Hello players, we hope you had nice holidays. From this update onward we’ll be back on our usual release schedule. During our break I used a lot of the time to look at different new techniques I want to implement into StarMade, including maybe a very nice new way to do planets (nothing promised though). This update addresses a lot of common points about usability and also adds some features to make factions, as well as individual players, a lot more protected.

Personal Faction Rank

Faction modules now have a new “personal” rank that will help make joining and working within a faction a lot more secure. Selecting this rank within a faction module will set you (and only you) as the owner of the entity. This means other faction members will not be able to use that entity regardless of their rank – including the faction’s founders. If you leave the faction for any reason (including being kicked), you will retain your ownership of the entity. In this event, the entity would keep the existing faction signature, but your ownership will override it. Pressing R on the faction module will allow you to reset its faction once it is no longer docked to that original faction. It’s important to note, however, that you can only set something to “personal” if you have permissions to access the faction module’s settings. The rank selected in a faction module will now propagate to any docked objects so long as you the player have permission to set the ranks on those. This propagation will not apply to docked objects with faction modules set to “personal.” This prevents exploitation of the propagation feature to gain access to personal-set objects.

Faction and Public permission blocks

A new block has been added that will give faction-wide access to blocks it’s placed next to. The previous block, originally called “Faction Permission Block” has been renamed to “Public Permission Block”. The new block has now been named “Faction Permission Block” since this makes more sense. Permissions will now also extend to storage blocks, making it easy to protect your cargo. There will be additional blocks in the future providing more rank customization.

Rails on Trading Guild Shops

Advanced TG shops now have docking rails by default. Server admins can also activate this feature on regular TG shops if desired, or switch it off altogether. Changing the option does not require a database reset; however the docking rails will only appear on newly generated shops. Docking on these rails will function similarly to docking on a home base, with the exception that no weapons can be used while docked. This should give factionless and new players a lot more room to secure their ships without having to rely on a home base or a faction.

New Default Keybinds

There have been some adjustments made to the keyboard.cfg that will provide a new default keybind set. Most of these changes were made to make controls more intuitive for newer players. Your keyboard.cfg file should not be overwritten unless using a new install, so your custom keybinds should not be affected except in the case of a few buttons that were remapped to blank keys. Any duplicates (in respect to context) in the keyboard settings in-game are now marked red for easy fixing.

Bug fixes

Fixed issues: T1010 can build on factioned entities regardless of permissions T1003 Can overwrite any blueprint by uploading one with same name T964 Teal and pink light rods have full-block collisions. T939 unload/load will drop blocks if volume used is bigger than default chest capacity T903 tooltip doesn't always display or shows wrong data T894 "Create Docking" not working on factioned entities T860 BufferOverflowException + render issues with mass placement of non cubic blocks T846 In game can't show full-width characters (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) But it works in setup window T820 stuck in ship core /stuck in undeathinator T789 deleting shipyard core anchor when design is loaded, removes it from the database T680 Ships not checking for collision before docking T649 docked entities created in adv build under create docking will not undock T618 Flora items missing from creative menu T548 "Filter by block name" does not work for multi slots T442 Old docks can still be bought at shops, when using 'Buy amount' instead of 'Buy' T243 Player character repeatedly removing/replacing helmet Also, lists in GUI are now sorted by default and ‘Preview Block to build’ is now on by default. Removed additional arrow in “create docking” in adv. build mode to make overall orientation clearer. The Metal Mesh has been given a new improved texture, Trigger Area blocks now have a block icon among other graphical improvements.

Council Term 2 Voting Closing Soon

For those unaware, as part of our continued engagement with you, the community, we have a community-elected council. For four months, the council assists the dev team with filtering suggestions, running polls and discussions on topics or concerns the community has, amongst many other things. Currently, voting is open for the new council and will be closing in a couple of days. Any player with a Citizen Registry account can vote, so head over to http://council.star-made.org to view who’s in the running and cast your votes!

What’s Ahead

StarMade has been a unique development experience. The past few years have seen us build a solid foundation for where we want to take StarMade. It’s like we’ve been developing a toolkit for us to build the actual game of StarMade on, and as such there’s been a lot of justified criticism that there isn’t much to do yet. In our opinion, it has been more important to get that foundation solid before proceeding into developing the gameplay, lest development gets stuck in design hell. For every new feature or mechanic we’ve added in, we’ve always considered how well it would mesh with the rest of our plans for the game. We also find it equally important to consider the different ways that players could utilize a feature, as well as how it affects players’ differing gameplay experiences and play styles. Our plans for StarMade are big, and while up until now we’ve purely focused on ensuring that we’ve had a solid foundation to build upon, this year we finally start using our proverbial toolbox to build the game we’ve all been envisioning. Here’s to 2016 and to what’s ahead ~ Thanks for playing StarMade! ~ the Schine Team