Visual Polish and Performance (v0.6.18)

[p]Nothing massive this time, but this build includes some visual upgrades, meaningful performance improvements, and a handful of quality of life features.[/p][p][/p][h2]Thermal Lance[/h2][p]A new spinal weapon has entered the loot tables: the Thermal Lance.[/p][p][/p][p]It functions similarly to the Cryo Lance, but deals Thermal damage instead. Like all spinal weapons, it can be equipped with a fixed firing direction.[/p][p][/p][h2]Navigation Improvement[/h2][p]The navigation panel now features a proper territory shader. Factions are clearly highlighted, and debris types are displayed separately around encounters that include them. This should make the map easier to read and help you understand what you’re flying into.[/p][p][/p][p]Faction territories are visible even before you reveal specific areas, so you can still plan your route.[/p][p][/p][h2]New Shield Shaders[/h2][p]Shield visuals have been completely reworked. The new shaders better reflect hit locations, animate in more dynamic ways, and gradually turn red as shield power drops, giving you an earlier visual warning in combat. Overall, shield feedback should now feel clearer and more responsive.[/p][p][/p][h2]Friendly Ship Outlines[/h2][p]Arriving friendly ships now receive a temporary blue outline on arrival, making them much easier to identify during busy encounters.[/p][p][/p][h2]Ship Hit Effects[/h2][p]Ships now physically show where they’ve been hit. Hull damage appears directly on the surface and glows based on the damage type that caused it, layering on top of parts already breaking away long before the ship is fully torn apart. Combat should now feel more destructive.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Ship Design Improvements[/h2][p]Several long requested features have been added to the ship designer. You can now repeatedly click the same area to cycle down through overlapping parts, press Ctrl + A to quickly select everything, and use the new copy and paste functions.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Alongside these changes are significant performance improvements and a large number of bug fixes. Full details are listed below. Enjoy![/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]New Features / Content[/h3][p]• Added new spinal weapon, Thermal Lance.[/p][p][/p][h3]Balance Changes[/h3][p]• Ion thruster dodge factor increased from 140 to 180m/s.[/p][p]• Encounter rewards from invasions are now higher rarity.[/p][p]• Phase shift, Shield Ward and Disabled status effects now block hull regeneration.[/p][p]• Species-XI ships no longer Phase Shift for longer than 5s with a 12s cooldown.[/p][p][/p][h3]Quality of Life / Accessibility[/h3][p]• Friendly ships now get a blue outline on arrival, which can be disabled in settings.[/p][p]• Debris and faction territory are now rendered more nicely in navigation.[/p][p]• New shield artwork and shaders for all external shields.[/p][p]• Shield color now slowly shifts to red as it gets weaker.[/p][p]• Ships now get 33% transparency when dodging and are immune to damage.[/p][p]• Ship now shows damage temporarily as a visual effect when taking hull damage.[/p][p]• Clouds now appear volumetric under lighting instead of flat.[/p][p]• Clicking an already selected part in the ship designer now selects the part under it.[/p][p]• Ctrl + A now selects all parts in the ship designer when using a keyboard.[/p][p]• Added copy and paste buttons to the ship designer.[/p][p]• Ctrl + C and V can now be used to copy and paste in the ship designer.[/p][p]• Tweaked settings on bloom slightly for cleaner glows.[/p][p]• Reduced the size of ship explosions slightly.[/p][p]• Piercing projectiles now cut ships in half like lasers.[/p][p][/p][h3]Performance[/h3][p]• Vastly improved the performance of dodging and temporal drive after images.[/p][p]• Object pool returns are now instant instead of scanning the entire pool.[/p][p]• Death surge effects use a shared lookup table instead of rebuilding one per kill.[/p][p]• Projectile hits resolve with one component lookup instead of three.[/p][p]• Seeking missiles reuse already-found targets instead of re-searching each candidate.[/p][p]• Explosions reuse cached physics data instead of re-fetching per object in blast radius.[/p][p]• Spawned ships notify the spawner on death instead of checking every frame.[/p][p][/p][h3]Bug Fixes[/h3][p]• Fixed snake enemies moving far more rigidly than intended.[/p][p]• Dragging UI sliders in ship design no longer deselects parts.[/p][p]• Renamed Caustic Laser to Corrosion Beam.[/p][p]• Fixed a crash that could occur when rapidly clicking in the ship select dialog.[/p][p]• Fixed RenderTexture errors on Linux multi-monitor setups.[/p][p]• Fixed tiny Inferno Cannon item image.[/p][p]• Fixed two bugs that allowed Sector Keystones to be placed in storage.[/p]