Alpha 15 is released! We've continued work on all three of our major game modes - Survival Mode now has entirely new jumpgates with their own missions at the end of each sector, Arena mode has been expanded to support different types of ships within each fleet, and the Industry mode has been expanded to Stargate phase 7 with the introduction of an entirely new and unexplored sector, filled with valuable new minerals and all new dangers.
There is no video for this alpha, but we plan to release Alpha 16 AND a video in about a month.
We hope you enjoy playing our game!
Survival mode, Continued
Each sector now has a massive Jumpgate in the final system. This Jumpgate is how you make the longer distance jump to the next sector.
You must bring all of the ships in your fleet into the Jumpgate and then align together, before you can activate it.
However, the Jumpgate is not always immediately available.
As you progress further and further in Survival Mode, more and more problems will occur with the Jumpgates. In these cases a special mission will be created for the sector, listing the steps that must be completed before the Jumpgate can be used.
Common problems that prevent the jumpgate from being activated:
- You must Pay a transit fee
- Damaged. You must repair the gate using Drones.
- They require a set of specific components to repair the gate. You must acquire or fabricate them.
- Pirates running a blockade on the Jumpgate. You must eliminate them and prevent further damage.
Nb. Thanks to Johnny Struggles for the Jump Gate ship design.
Arena mode, Continued
You can now create battles between multiple different types of ships on each side of the fight.
Each type of ship will spawn in its own column at the start of the battle.
- New display at the bottom of the screen compares the relative strengths of the two fleets.Ships are compared on their trade price AND on their combat rating.
- There is a new GENERATE button that will automatically create a roughly balanced opponent
- The following research is unlocked for all ships in arena mode: [list]
- Drone Speed 2 (drones fly twice as fast)
- Drone Intelligence (drones collect resources in batches)
- Track Speed 2 (tracks are three times as fast)
- Robot Arm Speed (robot arms twice as fast)
[/list]
Stargate Project, Continued
Work continues on the epic Stargate Project.
The project can now be completed up to and including phase 7.
- Phase 5 (The power-on test) now unlocks access to an entirely new and Uncharted sector![list]
- Once the power-on test is complete, the stargate must be continuously supplied with 100MW of power to remain open
- From this point onward you can jump ships to the Uncharted sector to explore and gather materials
- There are new minerals and gases that are only found in this Uncharted Sector.
- Collecting them will unlock further research projects to refine them.
You will need to bring the refined resources back to the home sector to supply them to the Stargate Project.
- Neubidium Ore -> Neubidium Ingot
- Zeleon Gas -> Stable Zeleon
- Zeleon Energy Cell
- Neubidium Capacitor
- Lots of the new resources will be required
- By phase 7, hostile elements will have moved in to claim the valuable new resources
[/list]
New Exterior Rendering
We are developing a new method for rendering the exterior of all ships
- Exterior of ships are now lit from a common direction, and have simple normal maps for surface details
- Texture filtering on exterior textures much improved
- Added a pencil outline to all ships
- Improved rendering of scaffolding to be sharper when zoomed out
Steam Cloud Saves
Steam Cloud Saves are now enabled on all platforms.
When making a new save game you will now see a tickbox to enable saving to the cloud
Localisation
- New translations have been added[list]
- Dutch
- Italian
- Polish
- Brazilian Portuguese
- Russian
- Swedish
SMALL CHANGES
- Scaffold now adds a small mass to the ship
- Survival mode is now unlocked by completing ANY story episode in Boldly Go mode
- External equipment will no longer block incoming shots once it has been destroyed. (Prevents an impenetrable shield of destroyed solar panels)
- Drones can now patch holes in severely damaged ships
- Add a placeholder thumbnail to save files and ship files without thumbnails
- Game save thumbnails images are created on load if they are not found
- Ship thumbnails images are created on load/import if they are not found
- When docked ships are exported together, they are all included in the thumbnail
- Track install preview now matches selected orientation
- Robot arm install preview now matches appropriate length and rotation of installed robot arm
- Low power warning bolts are no longer shown when power has been turned off from the powergrid
- Automically deactivate tactical mode when clicking prepare jump
- Auto-trades can be cancelled while the delivery shuttle is on its way
COMMUNITY AND OFFICIAL SHIPS
Lots of fixes for the following common problems:
- Fix Equipment embedded in walls
- Fix Ladders exiting into walls
- Fix Doors not filling gap
- Fix Interior cells outside of ship
- Fix Armour not attached to ship
BUG FIXES
- Fix being able to separate ships in FTL on Survival mode
- Fixed: Sometimes loot would be spawned at completely the wrong place when a ship explodes (bug with storage crates)
- Fix for rendering objects at the wrong position in Tactical View, when they were stored in a Container (would appear floating in space)
- Fix gas collector in DSI Part 2 not being present in system
- Fixed an issue with Oxygen being lost rapidly on large ships with lots of airducts. Each airduct was over-providing, resulting in lost oxygen.
- Fixed an issue where selling items would not decrease the value of a ship until the items were delivered.
- Fixed an issue where selling a ship with active logistics transfers gave you the value of the items and still continued the transfers.
- Fix where auto-orders would not calculate ship stock correctly for non-containers (e.g. drones and spacesuits)
- Fix drones being counted twice in logistics menu if they are stored in a storage crate
- Fix for light space dust around asteroid belts becoming thick, heavy space dust after saving and reloading
- Issue #339 - Shuttle doesn't leave under specific circumstances
- Issue #397 - Assembly Tables on ships built at Shipyard retain their loaded components and build histories, should be empty/ zero
- issue #421 - TranslatorAssist setting doesn't affect tutorial dialogs
- Issue #445 - References to systems don't use S*X
- Issue #447 - Robot Arm and Storage Crate stuck in a loop
- Issue #451 - Drones dropping logistics transfer items when they shouldn't
- Issue #458 - Robot arms not unloading
- Issue #449 - Other ships can obscure the editor when loading Creative Mode
- Issue #465 - Fix Ship over 100% damage not destroyed
- Issue #470 - Hydroponics Gardens still draw water when powered down
- Issue #474 - Engine deleted by Ship Editor: Delete hull function
- Issue #488.1 - Nothing ships can now only be created in a Ship Yard and cannot be FTL jumped.
- Issue #493 - Zoom limits not working when using Q and E
- Issue #495 - Infinite Money Glitch - can buy new ship for free and then sell for millions
- Crash in when Fighter about to be launched and there is no free space.
- Crash in calculating the value of a ship that has a boxed storage crate.
- Crash when guns look for cell to attack on zero width or height ships.
- Crash when an object is unloaded from another object that is not equipment. Validate save game for correctness. before loading.
- Crash when a drone carries out logistics orders after completing another mission.
