Dust Fleet News

Season's greetings, commanders!

We're releasing a small patch today to correct a few issues that were reported with the Sector Assault update. As always, please report any issues you come across so they can be fixed as quickly as possible. To leave a bug report, see this thread.

Also, it really helps small games like Dust Fleet if you have the time to leave a review, so please do if you can!

Now, onto the fixes!

[h2]FIXES[/h2]

• 3-way battle did not work correctly when player withdrew from battle. The location was still shown as contested, preventing moving to the next turn. With this fix, if a battle location is contested on return to the starmap, the game now runs an autobattle between the remaining enemies to find a winner.
  
• Ocelot could not be reverse-engineered when playing as D-SEC.
  
• Odyssey did not have enough dock points to be captured with APCs.
  
• Withdraw button sometimes did not disappear correctly when selected.
  

Hello commanders!

Winter is cold, space is colder. But starting today, you can heat things up by getting Dust Fleet at a huge 50% discount, from December 19th to January 2nd.

And if you already own Dust Fleet, there's something for you too. Update #5 is live right now. Welcome, commanders, to The Sector Assault Update.

I've been picking up hypercom messages from all the brave commanders continuing the fight in Sector Assault mode, requesting new features and improvements. The Orbiting Disco Corps of Engineers (me) has been working hard to put those requests into action, and here's what I've got for you.

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• Play as D-SEC: You can now choose between the UEN Navy and D-SEC as your faction.
  
• More enemies to fight against:
  • The UEN Navy (the player faction in the story campaign) is now available as an enemy if you play as D-SEC.
    
  • The Raiders, using the same ships as in the story campaign.
    
  • The Abandoned, who feature in the story but aren't named. Their ships are similar to the campaign, but with some balance changes.
    
• Raider stations now have Industrial and Technology slots, making them useful to capture.
  
• D-SEC has gained a bomber-class fighter, to even the odds when playing against the UEN.
  
• Custom difficulty setting now includes the ability to choose which of the factions to fight against.
  
• Salvage mode: An optional mode for Sector Assault. It replaces the tech tree with collecting new technology by securing locations on the starmap. Each location has one or more icons below it showing you what tech you'll gain by controlling it.
  
• Rebalance: At the start of a game enemies are now concentrated together, further away from the player. Their starting fleets have been toned down slightly, and they take a little longer to ramp up to full aggression. This should make the "Hard" difficulty a little easier to manage. And you can still choose "Custom" to get the game you want.
  

There are also some improvements that help both the story campaign and Sector Assault.

• New loadout editor: The loadout editor UI has been vastly simplified. It's now more informative and intuitive - just a single click to fit a new item, and a long click to fit it to all matching slots.
  
• Station capture in auto-battle: if your attack fleet has enough APCs (usually 4) you can now capture stations during an auto-battle. As long as you win the battle and have enough APCs, the station will be captured automatically instead of being destroyed. This option, when available, can be toggled next to the auto-battle button.
  
• Auto-rebuild for carriers: By default, carriers will automatically attempt to rebuild destroyed fighters. There's a new button on the carrier manager to toggle this setting.
  
• See depleted locations: The starmap now shows a "no resources" icon on locations that have run out of resources, so you can see at-a-glance where to send your mining ships.
  

• Minor balance tweaks:
  • Heavy battle laser cost reduced from 6500 -> 5800
    
  • Heavy railgun turret cost reduced from 8500 -> 8200
    
  • Honshu hull reduced from 1600 -> 1500
    
  • Wolf, Wolf MkII and Jackal now provide a starmap vision radius in line with most other frigate-class ships.
    
• You can now hold down shift while selecting your groups to add them to the selection.
  
• Loading time and file size improvements for saved games: 20% smaller files, 88% quicker load times and 66% quicker save times.
  

• Ships with welding beams were not auto-repairing nearby damaged ships.
  
• D-SEC fighters could not attack other fighters, only capital ships.
  
• When remapping controls, if you try to bind a key that's already being used, you'll now get a warning about it.
  
• The rebinding screen was not displaying localized names for the controls.
  
• Fighters were costing twice as much as the displayed amount.
  
• Wolf MkII had no silhouette icon.
  

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Thanks to all those commanders who helped with suggestions and sent me their saved games to track down bugs. If you do come across any issues, here's how you can report them.

Don't forget to join our community Discord and share your experiences!

I would also love to hear what you thought of the game through a Steam review. Steam reviews can have a massive impact on the success of small indie games like Dust Fleet so if you have the time it's really appreciated.

That’s all for now, Commanders - see you in space!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/406160/Dust_Fleet/

Hello commanders! Another day, another update!

Today, I have two more requested changes from players. I think you're going to like both of them, but the headline is that bottlenecks from hyperspace exits are now a thing of the past! Even big fleets can pour out of the wormhole without delay. Enjoy!



If you're enjoying Dust Fleet, or even if you're not, why not leave a review? It really helps small games like Dust Fleet to get seen. To leave a bug report, see this thread.

On with the patch notes!

[h3]CHANGES[/h3]

• Exits from hyperspace are now less restrictive, meaning far less waiting for the wormhole exit to clear, so your ships arrive as quickly as possible.
  
• The Advanced shipyard can now also build all the ships from the Standard shipyard.
  

Remember you can always stop by the Orbiting Discord to chat with me or like-minded players.

Hello commanders! A small update today to address feedback from some very helpful players. Please keep the suggestions coming, and a review is always appreciated.

If you experience any issues, please follow the steps in this thread to report them.

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Lance moved up a level on the tech tree, and research cost reduced.
  
• Odyssey research now requires the Oslo to be researched first.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Repair ships ignored repair orders for ships that do not have turrets, such as APCs.
  
• On the starmap, some enemy ship lists for missions were inaccurate.
  

Hello commanders! After every update, I keep a close eye on player feedback and work to fix issues as quickly as possible. The Reinforcements Update was no exception, and I've been able to release fixes sometimes within hours of them being reported thanks to your feedback.

I also want to say that I've been really pleased by the response since The Reinforcements Update came out - thanks to everyone who has been making great suggestions, helping me uncover issues, and writing reviews. And as always, I ask that you please do leave a review if you can. I can't overstate how much even a single review can help small indie games like Dust Fleet.

If you find a bug, there's advice on the discussion forums on how to report it.

All patch notes are available on Discord as soon as any update is released, but I release fixes so regularly I don't post them all here. Instead, I do round-ups like this one!

First of all, here's the lowdown on today's release:

[h2]v5.5 release notes[/h2]

• When capturing/dropping off resources/docking, target ship backs off.
  
• Hubs and roamers were capturable on mission "The Way Out" when they should not be.
  
• In sector assault, some ships may jump out of the wormhole immediately in rare circumstances, without being ordered to by the player.
  
• Captured ships auto-launch fighters when in combat. For ships affected by this in existing saved games, they will be corrected after their next battle.
  
• Cruiser not being awarded in "Heist Part 2" when it survives.
  
• Upgrading ships to loadouts with no fighters would not correctly remove the fighters, but still award the resources.
  
• D-SEC-controlled Honshus not equipped with fighters in Sector Assault.
  
• In the mission preview for "Heist Part 1 " and "Heist Part 2", D-SEC ships are incorrectly listed as UEN ships.
  
• "Enforcer Part 1" does not list any ships on the mission preview.
  
• Minor text errors.
  

[h2]v5.2 - v5.4 release notes[/h2]
Here's a round-up of other fixes since The Reinforcements Update was released.

• The new D-SEC ships (Orca Mk II, Wolf Mk II, Honshu) could not be reverse engineered.
  
• Pre-"Reinforcements Update" saved games did not show the new ships in the loadout editor.
  
• Enemy ships will stop attacking in some circumstances when a ship exits the play area.
  

That's all for now, commanders - keep safe out there!