Stellar Warfare News

This major update brings new armed neutral ships to the game, tweaks to some resource rewards achievement related bug fixes and minor rework to both ship and projectile velocities.



Pirates, like transport ships, will grant killing reward to a players who dealt a last damaging hit to them. Unlike transports heavy armored and armed pirate ships will fight back and may easily destroy minor fleets.
Both transports and pirates will now receive a reward boost that will depend on how time passed since the match started.
Floating text displaying amount of resources granted to player now also works for neutral ships.







In order to improve on how different ships and weapons 'feels' in the game we decided to globally reduce speed of every ship and projectile in the game by 10-50%. Maps now feel slightly bigger, heavy ships and weapons heavier and light ships less annoying ;)



* - some patch notes may be omitted for the sake of the post size. For more details, please join our discord, we post our dev logs there regularly

Additions

• Pirate ships now will be randomly spawned in most of SP and MP game modes
  
• Floating text now displays for transport and pirate ships rewards
  
• Cumulative pirate hunting achievements now available
  

Tweaks & changes

• Killing reward for transports and pirate ships now gets a bonus based on amount of time passed since the match started. 120 per 10 minutes for Transport ships and 300 per 10 minutes for Pirate ships.
  
• All ships and weapons slowed down by ~10-50%
  
• All projectiles 'lifetime' increased according to speed reduction they received
  
• Arteus enhancer module speed bonus reduced to 10% from 15%
  
• Engine booster module speed bonus reduced to 6 from 12
  
• Altered visuals on some projectiles
  
• Altered spawn logic for campaign mission 6 "Alone, together"
  
• Reduced amount of heavy ships spawned in campaign mission 6 "Alone, together" to balance out heavy ships being previously buffed
  

Fixes

• Applied additional logic that should prevent issue with weapons not switching a target when clicked target has a not optimal armor type
  
• Fixed some PvP and building achievements that previously were unobtainable
  
• Fixed Deep Space map not selectable in multiplayer lobbies
  

Based on user feedback I've made one of the campaign missions a bit easier. I've also increaesed the natural projectiles sizes.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Since the earliest days of this game some players didn't like the colorful projectiles. While there have been many changes and tweaks over time I can now finally announce that people can disable them. Just press the button in the bottom of the screen to toggle between colored and natural projectiles.



I have also worked on the following:

• The toggle buttons in the bottom of the screen now give feedback which of them are active
  
• Tried several variations of natural projectiles
  
• Added pirate ships (currently disabled until a bug is fixed)
  
• Disabled the halloween mod completely since it would sometimes turn on by itself
  
• Added a blue sun and black sun superweapon structure (currently disabled, coming soon)
  
• Added the Tari medium weapon
  
• Added FireDemon to the captain name list since he became a supporter of the project on Patreon.com/tensegames
  

A whole bunch of other things are happening on the backend of things. Hopefully I can give you guys an update on those things soon. I am also working out which things I still want to add before an official V1 release. There's a lot of feedback to go through, so I'm trying to be smart/wise in deciding what to add, in what order, and what priority each item gets. I will keep you guys posted!


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hyperspace Jump
Fixed hyperspace jump in Battle Royale. Should be uploaded with the next patch. Checking if this broke jumping in SP or not. Confirmed fixed in both BR and Sp game modes. Will now check in an actual build to see if the cooldowntimer still works properly as well. Confirmed cooldown working in SP. Confirmed cooldown working in BR.Noticed cooldown is not resetting in between games. Jump cooldown is now reset in between games. Noticed jump icon messing up in BR for some reason. Fixed missing icon.

Patreon rewards
Added @FireDemon to the captain name list for transports as a patreon.com/tensegames reward. Transports will now occasionally show his name in the tooltip.
Added ThomasMarc to the captain name list for transports as a patreon.com/tensegames reward. Transports will now occasionally show his name in the tooltip.

New weapons
Added the Tari medium weapon to the game
Added the Raquor medium cannon
Added the Rail Artillery weapon to the game

Over the last couple of months a lot of new features have been added to Stellar Warfare. Think of Unit Veterancy, Superships and Overshields to name a few.

Bugs have been fixed and more quality of life features have been added. But best of all: you can now also fly and fire your spaceships!

Inspiration
Games like Men of War and Dungeon Keeper have gone a step beyond and made it so that you could also fire units in these alternative camera modes. Perhaps that gave me the idea to also add direct fire to the bridgecam and give players a more direct control over their spaceships.



This does not make the game unbalanced however. Its a fun gimmick for fun-factor purposes most of all. You must remember that while directly controlling a ship you can't build economy structures (unless already queued) or give orders to the rest of your fleet. So even with the extra firepower and the benefits this might have it is not a game-breaking or overpowered feature.

How does it work?
Select a ship and press B to enter the bridge camera. Move the mouse to look around. Use ASWD to move the ship. Hold left mouse button to fire your ships forward guns.

Harvesters and Surveyors have been excluded from this functionality. All other ships have new weapons added based on their armor types.

Light ships fire anti-medium rounds from the forward guns. Medium ships fire anti-heavy rounds and Heavy ships now fire anti-building rounds.

The fire rate depends on the type of ship as well. The lighter the ship, the higher the firerate (but the less damage as well). Your regular weapons still fire automatically if they have an angle which means you'll become a true force to reckon with!

Kamikaze!
Ships in direct control mode can now also serve as kamikaze pilots! Brace for impact!



Doing so will deal damage equal to the health of your ship to your target, and vice versa. So lets say your ship has 50 health of its 100 health left, and your opponent has 100 of its 100 health left. Then after colliding into eachother your ship will be dead while your opponent his ship will have 50 hp left.



I have also updated our youtube trailer. You can find the updated version here.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In addition to the above we have also:
- Tweaked escalation structures
- Implemented and tweaked Steam Achievements
- Updated visuals
- Added a third GUI menu
- Fixed a victory on gameleave bug
- Improved Zabu resource generation (about 30% extra resources)
- Decreased Escalation Building effectiveness (from 50% boost per escalation structure to 33%)
- Hitting asteroids in direct control mode now kills the ship
- Asteroids now block projectiles
- Added new circular ships
- Added new superships
- Rearanged menu buttons
- Updated the GUI
- Added a wave number indicator
- A number of things covered in previous updates
- Much, much more