Space Impossible News

BETA 4 is now ready to download. This update is mainly a clean up and house keeping patch containing a large amount of bug fixes and quality of life changes to get us ready for content focused updates coming with the following BETAs.

One of the more significant changes is the addition of a new quick scanning ability (pictured below), this enables you to peek at components without requiring inventory to be open.



You can discuss BETA 4 and let us know your thoughts on Discord or as usual on the Steam Discussion Topic



[h2]Tactical Scanning[/h2]
We have added a new tactical scan feature which allows you to quickly scan a target and reveal its mount locations. We hope the new scan ability will address a few issues with combat pacing, and improve combat overall.

To use the new scanning feature, simply left click any point on a target vessel, this will for a brief time reveal all mounts near the scan point. This scanning ability was added specifically to address issues during combat when wishing to target specific components. Previously the game required you to have a targets inventory open to view component locations which is not ideal and caused issues with interaction, including the inability to target those components.

To accommodate the scanning ability, inventory of a target is now accessed by pressing and holding left click for a brief time, or alternatively by pressing "U" on the keyboard whilst hovering over the target vessel.

[h2]Bug Squashing[/h2]
For the second major component of this update we have squashed a significant amount of bugs, ranging from the smallest typos to some significant, long lasting issues, in addition to many minor quality of life improvements. Among some of the larger bugs we have fixed in this update are bugs with construction (mainly incorrectly splitting tiles off of objects, as well as constructions actions that are performed very quickly and losing sync with the server). The full extensive list of bugs fixed is listed below

[h2]Details[/h2]
[h3]Additions[/h3]

• ADDED: Ability to scan vessels and other objects for components
  
• ADDED: A max range for opening cargo (/sv_maxinspectrange server variable)
  
• ADDED: Explicit option to the /remove and /removeall commands to keep hangared vessels. This is default is false and will remove any hangared vessels.
  
• ADDED: Quitting game warning screen
  
• ADDED: Death location to respawn screen
  
• ADDED: Tooltip hint for inspection.
  
• ADDED: Universe check and dialogue box to warn players if a universe had previously not fully saved
  
• ADDED: Improved redundancy for universe upgrading to make it a bit less fragile in certain situations
  
• ADDED: A Painting cursor and a color swatch next to the mouse when applying colors during building
  

[h3]Fixes/Updates[/h3]

• CHANGE: Left click and hold is now required to view inventory/cargo and change components. Alternatively hovering object and press U can be used.
  
• CHANGE: Universes now store a copy of the universesetup data in their universe.json file. The universe can be considered entirely self contained now (outside of mod data). This will allow making and playing multiple universes easier when they have different settings.
  
• CHANGE: Dynamic region min/max settings is now located in universesetup.json instead of gendata.json, and will be saved to the universe data
  
• CHANGE: Added dead zone to mouse control to prevent rotation when clicking inside your own ship
  
• CHANGE: Tractors have had their max mass increased 10x and their max lengths increased as well
  
• CHANGE: During building only the range indicators for the current mount or component type will show to reduce clutter. This behavior can be toggled (auto/all/off).
  
• CHANGE: During building Energy overlay will no longer appear when placing components or mounts when in "auto" mode.
  
• CHANGE: Object template upgrading and remapping now better supports multiple versions of upgrading. This should make upgrading older templates (more than 1 version out of date) much easier and reliable.
  
• CHANGE: Player clients now received more faction data on joining, this allowed us to expose a few more things via tooltips
  
• CHANGE: Minor visual improvements to the Main Menu screen's social buttons
  
• CHANGE: Early Access notification popup is now partially transparent for improved presentation on game start
  
• CHANGE: Added keybind for opening pending hails, default: B
  
• CHANGE: If there is only one hail in the pending hails, pressing the notifier button or key will automatically open it, instead of previously requiring hail selection as well.
  
• CHANGE: Wrecks will no longer create zero objects. They will now always produce something, this should be most noticeable in lower level regions with smaller ships.
  
• CHANGE: Improved the "main piece" picking process during wreck generation. This selected piece will now be the chunk with the most bridges, previously it was the first chunk with a bridge.
  
• CHANGE: Improved wreck generation component picking. This means less overall components being left intact, but should also mean more interesting loot to find. It also means smaller vessels are more likely to keep at least one component around where as previously they would be almost guaranteed to be bare.
  
• CHANGE: Improved wreck generation piece destruction. Previously if the "main piece" was chosen for destruction this could result in no pieces. This will also increase the amount of varied wreck patterns experienced.
  
• CHANGE: Objects spawned with bridges and faction but no AI associated will now have public access. This should improve access to certain wrecks
  
  
• FIX: Tile changes will now immediately affect components instead of requiring de- then re-activating. e.g. a broken weapon will turn off immediately as soon as enough tiles are removed
  
• FIX: Completely overhauled split piece detection during construction, it should tolerate lag better and have a minor performance boost
  
• FIX: Problems encountered with returning split pieces when leaving construction would prevent further pieces being returned. There should be no floating tiles possible now.
  
• FIX: Dragging quickly when building should no longer result in strange tile boxes
  
• FIX: Multiple tile building overlay problems leaving ghost overlays
  
• FIX: Improved item count accuracy during building, especially during rapid input
  
• FIX: Improved tile edit batching especially when actions are performed quickly
  
• FIX: Repeated "Run out of items" and similar building error popups should be much less frequent
  
• FIX: Some issues where hologram tiles in construction would stick around when they shouldn't
  
• FIX: An issue that was affecting adding tiles during building
  
  
• FIX: Object templates created in BETA1 onwards being 'upgraded' when they didn't need to be, resulting in incorrect results when loading
  
• FIX: Popup message when loading a template failed had broken/incorrect text
  
• FIX: "Force clear" button not working correctly on template loads during construction
  
  
• FIX: Building inventory panel always opening half scrolled on first open
  
• FIX: Improved legibility of the "infinity" icon most noticeable when building in creative mode
  
• FIX: Updated item display on the cursor and building inventory items to match the rest of the game
  
• FIX: An issue with the cursor not being set correctly during construction, which was occasionally breaking the whole UI
  
  
• FIX: Removing tiles under multi tile mounts during building would occasionally cause the mount to bug out
  
• FIX: An issue with multi tile mounts not always associating correctly tiles added during building
  
  
• FIX: The energy overlay missing was its texture if inventory was opened with the EnergyOverlay parameter set to "ForcedOn"
  
• FIX: Tile energy labels occasionally displaying being behind the overlay itself
  
• FIX: Tile energy labels should now display correctly even when zooming in and out quickly
  
• FIX: Energy overlay incorrectly appearing when switching out other components if you have any reactor affecting enhancements
  
  
• FIX: The component/mount overlay graphics looking out of place for a brief moment when opening inventory
  
  
• FIX: Improved currency label count up/down animation
  
• FIX: Dragging the trade slider widget when buying and selling wouldn't let you pick full range
  
• FIX: An error when viewing a trader's inventory whilst it refreshed could cause broken UI or incorrect prices
  
• FIX: Trade dialogue not being closed correctly when another dialogue is opened
  
• FIX: Issue with Trader UI being considered "visible" when it wasn't, which was causing other UI issues afterwards.
  
  
• FIX: SHIFT+AlphaNum keys to pick dialogue responses not working correctly
  
• FIX: Using SHIFT+AlphNum for dialogue responses also changing action bar slots
  
• FIX: Missing portrait when being hailed by a dead entity
  
• FIX: The strange flashing animation on the hail notifier
  
  
• FIX: Issues with Faction panel scrolling
  
• FIX: Improved performance of the faction panel UI and also slightly restyled it
  
  
• FIX: Lab queue UI not resizing correctly when switching between labs
  
• FIX: An issue where labs were still processing their old queues when lab was replaced. Queue is now cleared when the lab is replaced.
  
  
• FIX: Spaced out tutorial text to improve legibility
  
• FIX: State of Energy Overlay/Range Indicators etc. should now correctly those of the buttons in inventory on subsequent openings
  
• FIX: Home icon on name plates should now show immediately when a new home station is set
  
• FIX: Pressing ESC whilst in a text input boxes should now consistently clear text input then deselect the input element and then finally close the element/panel
  
• FIX: Input issues that were incorrectly being performed when the map was open (clicking on things behind the map, firing weapons, etc.)
  
• FIX: An issue with the UI breaking when transitioning between two star systems when the inventory is open
  
• FIX: Ability to spam click "Join Game", which was causing some problems
  
• FIX: Wrong text on respawn screen when dying in a ship
  
• FIX: Misspellings of the "Zeblalt", spelling should now be unified across the game
  
• FIX: Click-to-move mouse control causing the ship to continuously spin when not intended
  
  
• FIX: Fixed an issue where objects weren't being correctly removed from the region server when tractored objects were taken into warp when other players were present in the region
  
• FIX: All players in a region should now have correct discovery info for that region, especially important when being tractored by another player.
  
• FIX: Tractor constraint length is better calculated, resulting in less "shoving" when tractors are used on large objects
  
  
• FIX: Mount removal and components changes not always being synced correctly on the region server. This should fix issues where AI thought they had weapons (or other components) when infact they didn't. This should significantly reduce incorrect AI behavior where it is dependent on component counts.
  
• FIX: An issue with AI target searching when they had no weapons available
  
  
• FIX: Improved performance when generating missions
  
• FIX: Updated several naming patterns in mission generation
  
• FIX: An issue with tile death and updating the associated region server
  
• FIX: Added some verification for item pickup to prevent incorrect pickup when someone has just warped or died.
  
• FIX: Added pickup range verification to the server to ensure consistency
  
• FIX: An issue when receiving shield health if the shield component had been removed on the client
  
• FIX: An issue where client input was not being validated correctly against server data
  
• FIX: A few issues with AI data not being saved correctly, which was causing "dead ai" to appear, especially after a game crash.
  
• FIX: An issue where the max player limit was being reset to 4 in single player
  
• FIX: Improved memory cleanup when quitting to menu
  
  
• FIX: Improved several networking issues, especially when programs other than the game attempt to connect on the same ports. Previously these connections could sit in the connection processing queue and were not always being cleaned up properly. They were already being ignored once the initial handshake failed however.
  

[h2]COMING IN BETA 5[/h2]
BETA 5 will see the introduction of a new limited faction, Madd's Marauders, a group of bounty hunters that will show up in other faction's star systems. Additionally we will be looking at adding a few more weapon types to improve combat variety.

A Pre-Release build for BETA 4 is now available on the test branch. This latest BETA adds a new quick scanning ability along with the most bug fixes yet and many small quality of life changes.


[h2]Tactical Scanning[/h2]
We have added a new tactical scan feature which allows you to quickly scan a target and reveal its mount locations. We hope the new scan ability will address a few issues with combat pacing, and improve combat overall.

To use the new scanning feature, simply left click any point on a target vessel, this will for a brief time reveal all mounts near the scan point. This scanning ability was added specifically to address issues during combat when wishing to target specific components. Previously the game required you to have a targets inventory open to view component locations which is not ideal and caused issues with interaction, including the inability to target those components.

To accommodate the scanning ability, inventory of a target is now accessed by pressing and holding left click for a brief time, or alternatively by pressing "U" on the keyboard whilst hovering over the target vessel.

[h2]Bug Squashing[/h2]
For the second major component of this update we have squashed of over 100 bugs, ranging from the smallest typos to some significant, long lasting issues, in addition to many minor quality of life improvements.

Among some of the larger bugs we have fixed in this update are bugs with construction (mainly incorrectly splitting tiles off of objects, as well as constructions actions that are performed very quickly and losing sync with the server). The full extensive list of bugs fixed will be coming with the full BETA 4 release.



If you would like to check out this pre-release build all the usual things apply, it will have problems (some of which we know about) and it may break your universe. Let us know your thoughts via the forums or on our discord

If you still wish to give it a try check out all the changes and details here : https://steamcommunity.com/app/416240/discussions/21/2275953283823580480/
and how to access it here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/416240/discussions/21/2275953283823578840/

BETA 3 has arrived, with a focus on improving the star system. We have added a number of new features as well as some polish to existing ones.

You can discuss BETA 3 on Discord or as usual on the Steam Discussion Topic


[h2]Warp is no longer safe[/h2]
Fleets can and will now react to your presence. If you get too close to a hostile one, they may chase you down and force you into combat. If you do enough things to their faction in a small frame of time, a pursuit fleet may be spawned just to track you and try to kill you.

Regions may now react to players visiting. Distress calls will reveal their true nature when entered. Maybe they are an ambush, or its a ship wreck--the twisted salvage strewn amongst some asteroids--or it could be a genuine ship in distress.

[h2]Discover all the things[/h2]
Region information and discovery has been improved. You can buy information about a system from a trader (if you can find one), and you will see labels for regions known to have Assemblers (for ship building and repairs), Labs (for manufacturing), Traders or where combat is taking place. Discovery has been tweaked overall to make things a bit more interesting, and now visually distinguishes between regions you've scanned, and regions you've visited.

[h2]Space is now a little less empty[/h2]
Finally, the spawning algorithm responsible for spawning dynamic regions (like fleets and traders) has been overhauled. The focus is now on making interesting things for the players, as opposed to just filling up the star system. The end result is actually a more engaging flying time, with the additional benefit of less wasted and extraneous regions the player never visits.

[h2]Details[/h2]
[h3]Additions[/h3]

• ADDED: Regions (fleets and such) can now force players out of warp
  
• ADDED: Aggressive regions
  
• ADDED: Factions will now keep track of players actions against them (for the short term). This allows factions to react with different levels of intensity depending on what the player has done, and how pissed off they are.
  
• ADDED: Several new parameters to universesetup.json
  
• ADDED: 3 new region templates to support the multi faction capabilities.
  
• ADDED: Regions will only be marked as "in battle" if they are battling something other than you, the player. Other things include other players and two or more AI factions going at it.
  
• ADDED: Indepedent Traders will now offer trade options upon initial hail.
  
• ADDED: Inline tooltips to mission descriptions and other text elements for additional mouseover information. Will be used more in the future.
  
• ADDED: Traders now offer the option to buy star system discovery information
  
• ADDED: Ambush regions will now spawn fleets that can chase a fleeing player
  
• ADDED: Regions known about (via visiting or trader purchasing) will show region faction icon
  

[h3]Fixes/Updates[/h3]

• CHANGE: Changed how dynamic regions are spawned. They are now focused more on the players active in the star system. This should produce better gameplay while keeping the number of active dynamics limited to a fixed number regardless of star system size.
  
• CHANGE: Certain hostile regions can and will now be immediately engaging in combat upon player enter instead of the previous multi second delay.
  
• CHANGE: Suits will now be destroyed if they receive an extra amount of damage after death.
  
• CHANGE: Enhanced the system used for picking and assigned factions to regions, this now allows for much easier multi faction regions (ex: two fleets in mid battle)
  
• CHANGE: Systems in conflict will slowly convert regions into battle regions. These regions will have multiple factions spawned.
  
• CHANGE: After a star system conflict has resolved, regions now have the chance to regenerate into completely different types of regions. Ex: A planet outpost region could become a planet trader region
  
• CHANGE: Projectiles, like mines, spawned via region templates can now vary their level based on the region's level
  
• CHANGE: Behind-the-scenes, restructured space suits to be more desirable. This should fix a number of edge cases where space suits were being ignored or overlooked for gameplay elements.
  
• CHANGE: Improved AI responses to combat elements. Previously AI vessels would only react on tile death, but now they can and will react on tile damage, tile death and shield damage.
  
• CHANGE: Tweaked how reinforcements are generated. Instead of a pure tile % check, it now uses a more sophisticated agro check.
  
• CHANGE: AI now are aware of "Transfer all/single" actions when calculating their opinion of cargo theft.
  
• CHANGE: Taking inventory from factioned cargo may now be seen as an aggressive action and not only lose faction standing, but may result in combat. Also, the closest appropriate vessel will hail you now to let you know what you've done instead of the first valid vessel.
  
• CHANGE: Changed the data structure for discovery. This goes in hand with changes to the discovery system where elements are displayed at the star system level once the elements have been identified. This includes things like labeling regions that have battles occuring, where traders are known to be present, where Assemblers are present.
  
• CHANGE: Discovery now lets you know whether you have merely scanned (to scan something you just have to be within range) or also visited (having exited warp into) a region. Scanned regions have a different color boundary than visited, and unknown regions have a dashed boundary.
  
• CHANGE: Updated how trader items are generated. This should provide more variety yet better accuracy depending on the region and star system characteristics.
  
• CHANGE: Herman has signed an exclusive deal with the Independent Traders. He is now a member of their faction.
  
• CHANGE: Adjusted fleet region naming to be a bit more descriptive.
  
• CHANGE: Distress beacons will now change to a more appropriate type once they have been visited. This means that distress beacons can now be revealed and labeled as shipwrecks, ambushes and distress calls.
  
• CHANGE: Changed "ping point" to "map marker" for hopefully better clarification
  
• CHANGE: Certain dialogue will now automatically pop up
  
• CHANGE: Destroying all alive ships in a distress beacon region should now cause the region to disappear or change into a debris region (depends on what else is left behind) after the last player leaves.
  
• CHANGE: Removed bulky reactors from the "light" loot pool. This should lessen the issue of small, light ships spawning with these massive reactors in their cargo.
  
• CHANGE: Wrecks will now retain their faction by default but allow access to inventory etc similar to factioned cargo crates. Be careful no one is around when you loot them!
  
• FIX: A general issue with connecting via hostname
  
• FIX: Connecting using hostnames that include a dash "-"
  
• FIX: Connecting to a hostname with multiple subdomains (e.g. server1.cool.game.server.examplehost.com) should now work
  
• FIX: Extraneously garbage generation from the weapons system
  
• FIX: An issue with wreck generation where mounts had phantom tiles present.
  
• FIX: An issue where commands that required no parameters were given parameters and causing errors
  
• FIX: Dedicated server console command input now uses the whole input string. This mainly effects things that have information like /kick
  
• FIX: Some issues with UI culling of star system elements when at warp have been identified and fixed
  
• FIX: Missing language entries for mission 259 - Conflict: Ticeroy Base Located
  
• FIX: Regions generated for missions not being seeded correctly resulting in "samey" names, in addition to other things.
  
• FIX: A rare issue where missions generated via /command for star systems in conflict were being generated with the wrong factions.
  
• FIX: /clearallmissions not fully clearing missions
  
• FIX: Fixed Charkles dialogue... again
  
• FIX: Fixed an issue with ship wreck generation where ownership was incorrectly assigned
  
• FIX: Fixed region label text wrapping that occured when zooming in and out
  
• FIX: Fixed an issue with buying bribes when you had the exact amount of spacebucks
  
• FIX: Corrected a number of misplaced engine recipes
  
• FIX: Sometimes suits would not be removed when they were supposed to.
  

[h2]COMING IN BETA 4[/h2]
For BETA 4 we will be looking at general content and polish. This means a larger picture look at what is going on and focusing on lots of little things that we find could be done better.

The first Pre-Release build for BETA 3 is now available. BETA 3 features a number of star system level improvements and polish.

[h2]Changes[/h2]
[h3]Warp Is No Longer Safe[/h3]
One of the major issues with the game previously was once in warp, everyone just kind of ignored you, whether they liked you or not. Not anymore. Now different types of regions can spawn and they will behave differently. Fleets now on patrol will turn towards you if you get too close, and chase you should you flee, before ultimately starting a fight if they can catch you. Likewise, fleets can now spawn when a player does certain actions (like faction loss or tile destruction) that have one intent only, chasing you down and killing you like the spacedog that you are.

[h3]Better Region Spawning[/h3]
Overall the spawning algorithm has been enhanced to be more engaging on a player-centric level, now spawning dynamic regions around players, instead of strewn randomly across the star system, even if no one is near to see it. Little did you know, but some Distress Calls were actually Ambushes. These regions will be more obvious once you've tripped the ambush. Finally, hostile ships will engage you immediately once out of warp, instead of the previous "wait for X seconds" behavior.

[h3]Improved Discovery[/h3]
We've also sat down and looked at Discovery and started implementing a number of improvements there. Now visible at warp, a region that has been visited will have additional information displayed. Things like whether an Assembler is present (like a shipyard), a trader is known to be available, or if combat is currently happening. Additionally, you'll find traders who will sell you information about the star system, saving you potential time and effort, but at a cost.

As usual there are several smaller improvements that will be noted in the final release patch notes along with fixes to a number of issues reported from BETA 2 and 2.1.



If you would like to check out this pre-release build all the usual things apply, it will have problems (some of which we know about) and it may break your universe. Let us know your thoughts via the forums or on our discord

If you still wish to give it a try check out all the changes and details here : https://steamcommunity.com/app/416240/discussions/20/2261313417709440733/
and how to access it here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/416240/discussions/20/2261313417709438540/

BETA 2.1 is a small hotfix patch that addresses some issues discovered by players as well as some other more technical problems.


[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• FIX: Fixed an issue where a Construction Access error was being generated even if the vessel should be valid for construction.
  
• FIX: Fixed some weapon effects not being cleaned up properly at the end of the effect.
  
• FIX: Fixed some low level issues to do with copying of object data. We caught this happening by chance and it was affecting things like when going to and from warp. This issue may explain certain unexpected behavior with mounts on vessels.
  
• FIX: Fixed an issue where weapon blob effects were not being cleaned correctly.
  
• FIX: Fixed some issues to do with object cleanup. This should result in better overall performance and scene integrity.
  
• FIX: Fixed incorrectly oriented Mag Blastors on the Drumegeethalt.
  
• FIX: Fixed a reliability issue to do with seating/unseating of Components from Mounts.
  
• FIX: Fixed an issue where tiles were not being pruned correctly from Mounts when the parent vessel was being split due to tile removal (e.g. in combat).
  
• FIX: Fixed tile health clamping. In certain situations the health was wrapping around, and the tile was healing instead of being destroyed.
  
• FIX: Fixed an issue where the original tile being destroyed during certain splash damage situations was incorrectly not dropping tile loot or being properly destroyed on the server leading to unexpected split behavior on following splits.
  
• FIX: Fixed a number of issues stemming from duplicate tile health network messages leading to sync issues on the client.
  
• FIX: Removed physics collisions from item colliders, which should lead to massive performance improvements during battle situations.
  
• FIX: Fixed an issue where the effects of Components (mainly weapons) was not being cleaned correctly when the Component was removed. This should provide a slight performance improvement over long game sessions.