Patch 0.8.1.0 Notes

After we released the ship upgrades and custom loadouts patch a few days ago, we fixed a number of issues (some of which are pretty important) and added a polish pass over the loadouts interface. We also addressed some of the most urgent balance issues related to the two new weapons, the Halcyon and the Plasma Cutter.

[h2]General and gameplay[/h2]

• Introduced carrier spawns (compatible with other capital ships too) and updated station layouts to allow carriers to spawn at docking bays that have enough room for a carrier. Carriers will no longer spawn in space far away from stations. Note: we introduced a new icon to represent the carrier spawn. It currently uses the 'L'arge character, like other capital ships. In a future patch we'll replace it with a dedicated 'C'arrier icon
  
• Starmap list now takes compatible spawns into account when displaying "deployable" vs "non-deployable" hints and icons. This means that if you're an interceptor trying to deploy at a base where all fighter hangars are destroyed but corvette bays are still intact, the list will now show "deployable" instead of preventing you from being able to deploy there
  
• Reduced amount of chaffs on Interceptor to 10. This should make the chaff upgrade more interesting
  
• Added a new upgrade: Efficient Booster. This upgrade reduces the booster's energy consumption by -30% at the expense of a small piece of the shield's recharge rate (-15%)
  
• Doubled the amount of hitpoints on MK5 Flak canons, as they were too easily damaged in combat
  
• Reduced Halcyon shot speed, range and damage. It still has slightly more DPS than gimbaled machine guns, but you'll need good accuracy to fully exploit it
  
• Reduced range and damage on the Plasma Cutter (although less than the Halcyon nerf). Shot speed is unchanged
  
• Reduced spread on Halcyon and Plasma Cutter, making them more accurate at larger distances
  
• Reduces heat (Halcyon) and heat+energy consumption (Plasma Cutter) to allow firing them for a longer time
  
• Fixed some Halcon and Plasma cutter settings which made their converging mode useless. The new settings should make it more easy to hit a target
  

[h2]Bug fixes[/h2]

• Fixed HUD icons being messed up at "low-quality" texture level
  
• Fixed a bug with the deploy panel that didn't refresh the ship screen's upgrades/components panel after changing the selected deployment loadout
  
• Fixed a propulsion issue caused by introducing a ramp-up factor at very low speeds. This made ships unable to take-off from planets when they were at zero/very low speeds
  
• Fixed custom loadout's automatic weapon groups being messed / mixed up together sometimes (or even having missing weapons..). Weapons are still assigned to groups automatically, but we'll provide a weapons configuration screen in a future patch
  

[h2]Improvements and UI tweaks[/h2]

• "Not enough credits" flashing text on the ship screen was moved at the top of the screen instead of occluding the center; loadout credits text is now smaller to fit on a single line for large credits values..
  
• Selecting a specific component's category in the ship's loadout panel will now filter hardpoints that match this category in the 3D viewport
  
• Changed weapons hardpoints to a diamond shape (the hexagon was too close to a circle and be confusing)
  
• Weapon's details info panel text is now colored the same as the weapon card in the upgrades panel
  
• Fixed some incorrect weapon details that appeared in the info panel, like for missile/torpedo launchers
  
• Added locking range information for missile/torpedo launchers in the info panel
  
• Duplicating a loadout will now automatically pop up the rename window
  
• Deleting a loadout will now pop up a confirmation window to avoid doing it accidentally
  
• Icon tweaks (ex.: info panel's dots are now smaller; added an up/down icon to match whether an attribute improves or hurts a ship's attribute)
  

[h2]Misc[/h2]

• added final version of the new musical tracks with smoother transitions
  
• added a new audio effect for the Plasma Cutter weapon