Starship EVO News

This build welcomes a new mechanic essential to the upcoming gameplay loop: player health, death and respawn.
Indeed, survival has no meaning if the player cant die!
A new system block has been added, acting as a healing station and respawn point in case of player death: the medbay.
The player will have to "Scan" himself to various Medbay belonging to his ship or NPC stations as he progress in the game.
I have created the medbay to have a minimal form factor so you can decorate it as you wish. It is designed to be placed either vertically or horizontally to fit the style you prefer, the player animation inside will adapt to the relative orientation of the local gravity field. It is as small as possible as one day when crew and boarding is introduced you might need to put several of them inside your ship!

Check out the design and animation below.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

New features:

• Player health
  
• Player impact FX (wip) and death animation
  
• Medbay system added
  
• Medbay can heal wounded players.
  
• Player can "scan" himself at the medbay in order set it as his respawn point
  
• Scan and Respawn FX
  
• Medbay can be place vertically or horizontally.
  
• The player will respawn to the last non-destroyed medbay.
  
• Player height reduced.
  

As with all the new content this patch will live in the Experimental beta branch for a bit of time before landing in the main branch.

Thanks a lot for playing the game!

This build introduces a few game mechanics needed for the upcoming gameplay loop.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

First a drop system and a very basic ship inventory system is introduced.
Secondly a Upgrade Chips system is introduced as the first lootable element in order to spice up the game progression.
Here is how it works:
- Destroying a system has a chance of dropping a random Upgrade Chip.
- Each Chip can improve one or several stats like Hull, Shield, Power or Weapons efficiency.
- The number of stats and their increase depends on the Chip rarity: Poor, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic or Legendary.
- Each ship can have up to 9 upgrade slots depending the ship Power output.


Upcoming:
- The current inventory system will be made more complex in the future with cargo management.
- More upgrade chip type will be added.
- Chip switch will have to be made at a station.
- An upgrade chip will increase the ability to get more upgrade slots (up to 14)



This build is available on the Experimental beta branch. Thanks for playing!

The latest series of patch over the last two weeks focuses on making combat more engaging.
It make hard-points a valid alternative to turrets, amp up brick based ship durability, make system destruction a viable combat strategy and address the ship agility issues following player feedback.

Furthermore we did an important push on accessibility and player locomotion to address some issues and difficulties some player experienced.

Please note that the last few update are being push on the EXPERIMENTAL beta branch, so if you want to help to test you can opt-in! No password required.

Here is a quick recap of the main changes and new additions:

• No-clip mode added, an help message will suggest to activate it when player is stuck
  
• Fast speed mode is now a debug toggle
  
• Player being stuck on high fall issue is fixed.
  
• inconsistent jump height issue fixed
  
• Ship turning speed will scale down with mass at a given agility rating.
  
• Ship agility rating is maxed out to 100% (it will still display score superior to 100% though).
  
• Bricks now provide some Armor and Hull Integrity according to their volume, up to 100 HP per voxel.
  
• Gimbal added for fixed weapons.
  
• Hit Marker added.
  
• NPCs can uses fixed weapons.
  
• Target Lead indicator for each hotkey added.
  
• Mouse Power curve setting added: default is at 50%.
  
• System Destroy chain: system blocks have a 75% of destroying a neighbor voxel.
  
• Systems will cease to function under 50% HP.
  
• HUD: system HP for own and target ship added.
  
• Thruster system will emit some smoke when partly destroyed.
  

As usual for the full list of or changes and bug fixes you can report to the github or check in game:
[New build - EXPERIMENTAL] 20w32b: Hotfixes. [New build - EXPERIMENTAL] 20w32a: Systems Destruction. [New build - EXPERIMENTAL] 20w31b: Hardpoint Improvements. [New build - DEFAULT] 20w31a: Brick HP and ship agility. [New build - DEFAULT] 20w30d: Hotfixes. [New build - DEFAULT] 20w30c: Player Locomotion Improvements


Happy building!
Francois

This update follows through on the latest effort on combat by making systems destruction a more viable strategy.
It adds a few new gameplay mechanics and some HUD feedback on players own ship and target ship systems HP.

Improvements and changes.

System Destroy chain: system blocks have a 75% of destroying a neighbor voxel.
Systems will cease to function under 50% HP.
HUD: system HP for own and target ship added.
Thruster system will emit some smoke when partly destroyed.
NB: Player will have ways to improve the previous stats through gameplay in upcoming updates.

Bugfixes:
#2741 Missing children entities on blueprint load.
#2721 #2738 Incorrect chunk information on blueprint load.
#2740 Build on a ship that is selected by the tracking cam breaks game.
#2731 Can link seat to buttons.
#2718 Mag-lock can lock to already locked entity
Mag-lock can lock circularly.
#2717 Grays paint not applied correctly on light.
#2734 Weapon spread not applied with gimbal weapons.

his update focuses at making hardpoints a more viable option for combat by adding gimbal, a target lead indicator, hitmarkers and a finer mouse control with the addition of a power curve.

Improvements and changes.

Gimbal added for fixed weapons.
Hit Marker added.
NPCs can uses fixed weapons.
Target Lead indicator for each hotkey added.
Mouse Power curve setting added: default is at 50%.
Some CPU optimizations

This build is part of the EXPERIMENTAL branch.