Deep Space Battle Simulator News

This update once again tries to improve the immersion inside the capital ship by adding new fuse boxes that get broken if their sector gets too damaged, and fires are now dealing continuous damage to the sector they are in until they get extinguished. A brand new fire extinguisher will be introduced in this update, they spawn on designated positions inside your capital ship.

You might also want to try to repair the new fuse boxes when they break due to too much damage in their sector since every broken fuse box will bring your available energy down by 2% until repaired. There are 2 fuse boxes in each sector of the ship, so there are 10 in total.



There are also new sounds for interior fires, fixes for Linux dedicated servers, the respawn timer in the "Energy Controls" screen now gets updated correctly if you increase the Life Support Energy and the AI will now try to dodge the super laser instead of just dying to it.


Full changelog:
- ADDED: AI Tactical Droid now will dodge enemy super lasers if possible
- ADDED: circuit panels all around the ship, if their ship sector gets too damaged, the break and need repairs, your ship loses 2 energy for each broken circuit board
- ADDED: fire extinguisher (can extinguish small fires inside your ship)
- ADDED: small interior fires now deal damage to the sector of the ship they are in (only 0.1-0.2% of max HP per minute right now, but they stack!)
- CHANGED: interior damage fire sound effect
- FIXED: "Energy Controls" UI now displays the correct respawn timer (scales with Life Support Energy)
- FIXED: fixed a few minor fire bugs
- FIXED: updated Linux steam libraries so everyone can now host dedicated Linux servers

This update introduces 2 new levers that can be operated from the capital ship bridge. The first one enables or disables the new "Lockdown Mode", which disables all doors (except your spawn room door) which can help you deal with unwanted intruders but limits the mobility of your teammates as well. The second lever suppresses the intruder alert, in case you want to disable it.

Since it had no functionality right now, I removed the captains' seat in the middle of the bridge to give players a bit more room to stand there and interact with the new levers, but it will be readded soon with an actual gameplay use. There will be a lot more of these levers and buttons, that can be interacted with directly instead of through an UI if the feedback from the community is positive.

One thing the game is currently lacking is the feeling of danger while being inside the capital ship, there are just a few rumbles and fires and not a lot of sound effects. This is something I want to work on in the future, for this update I already added a lot more interior fires, that spread the more damage their corresponding part of the ship has suffered. These fires currently deal damage, but can't be put out which is something that will be added in the future. I also optimized these fire a bit more and added a sound effect to them.

There are also still some players being killed by the elevator, this update introduces more fixes which hopefully resolves the issue. I also improved some floor collisions to make the movement on the smoother, fixed an issue that caused dedicated servers to shut down after not being restarted for a few days, and you no longer have to press the key to change target modes twice if you want to switch from the "Barrage" mode inside a turret.

There also was an issue that prevented Linux users from starting the game through Steam, it has now been resolved, sorry for the inconvenience!



-ADDED: "lockdown doors" lever on the bridge, locks down all doors except the spawn room door
-ADDED: "disable intruder alert" lever on the bridge
-ADDED: more interior fires when the ship gets damaged
-ADDED: fire sound to the interior fires
-REMOVED: removed captains chair for now (had no functionality, will be added back on a later date with an actual function)
-IMPROVED: made some floor collisions smoother
-FIXED: fixed some cases where the elevator would kill you
-FIXED: having to press the target mode change key twice after firing in barrage mode

This update introduces a new collision detection for smaller fighters, they now get damaged when they hit a capital ship or another object, this damage scales with the speed the fighter had on impact. There will also be a new sound effect playing when the fighter collides with something.

There also were some issues with the tutorial, some parts were confusing to newer players, and some parts did not work correctly when the player flew too far with the capital ship. There are now measures implemented that makes the tutorial less frustrating for newer players and easier to understand.

Full changelog:
- ADDED: collision effects and collision damage for smaller fighters
- IMPROVED: tutorial small fighter dummy now adjusts its location to make it easier for players to see it
- IMPROVED: tutorial now limits the movement of the capital ship to prevent unforseen situation making the tutorial hard to complete
- IMPROVED: engine increase tutorial part now has a blinking button, making it easier for players to understand what button they need to press

After the fix released yesterday allowed players to join password-protected dedicated servers, player hosted servers with password protection still had issues. These issues are now completely fixed and you can join private servers hosted by your friends again!

This update also introduces an on-screen target assistance for capital ships that have the "Super Laser" upgrade equipped, to make it easier to understand why your super laser is not on target.

The "US Official" dedicated server also experienced some minor lag issues due to some dedicated server code issues, these are now resolved and server performance should stay consistently good even after not being restarted lately.

There were some improvements made to droids pathfinding and their behavior when chasing players, they should behave a bit more consistent now as well. There were also changes made to the Tactical Droid AI, there are now multiple difficulty options you can choose from so both newer and more experienced players can have a challenge. The Tactical Droid also spammed B2 attack pods to often, making it very overwhelming especially for players that played alone, they now won't use them if the player is already being attacked by a B2 Attack Droid to give players the chance to fight back.

Since they were very hard to hit due to their small size and high speed, the torpedos and B2 attack pods HP were both decreased from 40 to 30 to make destroying them a bit easier.

Full changelog:
- ADDED: added target crosshair while controlling your capital ship if you have the super laser upgrade equipped to assist aiming
- ADDED: added garbage collection for dedicated servers, server performance should not be stable no matter for how long the server is running
- ADDED: host menu AI difficulty options (easy, normal, hard, very hard)
- FIXED: server passwords not working correctly (definitely fixed this time, sorry!)
- FIXED: droid bugfixes and pathfinding improvements
- FIXED: fixed some server errors and a server crash issue
- FIXED: smaller fighters no longer play the explosion effect when they just entered a hangar and did not get destroyed
- CHANGED: Tactical Droid now won't spam B2 Attack Pods anymore, has a limit depending on the AI difficulty
- CHANGED: reduced torpedo HP from 40 to 30
- CHANGED: reduced B2 pod HP from 40 to 30

This is the first bigger update for the game that introduces a new gameplay element: the barrage fire mode. It allows you to create an area of denial, your turrets won't just shoot at one location, but in one general direction so you can hit multiple areas of the enemy ship at once.

I also was told that players who invert their mouse only want to invert their y-axis, not their x-axis, so I updated the in-game "invert mouse" settings to only affect the y-axis.

Another issue was the Tactical Droid AI being too strong, especially for newer players. They now don't start attacking immediately after a new round started to give players more time to prepare their ship for battle. The frequency of their special attacks like torpedos got reduced as well, but now increases with every player in the enemy team.

You can now also choose the "co-op mode" in the server host menu, this will allow you to play together with other players against the Tactical Droid AI.

Full changelog:
- ADDED: "Barrage Fire Mode" to the turrets, which lets all of the turrets of that type shoot in a general direction
- ADDED: "Co-op mode" option to the server host menu allowing you to play with multiple players against the AI
- CHANGED: reduced main menu music volume
- CHANGED: "invert mouse" option to "invert mouse y-axis" option
- CHANGED: AI Tactical Droid now has a delay of 30 seconds after a round start before beginning to attack
- CHANGED: AI Tactical Droid now has a lower attack frequency against 1 player, but the frequency increases the more players he faces