This release candidate contains improvements to the new Build & Battle PvP mode, new built-in ship designs, and a handful of bug fixes.
Have fun, and thanks for testing!
RC1:
- Build & Battle: [list]
- Free-for-all is now supported with up to 8 players.
- Team games now supports up to 4 teams.
- Team starting positions in the battle phase are now randomized each round.
- Once all players have marked themselves as ready, there will now be a 5 second countdown before the battle phase begins.
- If the player has any default crew roles saved, those will now be loaded automatically at the beginning of the match.
- Chainguns will now start the battle phase fully stocked of ammo even if they were firing at the end of the build phase.
[*] User Interface:
- In the ship editor, a "bullets" icon will now be displayed on Chainguns and Chaingun Magazines to indicate when they are properly connected.
[*] Built-In Ships:
- Added 4 new Monolith combat ships: Almocaden, Almogavar, Project Mistilteinn, and Thyreos.
- Added 4 new Cabal combat ships: Cassiopeia, Eclipse, Gienah, and Nashira.
- Added 2 new Imperium combat ships: Augustus and Thunderbird.
- Added 4 new Fringe combat ships: Desecrator, Desolator, Hentzau, and Sicario.
- Renamed the 'Elanine' to 'Robin' and the 'Can Opener' to 'Desperado'.
- Miscellaneous updates to various other built-in ships.
[*] Bug Fixes:
- The recent fixes to the thruster logic screwed up Direct Control Mode, which should now also be fixed.
- Occasional crash caused by recent thruster A.I. fixes.
- Crash when deleting a planet in creative mode while its options window is open and U.I. animations are turned off.
- The battle phase in Build & Battle could end prematurely if a ship makes an FTL jump, which could lead to various other issues.
- In some circumstances, a ship's A.I. was unable to back away from a very close asteroid or other object.
- Using the "grab" tool to move parts wasn't properly copying the existing part settings to the new part.
- Deconstructing damaged parts was sometimes not giving quite as much resources back as you would have received had you repaired the part first.
- Various text rendering issues when a ship contains an ampersand (&) in its name.
[*] Modding:
- OpenCloseSprite should now properly move/rotate when the component it is chained to moves or rotates.
- Blueprints now support sprite animations.
- Buff provider components can now be set to 'BlueprintsOnly = true'. This will remove most performance costs for buffs that are only used for display purposes and have no affect on gameplay.
[/list]
