Most notably, this release candidate makes major performance improvements that should significantly improve framerates in many situations, especially for late-game Career saves. (If you have a poorly-performing saved game that is not running significantly better with this update, please send it to us for further testing.)
RC1:
- Performance & Stability: [list]
- A huge number of performance optimizations that together should improve performance in many situations, including and especially in late-game Career games. Most late-game Career saves we've tested have at least 2x improved FPS and some as much as 5x improvement.
- Significantly improved multiplayer connection reliability. Disconnects should hopefully be much less common now.
[*] Visuals:
- Many particle, VFX, and audio effects will no longer spawn/play/render when zoomed out or off-screen. This should generally not be too obvious but may occasionally be noticeable if you zoom/pan the view quickly or while paused.
- Sun damage VFX will no longer appear on asteroids within the sun's damage zone, and number of sun damage particles for non-asteroids has been reduced. This is a performance optimization.
[*] Balance Changes:
- Thrusters no longer have any magical "lateral" thrust. As a result, ships whose thrusters are mostly disabled/destroyed will no longer be able to rotate or maneuver unexpectedly well for no apparent reason.
- In lieu of lateral thrust, ships with at least one operational thruster now have a very small amount of non-rotational "magic" thrust that they can exert in any direction but only when still or traveling at very low speeds. In general this should almost never be noticeable or significantly impact combat, but it allows ships with poor thrust balance to very slowly maneuver out of difficult spots.
- Reduced Flak Battery ammo capacity from 92 to 52.
- Reduced Flak damage vs ships from 2250 to 1750.
- Increased Flak damage vs projectiles from 2250 to 2500.
- In Build & Battle, teams that are defeated during a battle phase will now be given observer vision for the remainder of the battle phase.
[*] Built-In Ships:
- Added 3 new Monolith combat ships: Destructor, Saber and Vanquisher.
- Added 3 new Monolith defense platforms: Medium Chaingun, Medium Deck Cannon, and Medium HE Missile.
- Added 2 new Cabal combat ships: Lesath and Redline.
- Added 4 new Cabal defense platforms: Small HE Missile, Medium HE Missile, Medium Ion, and Medium Laser.
- Added 2 new Imperium combat ships: Qin Shi Huang and Slipstream.
- Added 3 new Imperium defense platforms: Medium HE Missile, Medium Ion, and Medium Laser.
- Added 2 new Fringe combat ships: Hanabi and Shredder.
- Added 4 new Fringe defense platforms: Small HE Missile, Medium HE Missile, Medium Cannon, and Medium Laser.
- Miscellaneous updates to various other built-in ships.
[*] Bug Fixes:
- In Build & Battle, it was possible to refund a stashed tech that was being used on the player's ship.
- Missing "Distribute Power" strings in the controls settings.
- Medium, Large, and Deck Cannon shoot flashes weren't properly rotating to match direction of the barrel.
[*] Modding:
- Added a 'FloodBuffProvider' that provides buffs via a flood-fill algorithm. (Currently unused in vanilla but planned to be used for a future part.)
- All buff provider components now support multiple 'Criterias'.
- Added a 'Quad' media effect which renders a simple sprite quad at the effect location. (Currently unused in vanilla but planned to be used for a future part.)
- Removed the SuppressWholeShipTargetOverlaysForPartsFilter and SuppressWholeShipTargetOverlaysWhenTargetingShipRelativePoints parameters. The existing SuppressShipWideExplicitTargetsWhenTargetingShipRelativePoints and SuppressDirectControlWhenTargetingPartsFilter parameters now include their functionality.
- Part ContinuousEffects and TriggeredEffects components now support an optional 'MinMediaEffectsIntensity' parameter. If the effect intensity is under this threshold, then the media effects will not be played.
- Part ContinuousEffects and TriggeredEffects components will no longer play their media effects while their ship is not on screen or out of the player's sight range. Set 'MediaEffectsRequireShipInView' to false to always play their media effects.
- Part ContinuousEffects and TriggeredEffects components now support a 'MaxMediaEffectsZoom' parameter that will prevent the media effects from playing if the player zooms out more than the specified amount.
- ContinuousEffects components now support an optional 'IntensityTweenSpeed' parameter that if specified will cause the effect intensity to smoothly change over time.
[/list]
