Running On Empty (v0.8.3)

That's me back from holiday, hence the slight delay. Once the multiplayer madness had settled down, I took five days off to visit family.

This update isn't huge in terms of visible changes, but there's been a lot happening behind the scenes in preparation for Sector 4 - Phase 2, which is currently planned for October 12th if everything goes according to plan.

Full details are in the patch notes below, but here are the highlights.

New Global Modifiers

There are a host of new global modifiers that increase the damage, slow strength and duration of debuffs applied to enemies. The aim is to make single damage-type builds more viable, rather than pushing everyone towards Catalyst builds and stacking reactions.

There's also a new Maximum Shield global modifier that can increase your maximum shield power by up to 10%, helping shield-tanking builds compete more closely with hull-focused tanks.

Optional Thrusters

Primary weapons and shields used to be mandatory. Now the final mandatory equipment slot is gone too. Ships can be flown without a thruster, although they'll move extremely slowly and won't be able to boost or dodge.

More importantly, this makes swapping ship designs in the Hangar Bay much easier. If you want to use the same thruster across several loadouts, you can simply unequip it before switching ships.

Void Jumps

Species-XI use Void Thrusters, and if you equip one yourself, you'll now use the same purple phased jump effect. This is purely a visual change, but it's something I've wanted to add for a while.

Void Thrusters also get their own unique loading scene, which will become more relevant later when you finally get to enter the Void. Species-XI ships also no longer disappear instantly when retreating. Their Void Thrusters now have to charge before jumping, similar to regular hyperdrive jumps.

Varied Skirmishes

Not a massive change, but Skirmishes now have more variation in enemy numbers and Gateway ship counts. I'm planning to add more Warzone and Rescue variants in future updates as well, to give those objectives a bit more variety.

For Rescue missions, the plan is to have you escort a moving convoy rather than defend a single stationary ship. I'm also planning a Warzone variant based around controlling areas instead of simply destroying everything.

Co-op Fixes and a PvP Theme

The co-op fix list is fairly long, so here are some of the issues you're most likely to have encountered.

Shots fired by other players no longer pass through enemies. Enemies should no longer become unkillable at zero hull after another player dies. Enemy drones no longer freeze when someone leaves the game. Kills made entirely by your drones or clones now correctly award XP, and a player reading dialogue during a sector jump will no longer freeze everyone else.

There's also a small PvP improvement: if a rival player joins your encounter, the music now switches to a combat theme. So you're no longer murdering each other to ambient jazz.

Lower Video Memory Usage

One final change worth mentioning: the ship and item sprite sheets are now compressed, reducing video memory usage by around 1 GB with no real loss in quality. If you're playing on a lower-end GPU or Steam Deck, this should help performance and memory usage.

I'm still investigating some reports of possible memory leaks, although I haven't been able to reliably reproduce or track those down yet.

Plenty more changes are listed below. Enjoy!

Patch Notes

New Features / Content

• Thrusters are now optional, a ship with none crawls and cannot boost or dodge.

• New hangar designs now start with nothing equipped instead of a free thruster.

• New global modifiers boost your debuff damage, slow and duration on enemies.

• New Maximum Shield global modifier raises your shield power by up to 10%.

• Void Thruster ships now jump between encounters by void rift and tunnel.

• A new PvP theme plays whenever a rival player shares your encounter.

Balance Changes

• Skirmishes now roll varied counts of enemy squadrons and Gateway Disruptors.

• Skirmishes against EMP Wasps now require destroying every enemy ship.

• Species-XI ships now charge before jumping out instead of vanishing at once.

Quality of Life / Accessibility

• Every elite encounter type now appears at least once in each new sector.

• New Toggle Auto Tractor Beam key, default C, flips the setting during play.

• A Hologram toggle in Appearance lets your allied ships keep their own look.

• Controller navigation now wraps around the edges of cargo and storage grids.

• Saves with missing mods hide their Edit button since they cannot be saved.

• The mod panel now warns when Workshop mods were skipped as Steam failed.

• Test drone data numbers weapon slots the way the equipment panel lists them.

• The time to kill notice over a dying test drone holds 1.5s before fading.

Performance

• Ship and item sprite sheets are now compressed, saving 1 GB of video memory.

• Debuff reactions now resolve a frame later so chains spread across frames.

• Reanimated allies now rise a frame after the kill to smooth out big fights.

Bug Fixes

• Jumping away from the fleet uses the short charge again, enemies or not.

• Conduit links now draw to the weapon in use when the chosen slot is empty.

• Conduit links and highlights now show for invisible items in the panel.

• Floating damage numbers and notices now pause briefly before drifting off.

• Test drone data credits Shrapnel shard hits to the beam that triggered them.

• Test drone data now shows the slot for lingering patch and tether damage.

• Test drone data keeps weapon slots for the drone owner in co-op sessions.

• Changing the layer of a mirrored part at the top or bottom no longer errors.

• Controller focus now returns to a text box after the Steam keyboard closes.

• Reopening a text box now puts the cursor at the end so Backspace works.

• The seed box now locks while a sector generates so it can no longer stick.

• The secondary class hint in Upgrades now wraps instead of being cut off.

• Pressing right on the storage grid no longer selects the tick button below it.

• Mines and black holes no longer surge on a kill after their owner has died.

• Co-op enemies no longer turn unkillable at zero hull after a player death.

• Co-op shots from other players now land on enemies instead of passing through.

• Co-op sector jumps no longer copy the old gateway's loot into the new sector.

• Leaving a co-op session now hands your encounter's loot over to the host.

• Damage reflect now works against every co-op player, including in PvP.

• Enemy Mirror Image clones no longer hit some co-op players harder than others.

• Enemy drones no longer freeze in place in co-op after a player leaves.

• Kills made only by a co-op player's drones or clones now grant XP.

• A player reading a dialog during a co-op sector jump no longer freezes others.

• Co-op probes no longer fail to arrive when one player already holds the key.

• Sector gateway charges now show correctly for co-op players after a jump.

• Halos, torches, conduits, drones and spinners now show a damage type badge.

Modders

• ShipImage.AddHiddenSlotPart is a new virtual hook for invisible slot items.

• TestDroneTracker.RecordHit and CorrosiveShard.Init gained attribution params.

• StatusEffectReactions.BeginDamage gained upgrade and weapon-only overloads.

• GameShip.GetPlayerSourceModifierPercentage sums an applier's global modifiers.

• Modifier.Type.MaxShield (511) is a new global applied in Shield.ShieldMax.

• StarMapBase.minimumPerEliteStarDesign guarantees stars per elite design.

• EliteStar.Power.CircleTrap is a new elite power with a circular trap wall.

• Slot.EmptyAllowed was removed since every slot can now be left empty.

• ThrusterItemBase.voidJump makes a ship jump by void rift, not hyperdrive.

• GameShip.HasVoidThruster replaces the Species-XI faction check for jumps.

• JumpType and ShipSpawnerItemBase.jumpType were removed, thrusters decide.

• Core.LoadData.voidJump makes the Loading scene show the void tunnel.

• Projectile.ProcessOnKill now runs the on-kill shed and surges for all weapons.

• StatusEffectReactions.TriggerReactions now queues reactions to the next frame.

• MusicPlayer.Key.PlayerPvp (20) overrides all music while a PvP rival is near.

• SteamWorkshopMods.steamUnavailable is true when Steam failed to initialize.

• The Mods README now shows where Steam installs subscribed Workshop mods.

• SkirmishStarDesign gatewayShips and autoSpawnCount are now Min/Max ranges.

• GameShip.ApplyMindControl gained a hologram param, see hologramMaterial.