Development Patch D11

• Main Menu
  
  
  • Starter ship: In new Career Mode galaxy, the player gets a list of pre-built ships to start with instead of a random set of parts. Starter ships are determined by which ship files are present within SaveFiles/Starter. Ships in this folder are loaded on first run, but are never saved over.
  
  
• Weapon
  
  
  • 8 new hardpoint/weapon mounts added. These are animated and require an activation time when engaging an enemy. They deactivate on their own after a certain amount of time without a target.
    
  • 25 new weapons have been added as subsystems for new hardpoint system. Each weapon has unique stats and behaviour. This is an ongoing effort and will be updated as development continues for gameplay/balance.
    
  • Anti Missile System (AMS) Subsystem - Attaches to hardpoint/weapon mount, tracks and destroys incoming missiles. Cannot be manually controlled or assigned to weapon groups.
  
  
• Sector Display:
  
  
  • UPPER LEFT: In sector, added a Selected Object Information Panel with the following info:
    
    
    • Distance
      
    • Selected Object’s:
      
      • Name
        
      • Icon
        
      • Classification
        
      • Faction
        
      • Faction Hostility towards player
      
      
    • Image of Object
    
    
  • UPPER RIGHT CORNER: Target Lock Indicator(s) with the following info:
    
    
    • Distance
      
    • Faction Hostility towards player
      
    • Health Bar
      
    • Shield Bar
      
    • Weapon Groups Assigned
      
    • Tooltip text is available on hover.
    
    
  • Locking onto targets now has a delay based on Sensor Speed. “Acquiring Target Lock” displays until lock is complete, and the blue selection bracket will fade over to the red locked bracket.
    
  • Selected Locked Target now has an animation to indicate which target is selected.
    
  • Maximum lock targets is now based off the Sensor stats.
    
  • Warp Gate System: Use warp gates (designated in specific sectors) to travel to other star systems. Each has a specific destination within each star system. The Warp Gate Icon is always visible, regardless of your distance from it. Approach the Warp Gate, enter the gate and a menu will appear on the right, giving you the choice to warp to the Sector listed. If the gate has multiple destinations, you can use the drop down menu (click the Sector name) to select which Sector to travel to. This is currently the only way to move between Star Systems. The Sector warping on the map will only work for Sectors in your current Star System.
    
  • When warping to another sector or star system there is now an actual effect instead of just loading the new sector. When using a warp gate, the ship will enter being warping once the player uses the warp menu to initiate it. When warping to another sector from the map, the map will close and the ship will align to face the destination sector before entering warp. This alignment phase is identical to using the align or warp to function, and as with those cases, user input will interrupt the process and return control to the player.
    
  • New AI behavior: Small ships can now turn off their drag and face another direction while shooting.
  
  
  

• Shipyard Changes
  
  
  • Ship names may now have spaces or underscores_ in them.
    
  • Changed Engine Subsystems so that the Engine Module can only hold a single Engine Subsystem, but still can hold multiple Boosters.
    
  • Removed old weapon models. Note: All stock ships have been updated for the new weapon systems
    
  • Weapon Manager has been updated. Weapons will default to Weapon Group 1 and Manual, as well as their default weapon type. Left clicking on weapon name will highlight that weapon blue and set the camera’s pivot point to the weapon, right clicking on the weapon name will open the Subsystem Manager for that module. Hovering over the weapon name will display weapon stats in a tooltip if the weapon has a Subsystem applied to it.
    
    • Added a toggle for animated weapons in the shipyard manager, this will toggle all weapons with an activation/deactivation animation. Weapons will reset upon closing the Weapon Manager
    
    
  • Moved the Hanger Manager Window to the right side of the screen and stacked the window. The ship will be more visible without the manger window over top giving a better view of which hangar bay you have selected.
  
  
• Sector/Game Changes
  
  
  • Upon creating a new game, the game will start the player in a non-hostile sector, not just the first sector it finds with a station.
    
  • When choosing which ship to spawn, the AI will prefer ships closer in size to the player’s ship. Larger ships may still spawn, but this will hopefully provide a reasonable difficulty curve in campaign mode. Ships with an extreme module count will be penalized in the spawn chance calculation and spawn more rarely.
    
  • Ships that spawn upon loading into a sector will typically belong to the faction that owns the Sector. Loading in to find a group of hostile ships should only happen in hostile Sectors (but will be more likely than before if you are in a hostile sector).
    
  • The Station Docking prompt is now a slide out menu (like the new warp prompt.)
    
  • The Planetary Warning has been repositioned the lower left corner of the screen (rather than centered)
    
  • When selecting an object out in space the icon will now move to the lower right hand side of the selection/target bracket so that the object is visible.
  
  
• Map Changes
  
  
  • The right click menu on the map now always appears centered, instead of over the mouse position when you clicked.
    
  • The map’s right click menu has been changed. When you click on a sector in the list, instead of immediately warping, a new menu element appears to the right to display information about warping to that sector. If the player can warp there, the big red button will initiate warp. If the player is already in that Sector, or the Sector is in another star System, the button will be grayed out and text below the button will explain why it is disabled. The information panel in the upper left displays what warp connections, if any, that sector has.
  
  
• We have updated our GUI middleware to its latest version. This will hopefully resolve some minor bugs (such as render depth issues). GUI assets, especially text, should be noticeably improved in appearance.
  
• Armor plating is now more effective at preventing engine damage.
  
• Kinetic Ammo - Reduced the cost and increased the quantity purchased.
  

• Shipyard
  
  
  • Shipyard will no longer set ship names to all lower case when you load into the scene. If you have ships that have been renamed to lower case, rename them once with the desired capitalization and it should stick now.
  
  
• Sector
  
  
  • Bug where Laser beam sounds would cut out after a while.
    
  • Bug where Target Out of Range would stay on locked target after target was clearly in range.
    
  • Bug where Out of Ammo turrets were able to attempt to fire causing performance issues.
    
  • Enemies the player attacks with manual fire will now become hostile to the player. Ships will use a 3 strikes policy before attacking.
    
  • Issue where weapon fire spread was not calculated correctly when in manual fire.
    
  • Issue where the align functionality would do nothing if the target to align to was exactly behind the ship.
    
  • Bug where Tab and Z would not cycle to the correct target.
    
  • Bug that would allow the sun to shine through planets.
    
  • Bug where the Drone Management button would be visible when the ship did not have any drone capacity.
  
  

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New Galaxy Creation required for this update.

• New Microwarp Effect.
  
• Added Trade Goods to inventory/trade system. Currently available is only
• Materials and Water.
  
• New sector nebule effects
  
• Ability to access Inventory levels while in Sector (galaxy) mode
  
• Tooltips during Sector (galaxy) mode for icons on the screen + drone management window.
  
• A check for power requirements for ships when launching from Shipyard has been implemented.
  
  • WARNING! This only applies to player ships being launched from the shipyard. If you build a massive ship that does not meet the power requirements the AI can still use said ship. So if you want the game to have a balance to it make sure all ships meet the power requirements.
  
  
• A check for Kinetic Field Generator is a requirement to launch ships from shipyard.
  
• The map now renders lines that represent Star System links. In the future, these will be the jump gate routes used to navigate between star systems.
  
• Added a “You Are Here” marker (node) to the map above the Sector the player is currently in.

• Drone AI improvements:
  
  
  
  • Drones will now actively try to avoid running into ships. They will not always succeed. Take caution when launching and recovering drones.
    
  • Drones will now aim much more effectively. They should now be quite useful in combat.
    
  • Mining Drones automatically dock once inventory is full.
    
  • Mining Drones will only be able to mine asteroids, not able to attack other ships.
    
  • Attack Drones will only be able to attack other ships and not mine asteroids.
    
  
  
• Improved lighting in sector space.
  
• Drone ejection from ship has been reduced in speed.
  
• The Warp To functionality in Sector now takes the bounding box of the destination object into consideration. This means that if an object is extremely large, like a space station, the size of the space station will add to the buffer that Warp uses, so the player won’t exit warp colliding with the station.
  Improved visual effect for kinetic weapons
  
• All projectiles have doubled velocity
  
• Damage values of all weapons have been tweaked.
  
• Armor plate durability has been tweaked.
  
  
  
  • Resistances are now active, percentage based with diminishing returns.
    
  • Kinetic weapons are still the only weapon type in game for now.
    
  
  
• Kinetic Field Generator strength have been tweaked.
  
• Larger tier weapons now have increased firing range.
  
• Galaxy Generation changes
  
  
  
  • Your current galaxies are not compatible and should be deleted.
    
  • Previously, Each sector represented an entire solar system. This has been changed so that each sector is a part of a solar system that will contain areas of interest. Generation is capped to 50 solar systems, but each solar system will have multiple sectors, so the maximum allowed number of sectors is about the same as before. This change should allow us to make each sector more dense with content.
    
  • The Galaxy map has been completely revamped. WASD or dragging with left click will pan the map. Scroll wheel will zoom and holding right click will rotate. Right click on a star system to a list of its sectors. Click on one of the sectors in the list to warp there. Note that the game is paused while the map is open. This is only a first pass and the map will change greatly over the next few patches.
    
  • Star system names are randomly chosen from a txt file in the Streaming Assets folder.
    
  
  
• Changed all sizes of Engine Trails and other visual attributes of Engine Trails
  

• Fixed a bug that caused collision damage to pass through shields.
  
• Fixed a bug with turret aiming that caused turrets to not fire when calculated lead point was too far from the target. Beware, AI should be far more deadly.
  

• Skybox generation is now active, this system still needs tweaking.
  
  • Environmental Detail in graphical options changes the Skybox LOD (requires game restart).
  
  
• LOD system for asteroids
  
• Mining Drones
  
• Added keybind GUI for the Drone Management Window in the options menu.
  
• Added keyboard button bindings for camera rotation under Controls>Flight. By default, these are unbound.
  

• Drone AI improvements:
  
  • Drones will now actively try to avoid running into ships. They will not always succeed. Take caution when launching and recovering drones.
    
  • Drones will now aim much more effectively. They should now be quite useful in combat.
    
  • Mining Drones automatically dock once inventory is full.
    
  • Mining Drones will only be able to mine asteroids, not able to attack other ships.
    
  • Attack Drones will only be able to attack other ships and not mine asteroids.
  
  
• Improved lighting in sector space.
  
• Drone ejection from ship has been reduced in speed.
  
• The Warp To functionality in Sector now takes the bounding box of the destination object into consideration. This means that if an object is extremely large, like a space station, the size of the space station will add to the buffer that Warp uses, so the player won’t exit warp colliding with the station.
  Improved visual effect for kinetic weapons
  
• All projectiles have doubled velocity
  
• Damage values of all weapons have been tweaked.
  
• Armor plate durability has been tweaked.
  
  
  
  • Resistances are now active, percentage based with diminishing returns.
    
  • Kinetic weapons are still the only weapon type in game for now.
  
  
• Kinetic Field Generator strength have been tweaked.
  
• Larger tier weapons now have increased firing range.
  
• Galaxy Generation changes
  
  • Your current galaxies are not compatible and should be deleted.
    
  • Previously, Each sector represented an entire solar system. This has been changed so that each sector is a part of a solar system that will contain areas of interest. Generation is capped to 50 solar systems, but each solar system will have multiple sectors, so the maximum allowed number of sectors is about the same as before. This change should allow us to make each sector more dense with content.
    
  • The Galaxy map has been completely revamped. WASD or dragging with left click will pan the map. Scroll wheel will zoom and holding right click will rotate. Right click on a star system to a list of its sectors. Click on one of the sectors in the list to warp there. Note that the game is paused while the map is open. This is only a first pass and the map will change greatly over the next few patches.
    
  • Star system names are randomly chosen from a txt file in the Streaming Assets folder.
  
  
• All engines now have new trail effects for all sizes.