't apply the data modifications
- Autopilot evasion: going top to bottom on a station shield can evade into the wrong direction (into the shield)
- Autopilot evasion: check the direct front blocking sprites (instead of nearby asteroids)
- Autopilot evasion: disable medium evasion if there is already enough blocking the direct front
- Travel group: Guard ships go crazy during Kill Orish dialog
- Docked ships in detail range do not correctly gain the detail mode state (to load the emitter)
- Ship_Teleport_To_Current_Target() could undock if the ship is already docked on the target (Dr. Orish on Lashkar Gar is not moving from the spot next to it)
- Is_Dialog_Present() returns false when dialog is transitioning to a new stage
- When the player is locked on a landable the menu cannot be opened
- Double-Airlock event: 'Continue' seems to load autosave leave (player can proceed after death)
- No text displayed with translations if the locale is the system default
- Chinese big font is smaller than medium
- Selection noti: auto-size based on text width
- Chinese language: "Level" text height in tooltips is not large enough
- Translation: Support controller button names
- Weapon qualities don't affect AoE damage
- Trigger ship aggro earlier
- If a weapon level is too high, reduce it instead of deleting the weapon
- device_data: All passive devices producer are in lower case
- "Waechter Wreck" burning emitters are not visible
- Disable the mouse move camera mode when the player landed (Jhenox)
- All projectiles can be shot down
- Tutorial: wrong mission instruction for scan step
- Mr. Shiro wrong ship graphic assignment
- Vasquez' Drone Factory map icon missing
- Inventory: Hovered weapon tooltip flipped to other side of screen with 5 tooltips
- Wrong ship type could be scanned if the player selection changed
- Player radar/detail mode update should happen instantly after loading a save
- Ship radar update should happen instantly after spawning
- ship_data hull_regen_cooldown broken if attacker hits is less than 5 (for Turrets)
- Ship data values that get compared on passive devices are not newline synchronized
- Landable person list is not refreshed for some persons
- Disable News text on Wreck Stations and Vulcan
- Autopilot can lead player back to a previous target pos
- Kalypso person events are never removed (Player ship control_state locked after ramming Kalypso)
- Beth triggers "Dr. Rick will get you for this" dialog while dying randomly
- Station turrets should not have dialog handler
- In-space popup window doesn't pause the game but locks controls
- Map marker icon should be on top of the pos (not centered)
- Dialog-triggered scan also happens when people aren't in space
- Options Menu: Pressing controller dpad right should not enter the video tab
- Right stick up/down axis does not work with some old controllers
- Controller: Hacking input still based on button hold
- Regeneration emitters are shown in ship trade HUD
- Trade HUD: 5 decimal places shown for cargo
- Shield_Modulator_Callback does not set the dialog handler correctly
- Hacking is possible from the start (no skill required)
- Missing respawn pos (a station had no respawn and ejected ships)
Let's have a chat on Discord:
Learn more & stay tuned!