Alpha 2 is finally out, check below for all the changes, NOTE: DUE TO FILE FORMAT CHANGES, UNIVERSES MADE IN ALPHA 1 ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ALPHA 2.

Release Notes

Game Systems

• Added multiple tile healths per object.
• Rewrote weapon damage system. Weapons can do different amounts of damage to different types of tiles. This allows things like mining lasers that do significantly more damage to asteroids, but less damage to ships and space stations.
• Added weapon modules. These modify the characteristics of a weapon, like increased weapon arc, length, energy consumption (where applicable), damage, duration and cooldown.
• Added discovery mechanic.
• Significant changes to star system generation. Regions are now linked together via Warp Gates and are discoverable. Regions usually flow in increasing order, and require discovery to unlock. Any ship can enter warp from a warp bubble associated with a warp gate. Regions are less likely to overlap, though some might still be closely placed.
• Added the "Warp Chamber" component. Larger ships have this component, and it allows these ships to enter warp from anywhere in a region. Ships with warp chambers will exit near warp gates just like any other ships.
• Changed universe creation random seeds from random numbers to a combination of 3 words based on common English words.
• Shrunk starter region (Region 0) significantly, with a conveniently located warp gate. There are a few asteroids and maybe a planetoid. No AI will spawn in the region, so it's completely safe haven.
• Ship thrusters (left and right) now scale relative to ship's mass. We'll see how that feels for now.
• Mouse click on the warp bubble of a warp gate now opens system map instead of inspection panel
• Rewrote object splitting handling. Bridges and cargo bays are now factored into splits. When a player is in control of a ship or spacestation they will retain control of the resulting chunk that has the largest number of bridges. Inventory will remain with the chunk with the largest number of cargo bays. If no bridge is intact, the player loses control no matter. If no cargo bays are available, then inventory goes into the largest chunk based on tile count. We also altered ownership retaining of chunks (even if a player dies) and how that affects looting.
• Changed "Region 0" name to "Start Region" and added an entry to the language file for localization
• Changes to object placement. Should see less spawning into asteroids. Ship and station wrecks may still occasionally be next to asteroids though.

Weapons

• Weapons no longer have to be constantly clicked to activate. Clicking and holding will allow the weapon to activate only when appropriate (as long as there is enough energy, and within firing angle).
• Weapon modules cannot be manufactured, they only drop from wrecks and AI ships.
• Split beam weapons into the : (Basic) Laser, Mining Laser, Comblastor and Salvageborer series. (Basic) Laser is middle of the road, decent damage to asteroids and ships, but doesn't excel anywhere. Mining laser is great for mining but worse for combat. Comblastor are high powered combat weapons that are good for killing ship tiles, but produce little/no wreckage and low damage against asteroids. Salvageborer is slow working, low damage beam weapon that produces a whole bunch of extra wreckage.
• Leaving the bounds of a region no longer warps you to a nearby region, but will attempt to teleport you to the closest warp gate in the region.
• Changes to the wreck generation. Should have less single tile wrecks. Wreck loot is more region level consistent.
• Warp gates and wrecks should no longer spawn on top of asteroids in the occasional moments they did

Object Templates

• Fixed weapon mount angles on Providence ships
• Odyssey received more weapon mounts
• Trailblazer received more weapon mounts
• Reduced number of weapon mounts of Galactic Aquila
• Added the Drumit class to The Drumience Federation ships. This ship is smaller than the Drumen and should be a bit more forgiving in lower level Drumience regions.
• Added a custom "recovery capsule" template
• Asteroid art has been updated
• Added cargo bay parsing for space stations. Space stations now have cargo bays. Can't believe we missed that.
• Added "Outpost" type station. It has 8 inventory, 1 lab, 1 reactor, 1 bridge, 2 cargo, no weapons. It doesn't require any labs to be made, and is about half the resources of the homestation to make. Good for that first initial expansion outside start region.
• Lowered Stellar Raptor rotation rate by half
• Fixed some template issues which were preventing large planetoids from spawning in regions. They should be much more common now, as intended.

UI

• Added LShift + Click to transfer stacks between your vessel and inspected vessel
• Added weapon cooldown indicators to screen
• Region map now updates in real-time
• Added weapon tooltips, and weapon comparison tooltips
• Added mouse control based on player feedback. It is off by default, but can be enabled via "CONTROLS" in options. LClick to move forward/select (if highlighted), MClick to reverse, RClick to fire selected weapons.
• Fixed a UI issue where the "lock state" was being visually reset incorrectly.
• Altered tooltip text on assembly to suggest "Holding" instead of "Clicking" as some players were reporting handstrain.
• Fixed some spelling errors in existing English file.
• Placement holograms for many objects should no longer be half height (ex: storage container)
• Moved search/manufacturing check box from bottom to top
• Fixed issue where inventory collapse wasn't working properly when switching panel size
• Added chat fading. Hardcoded at 30s, we will probably add a configurable time to the options in the future. Let us know what you think of it.
• You can now craft multiple items. This works like crafting in other games. Click and hold to make multiple items. First to second item is 1s, 2nd through 10th is 0.2s (per item) and 11th and on is 0.05s.
• Added sounds for almost all inventory manipulation. So picking up and dropping down should now have an audio cue.

Discovery

• Many objects now appear as a "?" on the map before they are discovered.
• Altered the "last loaded" timestamp on Load Universe from UTC to local time zone

Recipes

• Homestation no longer requires Isomatrix Framer Mk 1 Lab to make
• Isomatrix Framer Mk 1 Lab no longer requires Isomatrix Framer lab (oops)
• Inert Photon Lab recipes use crystal powder instead of methane
• Increased crystal -> powder output

AI

• Significant changes to AI. AI should be better behaved in multiplayer, and they should behave much better when players enter and leave a region. Still not anywhere near final, but should be much better than Alpha 1.
• AI patrols should be more "interesting" in terms of location instead of flying in a big circle
• Added two AI events. Trader (Cargo) ships will now spawn near space stations or warp gates and fly towards a warp gate before warping away. Small pirate groups will occasionally spawn in regions with players and attempt to harass the player.
• AI now have a variety of weapon load outs, including torpedoes
• AI ships will always spawn with some inventory. Trader ships spawn with more than other AI ships.
• AI ships with torpedo launchers should no longer run out of torpedoes. They're kind of jerks now.
• AI now reach to tile damage, not just tile death. They will ignore tile damage from ships on the same faction, but will not ignore tile death as previous. They won't switch targets too frequently either so ping ponging them off your friends may or may not work.
• AI factions should react more diversely to different factions. Pirate incursions into friendly factions will often see skirmishes that the players don't even know happened.

Technical

• Rewrote the shader system to make effect assets more flexible and not be hard coded into Unity scene
• Cleaned up a bunch of log prints to make universe creation faster/logs smaller
• Added universe versions and checking
• Fixed bug where certain objects were dropping "empty" items
• Moved language files from built-in to GameData/base/languages. You can now take the existing english language and replace the definitions with your own. If you do a translation, we'd be happy to include it in the official release, just let us know.
• Added server/client version checking based off of build number. If the client is rejected, they should receive a proper message, and the server will log it as well.
• Sometimes a "client" folder was appearing in the "Load Universe" dialog. That should no longer happen.
• Sometimes when warping back to region 0, the "you are leaving the region" warning would popup. That shouldn't happen now.
• Disabled a fairly verbose log print that was happening due to inspection
• Fixed an issue where AI weren't always getting appropriate targets even if they were in radius after spawning. Also reduced some unnecessary redundancy when an AI target is cleared.
• Seemingly fixed the "item pickup" sound playing when warping due to warp or player death