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Hey everyone!
Beta 29 is out now! This might be one of the biggest updates we’ve done yet! This update focuses on a few big additions as well as several balance passes and quality of life features.
Lost Colony Data Fragments have been added to the game. These are required to get to the Lost Colony and can be gained through numerous ways. While the Lost Colony isn’t in the game yet, data fragments are the last feature we needed to add in order to introduce the Lost Colony content in an upcoming update. Many of the fragments grant passive effects to your ship, which we think add a nice bonus to acquiring them.
Two new places to acquire Lost Colony data fragments are the Auction found on the Spiderbarge in the Burrow, and the Highrollers Station which will contact crews and invite them to play Liar’s Dice at an exclusive station.
In order to add more variety to space combat, sectors now have a chance of including a “beacon”. These beacons create sector-wide modifiers to ship systems, and can either help or harm your ship. Some of the effects include thrust boosting, damage increases, armor increases and many others. Keep in mind that other ships also have these bonuses, and it’s possible to target and destroy these beacons if necessary (with no rep loss to do so).
This update also includes some big changes to Crew AI. AI can now charge programs, patrol sectors, and even launch nuclear devices! These effects don’t just apply to your crew, but enemy crews as well. The default AI priorities and behaviors have been greatly improved and updated. A few new additions include the Pibot being able to fly into Long Range Warp Stations, and the Engbot automatically lowering the shields when the Pibot enters a repair depot.
With the changes to crew AI, this means that enemy ships can launch nukes if they own them and are desperate enough. In order to help you manage this, the Scientist can now see if there is a nuke on board their ship through the sensor screen, and the Weapons Specialist now has a pulse laser affixed to many of the main turrets. This pulse laser can fire rapidly, allowing them to deal pinpoint damage to nukes and missiles.
We’ve also worked on new sector types including asteroid fields and faction battles. Faction battles are in-progress fights between a small number of ships and/or drones that can be approached in many different ways. Asteroid fields are cluttered with asteroids of various sizes requiring pilots to pay close attention to their surroundings to defeat enemy ships. Asteroids across the galaxy have also been updated with a new sharper look.
Ship combat has been tweaked to look and feel more impactful with new effects like hull debris flying off the ship and sparks flying on the bridge. Enemy ships are now more capable in ship combat, they are now able to warp out of difficult fights and call for backup with a distress signal. Ships can now also warp-in to provide backup to an enemy during a fight including both drones and powerful crewed ships!
Additions- New Sector: Asteroid Field
- New Sector: Faction Battle - Neutral / CU
- New Sector: Faction Battle - CU / Infected
- New Sector: Faction Battle - Neutral / WD
- New Sector: Faction Battle - WD / Infected
- New Beacon: Sniper - Fires at enemy ships from range
- New Beacon: Warp Disable - Disables activation of warp drives
- New Beacon: Shield Boosting - Boosts shield recharge rate
- New Beacon: Power Boosting - Boosts reactor power
- New Beacon: Boarding Drones - Sends boarding drones to ships with disabled quantum shields
- New Beacon: Block Comms - Blocks Long Range Comms (no rep loss, no flagged condition for stealing ships)
- New Beacon: Energy Damage Boost - Boosts damage output of energy based turrets
- New Beacon: Corruption - Broadcasts the corruption virus
- New Beacon: Disable Cloak - Prevents and disables cloaking technology from working
- New Beacon: Program Recharger - Recharges more program slots during manual program charging
- New Beacon: Fire Spread - Increases the spread and growth of fires aboard ships
- New Beacon: Overcharge - All ships and beacons will accumulate overcharge when near one another
- New Beacon: Random Component Effect - Boosts the efficiency of a random ship component per ship
- New Beacon: Armor Reduction - Reduces effectiveness of armor for all ships
- New Beacon: Physical Damage Boost - Boosts the damage output of physical turrets
- New Beacon: Warp Range Booster - Boosts the range of your ship’s warp drive
- New Fragment: Auction fragment - Grants special deals in general store
- New Fragment: AOG fragment - Your current ship clears its flagged status each jump
- New Fragment: CU fragment - +50% max shield integrity, +15% warp range
- New Fragment: Liar’s Dice fragment - Random bonus each jump (+50 credits, +25% coolant, +1 processed scrap)
- New Fragment: Fluffy Biscuit Fragment - 2x food supply, 2x credits from sales
- New Fragment: W.D. Fragment - 15% tracker missile refill each jump
- New Fragment: Racing Fragment - 30% thrust increase
- New Fragment: Sector Commander Fragment - 5% hull repair each jump
- New Fragment: Sylvassi Fragment - 2 additional program slots
- Faction Battles: New sector types at the frontlines of competing factions
- Enemy ships have functional distress signals and can receive backup
- Some enemy ships can now warp out
- Most mega turrets now have a fast-firing pulse laser
- New Ship HUD Elements for distress signals, warp drive charging, and ship system damage.
- Sparks can fly from lights in the ship when taking damage or while at low hull
- Hull damage can cause some hull bits to fly off into space
- Ships emit some smoke and sparks occasionally when hull is low
- Lifeform Scan
- Radiation Alarm
- New Processor - Overcharge Processor - Creates overcharge based on incoming energy damage
- Added more dialog to hailing crewed ships; some options include hints for finding Lost Colony data fragments
- New UI Element: a colored line appears above the ship info HUD in the upper right corner of the screen, If this line is there, then the ship’s Quantum Shields are online and boarding is prevented.
AI- Crew AI Priority menus have been tweaked. The Top priorities section now includes the current top behaviors from both Main and Class specific priorities, this should hopefully give a better idea about what priorities are currently important to that particular crew AI.
- New crew AI ability: Manual Program Recharge
- New crew AI ability: Launch Nuclear Device
- New pilot AI ability: Use Warp Station
- New pilot AI ability: Patrol - Fly to random points in the sector
- New engineer AI ability: Lower Shields
- New engineer AI ability: Shutdown Ship
- New engineer AI ability: Eject Reactor Core
- New engineer AI ability: Overclock
- New scientist AI ability: Sensor Sweep
- Scientist AI ability fixed: Search for Ships
- New AI priority override: Healing item is equipped
- New AI priority override: Healable crewmate is nearby
- New AI priority override: Fuel capsules on ship is > X
- New AI priority override: Unfilled program charges on ship is > X
- New AI priority override: Current ship has a nuclear device installed
- New AI priority override: Active Long Range Warp Station in sector
- New AI priority override: Target ship's combat level > X% of ours
- New AI priority override: Captain is sitting in the Captain's Chair
- New AI priority override: Reactor stability is > X%
- New AI priority override: Ship has been out of warp > X seconds
- New AI priority override: Ship has been in warp > X seconds
- New AI priority override: Target ship's warp drive is > X% charged
- New AI priority override: Target ship's distress signal is active
- New AI priority override: Nuke path is clear
- New AI priority override: Ship is inside a repair depot
- New AI priority override: Captain is onboard a ship
- New AI priority override: Target ship's hull > X% of ours
- New AI priority override: Last time doing this priority > X sec ago
- New AI priority override: Target ship's armor > X% of ours
- New AI priority override: Target ship's shields > X% of ours
- New AI priority override: Time since manual program recharge > X sec
- New AI priority override: Reactor is currently overclocked
- New AI priority override: Reactor core safety is enabled
- New AI priority override: Target ship can currently be detected
- New AI priority override: Quantum shields are online
- New AI priority override: Overcharge > X%
- New AI priority override: Reactor core is in meltdown
- New AI priority override: Ship does have a Reactor equipped
- New AI priority override: Reactor core was recently ejected
- Crew AI will stay in place longer when responding to Close To Captain order
- Scibot is a bit smarter about running programs
- Engbot is smarter about leaving their station, they will reduce usage and coolant flow so the ship is less likely to overheat or waste coolant while they are away.
- Engbot can now use the Aux Reactor. A priority of (1) will signify that.
- Custom Events menu has been improved to be more space efficient (tabs)
-The Custom Event “Repair Depot Nearby” is now a sector-wide check instead of distance based
- AI will now generally move slower, and also ramp up speed when starting to move from a standing position
Changes- UI - Tab menu now has a spot to display any currently held Lost Colony data fragments and their descriptions / effects.
- UI - Tab menu has been tweaked and the crew reputation section has been slightly reworked.
- Starmap now starts with fewer sectors (around 1700). This helps with the problem of mission sectors being labeled (2001, 2002, etc)
- General stores now sell higher level ship components based on chaos level
- WD ships have increased the number of missile slots from 2 to 3.
- Tweaked galaxying syncing, should be a bit faster.
- Tweaked galaxy generation, should be a bit faster and show progress percentage.
- Tweaked the warp-out SFX
- Overhauled the visuals and level of the Fluffy Biscuit mission planet for “Deliver Biscuits to Restricted CU Site 881”. Should be a better overall experience. Dialog of NPCs also tweaked to accommodate the changes.
- Fluffy Biscuit mission location for “Deliver Biscuits to Food Reviewer” has been slightly tweaked. Added moving walkways to the long hall.
- Tweaked the starmap clipping range
- Removed all sensor types but EM sensors, simplified some screen visuals
- Ship destruction credits / XP / rep only given if you have have done significant damage
- Laser-type turrets can shoot down many missiles including nukes and Defender Turret missiles
- Shield visuals tweaked
- Players can now leave the Liar’s Dice Gaming table by pressing “R” instead of “ESC”
- Liar’s Dice Rules have been changed. The number of dice must always increase with each bid, though the face value can change. The first to three points wins.
- Missiles have lower reload times
- Lock-on time for missiles has been reduced
- Damage calculation for missile explosions has been tweaked to be more predictable
- Missiles deal more damage overall
- Nukes can also be shot down but may take multiple shots to destroy
- Auto-aiming turrets and bot AI can now shoot down missiles
- Changes to how explosion damage is assigned to make it more predictable
- Crews can no longer shoot down their own missiles
- Ship shields should no longer block flares
- Lasers now check for collisions against the hull instead of the shield bubble when shields are down
- Turret networking updates more frequent
- Some settings from the Game Settings menu moved to Controls menu
- Game Settings menu has been cleaned up a bit
- Overall thruster power usage has been reduced
- Overall shield power usage has been increased
- Aux Reactor power amounts have been tweaked
- Scientist can now scan a ship’s installed programs
- Increased the variety of processors / programs on enemy crewed ships
- Tweaked / reduced spread rate of Infected sectors
- Infected can now take over graveyard, minefield and nebula sectors
- Optimised internal chaos updates
- Reduced initial spread rate of every faction. This will likely lead to “blotchier” sections of faction space with the intent of making navigation more interesting
- Galaxy pathing (course plotting and bounty hunters) is more efficient
- Nearly all asteroids have been overhauled with new visuals
Fixes- Defender Turret missiles will now track their target properly on clients
- Fixed SFX issue on missiles that caused them to still be heard after destruction
- Fixed a missing material on desert terraforming station planet
- PiBot should be better at collecting scrap
- Fixed an issue with items incorrectly spawning under the level. This should be fixed, but older saves may still have the issue.
- Fixed a small railing issue found in the WD hub
- Fixed a rendering issue for the Character Customization menu
- Fixed a moon issue on the AOG Secret Hideout Planet
- Fixed an issue with Programs / Viruses not correctly saving the order in which they were placed in.
- Fixed an issue that would show screens through walls
- Fixed a crashing issue found on the Interceptor and the Swordship. If you continue to experience issues try verifying the game files.
- Fixed a floating mesh issue found in Cornelia Station
- Fixed a UI issue with the Missions in the TAB menu
- Fixed a skybox rendering issue
- Fixed an issue that would occasionally lead to bots dying unexpectedly
- Fixed an issue with tooltips not always disappearing
- Fixed an issue with ships sometimes spawning in asteroids
- Fixed an issue that would occasionally make bots invisible
- Fixed an issue that prevented certain dialogue options from being selected when a captain’s notification was being displayed
Thanks for your time and please be safe out there!
Best,
The Leafy Games Team
