[p]Cosmoteer release candidate 0.30.0 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.)[/p][p]This is a release candidate for the long-awaited "MELTDOWN UPDATE", which adds new heat management mechanics, heat-based weapons, overclock modes for almost all other weapons and ship systems, and a new faction.[/p][p]Thanks for testing![/p][p][/p][p]RC1 Patch Notes:[/p]

• [p]New Gameplay Mechanic: Heat Management[/p][list]
• [p]Some new weapons and part effects now apply "heat" to the hull of individual ship tiles.[/p][/*]
• [p]Heat spreads out between tiles and slowly generates over time.[/p][/*]
• [p]If a tile has enough heat, a fire can start.[/p][/*]
• [p]Parts that are very hot will take more damage from enemy weapons.[/p][/*]
• [p]Heat can also be stored within some parts transferred between parts, and radiated away using new heat management parts (see below).[/p][/*]
• [p]Crew can now "repair" parts with hull heat even if the part has taken no direct damage.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]New Gameplay Mechanic: Overclock[/p]

• [p]Most existing weapons and functional ship systems now have an alternate "overclock" mode that enhances its power/functionality and twists is functionality, but produces waste heat as a byproduct. (See below for list of new overclock modes.)[/p][/*]
• [p]In Career games, overclock modes must be unlocked for individual weapons/parts by purchasing them from a station's blueprints tab.[/p][/*]
• [p]In Build & Battle games, overclock modes must be purchased separately from the base weapon/part and will not be offered until the base weapon/part has been purchased.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]Updated Gameplay Mechanic: Fires[/p]

• [p]Fires can now be started by heat in addition to being sparked by weapons and explosions.[/p][/*]
• [p]In most cases, fires will no longer completely destroy most ship parts. Instead, a part that is sufficiently burned will become "scorched" and unable to function until repaired. The exceptions are parts that contain explosive munitions such as cannon ammo.[/p][/*]
• [p]When a Fire Extinguisher puts out a fire, it will now leave anti-fire foam that will temporarily prevent any new fires from appearing where the foam is.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]- New Part: Heat Pipe[/p]

• [p]Instantaneously transfers thermal energy between connected parts.[/p][/*]
• [p]Can be connected to most parts in specific locations which will be indicated by yellow connection points in the ship editor. (In most but not all cases these are the same locations where doors can be added.)[/p][/*]
• [p]All parts that are connected via pipes are part of the same "heat pipe system" and can share/transfer heat between themselves.[/p][/*]
• [p]Comes in three variants: Interior Pipes, Exterior (structure) Pipes, and Crew Crossing Pipes (which allow crew to walk underneath).[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]New Part: Radiator[/p]

• [p]Dissipates thermal from the connected heat pipe system.[/p][/*]
• [p]Dissipation effectiveness is reduced if the area in front of the radiator is blocked.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]New Part: Heat Exchanger[/p]

• [p]Absorbs heat from the hull, transferring it to the connected heat pipe system while generating some additional waste heat.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]New Part: Thermal Battery[/p]

• [p]Safely contains large amounts of thermal energy, providing additional heat storage to the connected heat pipe system.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]New Weapon: Thermal Resonance Lance[/p]

• [p]A roof-mounted turret that fires a beam of pure heat energy but also produces a great deal of its own waste heat.[/p][/*]
• [p]Can store a limited amount of its own waste heat, or the waste heat can be transferred to a connected heat pipe system.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]New Weapon Module: Lance Dilation Pump[/p]

• [p]Increases the heat area-of-effect for all Thermal Resonance Lances connected to the same heat pipe system.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]New Weapon Module: Lance Amplification Pump[/p]

• [p]Increases the heat intensity for all Thermal Resonance Lances connected to the same heat pipe system.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]New Weapon: Thermal Canister Missiles[/p]

• [p]Guided missiles that take waste heat from their own ship and apply it to their target's hull in a small area.[/p][/*]
• [p]Fired from the Launcher like the other missile types.[/p][/*]
• [p]The Launcher must be connected to a heat pipe system and supplied with heat in order to fire.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]New Factory: Thermal Canister Missile Factory[/p]

• [p]Manufactures Thermal Canister Missile parts that can be delivered to the Launcher to fire Thermal Canister Missiles.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]New Faction: Great House Io[/p]

• [p]A new, 5th faction whose ships specialize in using heat management, heat-based weapons, and overclock modes.[/p][/*]
• [p]Will spawn as a faction in new Career games. (Will not appear in existing Career save files.)[/p][/*]
• [p]Adds 90 new combat ships.[/p][/*]
• [p]Adds 13 new civilian trade and transport ships.[/p][/*]
• [p]Adds 9 new defense platforms.[/p][/*]
• [p]Adds 7 new space stations.[/p][/*]
• [p]Added lore to the Codex describing the history of this faction and why it has suddenly appeared.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]New Overclock Modes:[/p]

• [p]Laser Blaster: Increases the rate of fire and replaces the laser bolts with instantaneous energy beams, but lowers the damage of each shot.[/p][/*]
• [p]Heavy Laser Blaster: Increases the damage of each laser bolt and adds splash damage, but reduces the rate of fire.[/p][/*]
• [p]Disruptor: Allows disruptor bolts to phase through solid materials and causes the energy drain effect to linger after the initial impact, but reduces shield penetration and the instant energy drain on initial impact.[/p][/*]
• [p]Ion Beam Emitter: Causes the ion beam to destabilize near its target, creating chaotic and powerful lightning strikes in an area around it, but prevents the beam itself from directly hitting its target.[/p][/*]
• [p]Standard Cannon: Fires salvos of multiple smaller shells, but each shell has lower damage and projectile speed.[/p][/*]
• [p]Large Cannon: Causes each cannon shell to break apart upon impact into multiple smaller incendiary shells that each continue penetrating into the target ship.[/p][/*]
• [p]Deck Cannon: Increases shell damage, velocity, and accuracy, but stops penetration once its damage potential is exhausted.[/p][/*]
• [p]Railgun: Improves the efficiency of longer Railguns and increases projectile speed and damage, but requires a charge-up before firing and stops penetration once its damage potential is exhausted.[/p][/*]
• [p]Chaingun: Projectiles become explosive-tipped, causing splash damage and greater overall destruction, but reduces rate of fire and requires the Chaingun to rest briefly after every four shots.[/p][/*]
• [p]Small Shield Generator: Enables choosing between expanding the shield to cover a larger area or shrinking the shield to cover a smaller area while becoming stronger.[/p][/*]
• [p]Large Shield Generator: The energy shield shrinks to cover a smaller area but becomes stronger and loses less power per hit.[/p][/*]
• [p]Point Defense System: Turns on a dynamo that slowly regenerates power, allowing the Point Defense System to fire for short periods without ever receiving batteries.[/p][/*]
• [p]Flak Array: Flak shells are packed with shrapnel that lingers in space for a short while after detonation, damaging any projectiles and blocking any energy beams that pass through.[/p][/*]
• [p]Small Thruster (all variants): Greatly increases thrust and power efficiency while significantly improving dynamo power generation, but also increases power consumption.[/p][/*]
• [p]Standard Thruster: Greatly increases thrust and power efficiency without affecting ramp times, but also increases power consumption.[/p][/*]
• [p]Large Thruster: Greatly increases thrust and moderately improves power efficiency without affecting ramp times, but also increases power consumption.[/p][/*]
• [p]Huge Thruster: Greatly increases thrust and minorly improves power efficiency without affecting ramp times, but also increases power consumption.[/p][/*]
• [p]Boost Thruster: Greatly increases thrust and moderately improves power efficiency without affecting ramp times, but also increases power consumption. Additionally allows the Boost Thruster to be refueled while boosting.[/p][/*]
• [p]M.R.T. Nozzle Module: Reduces the impact of Extender Modules on ramp-up time.[/p][/*]
• [p]M.R.T. Extender Module: Increases both the Nozzle Module's base thrust and the thrust of every attached Extender Module.[/p][/*]
• [p]Engine Room: Improves power efficiency when distributing power to attached thrusters, but forces all attached thrusters into Overclock mode. Additionally collects waste heat from attached thrusters, but produces additional waste heat while doing so.[/p][/*]
• [p]Small Reactor Core: Increases maximum power capacity and generation rate.[/p][/*]
• [p]Medium Reactor Core: Increases maximum power capacity and generation rate.[/p][/*]
• [p]Large Reactor Core: Increases maximum power capacity and generation rate. Additionally increases battery size from triple-capacity to quadruple-capacity.[/p][/*]
• [p]Power Capacitor: Triples the power capacity of both the Power Capacitor itself and the individual stored batteries.[/p][/*]
• [p]Mining Laser: Adds an area-of-effect to both mining beams.[/p][/*]
• [p]Tractor Beam Emitter: Significantly increases gravitational force in all modes, but restricts the force to always act upon the target's center of mass. Additionally, allows the emitter to be overcharged, depleting its energy and emitting a massive wave of gravitational energy in all directions.[/p][/*]
• [p]Sensor Array: Increases the visual range of the Sensor Array.[/p][/*]
• [p]All Factories (except Diamond): Significantly increases production speed. Produces waste heat while manufacturing resources.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]Balance:[/p]

• [p]Increased most projectile speeds by 20%.[/p][/*]
• [p]Increased Point Defense and Flak damage vs projectiles by 20%.[/p][/*]
• [p]Greatly increased the speed of construction and salvaging.[/p][/*]
• [p]Greatly increased the speed of crew flying in space.[/p][/*]
• [p]Greatly increased the speed of manipulator beams.[/p][/*]
• [p]Greatly increased the damage of mining lasers when salvaging junk.[/p][/*]
• [p]Ships no longer have a minimum hyper-jump distance.[/p][/*]
• [p]The sun now applies heat to ships instead of direct damage.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]Crew:[/p]

• [p]If a crew is ejected from a ship because the room they are standing/walking in is destroyed, they will now be unassigned from whatever their current job is, allowing a different (now likely much closer) crew to be assigned to that job.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]Career:[/p]

• [p]Increased the size of the galaxy from 50 to 75 star systems.[/p][/*]
• [p]Great House Io and its ships have been added as a new faction.[/p][/*]
• [p]Reduced the drop rate of steel, coils, and hypercoils by 20%.[/p][/*]
• [p]Trade station guard ships will now spawn farther from the station to prevent them from spawning on top of the player.[/p][/*]
• [p]Police ships will no longer surrender to the player.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]Build & Battle:[/p]

• [p]One unlock slot will now always be reserved for an overclock mode.[/p][/*]
• [p]Increased the number of available unlocks in the first round by 1.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]Domination:[/p]

• [p]It is now possible to remove crew quarters when inside the spawn circle. (Any crew deleted as a result will not be refunded.)[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]User Interface:[/p]

• [p]Translation updates for all supported languages.[/p][/*]
• [p]All weapons/parts with multiple sub-modules have been combined into single "part sub-tabs" that will expand when clicked. (Armor and the Launcher+Factories have also been put in sub-tabs.) Both the entire sub-tab or individual parts within them can be favorited.[/p][/*]
• [p]Moved all thrusters to their own new "Thrusters" tab.[/p][/*]
• [p]Combined armor and structure into a single tab.[/p][/*]
• [p]The various metrics shown on the right side of the ship editor can now be individually turned on and off.[/p][/*]
• [p]Added a toggle to display the ship's center of mass in the ship editor. (Due to technical limitations, the center of mass cannot be displayed in blueprint mode.)[/p][/*]
• [p]If a tooltip is too large to fit on the screen, you can now hold Alt and use the mouse wheel to scroll the tooltip. For part tooltips, doing so will also show the stats.[/p][/*]
• [p]Descriptions and stats for overlock modes in part tooltips can now be toggled by pressing the Ctrl key.[/p][/*]
• [p]The stats for the Small and Large Shield Generators now show the stats for the shield arcs themselves in their own sections.[/p][/*]
• [p]The Disruptor's shield penetration stat now shows penetration in "meters equivalent" units.[/p][/*]
• [p]Right-clicking with the grab tool to select a part or decal type will now prefer to select it in a favorites tab if possible and it isn't selectable in the currently-opened tab.[/p][/*]
• [p]Part toggle/mode changes made in blueprint mode will now only be applied to the physical ship once the "MAKE IT SO" button is clicked.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]Graphics:[/p]

• [p]Updated fire VFX and icons.[/p][/*]
• [p]Centered the symbol_dash text decal.[/p][/*]
• [p]Some ship parts such as corridors and crew quarters will now dim when their ship is junk or loses command.[/p][/*]
• [p]The visual effects for ion beams, thermal resonance beams, and mining beams should now appear smoother.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]Bug Fixes:[/p]

• [p]Crash if a station is destroyed while the player is in comms with it and the Hire Crew tab is selected.[/p][/*]
• [p]Crash when loading some saved game files with extremely high numbers of star systems.[/p][/*]
• [p]Rare crash with error message "The 'takeFrom' pool had more objects than we had capacity for".[/p][/*]
• [p]In Career mode, adding a part and then undoing it was not refunding any resources purchased from stations.[/p][/*]
• [p]In some circumstances, ships moving at high velocities could fail to collide with each other.[/p][/*]
• [p]Parts that take salvage damage while queued for repair would unintentionally cost resources to repair.[/p][/*]
• [p]In some specific circumstances, replacing a ship's blueprints could load incorrect crew roles.[/p][/*]
• [p]At low framerates, mouse clicks could sometimes be detected in the wrong location.[/p][/*]
• [p]Explosions could sometimes break surrender truces.[/p][/*]
• [p]Changes to "Log Deaths of Favorite Crew" setting wouldn't allow settings to be applied.[/p][/*]
• [p]Developer menu options weren't working if U.I. animations were disabled.[/p][/*]
• [p]Possible fix for the incorrect taskbar icon being displayed.[/p][/*]
• [p]Ships that were heading to a jump gate after surrendering were not properly avoiding enemy stations.[/p][/*]
• [p]Police ships weren't leaving the star system when no longer hunting the player.[/p][/*]
• [p]In Domination games, ships that were jumping didn't count towards the player's maximum fleet value.[/p][/*]
• [p]Ion Beams unintentionally did double damage to neutral ships.[/p][/*]

[/*][*][p]Modding:[/p]

• [p]In developer mode, can now press Ctrl+Shift+Tilde/Backtick to open up a side-menu from which part/tile statuses such as heat and fire can be applied and modified.[/p][/*]
• [p]Added a whole new "part network" system that allows parts to connect to each other and share resources. This system is used for heat pipes and transferring heat between parts.[/p][/*]
• [p]Added a whole new moddable "status system" that allows new per-tile or per-part "status effects" to be created. This system is used for both hull heat and the new fire mechanics.[/p][/*]
• [p]All values that were previously "buffable" are now "modifiable" and support a wider range of ways to dynamically modify them and combine modifiers, including by the new status system.[/p][/*]
• [p]Shader files now support 'geom' (geometry) sub-shaders.[/p][/*]
• [p]In developer mode, saved game files can now be drag-and-dropped into Cosmoteer to load them.[/p][/*]
• [p]Many new components, effect types, and small modding features as part of all the new gameplay features. (There are too many to be listed individually; please see game rules files for examples.)[/p][/*]

[/*][/list]