NEBULOUS: Fleet Command News

It's about time to show off some of the long-term development work we've been doing the past two months. Check out Devlog #26 below. It covers the current status of the implementation of the second faction, the Outlying Systems Protectorate, as well as a sneak peak at the even-longer-term work on Conquest at the end.

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The OSP faction will be our second major update, coming out in a few more months. Conquest will be our third major update, with no release timeframe currently determined. If you'd like to know more about Conquest, you can join our Official Discord and find the concept document in the #1mc-announcements channel.

For October's minor update we're rolling out enhanced data and statistics to help players dive into the intricacies of their battles and figure out where they need to improve.



[h2]Enhanced Battle Report[/h2]
The largest addition for this update is a major overhaul to the post-game Battle Report. This new report tracks over 50 different statistics, many down to the individual weapon or missile level, and presents a detailed summary of each ship's performance.



The performance of each ship is summarized in five "warfare areas" with a rating score between Terrible and Excellent. All of these scores are calculated based on the statistics grouped under each area, which can be seen in detail by scrolling down further in the report.

You can even export your battle report to XML to save it for posterity. We have no data collection mechanisms in the game currently, but if you feel so inclined you can upload a ZIP of these XML files periodically (no more than once a week please) to a special thread on our official discord under #neb-discussion so that we can do statistical analysis on these reports to help us make more data-driven balancing decisions.

If you worry you'll miss the old report that showed ship status displays and basic damage numbers, don't worry because it is still in the game and will be shown if a battle ends before a victor is declared. This is because the sheer volume of statistics being collected is prohibitive to synchronize continuously, so they are downloaded from the host at the end of the game. Be sure not to quit before the download is complete!

[h2]Debriefing Chat[/h2]
We have a really great community in this game and many of our experienced players are more than happy to help our newbies in our official Discord through the #post-game channel, but it can still be difficult to get a discussion going in the first place. When a battle is declared over and the battle report is successfully downloaded, all players who are still connected will be taken to a debriefing lobby where they can view the battle report and continue to chat with each other and give feedback.

[h2]Track References in Chat[/h2]
Continuing on the communication front, I've expanded the "Hook Track" feature to take advantage of the text chat. When you enter any series of 4 digits into the in-game chat, everyone on your team will see it automatically converted to an orange link. Clicking that link will perform the same function as hitting Q and typing it in manually, bringing your camera to the location of the track and highlighting it for you. These numbers will be automatically picked out of any chat, so you can send them along with other text like "Everyone primary 1234", and 1234 would be converted to a track link.

[h2]Power Hogs[/h2]
Power logic has gotten a small improvement which should have a huge impact. Previously, components consumed power based on their priority. That means that if you had a radar drawing 4000 power and only 3500 available, that radar would consume the 3500 and still not operate, starving every other component in the process. With the changes in this patch, if a component can't draw enough of a resource to operate successfully it will not consume it and leave it for other less demanding components down the priority line.

[h2]Spectator Overlay[/h2]
And finally, it's about time to give some love to our amazing streamers and tournament casters (and also to those of you who just like to spectate for fun). This patch unlocks a ton of information that was previously unavailable to spectators such as information bars and damage control boards for all ships on both teams, as well as a special new overlay HUD which allows them to see an at-a-glance summary of all ships in the battlespace.

We hope you all enjoy the update for this month, and stay tuned for a new devlog coming soon! There are a few other minor improvements and bug fixes, so be sure to read the full patch notes below:

Changes/Features:
- Added a detailed post-game Battle Report showing performance breakdowns for every ship.
- Multiplayer games will now exit to a debriefing lobby where players can discuss the outcome and review performance.
- Missile salvos now distinguish softkill counts from simple misses in their tally counts.
- Renamed the former battle report to Battle Summary, which will still be displayed if a multiplayer game was not completed before exiting.
- Added a new overlay for spectators showing all players, ships, and their statuses at a glance.
- Spectators can now select ships and see their information bars and damage control boards, but cannot interact with them.
- Spectators can now see all active electronic warfare areas of effect.
- Total battle count and win/loss record now appears in the tooltip showing progress to the next rank.
- Missiles with HEKP warheads but not enough velocity to penetrate armor will now turn the "0cm" text red and display a reason.
- Sensor tracks on the HUD now show a closing/opening rate in meters per second next to the range when a ship is selected. Positive numbers indicate increasing distance.
- Any 4-digit numbers entered by a teammate into the skirmish game chat will be automatically converted to a clickable link which will provide the same functionality as Hook Track.
- Added icons for chaff and flare decoys in the munitions select list.
- Comms jamming area of effect is now yellow to distinguish it from sensor jamming.
- Parts in the damage control board and ship status display (the small one) will now flash white for 1/5th of a second when receiving damage.
- Components attempting to consume a resource will no longer actually pull the resource if less than the requested amount is available, preventing them from starving less demanding components with lower priority.

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed fleet list folders not being able to be created in the lobby.
- Fixed dragging a fleet item in the lobby causing it to vanish.
- Fixed withdrawing ships with a locked heading order not playing the animation properly.
- Fixed Curve Shot achievement not being unlockable.
- Fixed some debuffs having references to old stat names.
- Fixed hybrid missiles staging early in some cases where the target was approaching quickly and the cruise stage was not at max speed (i.e. just after launch).

It's been a busy month, including a long move across the country, but the September minor update is here and brings with it a number of long-requested quality of life features and some major improvements to stability.

[h2]Folders & Search[/h2]
The most hotly requested feature for the Fleet Editor was the addition of folders and search functionality for the fleet list, with 25 individual mentions and a combined 509 votes in our feature request channel on the official Discord. In this update the fleet list window has been revamped to introduce folders. Your existing fleets can also be drag-dropped into your newly created folders via the in-game UI, but must be done one at a time. If you want to sort large numbers of fleets at once, you can move the files directly via your operating system's file explorer and they will be reflected in the game.

I've also added a search functionality to the fleet list. Entering any text into the top bar will display only fleets which match that text, and open all folders recursively.

Happy sorting!

[h2]Steam Cloud[/h2]
As part of this release I've enabled Steam Cloud functionality to auto-sync all Fleets, Ship Templates, and Missile Templates. If you have previously been manually copying these files between computers, note that Steam will upload the versions that are on whatever computer you start the game on first after the feature is enabled, and may overwrite files with the same names on other computers.

Note that changes made via your OS's file manager while the game is closed will be automatically reverted by Steam Cloud when you start the game, so if you plan to make changes to your saves folder manually you should do it while the game is running in the background.

[h2]Missile Balance Adjustments[/h2]
For our first balance pass on missiles since the major update there have been some minor adjustments made. These mostly center around balancing the Cyclone, which was always the problem child for the entire internal testing period. These changes make it no longer an optimal choice over the Tempest in all cases. Their costs have gone up slightly, and the HP values have been roughly swapped between the Cyclone and Tempest to give a similar tradeoff seen with the Pilum and Atlatl. The Tempest's increased durability now means Auroras will struggle a little more to deal with groups of them, while something like a Defender still only takes 2 hits to destroy one.

The stacking penalty for missile modules has also been increased, so double stealth coatings will now have a significantly decreased effect. This only applies to modules which change stats, stacking modules like decoy launchers will be unaffected.

[h2]Stability Improvements[/h2]
You don't have to look far in the #looking-for-game or #post-game channels of our discord to find someone who was disconnected from a game they were in. After some deep investigation of our netcode, the root cause of the infamous disconnected-while-loading bug has been found and squashed. I've also made some changes to the networking library we use to hopefully solve the occasional Limit Exceeded disconnect that could occur when lots of sensor activity was happening. Overall, multiplayer stability should be significantly improved.

On a completely unrelated note, the maximum file size for custom badges is now 32kb.

[h2]Other Things[/h2]
And finally, a slew of other minor improvements and changes have been added. These include a deployment phase timer, shift-right-click grouping weapons on ships not in a formation, a withdraw animation for ships leaving the battlespace, and more.

As always, full patch notes follow:

Changes/Features:
- Added folder management system to fleet and ship template lists.
- Existing fleets can be drag-dropped into folders in the list.
- Added file search function in fleet and ship template lists.
- Enabled Steam Cloud support for Fleets, Ship Templates, and Missile Templates.
- Newly saved ship templates will now include missiles, if a missile of the same name is not already in the fleet.
- Does not work for existing ship templates, as they did not contain the missiles previously.
- Added an accessibility setting to disable the background noise in the tactical view.
- Opening the action menu with Shift + RMB for a ship that is not in a formation will now group its weapons as it does for all ships in a formation.
- Added a better explanation of target discrimination behavior to the EO seeker description.
- Added a 60 second time limit to the deployment phase which starts when half of all players, and one player on each team (unless the team is only one person), have clicked the Deploy button.
- Players who have not finished deploying their fleet when the timer expires will have their ship spawn locations randomly chosen.
- Tooltip when hovering over the tracked status of a ship now reads "Track by Enemy Active Sensors" for clarity.
- Ships withdrawing from battle will now play a reverse of the arrival animation before disappearing.
- Player profile badges now have a maximum size limit of 32kb.
- Added a message to the top of the badge select menu with instructions and limitations.

Balance:
- Increased S1 programming time to 6 seconds (was 3). Note that AMMs fired automatically by the PD Controller are exempt from programming time.
- Changed the stacking penalty falloff of missile support modules to 1 (was 3.5, in line with ship components) so the second instance of a module now has a 36% effect.
- Increased S2 body HP to 30 (was 20).
- Reduced S2H body HP to 25 (was 35).
- Increased S2H body cost to 4 (was 2).
- Increased S2H programming time to 10 seconds (was 8).
- Increased Fast Startup module failure rate to 20% (was 15%).
- Reduced EO seeker target selection finalization distance to 1.5km (was 2.5km) for improved target discrimination.

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed several network stability related disconnects and crashes.
- Fixed some spelling and grammar mistakes in flavor text.
- Fixed many debuff types not being applied due to class name changes.
- AI ships will no longer continue firing at their last target after it has been eliminated if no other targets are detected.
- Fixed heated metal glow effect in the hull damage shader fading out almost immediately.
- Fixed parts sometimes being immediately re-destroyed after being restored if they had a pending damage frame.
- Fixed damaged components not being able to be prioritized until they had received further damage when loading a saved game of when ships were transferred to another player.
- Ships set to WCON FREE will no longer automatically return fire at tracks that are decoys, missiles, LOBs, or on the opposite side of the ship that hits are coming from.

With our first major update behind us, we're shifting back onto a somewhat regular schedule of minor updates while we continue our work on the second faction and begin laying the foundation for Conquest. The first of these minor updates is to provide enhanced modding support to our awesome community of modders. An incredible number of map, weapon, and ship mods have cropped up since early access and we want to continue supporting these as much as we can.

[h2]Custom Factions[/h2]
NEBULOUS has always had a faction system built into it, but as a number of hull mods sprung up the creators elected not to use it because all of the vanilla weapons were locked to the existing Alliance faction. This would have required them to create a full suite of weapons as well as hulls in order to have their faction be playable, which was an unfair obstacle to impose on them. The faction system has been enhanced to allow factions to borrow equipment from other factions, making it much easier to create a dedicated faction for your custom hulls while still being able to use the base game's weapons and other components. Weapon and other component mods which leave the "Faction Key" field blank will still be available to all fleets regardless of faction.

Additionally, the roundel for a fleet's faction is now displayed next to the fleet name in the game lobby so you can proudly fly the colors of your preferred faction. This roundel is also displayed in the fleet select list.

Please note: If modders choose to update their mod to use the faction system for their hulls, keep in mind that any existing fleets you have will still be marked as "Alliance" and will be detected by the game as having a mix of hulls which is not permitted. Opening these fleets in the fleet editor will allow you to re-assign their faction, and will remove ships which do not fit that selected faction.

[h2]Dependency Tracking[/h2]
Mods can now have dependencies between each other, allowing enhanced support for community toolkit and foundation mods without the need to duplicate assets or DLLs between multiple mods. Mod loading order can now also be automatically sorted in the mod manager list.

These dependencies can also be tracked when loading mods from a multiplayer lobby, and will be iteratively discovered and downloaded as they are needed.

[h2]Mod-Friendly Lobbies[/h2]
The delicate nature of balance in a game like this means some players don't like playing with mods, and that can mean players who want to play with their modded fleets can struggle to find a group to play with. Lobby hosts can now mark their lobby with a special "mod friendly" tag, which will show a badge in the match browser indicating that lobby is accepting of fleet mod use.



Full patch notes follow:

Changes/Features:
- Added the ability for modded custom factions to share equipment from other factions on either a per-component or pattern basis.
- Opening the fleet editor with multiple factions available will present a list to select the fleet's faction from.
- Fleets with mixed-faction hulls can no longer be used in skirmish games, but can be converted to one faction or the other in the fleet editor.
- Added a faction badge to the currently selected fleet in the lobby and to each item in the fleet selection list.
- Added a "Mod Friendly" option for hosting a new multiplayer lobby, which marks lobbies with a special badge on the match browser.
- Added mod dependency tracking in ModInfo.xml files.
- Added auto-sorting of mod dependencies in the mod manager window.
- Loading mods in a lobby will now iteratively subscribe and download all dependencies as they are discovered.
- Hovering over the mod badge (crossed wrenches) next to a player's fleet name will show a list of mods the fleet uses.
- Hovering over the mod synchronization pane of the lobby will show all mods in use for all fleets, maps, scenarios, etc.
- The default fleet when entering a new lobby will now be the first non-modded fleet, even if a modded fleet preceeds it in the list.
- Mod developers can now use the console command "ReloadLocalMods" to reload any non-workshop mods when they have made changes, without having the restart the game to test.
- The confirm button when exiting a game early as host now needs to be held for 3 seconds to prevent skipping the warning.
- PD Controller now checks for obstacles between the ship and the PIP before launching AMMs.
- Friendly ship icons now fade out as the camera gets close to them.
- A separate heading line is now visible in the tactical view for all friendly ships and enemy tracks identified as ships.
- Made further adjustments to spinal weapon aiming PID.
- Rebalanced difficulty of heavy cruiser target in Tutorial 6.

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed bi-directional sequential buttons (e.g. for ship posture) not transitioning visual states when being right clicked.
- Players who have a modded fleet selected and switch to spectator will no longer count towards mods that need to be loaded.
- Fixed the player ship in Tutorial 8 firing on the enemy spotter if it was hit by a missile.
- Fixed Intel report for enemy ships showing "Pending..." far longer than it should.
- Fixed AI firing missiles at targets which are occluded.
- Fixed AI firing missiles at targets which are out of range, or will move out of range before intercept.
- Fixed bug in time dilation controller resulting in timescale stuttering between 10% and 100% when under stress.
- Fixed extra newlines in ship card debuff list tooltip.

We'll be streaming gameplay from the community on the store page, come join us!

For NEBULOUS discussion, you can also join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/57cxuE9hTn

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