Weapon Systems added, new station models, new radar icons and additional AI added to faction simulations.
Added:
- New Stations! The previous old and crappy trade stations have been replaced by new assets. We think you will agree when we say that they look just lovely.
- Added a separate icon for mining stations to differentiate them from trade stations.
- Added Beam weapons - Have a high energy load, will do their damage over time.
- Added Missile Weapons - Requires Ammo. Have guided (Homing Missiles) and non-guided(more like Kinetic slugs). Makes a nice boom on impact.
- Added Hardpoint/Subsystem Weapons system - Turrets (Hardpoint) and Weapons (subsystems) have been split into two systems. The turret (hardpoint) will have how far the turret can reach in an arch as well as how fast. You then will equip a Weapon (subsystem) to it to dictate what type of weapon it is and what type of damage it will do. Old Weapons(non-hardpoints) will have a “base” value set to them for their damage type. It is advised that all users begin swapping out old turrets for the new hardpoint systems. Older turrets will be phased out as we add more replacement weapon systems.
- Ammunition Resources, three types currently. (Only available in the store. Remember to move from Station Inventory to your Ship Inventory after you purchase if from the store. When you purchase items from the store they just go to your Station Storage, not to your Ship Storage)
- Creative Mode has unlimited ammo. Ships do not require to have ammo put into their inventory. The Creative Galaxy Ships circumvent the ammo requirement code and will display Inf on the hud.
- Kinetic - used for any Kinetic Type Weapons
- Non-Guided Missile- used for any Non-Guided Missile Weapons
- Guided Missile - used for Guided Missile Weapons.
- Major Map Updates:
- By default, Star system names are now highlighted to indicate ownership. Gray systems are unclaimed, other colors correspond to factions as shown by the map legend.
- By using the popup list in the lower left, highlighting can be switched to show hostility toward the player. Keep in mind that sectors tend to spawn more ships belonging to the ruling faction.
- As factions go to war over territory, icons on the map will give the player general information about the conflict. A ! icon next to a Star System’s name will indicate a faction is currently trying to invade it. Within the system, sectors currently under the owner’s control will have a blue flag. Sectors that have been captured will have a red flag, and sectors currently experiencing a battle will be marked with a ! warning icon.
- Right click menu: if a system is in conflict, the sectors in the list will have an icon next to them identical to the one above it’s sector object. When mousing over a sector’s button, the sector’s object is highlighted blue. The button for the sector the player is in is colored green. The notes field is player editable, its contents are saved per sector.
- Sectors currently under conflict are more likely to spawn factions involved in that conflict.
- Buy and sell prices at stations are affected by the player’s standing with the faction that own’s the station, as well as the availability of raw sources (via mining stations) in that sector.
- Opening fire on a ship will lower your standings with that ship’s faction. Killing a ship will greatly lower standing from the owner, but will slightly raise standing from the owner’s enemies.
Changed:
- Asteroid Spawning: Previously, asteroids were spawned individually and culling operations were carried out on them to reduce impact on performance. To further increase performance while allowing for more interesting asteroid fields, asteroids are now spawned in clusters, and spawn/despawn dynamically to drastically improve both physics and rendering performance. These clusters should still be visible from a distance, but will only have a single radar icon until the player comes closer.
- Adjusted all module and subsystem values (This will be ongoing)
- NOTE: Your subsystems have been changed/removed. You need to open the subsystems of your HULL (at least) and verify you have the right
- Inventory/Store Main Categories(Subsystems/Ship Parts/Trade Goods) have been switched over to radio buttons. Only one Main Category can be selected at a time.
- Weapons (except Energy) require Ammo to be fired. The weapon size will determine how many resources it uses each time it fires. (Size 1 = 1 usage, Size 2=2 usages, etc)
- Camera’s Settings: Now should be able to zoom in to an acceptable closeness without too much clipping. Camera is now centered in middle of ship.
- Radar Sensor subsystems have been limited to 1 per ship. Their ranges and durability have been adjusted to reflect this.
- Massive improvement to performance when asteroids are in the same sector.
- Greatly increased base sensor range.
- The hull indicator now displays raw value instead of percentage for the player hud and target indicators.
- The Warp Effect is scaled by the size of your ship.
Fixed:
- Fixed a couple misaligned cubemaps for the skybox generator.
- Fixed a bug where Shared Hull Subsystem Capacity was being miscalculated shared hull space will be lowered due to this fact.
- Fixed issue where modules would gain space if modified.
- The faction standing menu (visible in sector, default key is K) has been fixed.
- Fixed a bug that caused some NPC ships to be idle.
- Stars will no longer appear to be rendered on top of planets.
- Fixed a few minor memory leaks in Sector.
- The galaxy and ship name fields no longer accept special characters or punctuation. (Next patch will allow _ or spaces, no other special chars)
- Fixed bug in laser damage timing.
- Fixed bug in Turret seeming to take to long to engage.
- Fixed an bug with the warping system that caused the ship to sometimes overshoot the target.
- Fixed a bug where the camera would offset itself.
- Fixed a bug where Inventory weight was not being calculated correctly allowing you to remove cargo subsystems after filling cargo hold.
- Fixed a bug where you were unable to buy resources other than ammunition.
- Scale of stations
- Removed rotation on station rings - this was causing huge performance hit.
- Clipping distance between near and far camera.
- Factions not updating on new galaxy creation.
- Recalculated how beam damage is applied, increase in performance.
- Fixed an issue where Inventory would not display the correct values in Sector until you cycled thru the main categories.
