Hi everyone,
Today’s patch brings a number of changes, bug fixes and balancing updates. These are geared towards points raised by players over the past couple of weeks about issues they were facing with the game.
Saving
There has been some discussion about how saving works in-mission, so we’ve made a few changes to this.
- You can no longer save inside a combat mission.
- You’ll need to jump out first, but saving won’t incur a penalty.
- You can now jump out before the mission is over!
- Using the “Escape” button will return you to the sector map.
- Escaping from a mission will apply critical damage to your ships and consume 1 supply.
- If you have no supplies, you can’t escape.
- You will no longer have to replay the mission when you escape it.
No Supplies?
If you run out of supplies, there will be an ever-increasing chance that one of your ships will receive critical damage each time you jump. We did tell you bad things could happen! You’ll receive a notification if one of your ships is affected by this.
Starting Shop
By popular demand, the starting shop now has all ships available to purchase.
Class Changes
We’ve made a number of changes to certain classes as part of our balancing work:
- Drones have had their HP reduced but damage increased.
- Assault ships have gained an additional system slot.
- Assault’s shield has been reduced from 240 to 200.
- Assault has had its base price increased from 17600 to 21900.
- Assault (pirate) has gained an additional system slot.
- Carrier has gained an additional weapon slot.
- Carrier has had its base cost increased from 21600 to 29550.
- Command ship has lost a system slot and gained a weapon slot.
- Command has had its hull reduced from 400 to 320.
- Command has had its shield reduced from 400 to 320.
- Command has had its energy reduced from 400 to 320.
- Dreadnought has had its price increased from 24000 to 30000.
- Dreadnought (pirate) has had its energy increased from 120 to 200.
- Gunship has gained an additional system slot.
- Gunship has had its shield reduced from 160 to 120.
- Gunship now has 40 energy and access to Attachments with energy costs.
- Gunship has had its base price increased from 9600 to 15000.
- Lancer has had its shield reduced from 80 to 40.
- Lancer has had its base price increased from 5600 to 8100.
- Marauder has had its hull increased from 200 to 280.
- Pulsar has had its energy reduced from 160 to 120.
- Pulsar has had its base price increased from 18400 to 21750.
- Rogue has had its shields reduced from 120 to 80.
- Rogue has had its base price increased from 12000 to 15150.
- Tech has had its hull increased from 80 to 120.
- Tech has had its energy increased from 160 to 200.
- Tech has had its base price increased from 16000 to 23100.
- Drone launchers have had their max drones reduced.
- Added Thermal Torpedo Weapon.
- Added Thermal Torpedo to Dreadnought as standard.
- Added Thermal Torpedo to Command Ship as standard.
- Enabled energy-based systems and skills on the Gunship.
- Reinforce Shields should now bring shields back online.
Usability
There is an issue affecting players who use more than one monitor – clicking to the second monitor caused the game to minimise. This is an issue with Unity and although there is a workaround, it would require reworking the entire UI which is pretty big task.
However, we have implemented a fix which should help the situation for players:
Existing Players
- If you are full screen, you will continue to be full screen and see no difference
- If you are windowed – your window will now not have a border (but if you are windowed to the native resolution of their monitor it will seem that you are fullscreen).
- You can now mouse to the other window and clicking will not minimise the game.
New Players
- Will be full screen by default (mousing to the second screen will minimise the game).
- Unfortunately turning this off means it doesn’t default to the native screen resolution (we’d have to arbitrarily assign a resolution).
- If you have dual monitors, then:
- Main Menu > Options > Display > Turn Off Full Screen
- And make sure the resolution is set to the native resolution of your monitor.
- You can now mouse to the other window and clicking will not minimise the game.
Additional improvements:
- Added the ability to pan the camera while holding down the middle mouse button.
- Added slight delay on mouse pan, if you pass that delay the mouse will continue to pan even if you leave the screen (window).
- If you don’t hold for that delay you are able to leave the window without panning the camera.
- Can now toggle edge scrolling on/off via a checkbox in the Display pane of the Options Menu.
- Added persistent alert markers to stationary Hunt objects.
- Added a “controls” button to the main menu. This will allow new players to view controls before entering the game.
- Persistent Alert Markers on the minimap now no longer have an icon. All other alert markers still have them.
Enemy Fleet Scaling
There were a number of no-win situations occurring as a consequence of previous changes to the spawn behaviour of enemy fleets. This patch brings a number of changes to resolve these issues – in particular reducing the number of fleets that spawn in certain missions.
- Disabled random activation timers on triggers to remove unintended chance of enemies spawning at similar times.
- Reduced the number of fleets spawning in Ambush, Defend and Boss Battles.
- Removed some of the higher quantity pirate fleets from the game.
- Updated A’kari fleets to new points system.
- Updated Orthani fleets to new points system.
- Player now notified when Erebus defence stations are under attack.
- Reduced the sector fleet scaling to accommodate for enemies gaining more Attachments over sectors.
- Hostile fleet Attachments now scale based on Sector number not Danger Level.
Balancing Changes
- Changed the intro mission’s format making it far easier.
- Increased the effectiveness of Skills and Criticals.
- Reduced the AOE size of BF Torpedo.
- Increased the Fleet Level in later sectors by 0.1.
- BF Torpedo has had its damage reduced by 30% and it’s cooldown reduced by 10 seconds.
- All missiles have had their damage reduced by 15%.
- Assault ships now have missiles as default weapon.
- SpawnByDifficulty player fleet modifier now works on a percentage modified value.
- Reduced the effect of Shield Phasing from 2.5 shield per second to 1 shield per second.
- Increased Combat Piloting from 10% speed increase to 25% speed increase.
- Removed Burst Cannon I from Dreadnought’s standard Attachments.
- Added EMP Bomb I to Rogue’s standard Attachments.
- Increased the energy cost of Mine Launcher I from 40 to 60.
- Increased the energy cost of Mine Launcher II from 30 to 50.
- Increased the energy cost of Mine Launcher II from 20 to 40.
- Added a buffer to automatic weapons so that they should go just past their range.
- Starting shop Credits are now 35000.
- Lancer shop price is now 9400.
- Gunship shop price is now 14400.
- Rogue shop price is now 16415.
- Assault shop price is now 19985.
- Pulsar shop price is now 21870.
- Tech shop price is now 22995.
- Carrier shop price is now 26275.
- Dreadnought shop price is now 29700.
- AOE based weapons now use an AOE modifier to calculate their credits cost.
- All weapons have had a rough 200-400 credit cost increase.
- Turtle mode should no longer cause players to be stuck in place.
- All weapons have had their ranges decreased.
- All ships shield regen has increased by 15%.
Bug Fixing
- Audio volumes no longer stay at 0 when they are turned ‘on’.
- Audio settings should now be saved correctly.
- QuestEvent2D no longer results in a black screen / need to restart.
- Galaxy Unique events now behave correctly. There was an issue where the check to see whether an event had been used was always returning false.
- Auto-weapons are now sorted to appear first on the in-game ship buttons to avoid issues where the players did not have all the auto ones first, or had a manual weapon in the middle of them all.
- Enemy ships didn’t have any Attachments in the final sector, making it too easy. Now fixed.
- Added extra tests for gameflow state changes to allow the escape button to be shown and hidden correctly.
- Aggro Targets now get passed through to the BrainStateAttack so ships will actually chase their aggro target rather than just sitting there.
- Fixed anchoring and scaling of the No Supply Warning on the Map Scene.
- Thermal Torpedo and BF Torpedo’s explosions were too small.
- Fix for the Divert Power SFX playing on a loop – it no longer just carries on repeating itself once triggered until the end of the mission.
- Fixed assorted issues with Turtle Mode.
- Music audio no longer persists after using the Escape feature.
- Player can no longer use Escape option on the Erebus Platform.
- ‘You’ve Won!’ screen now appears after completing final mission.
- Bar cover on NPC info box now extended to cover bars of all sizes.
- Ship follow status bars no longer show if the mission is not in the running state.
- Attachment buttons now return to their greyed-out, non-blue state when they go from the charging to the activated states.
What we’re working on now
Last week, we added guides to the Steam community that detail the values of each weapon, attachment, skill and critical. We understand that players would like this information in-game and that’s something we’re working towards just now.
As we continue to look at the balancing on the game, one of the key areas we’ve identified is the early game experience, particularly for new users. With an aim to improving this, we’re working on a series of tutorial videos that will be available in-game and via our website, YouTube channel and the Steam community.
