Deep Space Battle Simulator News

Before this update, lasers dealt the same damage no matter how far they traveled, and then just ceased to exist after reaching their maximum range. Now they will have a damage falloff at range, and deal only 70% of their normal damage. To compensate for this nerf in damage, I increased the damage of all lasers slightly, so you shouldn't notice a big difference in the total damage output.

Fighters are pretty strong right now, especially since you could just fly in a hangar and then enter the fighter again to fully restore its HP. Now, there are repair stations inside the hangars that repair your fighters slowly over time, to give damaged fighters a bit more downtime. The "Heavy Fighter" rockets also got their damage reduced from 150 to 100, since it was a bit too strong.

There are also some minor additions and bugfixes, you can take a look at them in the full changelog below. One bug that is still in the game that I am currently working on fixing, is fighters sometimes being unable to enter the enemy capital ships, even if the hangar doors are destroyed/hacked. I added a small debug number at the top left of the screen, if you experience this bug please let me know what that number said at the moment you couldn't enter the hangar, this will help me out tremendously. Anyways, expect this bug to be fixed soon.

Full changelog:
-ADDED: damaged fighters now keep their HP when landing in a hangar
-ADDED: repair stations to the hangars that activate when a damaged fighter is parked below and then start repairing it
-ADDED: "distance to enemy capital ship" info to ship controls UI
-CHANGED: laser weapons now lose some damage if their target is far away, instead of always dealing full damage and then disappearing if they reached their maximum range
-CHANGED: laser weapons now deal 30% more damage at point-blank range, but 30% less damage at their maximum range (this is a small nerf for double laser turrets)
-NERFED: reduced Heavy Fighter rocket damage from 150 to 100
-BUFFED: increased "Large Laser Turret" range from 120,000 to 140,000
-FIXED: capital ship hangar doors blue shield flickering through the doors sometimes
-FIXED: volume setting not saving correctly

This update fixes some of the most annoying bugs, like lasers not appearing correctly if you would drive your capital ship far from its start point, which took quite some time to fix. Expect more content soon, now that these bugfixes are out of the way!

There is also a new 20-second preparation phase at the start of each round, where you are traveling in hyperspace to the battleground, you can't control the capital ship and fly out in smaller fighters while in the hyperspace/preparation phase.

There are also some smaller changes, like more camera shakes when your ship gets damaged, some extra lights for the engine switches so you can find them a bit easier, the AI now has better following behavior when driving the capital ship, as well as some minor bugfixes.

Full changelog:
-ADDED: more camera shakes when a ship part gets damaged and you are inside it
-ADDED: 20 seconds preparation phase, the ship will jump out of hyperspace into battle after it
-ADDED: hyperspace/warp visual effect and sounds
-ADDED: small light above the engine side output switches to make them easier to find
-CHANGED: increased engine sound volume slightly
-IMPROVED: AI capital ship following behavior
-FIXED: some server error spams
-FIXED: some cases where the ship would continue to fly forward after its engine was destroyed
-FIXED: lasers and other things disappearing or not appearing at all when the capital ship is far away from the center of the map

This update introduces a new repair system for the engine and a visual rework for the engine room. There are now multiple switches on the engine block, as well as an "Engine Status" screen that displays the current status of the engine, and how to fix it if it's broken or overheated for example. Fixing the engine now requires multiple steps, instead of just holding a key for a few seconds. The B1 droid and Barsk Security Guard got updated as well, so they are able to perform engine repairs with the new system,

In the new engine room, you will also find a new "overclock engine" button there, which allows you to double the output of your engine but puts your engine at risk for overheating, so use it with care!

You will also notice that there is a new fighter called "Heavy Fighter". Similar to the "Light Fighter" it is a very good allrounder, but it comes with even better stats and 6 dumb-fire rockets. This improvement will cost you 200$ of your upgrade budget per Heavy Fighter though, so you need to decide if it's worth it for your strategy.

There are also lots of smaller improvements and bug fixes coming with this update, there are new keybinding and setting options, for example, some of the older ones that had issues with saving now save correctly and the stealth fighter now has a cloak effect instead of turning completely invisible when cloaked. You can have a look at all the smaller changes in the changelog below!


Full changelog:
-ADDED: new engine model, damage and repair system that allows for different types of engine damage
-ADDED: engine status screen to the engine room, displays the current engine status and steps how to fix if it's broken
-ADDED: engine overlock from the engine room, doubles your engine speed but can overheat your engine
-ADDED: B1 droid and Barsk Security Guard can now perform multi-step repairs on the engine
-ADDED: support for fighters that cost extra money that gets reduced from your overall upgrade budget
-ADDED: "Heavy Fighter", costs 200$ extra, best overall fighter, comes with 6 dumb-fire rockets that deal lots of damage
-ADDED: cloak shader effect to cloaked stealth fighters instead of making them just invisible
-ADDED: part of the stealth fighter cockpit turns invisible from the inside as well so it's easier to see if you are cloaked
-ADDED: "invert mouse y-axis only for fighters" option
-ADDED: keybind option for opening the scoreboard (default is still "TAB")
-ADDED: "Rotate Left" and "Rotate Right" keybinding options
-IMPROVED: "Turn Input" fighter controls to allow for better smaller adjustments
-CHANGED: increased firearm laser speed from 20,000 m/s to 35,000 m/s to make it easier to hit moving targets
-CHANGED: engine exhausts are now only visible if the capital ship is accelerating instead of always as long as it was moving
-CHANGED: updated tutorial so it works with the new engine changes
-FIXED: smaller fighter collision sounds behaving inconsistently sometimes
-FIXED: hangar door shield not being visible after the hangar door got destroyed
-FIXED: players sometimes having weird view rotations after exiting a turret or fighter
-FIXED: FOV and Fighter sensitivity not saving correctly since the last update
-FIXED: turret zoom being hard-coded to "Right Mouse Button" instead of using the "Alternative Shoot Key" bind
-FIXED: "Turn Input" being the default fighter input settings instead of "Direct Input"
-FIXED: fighter input setting not saving correctly

This update further improves the new resource points system, fixing a few issues with it and adding a 50% discount on bridge mid-round upgrades for the Officer class, as well as 40% more resource points for the Crew class, since all other classes get discounts related to their position now.

There are also some quality of life improvements like hit markers for turrets, an UI info panel when looking at droids so it's easier to understand which are from your team, and which droids are from the enemy team.

The AI has been further improved as well, the AI ship will now move more often while trying to chase you down, or gain some distance between you. Playing against the AI is now a bit easier, especially on lower difficulty levels, with some nerfs to respawn timers, and overall droids the AI can spawn.

Lots of upgrades have been adjusted to make them more viable in this update as well, you can get a detailed list of the changes in the full changelog below.

Full changelog:
-ADDED: hit marker for turrets
-ADDED: Officer class now gets 50% discount on bridge mid-round upgrades
-ADDED: Crew class gets 40% more passive resource points
-ADDED: "class will be changed at the start of the next round" info to the ingame class change menu
-ADDED: enemy AI ship will now move more often, trying to chase down the player ship, or back off a bit if the ships get too close to each other
-ADDED: UI info if the droid you are looking at is a friendly or enemy droid
-CHANGED: Titanium Hull cost reduced from 650->550, Bridge Hull cost reduced from 400 to 250
-CHANGED: "Optimized reactor core" cost from 400 to 550, bonus energy from 5% to 10%
-CHANGED: "Overloaded shield generator" cost from 300 to 450, shields regenerate 10% faster instead of 5% faster
-CHANGED: killed droids on the AI ship will now take longer to respawn (10 seconds instead of 5 seconds)
-CHANGED: less B1 droids on the AI ship (medium difficulty: 2 instead of 3, highest difficulty: 5 instead of 7)
-CHANGED: AI ship torpedo/b2 pod/interceptor frequency will now not increase as drastically as before when there are multiple players in the players team
-CHANGED: halved the amount of B2 Attack Droids/Interceptor droids that the AI uses at once (medium difficulty: 1 at once instead of 2 at once)
-CHANGED: increased torpedo cost from 250 to 300
-CHANGED: reduced fighter resource point cost from 300 points to 200 points
-CHANGED: increased zoom in turrets
-CHANGED: default turret mode is now "Manual Fire" to make it more intuitive for newer players
-CHANGED: revolver sound
-CHANGED: round won't restart anymore if a second player joins while in coop mode
-FIXED: some resource point purchasing UI bugs
-FIXED: lots of server error spam, especially for coop mode
-FIXED: fighter sensitivity resetting if opening the settings menu again
-FIXED: some AI issues
-FIXED: some resource point bugs
-FIXED: double laser turret only firing out of one barrel if shooting manually

This smaller update adds icons for the resource point purchasing stations to the map so they are easier to find for newer players, it also fixes some bugs with the resource point systems like the UI sometimes not working correctly, and engineers not getting a discount on droid purchases.

Kills you make while in a smaller fighter or in a turret now also appear on the killfeed, and you get points for destroying enemy fighters. There are also lots of bug fixes related to the new fighter sensitivity option, changing classes, and the AI droids.


Full changelog:
-ADDED: resource point purchasing stations to the in-game map
-ADDED: capital ship icon for your ship to the fighter UI
-ADDED: killfeed for smaller fighter kills
-ADDED: you now get 2 scoreboard points and 10 resource points if you kill an enemy fighter (works if you sit in a fighter yourself, or in a turret)
-CHANGED: smaller fighters now can always start to shoot as long as their heat is below 100 (before only when heat was below 50)
-IMPROVED: AI pathfinding so they don't always walk to the hangars when just roaming around
-IMPROVED: Droids now aim for the small Fireo droids correctly
-FIXED: some smaller fighter heat bugs
-FIXED: some mid-round droid purchasing UI bugs
-FIXED: engineers not getting a discount on mid-round droid purchases
-FIXED: fighter sensitivity not saving correctly
-FIXED: resource point purchasing menus not disappearing after you died
-FIXED: selected class sometimes not updating/saving correctly
-FIXED: another potential fix for longer interactions not working on Linux