Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander News

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.25.0 is now available for testing! (To play this release candidate, you must opt in to test it. Please see this post for info on how to test release candidates.)

This release candidate adds a brand new multiplayer PvP mode called "Build & Battle" which combines ship building with ship battles. Played over several rounds, competitors build or upgrade their ship using a randomly limited selection of parts and then battle against the other players. At the beginning of every new round, players receive credits with which they can build or upgrade their ship and unlock new parts. (Ships are repaired for free.) Then they fight against their opponent(s), and the winner earns a "victory point". The first player or team to (by default) 3 victory points wins the game!

This release candidate also adds Medium and Large Hyperdrives. The larger drives store more hyperium and boost jump efficiency within a larger radius. As such, they will likely be more cost-effective and convenient for larger ships than the existing Small Hyperdrive.

Have fun, and thanks for testing!

RC1:

• New PvP multiplayer game mode: "Build & Battle". Played over several rounds, competitors build or upgrade their ship using a randomly limited selection of parts and then battle against the other players.
  
• Added Medium and Large Hyperdrives that can store more hyperium and boost jump efficiency in a larger radius.
  
• Split the Launcher blueprint technology into four, one for each type of munition (H.E., E.M.P., Nuke, Mine). Existing saves that have already unlocked the Missile Launcher will now receive all four munition blueprint techs for free.
  
• Modding: Career mode techs now support multiple techs unlocking the same part.
  
• Modding: Career mode techs now support unlocking doors and individual UIToggle choices.
  
• Modding: Rules files now support the old Mac OS style of line endings.
  

RC2:

• RC Bugfix: The logic that was supposed to detect when ships should become junk was extremely broken.
  
• RC Bugfix: The Hyperium U.I. tile for the Large Hyperdrive was in the wrong location.
  

RC3:

• The first round of Build & Battle now has an extra random part offering.
  
• Updates to the official Build & Battle rulesets. They all now give different credit amounts in each round.
  
• Loading of saved ship designs is now disabled by default in Build & Battle but can be re-enabled by the host.
  
• New icon for Build & Battle mode.
  
• It is no longer possible to abandon or self-destruct your ship in the build phase of Build & Battle, which could cause crashes and other issues.
  
• The scoreboard will now have a scrollbar if it is too long to fit on the screen.
  
• Modding: Using mods that had blueprints techs with the Missile Launcher as a prerequisite will no longer crash. Those specific blueprint techs will now require all four of the launcher munition techs as their new prerequisite. It is recommended that mod authors update their mods to use the new techs as prerequisites if different behavior is desired.
  
• Modding: Build & Battle now has an explicit whitelist of parts that don't require tech purchases to unlock. This will prevent modded parts from being automatically buildable; those parts must now be added to the whitelist or be given purchasable techs by the mod.
  

This hotfix fixes a few issues in Friday's 0.24.3 update that didn't get caught during testing.

• Bugfix: Patch 0.24.3 broke shields' ability to block sun damage when flying away from the sun at high speed.
  
• Bugfix: Patch 0.24.3 broke the ability to right-click-and-drag away from ship icons to set an attack/follow distance and direction.
  
• Cosmoteer will no longer wait for Workshop downloads to finish if no mods are enabled or the game is being run in No Mods mode.
  
• While Cosmoteer is waiting for workshop downloads to finish, you can now press the spacebar to skip waiting and load without the mods.
  

Cosmoteer patch 0.24.3 is now available! This patch has a handful of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements.

We're still of course working on bigger features as well. Specifically, we're shooting for the next update in a couple of weeks to have a new "Build & Battle" PvP multiplayer mode as well as larger hyperdrives. And work on Career 2.0 is progressing but still a ways off. Thanks for your patience!

Enjoy!

• Updated translations for all languages.
  
• Added 3 new Monolith defense platforms: Chaingun, Deck Cannon, and Railgun.
  
• Added 1 new Cabal combat ship: Mebsuta.
  
• Added 3 new Cabal defense platforms: Dual Ion, Heavy Laser, and Point Defense.
  
• Added 1 new Imperium trade station: Large Imperium Trade Station II.
  
• Added 1 new Imperium defense platform: Heavy Laser.
  
• Added 2 new Fringe defense platforms: Flak and Large Cannon.
  
• Added the 12 winning ships from the Oct. 2023 design contest: Chainbound, Combination, Echo of the Abyss, Empyrean Augur, Man O War, Missus Ket, Mister Rock, Omnipresence, Pandaemonium, Quartz, Superconductor, and Zhe Yu. (These ships do not yet spawn in Career mode but can be spawned in Creative mode.)
  
• Miscellaneous updates and tweaks to existing built-in ships.
  
• Crew will no longer be automatically unassigned from their bunk rooms if the path back to their room gets disconnected.
  
• Delivering resources to a station before accepting a delivery mission will now count those resources towards completion of that mission.
  
• Ships with diagonal flight directions should now be much better at strafing.
  
• Ships without an operational control room are now able to hail other nearby ships or stations up to 400 meters away.
  
• Point Defense turrets now have collision. (They are also slightly heavier as a result.)
  
• The "Any unsaved progress in the current game will be lost" confirmation dialog will now show how long it has been since the game was last saved and will also explain that Auto Save and Quick Save slots are shared between all game modes, are not synced to Steam Cloud, and will eventually be overwritten.
  
• The number of active mods will now be displayed in green on the "MODS" button on the title screen.
  
• New Creative Mode games now default to the starry black background, which will improve creation/load times.
  
• Cosmoteer will now wait for any in-progress Steam Workshop downloads to finish before loading game data. This should hopefully make it possible to use mods when playing on Geforce Now.
  
• The health bars in Elimination mode now looks less janky.
  
• The various part-specific tutorials (such as the cannons tutorial) will now only appear once the player has defeated their first enemy.
  
• The game speed can now be adjusted using hotkeys while the game is being saved.
  
• Bugfix: Crash if an explosion damages a shield and somehow destroys the shield generator itself on the very same tick. (Probably only possible with mods.)
  
• Bugfix: Crash if a saved game file was selected to load in multiplayer but was deleted outside of Cosmoteer before launching the game. An error message will now be shown instead.
  
• Bugfix: Redeeming multiple missions in rapid succession could cause the credits display to show more credits than the player actually has if any of the redeemed missions caused the player's faction reputation to rank up.
  
• Bugfix: Right-clicking on an enemy ship and dragging away from it to set a distance/direction would cause the rotation to be automatically changed even if a specific rotation was saved using "Save Attack Defaults".
  
• Bugfix: Command adjustment handles were clickable even when underneath other U.I. elements.
  
• Bugfix: Railguns were unwilling to shoot at junk ships and asteroids.
  
• Bugfix: Railguns were unwilling to shoot at structure tiles of enemy ships even when those structure tiles were explicitly targeted.
  
• Bugfix: Shields could sometimes fail to block a portion of sun damage.
  
• Bugfix: Resource delivery missions could be exploited by buying the required resources from the station
• before* accepting the mission and then selling those same resources back to it after accepting the mission.
  
• Bugfix: Loading a Creative Mode game in multiplayer, saving over that saved game file, returning to the game setup screen, and relaunching without changing the saved game file would cause it to load the old original game data from before the file was overwritten.
  
• Bugfix: A recent Discord change broke the ability to drag ships straight from Discord into Cosmoteer. This should now work again.
  
• Bugfix: Typing long messages into text boxes and then deleting that text could cause the text insertion caret and any subsequently typed text to become offset.
  
• Bugfix: Minor graphical glitches caused by asteroid/megaroid 1x1 wedge tiles.
  
• Bugfix: The crew priority for delivering Tritanium to storage bays was missing. (It was using the Iron priority.)