Hello Spacers!
This minor update has been a long time in the works while we've been busy with Carriers, but we're glad to finally get it out to you and apologize for how long it took.
Fleet Editor
The last time the Fleet Editor received any significant quality of life upgrades was at the end of 2022 with the addition of undo/redo, fleet editing in lobbies, and the quick testing range. Given how core a part of Nebulous fleet building is, it's about time the place where a lot of players spend most of their time got the love it deserves.
First off, the editor's UI has been completely updated to match the updated look-and-feel of the skirmish game (along with the rest of the game's UI as well). The socket and statistics list are now much cleaner and easier to read. Most things have stayed in the same place to ease the adjustment period, though things like the movement of the rename and add ship buttons may be frustrating for a little while.
We've also added copy/paste functionality to the editor, including bindable hotkeys. The addition of full ammo statistics including the amount of firing time for each ammo type means you no longer have to guess how much 20mm to bring. Modular missile engine tuning has also gotten a bit upgrade with the ability to switch between coarse and fine adjustment modes, as well as the ability to lock a specific side of the triangle. There are also tons of other minor improvements sprinkled throughout, so I hope you enjoy!
Lineship Roll Logic
This is a seemingly minor change with huge impact, so I wanted to call it out specifically here. The heading and roll logic of ships with fixed weapons, most importantly OSP's Lineships with their flank-mounted cannons, has been improved so that ships will now prefer to roll onto the target instead of yawing if that is determined to be faster. This makes playing double-sided LNs much easier, as you no longer have to fight the ship controller.
Moddable Icon Sets
The skirmish HUD icons are now easily moddable so modders can now replace the icons for ships, missiles, and more to make them look like whatever they want. The icon sets are supported by the workshop and can be selected from gameplay settings once activated. Non-modders can now also tune their HUD colors from the game settings, changing their Mine, Friendly, and Enemy colors to any option from the color palette.
The vanilla game now has two icon sets by default. The current one you're familiar with is Nebulous Classic, and we've added Nebulous Aegis which has more resemblance to the Naval Tactical Display System iconography many wargamers are familiar with.
Berthing Removal
The berthing compartment has been removed from the game, and components that require crew will now generate the number of crew they require. Berthings were one of the first components added to the game, before hulls even had a base crew complement. However, because under-crewing ships (or "crew cheese") does not degrade performance as was originally planned, the existence of this module has been a massive newbie trap for a while. Additionally, no balance decisions have ever been made based on tweaking crew requirements. Because of this, it was decided to remove the compartment to help new players and free up the compartment slot for other things. The removal should not affect balance of the high-end builds, as they were already under-crewing, while improving the performance of builds where players either chose not to do so or didn't know it was possible. If you want to know more, you can check #balance-contemplation on our official discord.
Other Changes
We've made a few other minor balance tweaks over this testing period. We've reduced the Solomon's armor thickness slightly so 250mm AP is able to penetrate from a slightly wider range of angles. Additionally, the Flathead's internal density has been increased. At first that might seem like a buff, but increase internal density actually means less overpenetrating hits against stripped frontal armor and thus more damage received.
And finally, our sound designer Marshall has gone through and updated almost all of the weapon sounds to be much punchier.
Full changelog follows.
See you in the battlespace,
- The NEBULOUS Team
Changes/Features:
- Added "High Saturation (Neb Classic)" color palette option under Accessibility settings.
- Updated numerous weapon sounds.
- Updated Fleet Editor UI and most general purpose windows with new look and feel.
- Added coarse/fine adjustment mode and ability to lock axes on missile engine triangle slider.
- Added copy/paste component functionality for Fleet Editor, with bindable controls.
- Improved fleet editor performance when switching between ships.
- Added right-click context menu to Fleet Editor.
- Added ammunition load endurance stats to fleet editor.
- Lowered default music volume.
- Added moddable HUD icon sets.
- Added "Nebulous Classic" (current set) and "Nebulous Aegis" icon sets to stock assets.
- Ported numerous utility classes from conquest branch to main for later use.
- Missile decoys owned by your team now appear on the HUD with the decoy icon instead of the missile icon.
- Removed berthing component. All components that require crew will spawn the amount of crew they need.
- Removed Battle Dressing Station.
- Added turn rate to missile engine stats list.
- Added unique visual track icons for all contact types to replace the generic eye.
- Spectators no longer count as ready players for the purpose of starting the force deployment countdown.
- Added add/remove stack to magazine ammo spinners.
- Added individual and total RPM stats to weapon stat blocks in the fleet editor.
- Increased Fuel Line Fire repair work to 40 (was 25) and increased trigger time to 100 seconds (was 80).
- Increased Cell Cookoff and Magazine Cookoff repair work to 30 (was 18) and increased trigger time to 80 seconds (was 60).
- Split DC team work speed stat into four subtypes: general, restore, firefighting, and reactor overload.
- Combined Launcher Deluge System and Magazine Sprinkler into new Fire Suppression System, increased HP to 150 (was 75), added reinforced flag, and added 50% firefighting speed bonus.
- Increased HP of Redundant Reactor Failsafes to 150 (was 75), added reinforced flag, added 30% reactor overload repair speed bonus, and reduced cost to 10 points (was 25).
- Increased Lock Target TTGI for all modular missiles seekers to 3 seconds (was 2).
- Seekers with validator memory will now have that memory cleared if the validated target is lost by the primary seeker.
- Side-mounted fixed weapons will now prefer to roll onto target if the angle to target is over 90 degrees.
- Increased Mk81 Railgun traverse rate to 6 (was 3).
- Failing to load a fleet file due to an XML error will now leave a warning in the log and not print to the screen.
- Updated starter fleets.
- Updated default Riposte missile template to be better.
- Decreased Solomon armor thickness to 56cm (was 58).
- Increased Flathead MN internal density armor equivalent to 0.75cm/m (was 0.5).
- Increased 450mm AP armor penetration to 120cm (was 110).
- Increased C90 Cannon cost to 60 (was 40).
- Increased 400mm Plasma Ampoule range to 7,800m (was 7,200).
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed MLS launcher SFX not working.
- Fixed HEKP warhead stats using "Component" as the title of three different lines.
- Fixed missile aim point offsets getting reset to 0 in some cases.
- Fixed passive seekers not correctly syncing their target to clients.
- Fixed RPF explosions not detecting mines sitting on rock surfaces.
- Fixed tooltip taking one frame to size itself correctly.
- Fixed structure break icon not working on clients.
- Fixed legacy active seekers on mines having their beam direction altered incorrectly.
- Fixed fuel line fire not causing damage.
- Fixed ships not being evaluated for elimination when their last DC team was killed.
- Fixed mines behind a terrain backface being able to trigger on ships.
- Fixed burst tube launchers not checking for obstruction on every launch.
- Fixed ELINT crossfixes showing their TQ as the last calculated TQ from a non-crossfix track.
- Fixed rocket containers and mines not being affected by radar jamming.
- Fixed lobby player count in fleet editor not updating if a player left.
- Fixed lobby alert ping not stopping if a player left and the ready count dropped below the threshold.
- Fixed Moorline Stern C DC board missing one of it's C2 mounts.
- Fixed WAKE primary seeker being turned around by gaps in trails.
- Fixed skirmish chat being obscured by the HUD.
- Fixed Marauder Stern B reverse thrusters having 80% power instead of 100%.
- Fixed WAKE turning to the trail's direction while well outside it in some geometries.
- Fixed ARAD validator memory being cleared when it should not have been.
- Fixed errors when a missile body is missing preventing fleet or missile templates from loading.
- Fixed wake trail previous point influencing next point movement direction.
- Fixed format exception when giving a ship an empty hull number.
- Fixed opening the dev console with F2 causing persistent frame drops if a lot of errors had occurred.
- Fixed active non-interactible checkboxes not showing their active dot.