Stellar Tactics News

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.

Hi all - I am happy to release the latest content patch for Stellar Tactics today. There are a lot of changes in this build so please read the patch notes below. I'll be monitoring the bug forums closely over the next few days and patching out any issues you might find. While I've done a lot of testing on this build, as you know, things happen. I hope you enjoy the changes.

I expect I'll be spending a week or two tweaking a few things with the special attacks, addressing issues (if any), and clearing a backlog of small issues that need to be looked into.

What's next? Sometime in the next week, I'll post an update covering what you can expect going forward. There are a lot of changes coming to Stellar Tactics and I'm really excited to be at a point where I'll be implementing new story content, expanding the mission system, polishing various rough edges, adding psionics, and more.

ADDED SPECIAL WEAPON ATTACKS AND SUPPORT SKILLS:
Weapon special attacks and support skills are now in the game. Note that enemies start using special attacks at around level 5. Players get all weapon skills at the start of the game and they improve over time with five total tiers increasing at skill levels 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100. Weapon skills are specific to each weapon type and several are shared (1hand slash and 1hand blunt). Initially these attacks are fairly weak, however, over time they scale nicely and you will be using them regularly in combat.

• Special attacks and support skills use zero AP and can be triggered at any time if they are available as long as it is your turn in combat.
  
• Special attacks are guaranteed to hit, however, DEFEND can mitigate damage.
  
• Enemies start using special weapon attacks at level 5
  
• Weapon special attacks are on global cooldown timers.
  
• Support skills are reset at the beginning of combat. You can use sprint, taunt, and barrier at the start of each combat session.
  
• You can use special attacks and support skills from both equipped weapons ( primary and secondary ) in the same round if global timers are reset by swapping weapons.
  
• Special attacks, taunt, and barrier increase in power as you gain skill in that weapon class at levels 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100.
  
• Game difficulty affects how NPC's use special attacks by changing how often they are used. The frequency and power of these effects from NPC's vary by enemy difficulty. A regular NPC will use them less often, a single skull enemy more often and bosses will use them most of the time when their cooldowns expire. On easy mode, these attacks are less likely to trigger - on extreme difficulty the attacks will be triggered more often.
  
• Some enemies have special abilities. For example Phage vomit. Rather than triggering a special attack, they will use their special twice in one attack if they trigger a special. New enemies in future updates may have similar attacks that they use more than once in a combat round.
  

UPDATED - BOARDING:

• When boarding a ship, there will always be a loot container that contains ship equipment loot similar to what would have been dropped if you had destroyed the ship. NOTE: Ore and ship ammo is not included in the loot table.
  
• Enemy subsystem regeneration time increased by 30 seconds. It should now be easier to board ships with lower-tier ship equipment. Note that it has always been intended that boarding a ship with starter turrets would be difficult. Upgrading your turrets and systems will make boarding enemy ships much easier. While boarding, a ship may regenerate its shields, however, they go down faster after repaired by the enemy crew.
  
• General reward for selling ships to Arkus increased by 30%. Selling a ship with multiple decks increased by 70%. Note that repairing ships to full always rewards more and yes, it does take some time to gather the components - though, with higher salvage skill, more components are rewarded. I will be adding side missions for Arkus and he/she/it will have missions that will let you earn better rewards as you develop your relationship.
  

ADDED - REVIEW AND UPDATE CREW PERKS/STATS FROM THE CREW MANAGER:
You can now edit crew member perks, stats, portrait, voice, and name in the CREW MANAGER for any crew member by selecting the crew member you want to edit from the list on the left and then clicking the "EDIT CREW MEMBER" button. This is very useful when adjusting space crew perks for mining, space combat etc. Previously, you needed to add the crew member to your active crew to make adjustments.

ADDED - DEDICATED CREW MEMBERS FOR HACKING, SALVAGING, CRAFTING, AND REPAIR
When activating any of these skills, you can now select the active crew member as dedicated. This means that no matter which crew member activates the skill, the dedicated crew member will be the crew member who's skills and perks are used. This crew member also receives all experience from actively using these skills.
If you would prefer to not use a dedicated crew member anymore, just select the portrait to remove the "check mark" and the crew member that initiates the skill will be used.
The first time any of these skills is used a popup is displayed explaining how to select this crew member as the dedicated crew.
SELECT DEDICATED CREW MEMBER: When any of the skill UI's are displayed, click the portrait and a checkmark will be displayed indicating this crew member is not the dedicated crew member for that skill.
REMOVE DEDICATED CREW MEMBER: When any of the skill UI's are displayed, click the portrait and the checkmark will be removed indicated a dedicated crew member is not selected for that skill.
--NOTE: Removing or replacing a crew member from your ground team in the crew manager will reset your currently active dedicated crew. You will need to re-assign a new crew member to the various tasks.

UPDATED - VSYNC AND FRAMERATE CAP OPTIONS:
Uncapping the framerate in the video options has been changed to give players more options. You can find a new slider in the video options menu. Default is VSYNC ON. The slider lets you cap your framerate to 30 FPS, 60 FPS, VSYNC ON, VSYNC 1/2, VSYNC 1/4, and NO LIMIT (no cap at all!). VSYNC is highly dependant on your system, monitor, and video card settings. This should give players more options and hopefully address issues of animation slowdown. If you have any issues, you can always either uncap the framerate completely by dragging the slider to the far right or set the framerate cap to 60FPS or even 30FPS.

I'll keep an eye on the bug forums to see if any of the VSYNC and framerate adjustments mentioned above cause any issues. VSYNC ON should always provide the best performance.

GENERAL PATCH NOTES:
UPDATED: Increased base Micro-Warp speed of ships.
UPDATED: Reduced spam-click timer so there is less delay when interacting with objects and NPC's.
UPDATED: Skyboxes for the main menu and FTL space.
UPDATED: Doubled faction token and faction standing rewards for agent missions.
UPDATED: Doubled positive/negative faction reward values for clearing explore locations.
UPDATED: Increase the number of credits rewarded when completing a faction agent mission
UPDATED: Faction display in the log map area now displays your current faction values as positive/negative values ranging from -50,000 (worst) to +50,000 (best). Neutral ranges from -10,000 - +10,000.
UPDATED: Hacking and auto-hacking are now faster. When entering the correct key code, the next combination digit begins immediately instead of waiting for the cooldown timer to expire.
UPDATED: Repair and Salvage experience bars when repairing/salvaging ship components on boarded ships now show experience toward the next level instead of total skill experience.
UPDATED: Adjusted bleed damage down a little.
UPDATED: The FTL guide entry is displayed the first time you enter FTL space. A reminder to accelerate is displayed on the screen when entering FTL space. Additional information added to the FTL guide entry noting that piloting skill and FTL drive quality affect SHIP speed in FTL space. Guide entries/tutorials will eventually get an overhaul.
UPDATED: Added new key binds. Your current key binds have been reset.
Keybind for toggling grenades on/off [O]
Keybind for toggling med-kits on/off [P]
Keybind for scanning the selected target in space [DELETE]
Keybind for attacking the selected ship. When in space combat you can tab-target ships in combat with you, and press the attack key to switch all turrets to the new target. [RETURN]
FIXED: Neutral system stations would occasionally spawn faction agents that would give missions that could never be completed.
FIXED: It was possible to mount heavy turrets on light turret mount slots. I recommend replacing any heavy turrets mounted on light turret mount locations to avoid issues with space combat.
FIXED: Corrected ship info list below turrets on ship screen [K} so it correctly displays the mount point info for heavy/light turrets.
FIXED: If entering the Abandoned Facility and taking missions before completing the Slice Mines mission, it was possible you could not turn the Slice Mine mission in to Scarby Hurzog.
FIXED: Rollover highlights for a number of objects.
FIXED: When removing status effects using first-aid perkS, the status effect displayed under the crew portrait is updated immediately.
FIXED: A few minor visual glitches with projectiles.
FIXED: A few material errors with Kchor NPC's
FIXED: A skill rounding error when recruiting mercs that would round skills down one level occasionally.

I'm posting a short WIP video today showing some of the new weapon special attacks and support skills. I'm also showing a few QoL changes that are coming in the next content patch. I expect the next content patch to be ready on January 8th.

https://youtu.be/mA-WNiN7raU

For those of you who have been playing Stellar Tactics, I'm sure you have noticed the two empty slots on the combat tool-bar. Those have always been reserved for weapon special attacks and support skills. These will be available from level 1 and increase in power as you gain skill in the weapon class they are associated with.

Special attacks are zero-AP cost attacks on a global cooldown timer. They provide a number of effects like PBAoE, target-based AE, and burst single target damage. The goal of the attacks is to give you additional options. Save them for a tough fight, or use them any time. The attacks make a big difference to the pace of the game. Also, because NPC's can use these attacks, you will need to be on your toes making sure your crew's HP is topped off.

The new support skills give you additional mobility, the ability to charge your shields, reflect damage, and the possibility to taunt enemies off of crew members who need a round to regroup.

In addition to the new support and combat skills, a few QoL updates are coming:

Dedicated crew members - You can now assign dedicated crew members to hacking, salvage, crafting, and repair. That means regardless of who engages these skills, the dedicated crew member will always perform the action and gain the EXP. For repair, it means you no longer need to drag weapons and armor off crew members into general inventory.

Crew member review - You can now review any crew member from the crew manager. This makes it easy to assign perks to any crew member without needing to move them into your ground crew.

Hacking update - You can now enter combination keys when hacking before the cooldown expires. This makes hacking a lot faster.

Boarding ships - There will now always be a container with the loot that would have dropped from the ship if you had destroyed it. This should make boarding a bit more profitable. In addition, larger ships will pay out more than smaller ships. Overall, I'll be adjusting the amount you get from ships marginally. Of course, repairing ships completely before selling them always pays the most.

Happy Holidays to all of you! Stay safe and thank you for supporting Stellar Tactics.