Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander News

Cosmoteer update 0.21.2 is now available! This update has a bunch of miscellaneous quality-of-life improvements, balance changes, and bug fixes. Enjoy!

• Railgun balance changes:
  - Increased Loader mass from 12 to 24.
  - Increased Accelerator and Launcher mass from 24 to 36.
  
• Mine balance changes:
  - Halved iron/ammo cost to manufacture mines.
  - Increased health from 800 to 3200.
  - Increased the number of mine parts that can fit in a tile stack from 4 to 8.
  
• E.M.P. Missile balance changes:
  - Increased E.M.P. missile range from 600 to 700.
  
• Various new and updated built-in ships:
  - 5 new Monolith ships: Accoster, Ambuscader, Bombardier, Quickdraw, and Roughhouser.
  - 4 new Cabal ships: Astraeus, Aurelian, Ejecta, and Eos.
  - 8 new Imperium ships: Austral, Avicida, Black Knight, Elanine, Hercinia, Longspur, Ninox, and Skirath.
  - 8 new Fringe ships: Bigfoot, Chimney Slug, Clockwork, Junk Carver, Nutcracker, Sprocket, Streamliner, and Umbrage.
  - 1 new Medium Imperium Trade Station.
  - Miscellaneous updates to other existing built-in ships.
  
• Ships that are set to "junk" can no longer be controlled, which the U.I. now makes clear with a red icon on the HUD similar to the icon shown when the ship doesn't have enough command points.
  
• Delivery missions will no longer be shown if they don't have enough space to hold the requested resources.
  
• Mining lasers will no longer shoot at parts marked for salvaging when set to Hold Fire.
  
• Collateral damage from area-of-effect weapons will no longer damage neutral ships/stations. This should prevent accidentally damaging stations while trying to rescue them.
  
• Tweaked collision avoidance so that ships will be less likely to interfere with each other when flying around suns.
  
• Changed the default hotkey for toggling the "Toggle Auto Face Cursor" direct control mode option from Ctrl+F to Ctrl+Shift+F to reduce accidental presses.
  
• Ships owned by player can now be abandoned even if there are no crew on the ship.
  
• Added settings to turn off the flying crew and resource pick-up dotted lines.
  
• Using the "Load Ship (Replace Existing)" option in the ship editor will now automatically update the ship's flight direction to match the loaded ship.
  
• Increased the default number of auto-save, quick-save, and lost ship files from 10 to 25. (Only applies to new players.)
  
• Replaced the clock icon (shown next to a player's name in multiplayer when they are slowing the game down for everyone else) with a turtle icon.
  
• Bugfix: Crash in some very specific situations when transferring crew to a junked ship.
  
• Bugfix: Rare crash when jumping to a new star system.
  
• Bugfix: Occasional crashes almost immediately when a multiplayer game desyncs.
  
• Bugfix: After a multiplayer desync, any observers would become like "Player 1" but unable to actually control anything.
  
• Bugfix: On occasion, more crew than necessary could be assigned to deliver batteries.
  
• Bugfix: Ion Beam Prisms were very slow to change targets after destroying their current target.
  
• Bugfix: If a player gets disconnected from a multiplayer game while making an in-system hyper-jump, the jumping ship(s) would disappear until another player travels to near where it jumped to.
  
• Bugfix: Copying, rotating, and pasting groups of parts could break resource and crew assignments when done between non-rotatable parts.
  
• Bugfix: The "Break Formation To Attack" setting was not functioning at all.
  
• Bugfix: Missions that were redeemable at any trade station in a star system would also erroneously show star icons on faction bases.
  
• Bugfix: Typing multiplayer chat messages longer than the text box would cause the text to be offset the next time a chat message was typed.
  

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.21.2 is now available for testing! (See this post for info on how to test release candidates.)

This updates contains miscellaneous fixes and improvements.

• Railgun balance changes:
  - Decreased Loader cost from 12500 to 10000.
  - Decreased Accelerator and Launcher cost from 7500 to 5000.
  - Increased Loader mass from 12 to 24.
  - Increased Accelerator and Launcher mass from 24 to 36.
  
• Mine balance changes:
  - Halved iron/ammo cost to manufacture mines.
  - Increased health from 800 to 3200.
  - Increased the number of mine parts that can fit in a tile stack from 4 to 8.
  
• E.M.P. Missile balance changes:
  - Increased E.M.P. missile range from 600 to 700.
  
• Various new and updated built-in ships:
  - 5 new Monolith ships: Accoster, Ambuscader, Bombardier, Quickdraw, and Roughhouser.
  - 4 new Cabal ships: Astraeus, Aurelian, Ejecta, and Eos.
  - 8 new Imperium ships: Austral, Avicida, Black Knight, Elanine, Hercinia, Longspur, Ninox, and Skirath.
  - 8 new Fringe ships: Bigfoot, Chimney Slug, Clockwork, Junk Carver, Nutcracker, Sprocket, Streamliner, and Umbrage.
  - 1 new Medium Imperium Trade Station.
  - Miscellaneous updates to other existing built-in ships.
  
• Ships that are set to "junk" can no longer be controlled, which the U.I. now makes clear with a red icon on the HUD similar to the icon shown when the ship doesn't have enough command points.
  
• Delivery missions will no longer be shown if they don't have enough space to hold the requested resources.
  
• Mining lasers will no longer shoot at parts marked for salvaging when set to Hold Fire.
  
• Collateral damage from area-of-effect weapons will no longer damage neutral ships/stations. This should prevent accidentally damaging stations while trying to rescue them.
  
• Tweaked collision avoidance so that ships will be less likely to interfere with each other when flying around suns.
  
• Changed the default hotkey for toggling the "Toggle Auto Face Cursor" direct control mode option from Ctrl+F to Ctrl+Shift+F to reduce accidental presses.
  
• Ships owned by player can now be abandoned even if there are no crew on the ship.
  
• Added settings to turn off the flying crew and resource pick-up dotted lines.
  
• Using the "Load Ship (Replace Existing)" option in the ship editor will now automatically update the ship's flight direction to match the loaded ship.
  
• Increased the default number of auto-save, quick-save, and lost ship files from 10 to 25. (Only applies to new players.)
  
• Replaced the clock icon (shown next to a player's name in multiplayer when they are slowing the game down for everyone else) with a turtle icon.
  
• Bugfix: Crash in some very specific situations when transferring crew to a junked ship.
  
• Bugfix: Possible multiplayer desyncs caused by railguns.
  
• Bugfix: On occasion, more crew than necessary could be assigned to deliver batteries.
  
• Bugfix: Ion Beam Prisms were very slow to change targets after destroying their current target.
  
• Bugfix: If a player gets disconnected from a multiplayer game while making an in-system hyper-jump, the jumping ship(s) would disappear until another player travels to near where it jumped to.
  
• Bugfix: Copying, rotating, and pasting groups of parts could break resource and crew assignments when done between non-rotatable parts.
  
• Bugfix: The "Break Formation To Attack" setting was not functioning at all.
  
• Bugfix: Missions that were redeemable at any trade station in a star system would also erroneously show star icons on faction bases.
  
• Bugfix: Typing multiplayer chat messages longer than the text box would cause the text to be offset the next time a chat message was typed.
  

Yesterday's 0.21.1 patch had a bug that would occasionally cause crashes during gameplay. This update should fix that bug.

Cosmoteer update 0.21.1 is now available! This update should significantly improve game performance for many players, especially with late-game saves that have a lot of "junk" floating around. Plus it's got a bunch of other fixes and quality-of-life improvements. Here's the full list:

• Greatly improved performance when there are a lot of "junk" ships, such as with many late-game saves.
  
• Upgraded to Microsoft .NET 7, which may further slightly improve overall performance. (Please let me know if you have any crashes or other issues playing Cosmoteer, especially if you are using Windows 7 or 8.)
  
• When loading blueprints from a saved ship design into the ship editor, you will now be given options to also load that ship's paint design, crew roles, crew assignments, and/or resource assignments. (When pasting instead of replacing, the paint and role options will not be available.)
  
• The game will no longer slow down automatically when an enemy is detected if there are already enemies within detection range.
  
• Added options to turn off the crew and resource assignment arrows for non-selected crew and resource rooms. These options are in the dropdown menu in both the crew and resource management screens.
  
• It is now possible to salvage your own ships by holding the Ctrl key.
  
• You must now hold Ctrl to delete damaged parts because they do not refund full resources.
  
• Multiplayer lobbies will now be named using the format "A-123" instead of a randomly-generated station name.
  
• The light size toggle for the new exterior lights is now changeable in the ship editor just like the color already is.
  
• If the player's ship is too far from a station to hire crew, the user interface for doing so will be disabled and a message will be shown to explain.
  
• Damage scaling based on difficulty level no longer applies to damage (or salvage) done to junk.
  
• When playing on Imagineer economic difficulty, crew can now be hired from stations at zero cost and as if the player had maximum fame.
  
• Ion Beam Prisms will no longer redirect incoming ion beams when powered off. This fixes an exploit where it was possible to aim a prism and then power it off to reduce its command point usage.
  
• It is now possible to attack a ship that you are already following.
  
• It is no longer possible for the host to force start a Career mode game if not all players are ready.
  
• Added a warning when VSync is enabled while also using a Minimum Target F.P.S. of 60, which is known to cause performance issues.
  
• Clearing debris in Creative Mode will no longer remove jump gates.
  
• Added 15 new faction ships and stations.
  
• Added the winning ships from the Feb. 2023 ship design contest. These ships will not spawn in Career mode but are available to use in Creative mode.
  
• Miscellaneous updates to several dozen existing ships.
  
• Various updates to the existing language translations. (Thanks community translators!)
  
• Bugfix: Loading a ship design from the ship editor was not properly loading crew roles and assignments.
  
• Bugfix: AI ships were over-emphasizing the firepower of each potential target ship compared to its distance.
  
• Bugfix: AI ships were over-estimating the firepower of ships with ion prisms.
  
• Bugfix: The "ALL HANDS LOST" game over message would be displayed when the player's control room was destroyed even if they still had crew.
  
• Bugfix: Trying to upload some ship fleets to the Steam Workshop could result in an error if the ship file chosen for the preview image was too large.
  
• Bugfix: When a ship didn't have any parts, its mass would be shown as 1.0 tonnes.
  
• The title screen logo ship was missing a door. (Literally unplayable.)