Stellar Tactics News

Hello all! I’m posting a patch today that fixes a number of issues. This is primarily a stability and bug fix patch with a few other bells and whistles. It’s important to note that this is not the Chapter 1 patch. I am busy working on that and will post progress updates as things move along.

Note that a lot of data was touched for this patch so the download will be fairly large.

Here is what you will find in the patch:
1) A major stability fix related to level load lockups
2) A number of other fixes listed below
3) The updated game UI.
4) A first pass at localization to Spanish, French, German and Russian languages.
5) A warning screen if compatibility issues related to drivers and 3D rendering support are discovered when the game loads.

LOCALIZATION -French, German, Spanish and Russian
Localization is VERY ROUGH right now. I'm sure there will be a number of embarrassing language issues and typos. If you want to join the localization process to clean up the rough edges, check the link below for more info and the pinned topic at the top of that forum. I'll post translation edits and fixes with future patches as they become available.

Join the community translation. I'm looking for a few people who are interested in editing and updating the Spanish, French and Russian translations. The German translation is in good shape.
Join the translation

• You can change the language in the "Gameplay" tab of the options screen.
  
• In some cases text in various languages may be too large for the UI and scroll past the boundaries of the UI area. If you notice these, please report them on the translation sub-forum here. A screenshot would really help.
  Report translation issues here!
• Old mission data is not localized. That data is saved in your current save and will continue to be displayed in English. New missions that you take will be localized.
  
• Some items in your inventory in existing saves may have descriptions and other information that are part of the save and will not be translated. New items of the same type found or purchased from vendors - like health packs - will be translated.
  
• Almost everything should be translated, however, I am still looking for places where English text is displayed in a field so expect that there will still be a small number of places where a fix is needed.
  
• Things that need to be translated or won't be translated for technical reasons: Crafting component suffixes, mod names, system names, character names, names of minerals, commodity names, and weapons names. There may also be a few other areas that are not translated that will get fixed over time.
  

Removed the HELP screen. Pressing "H" now opens the guide directly. The help screen is obsolete as all keys can be viewed and edited in the options menu and most of the information on that screen is available in the guide.

A warning interface is displayed at the main menu if your PC is not compatible with Stellar Tactics. This covers failed shader compilation and a review of all the core graphics requirements to run the game. If your system fails the check, an interface is displayed that provides a few suggestions like updating your drivers and making sure your system is utilizing your dedicated graphics GPU instead of the on-board low-power Intel GPU.

Optimizations in many areas.
UPDATED: Load times improved.
UPDATED: After completing the Phestus mission, FTL drives are now available in Achmedius at ship equipment vendors.
UPDATED: Universe ship manager performance updates - especially for games that have hundreds of hours of stored ship, system and station data.
UPDATED: Reduced the size of the selected ship reticle. Added transparency to selection options.
UPDATED: New portraits for main story characters (Rhamus, Jensen etc.) to match future story content portraits.
UPDATED: Precaching of dynamically loaded assets in space to avoid hitches.
UPDATED: You can now loot all by pressing the space bar.
UPDATED: NPC ships attack each other once again. I'll keep an eye on the forums in case there are any issues. Keep an eye out for free loot chests from these battles.
UPDATED: The game UI has been revised with a new custom UI.
FIXED: A random lockup when transitioning between areas during the loading screen.
FIXED: A random lockup in space combat.
FIXED: A random crash when displaying the line of sight indicators in ground combat.
FIXED: A potential lock up in the early game when opening the ship screen before launching to space.
FIXED: The left arrow when selecting crew voices on the portrait/name/voice editing UI was not working.
FIXED: In some cases, incursions were not being triggered. If you are in a state where incursions will not trigger, travel to another star system and the issue should be resolved.
FIXED: When crafting, a message is displayed on the screen if your inventory is full. You can no longer start crafting a schematic if your inventory or cargo are full.
FIXED: The ship storage display is now closed when pressing ESC if in the ship UI.
FIXED: A bug related to initializing incursions after Rhamus/Jensen leave crew on trade station.
FIXED: Infinite experience when crafting (processing items by pressing the enter key).
FIXED: KO crew members could block movement in narrow passageways.

It’s been a very busy summer with me and my family moving across the country and a lot of time has been dedicated to preparing our old home, selling it, packing, and moving in to our new home. None the less, progress has been made. Now that I am settled in, I am working on Stellar Tactics at my usual pace.

The next update will be a big one and I’ll cover some of the details below. The biggest addition will be the introduction of Chapter 1 of the story. With Chapter 1, new characters will be introduced, primarily the introduction of the Coven and the Sovereignty. The story will continue with a communication from Dr. Jensen who needs your assistance as the doctors continue to look into ways to eliminate the Phage and further their knowledge related to the Jhemm.

The Coven is a specific mutation that presented itself on one of the four ships that made the transit with the remnants of the human race. The mutation applied itself to females while in cryonic suspension and resulted in uncontrolled Psionic powers. The Coven were immediately isolated and studied by scientists on arrival and eventually released to colonize, provided certain rules were followed. Specifically, anyone with the Coven mutation was subjected to surgical implants that subdued their powers. Psionic powers were outlawed and have been since the Arrival.

This did not go over well with The Coven and eventually they went into hiding and removed their implants, refining their powers. For hundreds of years, The Coven have not been seen and are nearly forgotten, though some still do business with them – smuggling goods for trade with the elusive and secretive faction.



In Chapter 1, you will be introduced to the Sovereignty – the ruling power. Taxes are paid, and for that, security and law are enforced by the Sovereignty . The six main Houses (Halamis, Aralion, Cilivon, Conrair, Shikaru and Varadyne) have control over their holdings and pay tribute to the Sovereignty who in turn provides special dispensation to the Houses. The Houses exert their power on the various sub-factions in the Stellar Tactics Universe.

Ayela will be your primary contact with the Sovereignty and will have missions that involve investigating the Phage, The Coven, Raiders, Scavvers as these are all ongoing threats to peace under the rule of the Sovereignty. Ayela has been looking for a crack squad of mercenaries for a few critical missions.



Chapter 1 will also introduce more of the story related to the Jhemm and the menace they warn about in the Prologue. With this, Rhamus is still obsessed with the Jhemm and you will explore several of these locations in Chapter 1 which will introduce the “Azimuth” system. In addition to specific locations related to the story where you acquire Azimuth, a new random mission set has been developed for the Aznari ruins and you will find these occasionally when you scan planet surfaces. 18 new "creature" enemy types have been added for cave and ruins locations to increase the variety of enemy types you will encounter in the universe.

All of the original characters have had a facelift so they will match the new content in Chapter 1.


Speaking of mission sets, 3 new random sets will be added to the game in addition to static locations for Chapter 1 of the story.



The first pass of localization is complete for French, Spanish, Russian and German. Note that as a first pass at localization, the French, Spanish, and Russian localizations are likely very rough. The German translation is in very good shape thanks to community members who joined the translation effort. The localizations will be included in the upcoming content patch. When the content patch launches, I will open up localization again for these languages for anyone who is interested in joining.

Oh, and did I mention that Stellar Tactics is getting it's final UI? Daniel did an amazing job with the UI and the implementation work is almost complete. There are still some rough edges here and there - overall, it's coming along nicely.



That’s it for now. No ETA on the release of this content patch. I do hope to get everything finished before the end of this year and I will keep you updated as I make progress.

Today's patch updates space backgrounds and effects throughout the Universe. I have also removed the 5 point weapon skill cap. I'd like to gather feedback from players on the removal of the cap. In my opinion, the skill cap has caused a lot of confusion and some just don't like it at all. For now, the cap is removed. It will come back as a hardcore option at some point for those who enjoy micro-managing progression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWDjGWSW6e8

Meanwhile, a lot of work is being done for chapter one of the main story. There are also a number of other assets being developed that will provide points of interest in the universe. I'll explain more as I make progress on this work.



ADDED: The universal facelift. All new backgrounds and various other improvements for space. Make sure to enable the high-resolution skyboxes in the options menu if you have 2gb VRAM or higher. Enjoy!

UPDATED: The 5 point skill cap for weapon skills has been removed. Removing the skill cap will likely require some tuning over time so expect the amount of experience gain to go up/down as required as I gather more feedback.
--The skill cap will come back as an advanced gameplay feature for those of us who like it. By that I mean, it will be an option - off by default.
--The level cap remains at level 60 until the story content is ready.
--Skill gain remains unchanged. Even at the level cap, you can continue to gain skills for any weapon, support, or space skill to level 100.

UPDATED: Replaced a number of planet materials.
UPDATED: Improved performance.
UPDATED: On completion of an incursion, completion notification and reward delay are much shorter.
UPDATED: Reduced base resists for various enemies.
UPDATED: Reduced FTL FX timings for faster jumps to FTL space and between star systems.
UPDATED: Stability updates.
FIXED: Rollover compare info for pugilist weapons is now displayed if a single pugilist weapon is equipped in the primary or secondary slot. If you are dual-wielding pugilist weapons, you will need to compare manually.
FIXED: A number of typos.
FIXED: Duplicate sector data in systems 0,0 - 99,0. I doubt anyone is flying around taking missions in these sectors, however - if you are I recommend that you cancel and then re-take missions if they are active.
FIXED: A bug related to the display of active drone icons on the star map.
FIXED: A bug related to walking to and interacting with objects/NPCs.

UPDATED: If you have no weapons or a pugilist weapon in your sidearm slot, the secondary support skill has been changed to sprint. If the primary weapon slot is empty (fists) or a pugilist weapon is equipped, the support skill is taunt.
UPDATED: Updated the combat movement path marker to use a much faster system.
UPDATED: LOS lines are now displayed almost immediately when the combat movement cursor is moved to a position.
UPDATED: I did a lot of work on movement and pathing. Overhead objects, walls, and other objects no longer obstructed floor clicks. If you click the floor, your crew member should move to the location unless blocked. This includes how raycasts for movement interact with PC's, NPC's and the environment.
UPDATED: If a health kit is enabled, you can now click through overhead objects, etc to target crew members.
UPDATED: A few changes to the world map:

• You can now scroll the area map using the left mouse button and zoom in-out using the mouse wheel.
  
• World map uses a higher resolution map.
  
• You can now zoom in much further on the world map.
  
• World map now remembers your current zoom level and last position during the current game session. You can reset the map using the blue "+" icon on the map.
  

UPDATED: The star-map search feature loads much faster now. A few other new features:

• The star map now lets you search star systems where you have placed a beacon by entering only a few characters. So, for example, you can search for "Achmedius" by entering "a" and pressing enter in the search field and Achmedius will be displayed along with any other systems that start with an "A". For systems where you have not placed a beacon, you need to enter the entire system name and press search to center the map on that system.
  
• Entering "cargo" or "ship" in the search field and pressing enter will now display systems where you have cargo or ships.
  
• The search feature now includes the sector coordinates and sector level for systems where you have placed beacons.
  

UPDATED: The VSYNC option now enables VSYNC and the frame limiter for the 60FPS and 30FPS options. I'm still doing work on how various high refresh monitors interact with game events and area loading.
ADDED: Added new icons to the star map that show you if you have a drone, ship, or cargo storage in a system. If you have placed a beacon in a system, the system has a new icon overlay that shows you at a glance if a beacon is already deployed in the system.
ADDED: If a crew member is at the 5 point skill cap, a warning is displayed when entering the inventory or character info screens noting that the crew member will not receive weapon skill experience until they reach the next level.
FIXED: When clicking at a specific position in the game world, the navigation marker in combat was not being correctly set to the exact movement position.
FIXED: When first entering an area and engaging in combat, the LOS markers and cover icon was not being displayed until an enemy took a single turn.
FIXED: A bug in the display of various perk bonuses in the ship skill bonus area.
FIXED: Enemy AI equipped with grenades would occasionally throw two grenades during their combat round.
FIXED: A number of UI inconsistencies related to closing various menus with the ESC key (LOG - Search, Trade-Net, Faction window).
FIXED: A few perk tooltip errors.
FIXED: The game would lock up if a crew member dies at the same time as the last enemy in an encounter with a missile launcher, DOT, or grenade. Could also happen if you were in combat mode with no enemies around and you threw a grenade and killed yourself - oops.
FIXED: When selecting crew portraits, special attacks for that crew member are now updated correctly in the toolbar.
FIXED: A bug with melee movement introduced with the special attacks system that could cause melee crew members to stop before reaching their target causing a loss of AP.

With the addition of the combat special attacks and support skills, the majority of all the core game systems are now in the game. While 2020 was difficult for everyone with the pandemic, I was still able to get a large amount of work done on the game with 19 total updates to the game and several sizeable additions including the boarding system. I’d like to thank all of you for your continued support. Stellar Tactics would not be possible without your generosity and feedback.

So, what can you expect going forward? Well, I’m very excited about the next steps so I thought I would give everyone a glance into the future of the game. Until now I’ve been mostly focused on developing the core structure of the game. Things like combat, space exploration, the universe, inventory, crafting, salvaging, loot and all of the systems that make up the foundation of what Stellar Tactics will be. That is, the container – the universe.

Now it’s time to start filling the universe with meaningful content. Characters you will engage with in various ways. I’d like to expand on the lore of the universe, give you ways to define your place, build relationships with various factions, and expand on the core systems I’ve worked hard to implement.

What does that mean? First, I’ll be working on the story. With that, more of what is happening in the universe will become apparent. Who are the key players? Who were the Aznari? What are the Jhemm? What is this threat that is coming? Should you trust Jensen and Rhamus? And of course, what is your part in all of this? There are likely many questions after playing the Prologue and my goal going forward is to give the player places to go, things to see and do, and to expand on the core of the game with meaningful content and encounters.

I’ll be expanding on the mission system with branching missions that have multiple objectives. Missions may lead to new missions and I'll be looking into new and better completion rewards.

I’ll be expanding the storylines of characters you have already met – like Arkus, Rhamus, Phestus, Scarby, Rodger Crayson, and more. Some of these characters will introduce new mission types for mining, smuggling, salvaging, and ways to earn ships from Arkus through the boarding system.

I'll be adding new enemy types and epic bosses.

I'll be adding new armor sets and clothing for characters.

I’ll be adding Psionics. Psionics will use a new weapon type – the Psi Amp which is rewarded from a series of side encounters related to the Coven. I won’t spoil anything here, though I will say that Psi will be a very useful skill to have with the ability to buff, debuff, heal, and generate various other effects that enhance your team.

I'll be adding faction warfare and unique encounters in FTL space. These will be random locations with exploration, salvaging, and special faction warfare opportunities.

I’ve made an investment in new tools that will help me create unique and diverse characters for the story, new portraits, and in-game models. A few examples below.

Some of these characters you will love to hate.

Others you will learn to rely on.

And special crew members who have their own stories and backgrounds.

I’ll be revising and adding more variety to the universe with new high-resolution custom skyboxes made just for Stellar Tactics by Tim Barton – an amazing artist who specializes in space environments. You can check out Tim Bartons work at this link: Tim Barton on Artstation

I’ll also be knocking off some of the rough edges, improving the game visuals, and addressing QoL issues many of you have been asking for. I will be working on tuning, looking at all of the systems as a whole and how they work with each other, and making changes where they make sense.

I'm going to be patching out a number of small bugs and addressing a few other issues at the end of next week. From that point, I’ll be focusing exclusively on the content mentioned above. It will likely be the longest period of time you have had to wait for a content update and I’ll keep you all posted as I make progress.