Star Vortex News

[p]Star Vortex is taking part in the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) and is now running a 10% DISCOUNT for the next 14 days.[/p][p]If you purchase the game before September 15th then 15% of our net profit will be donated to the charity.[/p][p][/p][h2]New Bundle Incoming (Sept 15th)[/h2][p]September 15th will also see the Early Access launch of eXoSpace Combat Engineer. As I obviously love ship building games, and was a massive Reassembly fan, I'm very excited. It will launch for $14.99 USD with a 15% launch discount. Players who own Star Vortex can expect a further 15% discount as part of the bundle, so go get it on your wishlist ready for next Monday![/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][h2]Reddit Community[/h2][p]This week I also opened our Reddit community if you want to go join it! Feel free to share anything you like about the game there.[/p][p]https://www.reddit.com/r/StarVortex/[/p][p][/p][h2]All The Small Things[/h2][p]Slight Blink-182 reference for the next update but I'm ditching the priority list and running through all the small tasks/requests people have made since the launch. There is probably over 50 things clogging up my board right now, most of them will not take a great deal of time to implement, so it's time for a clear out.[/p][p]The next update should be with you at some point toward the end of the week-end.[/p]

[p]A smaller update this time. I was going to cram some more things in, but the final sector bosses were broken, and this includes the fix for that.[/p][p][/p][h2]Community Ships[/h2][p]When loading templates in the ship designer, you'll now notice a third tab called 'Community'. Here you will find ship designs that other players have shared straight from the site I shared previously.[/p][p]Galactic Shipyard: https://star-vortex.com/ships.php[/p][p][/p][p]You can also go to Export to find the button to upload your own designs. All designs are moderated, so they will not show immediately.[/p][p][/p][h2]Cargo Sorting[/h2][p]The long-requested feature of cargo sorting is now in. I've added all the options I could think of.[/p][p][/p][p]When it's sorting items, it will not move anything you've starred as a favourite. It does still move consumables, and I'm not sure how I feel about this. I like to have my consumables in certain slots, and it would be difficult to allow you to mark them as favourites because when they run out, they'd lose their status. I'll give it some more thought anyway.[/p][p][/p][p]A few more requested changes are below, more to come. Enjoy![/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]New Features / Content[/h3][p]• Added a new community tab to ship design when loading templates.[/p][p]• Ship designs can now be uploaded to the community to share with other players.[/p][p][/p][h3]Balance Changes[/h3][p]• Sector end bosses now spawn slightly further away and out of weapon range.[/p][p][/p][h3]Quality of Life / Accessibility[/h3][p]• Ships can no longer be exported if they have validation errors.[/p][p]• Fading of invalid parts in the ship designer can now be toggled off and on.[/p][p]• Added new item sorting dropdown to the bottom of the equipment and trade panels.[/p][p]• Quick sell is now a dropdown to make space for sorting in trade panels.[/p][p][/p][h3]Bug Fixes[/h3][p]• Destroying the Crystal Prism and Verdiction now correctly completes their mission.[/p][p]• Level requirement of class no longer overlaps class name in ship designer.[/p][p]• Fixed rare iteration error when cycling through black holes.[/p][p]• Fixed display error with items for sale header in trade panel.[/p]

[p]Just a quick update to fix some of the things I didn't manage to squeeze into the last update.[/p][p][/p][p]One thing of note though...[/p][p][/p][p]The game is now Verified on Steam Deck! If you encounter any issues playing on the Steam Deck let me know. I have one myself and can easily test things out.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Balance Changes[/p][p]• Shield Ward can now be used while Boost Invulnerable and is not removed by it.[/p][p][/p][p]Quality of Life / Accessibility[/p][p]• Assembler increase level panel can now be opened (and stays open) at max level.[/p][p]• Buttons in Assembler now disable with tooltips instead of disappearing.[/p][p]• Clicking ship stats with a controller now shows their respective tooltips.[/p][p]• Duplicated parts in ship design now retain their layer order.[/p][p]• Removed 'Switch Target' control binding as not very functional.[/p][p]• Target under cursor keybind now just picks the closest target and doesn't cycle.[/p][p][/p][p]Bug Fixes[/p][p]• Fixed memory leak in cone weapon explosions due to them not being pooled correctly.[/p][p]• Fixed error from comparison tooltip when viewing Schematics.[/p][p]• Baldur and Hodr mission is no longer marked complete until both are destroyed.[/p][p]• Shield Ward now works correctly with Internal Shield.[/p][p]• Activating the last weapon in a chain now still activates the whole chain.[/p][p]• Fixed modify buttons overlapping content above in Assembler Panel.[/p][p]• Static fleet ships now destroy asteroids that come into contact with them.[/p][p]• Asteroid collisions with shields now correctly trigger shield hit animations.[/p][p]• Tooltip pointer no longer reverts to normal pointer when clicking disabled buttons.[/p]

[p]Meaningful updates are going a bit slower at the moment, so apologies for that.[/p][p]A lot of my time has been spent recently trying to get Star Vortex reviewed as 'Fully Supported' on Steam Deck. You'll notice in this update that the UI scale can now be further increased to 140% and this has presented quite a few UI design challenges, but should hopefully satisfy text size requirements.[/p][p]Anyway, on to more interesting things...[/p][p][/p][h2]Storage Space[/h2][p]This got requested a while back. You now get 480 storage slots instead of 48. Split across several pages... plus a further 480 slots in your shared storage. If you want more than that, you'll need to break out the classic-ARPG mule saves.[/p][p][/p][p]The number of pages changes based on your UI scale/resolution so be aware that if you're changing these settings, your nicely organised system may get messed up.[/p][p][/p][h2]Comparison Tooltips[/h2][p]These have been changed to only compare to one equipped item at a time instead of all four. There are new key bindings if you want to cycle through what you're comparing.[/p][p][/p][p]This was changed because the tooltip simply did not fit on a higher UI scale.[/p][p]However, this was always going to be required later if you guys want to have more than 4 of a single slot type. That change is still some distance away due to the HUD ship bar and equipment panel also needing to support it... also, if you put 15 x Roach Drone Bays on your ship, your PC will absolutely set on fire. I'm working on it, hopefully I'll be able to allow it in the future.[/p][p][/p][h2]Part Limit Increase[/h2][p]With the release of our new Galactic Shipyard, it was pointed out that the ship part limit is a little restrictive. As such, rather than going 10, 20, 30 and 40 they now increase based on the square area of the shield radius, so 10, 25, 45 and 80. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Balance Changes[/h2][p]Enemies in Sector 2 and beyond get slightly increased stats to compensate for player synergy, slot unlocks and upgrades. The increase they receive to hull/shield values has been reduced, along with their speed. I've also halved the damage of all enemy PDL weapons to make missile/construct builds more viable at late game.[/p][p][/p][p]That's everything for now. All the other changes are mostly UI scale-related. Apart from the change to the Game Speed setting in Accessibility, which can now go up to 200%. I don't know why you guys want that, I'm scared what you're going to do with it, but it's there anyway. Enjoy![/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]New Features / Content[/h3][p]• Increased storage from 48 slots up to 480 slots split into pages.[/p][p]• HUD and UI scale can now be increased up to 140% in settings.[/p][p]• Comparison tooltip now compares to 1 equipped item at a time.[/p][p]• Shortened some longer AI-translated strings in Russian.[/p][p][/p][h3]Balance Changes[/h3][p]• All enemies have had their PDL damage halved.[/p][p]• Reduced bonus hull/shield enemies receive in Sector 2 and Sector 3.[/p][p]• Reduced bonus speed enemies receive in Sector 2 and Sector 3.[/p][p][/p][h3]Quality of Life / Accessibility[/h3][p]• Parallel fire toggle in equipment panel is now an icon instead of tiny text.[/p][p]• Linking slots in the equipment panel is now an icon instead of tiny text.[/p][p]• Comparison tooltips now scale with UI scale.[/p][p]• Removed headers from Trade and Assembler panels to decrease wasted space.[/p][p]• Ship stats now change to a scrolling single-item list on higher UI scales.[/p][p]• Ship designer preview now shrinks down on higher UI scales.[/p][p]• Fixed summary display at the bottom of navigation to not break at higher UI scales.[/p][p]• Renamed Item Storage in Assembler to Local Vault.[/p][p]• Renamed Shared Storage in Assembler to Shared Vault.[/p][p]• Adjusted canvas scaler to work from a 16:10 resolution to avoid issues at 16:9.[/p][p]• Increased part limit of Destroyers from 20 to 25.[/p][p]• Increased part limit of Cruisers from 30 to 45.[/p][p]• Increased part limit of Battleships from 40 to 80.[/p][p]• Game speed can now be increased beyond 100% in accessibility settings.[/p][p][/p][h3]Bug Fixes[/h3][p]• Fixed weird translation mixup with Polish translations.[/p][p]• Fixed bug where dragged items would not snap to slots directly below.[/p][p]• Fixed item flickers when dragging items on some UI scales.[/p][p]• Fixed display of single-directional stick control bindings.[/p][p]• Sensor range of enemies now correctly increases when aggressive enemies set.[/p][p][/p][p][/p]

[p]Struggling to come up with ship designs, or want to share your designs with others?[/p][p]The Galactic Shipyard is now live! Players on Discord have already started filling it with designs, so there’s plenty to check out.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Link: https://star-vortex.com/ships.php[/p][p]In a future update, players will be able to upload designs and import others’ creations directly in-game. It's not on the roadmap yet, but one feature I'd love to add someday is special events where player-designed ships jump in to fight.[/p][p]Anyway, back to the game updates I go. Enjoy![/p]