Ostranauts News

[p]Hey Folks![/p][p][/p][p]We've updated the Arena Mode, and it is now available on Steam opt-in beta branch arena_mode. Update 0.14.99.31 adds some new features, fixes, and balance changes to the Arena Mode, where players are currently trying out the new ship combat in a special zone.[/p][h2][/h2]

• [p]Missiles now have a chance of exploding into debris when intercepted.[/p]
• [p]PDC and railgun hits no longer knockdown crew.[/p]
• [p]Crew with SkillOpsZeroG now have a 75% chance of avoiding knockdown in collisions and missile hits.[/p]
• [p]NAV sensor VIZ circle changed to be more intuitive.[/p]
• [p]Ammo and other items in stacks within containers are now exhausted one stack at a time, instead of a little from each.[/p]
• [p]Added a combat rifle, carbine, and shotgun to the game.[/p]
• [p]Small mining charges adjusted to be useful as breaching charges.[/p]
• [p]Arena Mode scorecard now has a handy screenshot button, for sharing with others.[/p]
• [p]NAV orbit lines no longer accumulate over time after rotational maneuvers.[/p]
• [p]Player ship silhouette works again in NAV when zoomed-in.[/p]
• [p]Weapon arcs flicker less now.[/p]
• [p]Save on Close now added to options menu.[/p]

[p]
[/p][p]Several of the changes here are directly as a result of our first wave of feedback from players.[/p][p]
Players were asking if missiles could do splash damage when they were shot down, so we added a chance of that happening. Other players were frustrated with constant knockdowns from direct fire hits, especially the rapid-fire PDCs from enemies. So we nixed knockdowns from those, and also added the benefit of avoiding other knockdowns in collisions and missile hits if players had SkillOpsZeroG.[/p][p][/p][p]A number of players were confused by the sensor VIZ circle on enemy ships having a notch in it. That was there to help identify the circle's center, but many interpreted it as a blind spot. So we changed the VIZ to be a solid circle with rotating stalk, which should look more intuitively like a radar sweep.[/p][p][/p][p]Players using PDCs and railguns were also frustrated by the way those weapons drained one ammo from each stack, making it hard to reload. So we've adjusted the item removal code to focus on one stack at a time now.[/p][p][/p][p]This patch also adds the new combat firearms for personnel, plus adjusts the small mining charge to be usable as a breaching charge. Docking and boarding aren't very common in Arena Mode, but expect this to be more relevant when Fire in the Hold comes out![/p][p][/p][p]For now, though, we put them in there in case you want to play with them.[/p][p]
The Arena Mode score card now has a screenshot button to help players share their builds and results. Plus some fixes to NAV rendering issues, and other UI issues.[/p][p][/p][p]As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know via the forums or our Discord (also linked on the game's main menu), if you're trying out the update. We're interested in seeing which ship designs can be the most effective![/p][p][/p][p]Best,[/p][p]Daniel Fedor[/p][p]Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC[/p]

[p]Hey folks,[/p][p]2026 is going to be a big year for Ostranauts! We talked a little bit about the future of the game in the 2025 Year in Review post, but we wanted to discuss our plans in more detail here.
[/p][h3]Some notable things coming in the Fire in the Hold Update:[/h3]

• [p]New ship weapons, sensors, and hulls[/p]
• [p]Fire and smoke[/p]
• [p]3 new stations around Ceres[/p]
• [p]New Plot around Ceres[/p]
• [p]New small arms: Combat Rifle, HG Rifle, Shotgun[/p]
• [p]Asteroid mining around Ceres[/p]
• [p]Unity 6 port/Better performance[/p]
• [p]Add emotional statbars to main HUD[/p]
• [p]Steam Workshop[/p]
• [p]Steam Cloud Saves[/p]
• [p]SteamDeck improvements[/p]
• [p]Captain/Crew skills improve ship weapon ranges and fuel efficiency[/p]
• [p]Emotional clobber events have more variety, and more interactive[/p]

[h3]Notable things coming in 1.0:[/h3]

• [p]Replace placeholder maps on other stations in the Solar System[/p]
• [p]New EVA and Pressure suits[/p]
• [p]Improved modding support[/p]
• [p]Steam Achievements[/p]
• [p]Bug Fixes[/p]
• [p]Polish and quality of life changes[/p]

[p]We are committing to Steamworks support for 1.0 launch. We want players to be able to take advantage of modding tools to tweak their experience to their liking. With just a text editor and pixel art tool, it should be possible to edit items, characters, plots, maps, recipes, and even the star system itself![/p][p]Plus, some clever players are figuring out even more sophisticated mods to such things as crew AI, character creation, and even UI changes.[/p][p][/p][h3]Post 1.0[/h3][p]
We plan to continue supporting Ostranauts after 1.0, with more bug fixes, polish, and potentially even new content. Over the course of development, we've collected a large list of ideas that were beyond the game's original scope, both from players and our own desires.[/p][p]The success of Ostranauts will have an impact. If Ostranauts suddenly becomes a massive hit, it'll be a pretty strong case for us dedicating more resources towards making it bigger and better. Or if it isn't very popular, we may have to scale back.[/p][p]Either way, though, we don't see 1.0 as the end of Ostranauts's development. Merely a signal to potential customers that Ostranauts has reached the end of what we promised in our original Roadmap.[/p][p][/p][h3]Arena Mode Beta live now![/h3][p]
In preparation for Fire in the Hold, we’ve been working on a combat testing build, called Arena Mode, where you can pick out a preset ship and jump right into combat. Or you can edit a preset, or even make your own from scratch![/p][p] [/p][p]From there, you'll be attacked by endless waves of increasingly difficult ships. It's up to you and your ship design to last as long as possible.[/p][p]When you're defeated, you'll receive an after action report, and score, depending on how many waves of enemies you survive, how much damage you caused, and how expensive your ship was. This should be a great way to get some low-risk practice with designing and piloting ships in combat, for those who want to engage with that system in the upcoming milestone.[/p][p]You can check out Arena Mode by accessing the arena_mode branch, which can be done by following the instructions here.[/p][p]We’ve also created a text guide which explains how to play Arena Mode and how to engage in ship combat: [/p][p]Arena Mode Guide[/p][p]So strap-in to your flight seats! Power-on your NAV systems! (Maybe pack an extra fire extinguisher!) And go get 'em![/p][p]We can't wait to see what you come up with for ship designs, and how far they can get.[/p]

[p]Happy new year, everyone!
[/p][p]After restful holidays, the team here at BBG is back at work, getting Ship Combat ready. And I wanted to take a few minutes to look back at what we've been up to, and what's next.[/p][p][/p][p]For the first half of 2025, our work primarily focused on hardening the game. Each build, we would reevaluate which issues players were having most, and worked on fixes and features to alleviate them. This could be bug fixes, UI changes, performance optimization, new features, or other quality of life enhancements.[/p][p][/p][p]During that time, we gradually ramped-up our focus on new work for our final milestone, Fire in the Hold (v0.15). And as the year came to a close, we were nearly full-time on that milestone, only pausing to fix issues when they particularly disrupted players of the live patch.[/p][p]
Here's what that looked like, as a timeline:[/p][p]
Red lines are major updates, with new features and content. Orange lines are smaller features and significant fixes. And yellow lines are hotfixes, primarily addressing bugs players found.[/p][p][/p][p]The infographic also has blue lines for each of the major devlog and preview posts we made, plus green sections for when Ostranauts was on discount.[/p][p][/p][p]As you can see, 2025 was a pretty busy year! So busy, in fact, that we ended up postponing our release of Fire in the Hold to 2026.[/p][p][/p][p]And that brings us to the second part of this post.[/p][h2]What's coming in 2026?[/h2][p]While we weren't able to release Fire in the Hold in 2025, we did manage to get it into closed beta. And if you follow my Bsky account at all, you've probably seen a few of the screenshots coming from testers over the past few weeks.[/p][p][/p][p]Here are a few highlights from testing so far:[/p][p]
[/p][p]Figure 1: a revised OKLG with 3 docking ports, and one is occupied by an Ibex modified to carry a small craft docked in its own central docking port.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Figure 2: Retrofitting a police Vector Mk III with sensors, PDC, and mass thrower.[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]Figure 3: Ship Combat Shot and Hit Indicators[/p][p]
[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]Figure 4: Smoke and Contaminant Alarms[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Figure 5: Debris from a ship scuttling in an asteroid field.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Figure 6: Sensor view of a derelict wreck embedded in some asteroids.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Figure 7: Stray fire from a nearby ship battle, with asteroids and a beacon nearby.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Figure 8: Sprites for some new ship weapon types.[/p][p][/p][p]As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts in 0.15! Aside from ship combat and fire, there are customizable NAV stations, asteroids and mining, and even new possible ship designs with multiple docking ports.[/p][p][/p][p]The plan from here is to continue the closed 0.15 beta as we fix bugs and adjust balance issues. And once that is in a state where it's stable and entertaining, we'll push the patch to public_test for the rest of Steam players to try out.[/p][p][/p][p]At that point, the game will be feature and content complete, and the primary focus will be on stability, quality of life, performance, and general polish as we approach 1.0. Our hope is that we can achieve this in early 2026. Though, as history has shown us, our predictions can be wrong![/p][p][/p][p]As always, if you have any questions or other feedback, we're keen to hear it! The best place to post is as a reply to this Steam announcement, which we'll monitor for at least a few days. But we also keep an eye on our Discord and comments to our Reddit posts. Thanks for reading, and we hope you all have a prosperous 2026![/p][p][/p][p]Best,[/p][p]Daniel Fedor[/p][p]Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC[/p]

[p]Hey Folks![/p][p][/p][p]Lately, we've been focusing a lot of attention on getting the Fire In the Hold (0.15) Milestone ready. It's getting closer, and we expect to be in closed beta testing as soon as this week.[/p][p][/p][p]If you want a sneak peek at some of the sensor and weapon features it'll include, check out this short video of a battle between ships:[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][h2]Content Creator Sign-Up[/h2][p]And speaking of closed betas, are you a content creator interested in Ostranauts? If so, fill out this form to get updates on future opportunities and promo materials as we get closer to 1.0 launch.[/p][p][/p][h2]QoL Patch[/h2][p]And last, but not least, what about this patch? We're still trying to reserve some dev time to keep fixing and improving the existing game. Update v0.14.5.20 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.[/p][p][/p][p]This is a hotfix update to our "Inventory Overhaul" update, which includes fixes and improvements for undocking, the PDA Vizor, inventory, and others.[/p][p][/p][p]Saves from v0.14.0.0 and later should work. Note that if you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.[/p][p]
Note: 📢 indicates changes inspired by community feedback![/p][h2][/h2]

• [p]Undocking from ground stations no longer obliterates large ships.[/p]
• [p]PDA Vizor presets and saving now works more reliably, and older saves with problems can be fixed via 'pda reset' console command.[/p]
• [p]📢Inventory Trash slot is now in the bottom left, instead of top left.[/p]
• [p]Inventory Trash slot timer now ignores fast-forward, and correctly resets when new items placed in it.[/p]
• [p]Click-swapping an item in a container's inventory grid no longer makes the new item invisible outside of that grid.[/p]
• [p]📢Painting item install jobs via PDA now maintains item rotation between installs.[/p]
• [p]Box Sled ship type removed from starting ships.[/p]
• [p]Damaged doors no longer have the Access Locks option.[/p]
• [p]📢Autovents now power-on into the closed state, instead of open, to avoid losing atmosphere during a power cycle.[/p]
• [p]Bash action is now available on items after a save/load.[/p]
• [p]Characters will no longer get trapped in an infinite teleport loop when standing up from chairs.[/p]

[p]One of the more concerning problems we've heard reported involved large ships trying to undock from a ground station. They were frequently colliding with the ground on pushback, and sometimes causing total destruction.[/p][p]
This patch adjusts the pushback to avoid collisions better in those cases, and large ships should once again be cleared for departure![/p][p][/p][p]We also heard reports that older saves had broken PDA Vizor after the last patch. So this patch improves how those settings are saved and loaded, and keeps settings between crew members. It also includes a new command users can use to factory reset their PDA if it's stuck in a bad setting. Simply open the debug console (default F3 key), and type "pda reset" to scrub the settings back to their defaults.[/p][p]
A number of users requested the inventory trash slot move away from the head to avoid mis-clicks and lost items, so we swapped that with the social items slot. We also fixed the timer on trash to make it easier to undo.[/p][p]
While testing this, we also found a bug that hid the cursor item when item swapping, and were able to fix that.[/p][p]
Users have also requested that the PDA install painting cursor remember item orientation between each click. It turns out we had that in Ship Editor, but not the main game, so we carried that over.[/p][p]
Two changes were the result of watching new players struggle with the game. First, we finally removed the Box Sled ship as a character creation option. Way too many users would suffocate trying to board that ship, not realizing it had an open floor between the airlock and cabin. We tried making this ship only appear after a few new games were started, but it wasn't enough.[/p][p]
Now, you can still get the ship, but it has to be more deliberate. The ship broker should basically always have one in stock.[/p][p]
Second, a lot of users would encounter damaged doors, right click on them, and see "Access Lock." And reasonably assume that was how to get them working again. So we removed that option from damaged doors.[/p][p]
Another long-time player request was to change the auto-vent behaviors to start "closed" instead of open. Losing power on a ship would often mean the vents briefly open after power was restored. And in some ships, this could mean certain death, as the limited air was lost.[/p][p]
They now start in closed state, to avoid this unexpected air loss.[/p][p][/p][p]Finally, we fixed a few other issues players encountered with missing Bash actions and chair dismounting.[/p][p]
We hope everyone's getting settled-in for some cozy holidays! The team here at Blue Bottle Games will gradually be heading out for holiday breaks over the next few days, likely until the new year.[/p][p]
I may poke my head in here and there to see if anyone needs anything, but other than that, I'm looking forward to a few days of food, a warm fire, some (arguably) friendly games of cards with the family, and maybe a homemade karaoke night or two.[/p][p]
From everyone at BBG, we hope you have a safe and happy winter break, we wish you a healthy and prosperous 2026![/p][p]
Best,[/p][p]Daniel Fedor[/p][p]Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC[/p]

[p]Hey Folks![/p][p]
Update v0.14.5.18 is now available on Steam, and your clients should be updating shortly.[/p][p]
This is a hotfix update to our "Inventory Overhaul" update, which includes some quality of life improvements for Vizor and the QAB, plus other fixes.[/p][p][/p][p]Saves from v0.14.0.0 and later should work. Note that if you were experiencing issues in the older save, this patch may fix some, but others may persist depending on the cause.[/p][p]
Note: 📢 indicates changes inspired by community feedback![/p][h2][/h2]

• [p]📢Jettison menu option has been removed for all non-corpse objects.[/p]
• [p]Corpses should no longer become hotter than the Sun and explode the ships/stations they are on.[/p]
• [p]PDA Vizor presets should now remember their individual settings.[/p]
• [p]F3 console now has a 'wipe' command to clear any stale signal box settings on the currently selected item.[/p]
• [p]Signal boxes now run periodic audits of their settings to avoid stale links.[/p]
• [p]Using PASS, transit, or other teleportation services while docked should no longer drain RCS on ships left behind.[/p]
• [p]Docking/undocking from a ship should no longer cause damage that was leftover from previous docking encounters.[/p]
• [p]4L and 8L drink flasks should now use correct image in paperdoll UI.[/p]
• [p]Haul tasks involving corpses should no longer throw null reference exceptions when PDA is opened.[/p]
• [p]Using PASS should no longer throw null reference exceptions if one of the involved ships tried to spawn something.[/p]

[p]Many players have mentioned accidentally jettisoning items when using the QAB (context menu), which was an unfortunate necessity before the inventory update added a Trash option. Now that Trash exists, however, we can finally remove Jettison from the QAB (except for corpses, that is).[/p][p][/p][p]Speaking of corpses, with the help of some player saves, we were finally able to figure out why some stations were becoming so hot they exploded from pressure. It turns out that our body head code had a blind spot, which if left unchecked, could cause temperatures to rise indefinitely.[/p][p][/p][p]In some cases, this happened to corpses inside EVA suits, causing them to heat up the air inside to temperatures hotter than a star. And when that helmet was removed, all air in the station would superheat, expand, and cause the station to explode.[/p][p][/p][p]The PDA Vizor app now remembers settings from preset-to-preset, which should hopefully make it less of a pain to use. And signal boxes now have some self-auditing code to help clean up stale or broken references blocking their use. (Users can also now manually reset the signal box using the F3 console's "wipe" command.)[/p][p][/p][p]PASS and other teleporting travel should no longer cause RCS fuel to go missing upon return to a vessel. And docking/undocking should no longer cause extra damage if the vessel was previously bumped by NPC ships.[/p][p]
Finally, there were a few smaller null fixes, and typos corrected to fix missing sprites.[/p][p]
As always, there's plenty more for us to fix, change, and add! And we'll be continuing in roughly that order. In the meantime, let us know if this patch helps you out, as well as if it reveals new problems![/p][p]
Best,[/p][p]Daniel Fedor[/p][p]Founder, Blue Bottle Games, LLC[/p]