Stellar Warfare News

The main update for this week is the ship editor. I have experimented a bit with new positions for the elements. I am not 100% satisfied yet, but it is another step in the right direction. Especially because you can now always see the stats of the current ship and the changes.



The following changes have also been included in this patch.

New content:

• Added the Destructor Pod heavy missile launcher
  
• Added the Swansong medium multi missile launcher
  
• Added the Directa heavy missile launcher
  
• Added the Tirqa anti building projectile launcher
  
• Added the Reload cycler module
  
• Added the King heavy ship
  
• Added the Ratler medium cannon that fires in bursts of 3 projectiles
  

Balancing:

• Reduced Blossomer damage from 20 to 12
  
• Reduced Brackaria damage from 18 to 16
  
• Gauss repeater increased range to 185 and damage to 12 (from 7)
  
• Gauss slinger reduced cooldown to 8 (from 10)
  
• Gauss cannon decreased range to 175 and damage to 16
  
• Reduced Daedalus cost from 1000/1000 to 800/800
  

Misc:

• Decreased border radius in unlocked ships menu
  
• Algor has been helping with some texture fixes to make the textures look more uniform
  
• Improved challenger texture
  
• Updated Light Frigate model
  
• Algor retextured more ships
  
• Algor did some nice color experiments again
  
• When placing a building you now see a maximum of 5 'cant build' circles to save on performance
  
• When placing a building you now only see 1 'canbuild' circle based on which object is closest to the new building you are trying to place (can be both a building or a surveyor)
  
• The distance check is now using sqrddistance instead of vector3.distance to save on performance
  
• The distance to start drawing 'can build circles' is now better matched to the actual distance where you can place in. So the circle only shows when the building you want to place is already in range.
  
• The red 'cant build circles' distance is now better matched as well, meaning they only show up if the building you want to place is too close to an obstacle
  
• Added the current ship stats for the ship that is being inspected (Health bonus, speed bonus, shield bonus, metal and power cost reductions)
  
• Moved speed row up by 1
  
• Ship inspector now also shows custom properties like 'Has lasershield' or 'Increased projectiles'. In the future this will be replaced by actual values.
  
• Fixed a bug where modules in the editor were being added indefinitely
  
• Rounded stats values to nearest integer and applied more styling
  
• Improved ship editor layout more
  
• Added a custom dropdown size for each ship so that it doesnt overlap other labels
  
• For the metal and power cost bonus I've removed the double 'minus' icon
  

I've added a whole bunch of features in the last two weeks or so. You can find the summary below.

Main gameplay changes:

• New building construction animation effects
  
• You can now control ships directly
  
• Black holes added to the maps
  

Unit and weapon changes:

• Increased Offender price from 600/800 to 800/1000
  
• Increased Relentless HP from 2400 to 3000 and reduced speed from 60 to 40
  
• Duo Cannon now has proper weapon description (from heavy to medium)
  
• Fixed "Lancer flavor text calls it slow despite a base speed of 104 for a medium."
  
• Added the Photon Devastator
  
• Added the Magma Devastator
  
• Added Anomaly Extractor that can be placed near wormholes for a big energy and metal bonus
  
• Black hole minimap indicator visual added
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Gui changes:

• Unit thumbnail health values now update 1x per second
  
• You no longer have a few seconds delay when making your first unit
  
• Selected unit thumbnails are no longer being shown in direct control mode
  
• Updated ship editor visuals
  
• Fixed "Start game menu from the fleet editor does not have base assault option."
  
• Tweaked lighting in multiplayer menu
  
• Updated Anomaly Extractor thumbnail (with black hole)
  
• Updated Anomaly Extractor again (without black hole)
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Other gameplay changes:

• Ships now take damage when too close to black holes
  
• Units under Direct Control now have only half cooldown
  
• Made shields less bright in direct control mode
  
• Default shields are now less bright @Rysten (will be in next patch)
  
• Fixed the 'ship under attack' and 'building under attack' notification being played incorrectly
  
• Uploaded the latest changes to the playtest build on steam
  
• Tweaked missile launch sounds
  
• Anomaly Extractor 'in use' visual is now disabled while being created. It is shown while placing however as to indicate it is in range of the anomaly
  
• Reworked sound limiting. There is now a maximum of 10 sounds being played every second with a minimum of 0.2 seconds in between sounds. This is to prevent audio distortion in large scale battles.
  
• Increased purple planet brightness
  
• Skybox tweaks
  
• Updated black hole visuals
  
• Updated thumbnail weapon indicators
  
• Added black hole indicators to the minimap
  
• Buildings do not take damage while near black holes
  
• Map Void now has 1 black hole in the centre
  
• Map Nebulea now has 1 black hole to the side
  
• Map Deep Space now has 2 black holes to both sides
  
• Updated black hole positoning
  
• Fixed a bug where the 'is active' effect from the Anomaly Extractor was invisible after placement despite being in range of an anomaly
  
• Increased the damage dealt to units near black holes
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Big bugfix round for the new functionalities:

• fixed new build effect for sp
  
• fixed new build effect for mp
  
• disabled bomber launch while still building
  
• disabled metal storage while still building
  
• disabled power storage while still building
  
• disabled popularion increase while still building
  
• disabled fighter launch while still building
  
• disabled weapons while still building
  
• fixed 1 extra building being spawned per building placed in multiplayer
  
• fixed new building effect original building not being sent over network
  
• fixed new building effect dummy building not being sent over network
  
• fixed isDummy bool not set for the new building in multiplayer
  
• fixed new building dissolve effect nog working properly for pre-placed buildings in campaign (caused huge fps drop, fixed now)
  
• fixed engless error bug upon structure completion in mp
  
• fixed reference of original multiplayer object not setting the dummy reference correctly
  
• fixed defensive structures colors being incorrect while building because it would try to base the entire texture set on a weapon texture instead of the building model texture
  
• fixed an issue with the GUI staying visible even when it should be disabled
  
• fixed an issue with GUI visibility not reverting to the previous status when exiting bridge cam
  

Thats it for this update. Make sure to check out the TenseGames Youtube channel if you want more visual updates. Or join the Discord if you want to do some pvp or coop!

• Added the Indomitable heavy ship
  
• Added the Repentful cruiser
  
• Added the Relentless
  
• Increased Hive heavy carrier health to 2200
  
• Added the Damara bulky medium bomber carrier
  

Stats changes:

• Changed Heavy Corvette stats after discussing it with @High Council
  
• Changed Patroller cost from 150/50 to 125/75
  
• Changed Discus cost from 50/150 to 75/125
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Its not perfect yet, but I have added some quality of life additions. I'd test this a bit more and roll it out later, but since the amount of ships in the build queue is currently not visible in the live version I will roll out this update to fix that anyway including the following:

• Added light effects to all projectiles. Might remove if it costs too much performance
  
• Fixed "In any game mode, the number of ships underconstruction is no longer visible"
  
• Fixed flaktripler doing no AOE in SP
  
• Fixed shift-drag-select multiple time keeps adding units to the selection list
  
• Doomed ships deaccelerate to 15 speed now while dying. This makes them die more naturally rather than stopping abrubtly.
  
• Doomed ships now add a random rotation upon entering doomed state.
  
• Uploaded the new 'lights on projectiles' and 'deathroll' build to the playtest build on steam for @🥇 Backer reward role to try out
  
• You can now scroll through the unlocked ships @Algor (GMT+3)
  
• Added icons based on used weapons to the selected unit thumbnails
  
• Added healthbars to the selected unit thumbnails
  
• Added icon colors based on weapon used to the selected unit thumbnails (green for anti-light weapons, red for anti-building etc)
  
• Styled unit thumbs more
  
• Fixed Hive and Auxillum thumb
  
• Added easy loadout inspection for ship thumbs (weapon type & damagetype)
  
• Added 'click unit thumb' to select that particular unit
  
• Made unit thumbnail Click = select single unit
  
• Made unit thumbnail Shift + click = remove single unit from selection
  
• Made unit thumbnail Ctrl + click = select similar units only (removes others from selection)
  
• Made unit thumbnail Ctrl + shift + click = remove all similar units of the clicked thumbnail from selection
  
• You can now shift-leftclick to add 5 units to the build queue instead of 1
  
• You can now shift-rightclick to remove 5 units to the build queue instead of 1
  

Next up I will make the unit-thumb selection a bit more smooth. Its currently a bit wonky I feel, so I will be improving that asap.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I'm trying out a new font. I'm also slowly replacing the yellow accents wherever I can with blue ones because it looks more stylish. I am still looking for an artist for a compete GUI rework, but until then I will improving little bits here and there to keep making it better and better.

Apart from that I also:

• Added The Rattler
  
• Added The Megarepeater
  
• Added The Gauss Slinger
  
• Added The Agoniser heavy ship
  
• Replaced shipyard flak with Shipyard Super Autocannon
  
• Improved shipyard beam weapon and beam costs
  
• Added the Overwhelmer missile pod
  
• Removed unneeded json volume load file
  
• Added several checks to try to prevent the volume-slider-reset-bug