Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander News

Cosmoteer update 0.22.0 is now available! This update adds the "Hyperdrive Beacon":



The Hyperdrive Beacon is a new ship part that works in conjunction with other ships' Hyperdrives. Any ship with a Hyperdrive can jump to any (friendly) ship with a Hyperdrive Beacon. In Career mode, this means that you can jump not only to neutral stations and jump gates, but also to any of your own ships on which you have constructed a Hyperdrive Beacon. And in PVP multiplayer, this opens up new tactics and strategies for multi-ship fleets, allowing you to jump around the battlefield to evade and flank enemies.

Enjoy!

Patch notes:

• Added a "Hyperdrive Beacon" ship part that can be built by the player. Any ship with a Hyperdrive can now jump to any friendly ship with a Hyperdrive Beacon, not just neutral stations and jump gates. These beacons are also usable in PvP multiplayer, giving Hyperdrives a tactical combat use and allowing for advanced combat tactics.
  
• Ships will no longer rotate to face their destination when making an hyper-jump.
  
• Added a "Zoom Out When Hyper-Jumping" camera setting that, if disabled, will prevent the camera from automatically zooming out when plotting a hyper-jump within the local star system. (Hold the Shift to invert the behavior of this setting.)
  
• Built-in ship updates:
  - All built-in trade station and Hyper-Jump Beacon designs have been updated to have Hyperdrive Beacon parts. If the Hyperdrive Beacon is destroyed, it will no longer be possible to jump to the station. (Hyper-Jump Relays do not have Hyperdrive Beacons but can still be jumped to.)
  - Added two new Monolith ships: Shestopyor and Silencer.
  - Added five new Imperium ships: Atropos, Crane, Fantail, Jackdaw, and Lancea Libertatis.
  - Added two new Fringe ships: Backup, Hydra
  - Miscellaneous updates to existing ships.
  
• Sensor Arrays will no longer function when the ship doesn't have enough command points. (This is also true for Hyperdrive Beacons.)
  
• Career mode saved games will now display the player's current money, fame, and star system danger level.
  
• The Ring of Death now appears to shrink more smoothly.
  
• The Fire Extinguisher is now shown in the Utilities tab in addition to the Defenses tab.
  
• Roof lights are no longer flammable.
  
• Added a "Restock Resources" button to the hamburger menu in the resource management U.I. when playing in Creative mode or Imagineer difficulty in Career mode.
  
• The "Restock Resources" hotkey now works in Domination mode.
  
• When loading blueprints into an existing ship design, there is now an "Also Load Name, Author, and Description" option.
  
• The "Also Load" options when loading blueprints into an existing ship design will now be remembered the next time blueprints are loaded.
  
• Bugfix: Loading large save files in multiplayer could cause the host's framerate to drop very low and slow down the sending of the file.
  
• Bugfix: Fire VFX weren't rendering if the Fancy Lights setting was disabled but Fancy VFX was enabled.
  
• Bugfix: In the crew editor, hovering the mouse cursor over crew operating missile launchers would show the text "Operating Missile & Mine Launcher" instead of "Operating Missile & Mine Launcher".
  
• Modding: Part editor groups can now be given a 'SortOrder' parameter which will determine where the group appears relative to the other groups. (Groups without a sort order will appear after those with a sort order.)
  
• Modding: Added a 'RoofOpacity' part component that can be used to provide the current roof opacity value (between 0 and 1) to other components, such as to hide media effects when the roof is disabled. It has optional InputRange and OutputRange parameters that allow the roof opacity to be remapped to different ranges of values. (Only use this component for rendering! Using it to affect any gameplay logic will cause multiplayer desyncs.)
  
• Modding: Particle effects now support an optional 'IsSimpleLight' parameter that, if true, will prevent the particles from rendering if the Fancy Lights setting is enabled.
  
• Modding: Fixed crash when trying to play a wav file that uses 3 bytes per sample.
  

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.22.0 is now available for testing! (See this post for info on how to test release candidates.)

This updates adds a new ship part, the Hyperdrive Beacon, as well as a handful of other improvements and fixes.

RC1:

• Added a "Hyperdrive Beacon" ship part that can be built by the player. Any ship with a Hyperdrive can now jump to any friendly ship with a Hyperdrive Beacon, not just neutral stations and jump gates. These beacons are also usable in PvP multiplayer, giving Hyperdrives a tactical combat use and allowing for advanced combat tactics.
  
• Ships will no longer rotate to face their destination when making an hyper-jump.
  
• Built-in ship updates:
  - All built-in trade station and Hyper-Jump Beacon designs have been updated to have Hyperdrive Beacon parts. If the Hyperdrive Beacon is destroyed, it will no longer be possible to jump to the station. (Hyper-Jump Relays do not have Hyperdrive Beacons but can still be jumped to.)
  - Added two new Monolith ships: Shestopyor and Silencer.
  - Added five new Imperium ships: Atropos, Crane, Fantail, Jackdaw, and Lancea Libertatis.
  - Added two new Fringe ships: Backup, Hydra
  - Miscellaneous updates to existing ships.
  
• Career mode saved games will now display the player's current money, fame, and star system danger level.
  
• The Ring of Death now appears to shrink more smoothly.
  
• The Fire Extinguisher is now shown in the Utilities tab in addition to the Defenses tab.
  
• Added a "Restock Resources" button to the hamburger menu in the resource management U.I. when playing in Creative mode or Imagineer difficulty in Career mode.
  
• The "Restock Resources" hotkey now works in Domination mode.
  
• When loading blueprints into an existing ship design, there is now an "Also Load Name, Author, and Description" option.
  
• The "Also Load" options when loading blueprints into an existing ship design will now be remembered the next time blueprints are loaded.
  
• Bugfix: In the crew editor, hovering the mouse cursor over crew operating missile launchers would show the text "Operating Missile & Mine Launcher" instead of "Operating Missile & Mine Launcher".
  
• Modding: Part editor groups can now be given a 'SortOrder' parameter which will determine where the group appears relative to the other groups. (Groups without a sort order will appear after those with a sort order.)
  
• Modding: Added a 'RoofOpacity' part component that can be used to provide the current roof opacity value (between 0 and 1) to other components, such as to hide media effects when the roof is disabled. It has optional InputRange and OutputRange parameters that allow the roof opacity to be remapped to different ranges of values. (Only use this component for rendering! Using it to affect any gameplay logic will cause multiplayer desyncs.)
  
• Modding: Fixed crash when trying to play a wav file that uses 3 bytes per sample.
  

RC2:

• You can now hold the Shift key while clicking the button or pressing J to suppress the automatic zoom-out when making a hyper-jump.
  
• Roof lights are no longer flammable.
  
• Bugfix: Loading large save files in multiplayer could cause the host's framerate to drop very low and slow down the sending of the file.
  
• Bugfix: Fire VFX weren't rendering if the Fancy Lights setting was disabled but Fancy VFX was enabled.
  
• RC Bugfix: Hyperdrive Beacon VFX were screwed up if the Fancy VFX setting was disabled.
  
• RC Bugfix: It was not possible to jump to Hyper-Jump Relays in Creative Mode.
  
• RC Bugfix: Making a hyper-jump in an Elimination game would cause you to lose if that was your last remaining ship or put your fleet value under the defeat threshold.
  
• RC Bugfix: Modded editor groups without a SortOrder were appearing at the front of the list instead of end as intended.
  
• Modding: Particle effects now support an optional 'IsSimpleLight' parameter that, if true, will prevent the particles from rendering if the Fancy Lights setting is enabled.
  

RC3:

• Increased Hyperdrive Beacon command point usage from 8 to 12.
  
• Hyperdrive Beacons and Sensor Arrays will no longer function when the ship doesn't have enough command points.
  
• Added a "Zoom Out When Hyper-Jumping" camera setting that, if disabled, will prevent the camera from automatically zooming out when plotting a hyper-jump within the local star system. (Hold the Shift to invert the behavior of this setting.)
  
• Tweaks to the Hyperjump Beacon VFX.
  

RC4:

• RC Bugfix: Crash in some circumstances when quitting the game while there are active Hyperdrive Beacons.
  

Bugfix: The game could get stuck at a high percentage when loading a saved game from within a game in multiplayer.
Bugfix: Possible fix for multiplayer disconnections when starting or loading saved games.

Bugfix: Desyncs caused by projectiles hitting shields while penetrating through ships. (Most common with railguns.)

This patch fixes a major memory leak that was introduced in 0.21.3.