Deep Space Battle Simulator News

This update brings a much-requested change to the "Bomber" small fighter, the mines it drops now fall downwards (relative to the bombers location/rotation of course), making it easier to execute bombing runs on the enemy capital ships for example. While working on the new mines, I also decreased their size a bit and fixed a few bugs with them like their explosions not playing a sound sometimes.

Another change you will notice is the upgrade purchasing menu will feel more responsive now, and if you purchased the same upgrade multiple times, it will display a multiplier on the upgrade instead of having the same upgrade added to the "purchased upgrades" list multiple times, making it look a lot cleaner.



There also was a bug with the AI getting stuck behind doors after the doors were in lockdown mode and opened again, which is now fixed.

Full changelog:
-ADDED: mines now fall downwards (relative to the bombers location/rotation), to make bombing easier
-CHANGED: decreased mine size
-CHANGED: updated "Bomber" small fighter description to reflect the other changes
-IMPROVED: made upgrade purchasing more responsive
-IMPROVED: choosing the same upgrade multiple times now displays "3x" for example instead of having 3 different entries in the chosen upgrades UI
-FIXED: AI getting stuck on doors that were locked down and opened again
-FIXED: mine explosions sometimes having no sounds

This update introduces hitmakers for the personal defense weapons and the small fighter lasers, making it clearer to understand when you hit something.

There are also lots of improvements for co-op play, there are now two more difficulty options, both harder than the current ones called "extreme" and "impossible" for the players who are looking for a bigger challenge. The Tactical Droid AI will now also install and use the super laser if the difficulty is set to "Hard" or more difficult, the amount of AI interceptors spawned by the Tactical Droid now scales with the difficulty level, resulting in fewer interceptors at lower levels, and more on higher levels. I fixed some bugs for the Tactical Droid too and increased the size of the torpedos and B2 pods to make them easier to hit.

Full changelog:
- ADDED: hitmarkers for players and small fighters
- ADDED: "extreme" and "impossible" coop difficulty options
- ADDED: amount of spawned AI Interceptors by the Tactical Droid now scales with the coop difficulty
- ADDED: Tactical Droid will now install and use the super laser if difficulty is at least "hard"
- CHANGED: increased torpedo and B2 pod size to make them easier to hit
- FIXED: some Tactical Droid bugs

This update brings the first version of in-game team voice chats to improve communications, you can bind a key you would like to push-to-talk and then communicate with your teammates in-game. There are also some improvements for the quick callouts that you can use to send pre-determined text messages to your team, like requesting them to hack the enemy hangar doors.

Capital ships now also look a lot more damaged if they are low on HP with additional, larger fires and new smoke effects. You can also set new config values for your dedicated servers to allow for co-op play on them or to disable the Tactical Droid AI. Also, there are fixes for AI not shooting intruders, players sometimes being invisible, and hopefully, a fix for players occasionally falling through the floor after respawning.

If you experience any issues, please let me know!



Full changelog:
- ADDED: first experimental version of team voice chat
- ADDED: more exterior damage representation
- ADDED: "coop" dedicated server config option (true = coop enabled)
- ADDED: "disablebot" dedicated server config option (true = AI bot disabled)
- IMPROVED: quick callouts menu
- FIXED: Droids/Barsk not shooting intruders on Linux servers (like the official servers)
- FIXED: players being sometimes invisible on round start
- FIXED: potential fix for falling through the floor

There are a few changes to the lockdown mode in this update, there are now notifications if the ship you are currently on is in lockdown mode to make it easier to understand for players. You can now also shoot doors to unlock them, but this takes around one minute per door, and two minutes for a keycard-locked door.

The scoreboard now can display more players at once, and also shows the steam avatars of the players. This update also brings fixes for shotgun shots having no sounds for other players, dedicated servers not working with passwords, and players not being kicked out of the bridge seats after disconnecting, blocking them for other players. This update also should reduce the lag spikes when the two capital ships collide.

You can now also change the upgrade budget when hosting a server, and the costs for the "Overloaded Shield Generator", "Laser Crystals", "Optimized Reactor Core", "Heal Drone", "Sweepo Droid" and "Bridge Turrets" upgrades were reduced.


Full changelog:
- ADDED: can shoot doors to eventually open them, takes very long (~1min with the rifle for normal doors, 2mins for keylock doors)
- ADDED: lockdown notifications
- ADDED: scoreboard now shows players steam avatars
- CHANGED: reduced costs for "Overloaded Shield Generator", "Laser Crystals", "Optimized Reactor Core", "Heal Drone", "Sweepo Droid" and "Bridge Turrets" upgrades
- IMPROVED: scoreboard can now display more players at once
- FIXED: giant lag spikes when the two capital ships collide
- FIXED: shotgun having no sounds for other players
- FIXED: dedicated server passwords not working
- FIXED: bug with players remaining in their seats after disconnecting preventing others from using them

This update introduces 2 new upgrades: The "Sweepo" firefighter droid and the "Bridge Turret" defense option. The Sweepo patrols your ship and extinguishes any fires that may occur in battle. The bridge defense turrets are placed on the three entrances of your bridge and will protect you from any intruders as long as your generators are not disabled.

Also, there now is a button to disable the door lockdown in your spawn room, so you can always access your bridge even if the enemies gained control of it and enabled the door lockdown.

Another issue were players shooting their teammates to access the stations they were using, so I disabled friendly fire to prevent toxicity between teammates.

There were also some issues with the new interior fires, they should now be fixed. The new extinguisher now also has sounds, the elevator no longer kills you and the password screen has better visibility as well.




Full changelog:
- ADDED: sound to fire extinguisher
- ADDED: "Override door lockdown" button to spawn room
- ADDED: Bridge defense turrets upgrade
- ADDED: firefighter droid upgrade
- CHANGED: disabled damage to teammates and you can no longer kick your teammates out of stations
- IMPROVED: password screen visibility
- FIXED: some fire/fire extinguisher bugs
- FIXED: elevator no longer kills players