Lord of Rigel News

Greetings Lords of Rigel,

This patch continues with our bug fixes and quality of life adjustments including some from recent feedback.

This upcoming patch:

• Quality of life: A warning for when selected custom primary or secondary colors may be too dark for in game use.
• Space monster hitbox fixes.
• Colonization and combat UI fixes.
• Aquatic species terraforming fixes.
• AI Expansion improvements.

While this seems like a shorter patch in terms of fixes, it’s based on those reported by players. Also we’ve made more progress on the auto ship design generator and build queues, again fixing reported bugs has been our priority.

As for this week’s deep dive:
Torpedoes!

Torpedo weapons are unique in that there are direct fire and indirect fire (seeking) versions. Torpedoes use the attack rolls of missile weapons, and can be spoofed by ECM systems and enhanced by ECCM mods and special systems that improve missile accuracy. Direct fire torpedoes (Ion, Proton) effectively act like beam weapons while indirect fire torpedoes (Antimatter, Plasma) are like missiles that can’t be shot down with point defense.

Torpedo weapons don’t have ammunition, but have long cooldown periods. These can be very long if you stack lots of mods onto a torpedo, making them good alpha strike weapons. Each torpedo type can also have unique behaviors. Plasma torpedoes lose damage over time and so work best in close range, combining them with cloaking lets you maximize their potential. Similarly, proton torpedoes can have the ENG modification and cause damage directly to a ship’s engine system so using them with anti-shield weapons like disruptor cannons is powerful.

Torpedo effects are particle effects using a procedural material. The material uses noise and gradients in the pixel shader so that the flare effects of torpedoes animate as they move.
In coming weeks we’ll do more deep dives on species models, other weapon types, and some of the various gameplay mechanics in Lord of Rigel!

Image 1. Human ships firing a combo of direct and indirect fire torpedoes
Image 2. Phased cloaked Xantus ships firing plasma torpedoes

Image 3. Proton Torpedo Material

Let us know what further changes you would like to see or if you have encountered any technical issues. Please post on the forums, reach out to us via Discord or send an email: [email protected] Saved games and clear steps to reproduce the bug are critical. It helps us more quickly track down the bug and get it fixed. Additional information on bug reporting tips can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/437440/discussions/.


As always, we appreciate the feedback, conversations, and support from all of you!

Greetings Lords of Rigel,

This patch continues with our bug fixes and quality of life adjustments, including some from recent feedback.

This Patch:
• Hotkey for cycling between systems and colonies (default: Q, E)
• Hotkey for clearing event ticker. (default: X)
• Adjustments to the tax calculation system, changes only take effect now on turn.
• Reduced message spam for hostile fleet detection
• Adjustments to the autoexplore system to allow for multiple autoexploring player fleets at once.
• Volumetric clouds

We’ve made more progress on the auto ship design generator, but still in the works for EA 1 are two larger features:
• Loading and saving build queues: You can build a custom pre-made queue with known buildings. These queues are in their own save file and should be able to be shared between games and players! If you load a queue and there’s unresearched buildings those get filtered out.
• Auto ship design generator: With the optimizations done on ship designer we’ll be adding in an “auto” button to have the AI generate a design of your selected size class.
We are still hoping to hear back from you all on the default species color schemes, so suggestions and feedback are appreciated on what works and doesn’t work with the current species and their colors.

As for this week’s deep dive:

Planet skyboxes and volumetric clouds!

As we’ve been working through LoR’s EA1, we’ve been adding in graphical tweaks and adjustments such as the sharpness setting and tweaks to planet cloud shadows. The latest addition is a rework of some planet clouds to use volumetric effects. Volumetric effects use three dimensional and use materials that can be adjusted. Some planet types in LoR already heavily used volumetric effects, such as the Toxic and Swamp planets. Others, like Dead worlds, use a combination of volumetric particles for dust blowing effects along with the update volume cloud system. Finally, the background sky dome in each scene has its own material with a color scheme set to match with the system view and tactical appearances of each planet climate type.

Image 1. Terran Planet Cloud System

Image 2. Ringworld Cloud System

Image 3. Dead Planet Cloud System
Image 4. Dead Planet Dust Volume

Image 5. Ocean Skybox Material

Let us know what further changes you would like to see or if you have encountered any technical issues. Please post on the forums, reach out to us via Discord or send an email: [email protected] Saved games and clear steps to reproduce the bug are critical. It helps us more quickly track down the bug and get it fixed. Additional information on bug reporting tips can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/437440/discussions/.


As always, we appreciate the feedback, conversations, and support from all of you!