Big update warping in! A lot of new improvements for weapons, including shooting ahead of a moving target, better special effects, improved homing on some rockets, new weapons in general and a lot of new upgrades, even some new devices for some active abilities during combat. Most of the Caduceus storyline got a little rework, including long-awaited changes for the final mission and a lot more.
As the 1.0 release is around the corner and things are getting serious now, test pilots are heavily encouraged to try out everything new and old - we want to find all the bugs and polish everything the best way possible before this big milestone. All of your feedback is welcome and needed to push this project into its next stage!
Frozen flower collectibles
Repair Eliz3, the robot and help Zopa cultivate her greenhouse with rare plants from the solar system.
Flowers – in space, frozen in time! Unbelievable? Wait until you've seen the flamethrower...
Extractable gas clouds
A long-forgotten feature - to bring some extraction (extra-action!) to the last corners of the universe - has been finished and implemented. These clouds provide various raw materials, mainly - guess what: gases!
Hunt them gassy clouds, buddy!
New sidequests and events
Have a taste of mob mentality during the Ganymede Flu!
Tougher fights
The AI now fires fixed weapons with high precision. Shooting ahead of any moving target (leading the target) - which will very likely be YOU!
Persistent savegames
Asteroids, Plasma clouds, and spawned ships are now fully restored with savegames
New J-12 big guy: Ferox
Some of the very early birds may recognize this one - from back when a rough version of him was idling around in the Jupiter area. After some polishing, it's kind of a whole new ship now - and most important: It's playable.
2 big turrets, 3 medium ones – what else do you need to know?
Weapons
Weapons have been kind of a main focus this time. We've added dozens of new ones, new effects and reworked basically the whole arsenal (also check the 'improvements' section). Here are some rather exotic hightlights:
Zion Junk Cannons - yup, they're shooting trash!
Flamethrower
'Razors Edge'
New upgrades & level graphics!
Damage type visualisation (custom projectile and impact FX)
plasma
shock
radiation
Active Devices
Distance Enforcer A shockwave that lets you take a breath from intrusive attackers. Can be absolutely devastating in combination with asteroid fields!
Crash Creates a radial impulse, jamming all engines around you!
Locations
ISA Observatory Deck, Hokucho Gate, Bartholdy custom location pic
Portraits
Loreley "NO drinks on the house!"
J-12 male thrashed / patched up This poor guy is having a rough time...
UI
Some new location and weapon icons
Audio
Enemy alert (NPC turns hostile)
New weapon sounds
Bartholdy's Bar background music - 'Night in Venice' by Kevin MacLeod
Drinking sound
New achievements
Crash on First Sight, Flower Power, Exitus Igneus
Main Story
During the pirate attack on Pluto, pirate ships of the second wave will now attack the player if damaged by the player
The Waechter hacking mission got reworked, new dialog, incorporated the actual hacking skill into the hacking event, improved balancing, also added a mini text-only hacking tutorial to the beginning of the mission
During the Caduceus transport from Pluto, Assistant Lucca will now stop after the player has stopped the escort
Some changes for O-Dog's boss battle. Advanced dialog, new primary weapon. After the mission ends, the player doesn't have to return to Atlas HQ anymore
Some improved dialog before the Supreme Court hearing
Additional dialog for Kalypso for the whole Caduceus Arc
First big changes to the final mission, support from Atlas and Kalypso, Kouji now actually works, added dialog and first version of an ending scene (for that arc at least)
World
Draw asteroid belts behind the Fog of War
Plasma fields damage
Weapons
As mentioned before, a lot of work has gone into weapon finetuning and optimizations. A quick summary:
Reworked stats of almost all weapons
Changed some weapons essentially to make them more fun / diversified
Added more preferred weapon sets to NPC ships for more variety and combat difficulty
Switched the projectile blending for better visibility (no more glowy projectiles looking dark on bright backgrounds)
Optimization of projectile collisions, spawning and visual FX
Inventory: Weapons sorted by subcategories
A lot of weapon renaming
Ships & Stations
ISA Research Station polishing
Include tracked damage in some affinity tests
Improve the ship death shockwave scaling
Show the shield on hit effect a bit stronger/longer for weak weapon hits
Add shield damage type weakness/resistance
UI
Radar HUD Scanline shader
Some more UI & json DE translations
Analysis HUD: Use the shield bar for gas clouds (uses the item color)
Analysis HUD: only show the shield bar if it's useful
Readable HUD: Improve the layout sizing
Select the inventory list item again after a weapon upgrade
Options Menu: Keep the scroll position on shortcut assign
Localization: Show incomplete translations in the Options menu
Inventory HUD: Keep the scroll position on equip/unequip
Show the Cooldown HUD when selecting a weapon target
Radar HUD: Show it with the tutorial
Binary: additional icon resolutions
Small loading time improvements
Show the critical chance in tooltips
Freight Containers: hacking level 3 is 100% with hacking level 1
Fight AI does not move sideways sometimes (stuck with switching)
Laser hit graphic is not always sized correctly
Travel group engage should undock all group ships
Use the full progressbar width for the hacking bar layout on freight containers
Add an autopilot recover behavior state that does not resume fights
Travel group can wait endlessly (does not restart) if the stage is WAITING_AT_DEST
Person trader level is not set
Some weapon upgrades / damage types were broken
Ships don't randomly buy big-type weapons (weapons were unspawned)
Bartholdy always provides the same drink as 'today's special'
Collision aggro triggers too easily with defend mode behavior
Show the cargo noti weapon name like it is in the inventory (with quality)
Map icons can disappear early when they should still be visible on screen
Weapon inaccuracy setting is limited to one plane and affects speed
Turret z-fighting
Kouji doesn't defend the player
Cooldown HUD: Stop the fade out if any weapon still has heat
Big turret uses wrong base item icon (has fixed color)
Projectile additive blending mode is not used
Haas-Rocket: lights offset in upgrade window
Energy regen upgrades not displayed
Weapon Upgrade HUD: Use a different method to uppercase the damage type
Don't save a dying weapon target identifier
Set the type_name for spawned_mine
Analysis HUD: enable clipping for the linked renderer
Big update incoming! Major changes and things yet to come. Preparations for 1.0 release, which has been moved to August, are underway. Don't forget, even then the journey is just beginning! More full storylines and content will follow after 1.0. Now's another opportunity to join in early and help us with feedback. For this purpose, enjoy our big discount on steam this weekend.
Transmission over.
Scoundrel Update (0.17)
Ahoy, mateys, space dogs and buccaneers!
While we're putting some heave ho into our incoming main update, we've got a lil' (maybe not so little) surprise patch in store for ya. So avast ye, give no quarter to those new pirate fleets and fortresses, now matched to their respective pirate captain in color and strength. So old salts and landlubbers alike, batten down the hatches and test ya might, feed those scoundrels to the fishes and gain some booty! If you don't wanna walk the plank yourself, better prepare yourself – some of them Jolly Rogers are stronger than ever before!
Pirate Factions
The various pirate leaders who have joined the game over time (and are finally complete with this update) now have their own sub factions - bringing variety to the game world and filling the lawless void with merciless battles!
Some pirate factions are much stronger than others – exploring the far corners of the system has never been this dangerous before
New pirate weapons and shields for more action!
Pirate ships can now drop certain weapons if you destroy them
Some pirate fortresses have a new position
Weapons
Physical (Ramming) damage gives XP, Loot, and also triggers aggro (player only)
Full asteroid drop yield only with mining equipment (otherwise only 50%)
The mining laser turret got its visual upgrade levels – expect more of these soon!
Portraits
Captain Mary Read ...making the pirate bosses complete!
Atlantic Alliance Captain The more law-abiding variant of a captain.
Unique crystal drops
Crystal asteroids now drop actual crystals instead of cargo boxes.
General
Teal's Bloodtest sidequest is no longer forced on the player during the mainquest
Pluto Colony now has a quarantine dialog when you click on it while it's still locked
Added and corrected some sort_keys for NPCs
Improved some dialog and fixed some spelling errors
Caduceus Station has reduced HP and shield HP for now
Note: We are still working on our big story update which will rework the main mission structure of the last Caduceus Arc missions. We reduced the Caduceus Station's HP for now, because that mission was too frustrating for players in its current state!
Ships / AI
Travel group:
Try harder to find a nearby free spot, start randomizing late, be more consistent, add effort estimation
Only shortcut the path testing if we are really nearby the target
Update free lane path finding
Ship evasion:
General improvements
Improve asteroid field ship evasive behavior
Do not evade with a higher velocity
Improve turret target lead (include parent ship velocity)
Improve finding a free location for big ships when undocking
Weapons
Halve the turret "ready to fire" angle distance
World
Asteroid drops balancing:
New category of 'tiny' asteroids
Added drop amount limit for each category (to prevent the possibility of small ones dropping more items than big ones)
Space trade: decline when most friendlies are fighting nearby
Only de-spawn items if they are outside the player radar range
Container: Reduce the chance to drop content on destruction (by level)
UI
A 4K game with a 2K interface? That doesn't sound right! Therefore we have:
Doubled the interface resolution
Reworked some UI elements (like the menu cursor, tab buttons, check boxes, sliders and more)
Ship Trade HUD: Hide ship data when the blueprint is missing
Portraits
Seraphim Applicator polishing, variations
Although masks are quite a thing lately, we haven't found any proper use for the last guy yet...
FX
Shock Cannon visual improvements
Small improvements on cargo drop animations
Screenshot files are now tagged with the game version number
Render improvements
Item Upgrade HUD: Correctly unlink on window exit
Hackable destroyables should use hull damage (not disintegration)
Marcel Wallas quest counter for all three items can switch too early
Ship Trade HUD: Large font size fixes
Player can trade with the caduceus station while fighting it
Extra hull given by "Additional Armor III" device is reset on each savegame load
Travel groups: wait time should be based on distance
Pai Pai job accept doesn't advance
Shield restore animation is buggy
Trade HUD: do not move the left box to the front on init
Get_Random_Ship_Data() can fail
Horizontal scrollbar is visible in Inventory/Trade HUD
Trade Tooltip: Increase the name height for large fonts
Don't play the quest noti sound when loading
Savegames: "Bring Jurgen's body to Xiao and tell her the bad news." is added to the quest log several hundred times
There are times when a robot's blown fuse throws a whole solar system into turmoil – and other times when you can't take a step outside your cozy space shuttle. To make your stay as pleasant as possible, here are some suggestions from the Warp Turtle quarantine lab:
EXPLORE new and polished parts of the storyline and discover more sidequests
HACK ships or even stations with new skills from the Kalypso tree
HELP others - rescue lost miners or get our new celebrity NPC Trash Panda some of his beloved trash, your cargo bay is full of it anyway!
We also polished the homebase, put out the trash and created new living quarters on moons.
If you run into anomalies or got any feedback - find us here or on discord as usual!
New Missions
FTA databanks are attacked by pirate hackers! Can you help?
Agent Horace on Nexsen needs someone to secure the area!
Tezla got a new first Mission: Rescue those CoC Miners! (Devs note: The old first mission "A Hard Day of Work", which was a little bit to difficult for the beginning, is now Tezla's 2nd mission)
Hack ships and stations!
Staying in the ship allows you to sabotage others silently – the new ship hacking feature comes with a whole skill tree. There are still improvements on the list and we're working on FX, but here is the basic thing!
"Enough talking, Auxi – let's hack your shield!!"
Choose from a variety of things to hack (devices excluded for now)...
...and master the hacking skill tree to become a legendary hacker!
64 bit support
Blast Processing!
Locations
Like most J-12 sites, the Pugnator recruitment center is nobody's first choice for a vacation.
Moon colonies – all over the place!
A mysterious visitor
There seems to be someone visiting the Caduceus Station. Can you catch a glimpse before he's leaving? Dude is not playable yet – but WILL BE with a hotfix in the next few days!
Interesting folks
Trash Panda, Zeldi Rubinstein, Igor VII
as well as some tragic heroes, like a dead mechanic and a shot ISA doctor.
Pirate drones
Not really intelligent, but fun to wreck!
Audio
Atmospheric background music for wreck stations
Highly motivating cheer sounds for saving lost astronauts!
Reworked Sphere ship graphics
(Click for very :D high resolution!)
Locations
Pluto Colony, as seen in the update's title pic. The previous version was 8 (!) years old and still in half resolution, so we felt like finally giving it a major rework!
Planet garage skyline polishing
Portraits
more Portrait versions (female ISA doctors)
Sphere portraits polished (Richter, soldiers)
O-Dog portrait color optimization
General
polished some weapon and shield stats (thx @Sergalicious)
Corrected some spelling mistakes (thx @Jeremy)
Removed a lo-res-looking star layer from Pluto's background nebula
Added Alloy traders to CoC Stations (to make crafting ships a little bit more accessible), many other small improvements, script polishing and stuff, thx @Thunderofwar, @Sergalicious, @Azmoden, @zackerlandor and many others for bugreports and a lotta feedback
Improve the json loading performance
A log_level config option
UI
Add a Hacking Range and Hacking Speed skill
Character HUD: Show the destroyed ships favorite
Character HUD: Skill overview for Mechanic, Persuasion and Hacking
Cache the map icon layout
Do not draw the whole world when fading in after a save load
Localization system, location pictures and a reworked location interface - Livin' La Vida Loca! Things are starting to get really interesting at this stage, as a lot of milestones are in motion and about to join the game step by step now. Our goals for 1.0 are getting closer and we are grinding towards the final polishing phase of the Caduceus Story Arc.
Thanks for all the positive reviews and the great community feedback so far!
Story
The first visit on Caduceus HQ is now 120% more polished :D - new events, new dialog, new sidequests, new achievement!
New NPCs added, new dialog and new items (more readables, some can now be retrieved in the ISA Library)
Localization system
To meet the wishes of many people, we have implemented the basics for an easy translation of the game. See how it works - any help is much appreciated!
All names and descriptions, the biggest part of the UI and some first dialogs like the tutorial have been translated to german for beta-testing the localization system with the new patch.
Along with this so-far translation, a lot of corrections and optimizations have been made to the original text.
Location images
The Zone, ISA Auditorium, J-12 Living Quarters
Portraits
Don Gorgon, Seraphim & ISA randoms, FTA Manager (old guy reworked)
Weapons
Visual upgrade levels for the default gun turret
All weapons using this turret graphic are upgradable to 4 levels now
Auxi's Top Gun is upgradable to a dual projectile weapon
Sound
Shield shutdown
'Playing Doctor' achievement
General performance improvements
Interface
Location HUD: BIG images
We figured out that full-scale location images provide a lot more atmosphere and immersion when traveling around on planets or stations. Therefore, the location hud has been fully reworked.
With the exception of 1-2 special cases, all location pics are now in full 4K resolution.
Factions assigned to the locations
New weapon upgrade layout
Controller
Support Combobox
Support the options menu
Support the landable location HUD
Exit start menu windows with B too
Support MultiColumnList d-pad iteration on blocking HUD windows
auto select first entry for a multicolumnlist
Always highlight the currently active focus window
Make the active focus window look like a selector
Unselect the last controller selected MultiColumnList item when the controller focus leaves it
New Game Menu: button A should confirm portrait selection
More UI stuff
Newsticker auto-scrolling
Add a skill tooltip icon
Scroll the newsticker
Radar HUD: draw improvements
Add minimal padding to the item tooltip description
Landable HUD: Hide "visitors" subhead when no visitors there
Replace the default GUI tooltip
Added missing shop marker to some ship traders
Added missing item descriptions
Characters in the person list are sorted by importance
Randomized planets in main menu (Earth, Mars, Venus)
Minor landable HUD changes
Story
Added the possibility to hack the locked door on Essex with hacking level 3 (thx @Keith_McD from discord for suggestion)
Changed Billie Jean and Rufus NPCs from the Living Permit quest, so that the player will not break the quest if he attacks them before talking to them. (thx @Eckman Jones from steam community for bugreport)
World
During the 4K optimization process, a lot of location images have been improved and polished to look fancy in the new resolution as well.
Jupiter texture color optimization
J-12 Station polishing and new lights
Trash spawner around Earth
Pluto clouds enabled
Balancing
Added new big shields (thx @HALOSHOCK from steam community for suggestions)
Some ship & weapon balancing
Portrait polishing
Mr. Shiro, Kingston, Jerome, Dr. Cram Bokaj, Nortnex burning
Landable HUD: Hide the Exit button when on a location
Use the passive AI profile for planets and some stations leading persons
Keyboard focus index fixes
Trade HUD: support multi selection with the keyboard too
Show the supported resolutions of the selected primary display
AI: Friendly ship detection is only working partially
Person sort key is not used when the drawable is missing
Destroy the MultiColumnList custom tooltip correctly
Update the MultiColumnList item tooltip when scrolling
MultiColumnList page up/down should actually move a page
MultiColumnList generic key handler can crash (rare)
newsticker_group can have a 1 pixel gap/overlap
Location quest person target on the same location is not updated instantly if they have a ship
Options Menu: Show the correct shortcut type default assignment
Improve the TabButton imageset sizes
Change the TabButton Hovered/Pushed/Selected color
Crash Course: if you already have the 9 Aluminium the quest counter should instantly trigger
scripts: parse all files as utf-8 by default
Savegame the message queue
Savegame the perma noti state (tutorial info is lost)
Options menu reload triggers the logo animation
AI lands on the gate
Get the correct image dimension if an image settings base is set
Controller: Skills HUD focus order is broken
Controller: pressing B in the main menu breaks it
Loading hints formatting fixes
Added some missing quest markers for special cases
Some broken dialog (Kingston, Borg Johnson "Devi" question, Heimwehr and more)
Take off your winter boots, slip into something comfy, turn up the heater and dive into the next update of Gaia Beyond. Also – we are on a 21% discount during the Steam Winter Sale!
Happy Holidays!
Over 15 new sidequests!
Collect blueprints for the ISA
Find and rescue the forgotten spacemen!
Visit Nookrium on the Euphoria station ...and much more!
