BETA 6 is focused on general playing experience, for both new and existing players. Along with the usual smaller tweaks and additions this release adds Statistics, a new Tutorial system as well as the Codex, an in game reference manual. You can discuss BETA 6 and let us know your thoughts on Discord or as usual on the Steam Discussion Topic

Patch Notes

Statistics

The game now tracks nearly everything you'd ever want to know about your play experience. Everything from time played, distance traveled, enemies killed, deaths suffered and much more. Statstics can be viewed on the new Statistics screen (accessed with ;). This data is saved per universe, so each universe will be a different experience and may yield some interesting insight. To go along side these new statistics we have implemnted a behind-the-scenes event system. Its first use is for a new tutorial system, and detecting when stuff happens for the first time, giving you a one time popup with more information (if you want it).

Codex

The Codex consists of ingame reference material, with indepth descriptions and images detailing and explaining game mechanics, ranging from what Power is to topics like Construction and Trading. We hope this provides useful information for both new and existing players, with future updates to add more topics covering universe and game setting topics. As a note to those community members creating localizations in the workshop, in order to support the Codex, we've overhauled our language files to be far more robust, yet hopefully still easy to edit and understand. Also added a new number of special text characters and symbols for gameplay.

Missile Defense Shields

In BETA 5 we added Point-Defense Lasers as a means to protect against projectiles. Although these served there purpose we found that you always wanted them turned on and they acted unlike any other weapon. Therefore based on player feedback and our own dev gameplay experiences we have decided to replace these with a new shield, the Missile Defense Shield. Missile Defense Shields are a type of shield that will automatically intercept incoming projectiles, and function very similarly to the Point-Defense Laser weapons. These shields have a distinct shield graphic to differentiate from Energy Shields. Point-Defense Lasers still technically exist, and will still appear on custom vessels, but are no longer obtainable ingame without cheats. All vessel templates have been updated, and any newly spawned AI controlled ships will have the newer shields equipped.

Inertia and Rotation

Through play testing of the new missile shield we discovered a great innacuracy with how rotational interia was being calculated for a vessel. In brief rotational intertia or "moment of intertia" determines how much force is needed to turn an object and is based on how mass is distributed across an object (ie the further a heavy mass is from the center the harder it is to turn). BETA 6 now correctly calculates inertia based on Tile/Component mass and placement. To go along with this change Rotational force and strafing force is now almost entirely dictated by internal engine characteristics. All engines will now affect ship rotation and strafing regardless of their mount facing. Do note that the placement of Engines still matters greatly as an Engine further from the center can turn a ship with greater force (think of this like a big lever). This is fairly new and may have some unintended side effects, so please let us know if you experience any issues. NOTE: Objects with a reactor, but no engines, still retain some slight rotation ability.

Underlying Engine Updated

Due to a recent Windows Update we have been forced to update the underlying engine of Space Impossible. This is something we have tried to resist as it may have unknown consequences however we have checked the game as much as we can and there doesn't seem to be any major problems (it even boosted performance in a number of areas). Please let us know on the forums or on Discord if you encounter any strange new graphical bugs, crashes or any other problems that may have been caused by this change.

Details

Additions

• Added Statistics. These keep track of nearly everything you do while playing and presents it in a neat little ingame chart. They are per universe and are saved on the server if playing multiplayer.
• Added an internal event system. This works closely with the statistics system to detect when a specific event occurred, record it, and possibly spawn a player prompt for the Codex.
• Added ingame Codex. The Codex is a repository of information about game mechanics, terminology and general information useful (and not useful) for understanding the universe. Initial version covers "tutorial-like" topics to help players understand the basics of the game. In future updates, more topics will be added on things like faction backgrounds, special or unique people or places and other general interest topics.
• Utilizing the Statistics and Codex system, the game now features tutorial-like popups during gameplay. These can be clicked on to open the Codex to the relevant page. These popups appear once per topic per universe. They can be globally disabled in the Options menu.
• Added control "cheat sheet". This in addition to tutorial popups replaces the beginner tutorial and can be viewed from the menu again if needed.
• Change language formatting and added support for YAML files. It can now come in three different ways: [olist]
• Single file LANG file (for backwards compatibility)
• A directory of language of files. All files are combined on load with "last to load" priority on existing entries. Directory should take precedent when loading similar name languages.
• Same as #2 but inside a ZIP file. [/olist]
• Adjusted internal inertia calculations to be more accurate regarding mass of tiles and components.
• Engine thrust and placement now directly affects ability to rotate and strafe a ship. Better engines placed further out from the center will result in faster turn rate. NOTE: Objects with a reactor, but no engines, still retain some slight rotation ability.
• Added Missile Defense Shields and removed Point-Defense Lasers.
• Attackers now receive the correct credit for causing a reactor explosion, and any subsequent explosions (e.g. a reactor chain explosion).
• Control groups can now be saved and loaded with player made templates.
• AI vessels now use control groups for targeting and movement logic.
• All default vessel templates have been updated with control groups.
• Added an element to distressed AI vessels. They will no longer immmediately attempt to attack you, and instead hail you with a general "distress" style message, regardless of your faction standing with them. This will be further enhanced in upcoming releases. NOTE: They will still respond correctly if you are aggressive to them.
• Added "key highlighting" for UI text. This will hopefully make key button references more obvious when read in the text.
• Added ability to exit vessel for EVA in direction of mouse position.
• Added older recipes to higher leveled labs. This should minimize the amount of older Labs you need to maintain.
• The option to Begin a Trade is more clearly marked in dialogue.
• Added auto saving templates for during Construction. The vessel currently under construction will be saved when: on enter construction, up to three rolling saves every two minutes, and on construction exit. NOTE: This globally per client, across any and all universes.

Changes

• CHANGE: Updated underlying engine to a newer version
• CHANGE: Clarified some terminology: Reactors produce Power. Components require Power to operate. Energy exists as a kind of weapon and as a kind of shield.
• CHANGE: Clarified shield stat: "Shield Strength" is the max amount of damage a shield can take before collapsing and going into cooldown, was previously called "Shield Energy".
• CHANGE: A number of performance improvements including some reduced audio hitching and slight networking improvement
• CHANGE: Improved load template UI, preview window is now much larger. Added extra space for tabbed pages for more information in the future.
• CHANGE: Trader dialogue will no longer reprint the response options when refreshing text.
• CHANGE: Item sprites now share the same material, allowing render batching. This improves performance significantly when many items are floating around.
• CHANGE: Improved the performance on some combat related code to reduce number of entity lookups.
• CHANGE: Nav Scanner bars are now sorted in the UI. They should now correctly appear behind most other UI elements.
• CHANGE: Announcements/Notifications are now separate from item pickup and codex notices
• CHANGE: Web links in the UI now highlight to indicate its a clickable link.
• CHANGE: The ingame "Computer Panel" is now larger
• CHANGE: Added symbols in UI text for a number of game elements.
• CHANGE: UI text scrolling should now be more consistent regardless of height of the window and text content.
• CHANGE: Internal shield edges are now visible at a low opacity. This should help now when evaluating just how shield stacked an opponent is. This effectively eliminates the "invsisible walls" that occured when fighting larger/more heavily defended vessels.
• CHANGE: Starter Star system no longer will spawn Patrol Fleets as they were a bit to aggressive for the "early game".
• CHANGE: Key modifiers (shift, ctrl, alt) left/right variants are now treated as equal. That means whether LShift or RShift is pressed, they both equal the same thing.
• CHANGE: Recipe text filtering input is now auto cleared when leaving Manufacturing.
• CHANGE: Added a tiny warp rating to Outdated Ion Engines Mk. 1
• CHANGE: Reactor explosion sounds are now played at the source entity, and to play multiple explosions as one explosion. This should eliminiate the defeaning "MEGA EXPLOSIONS" sound that occurred when blowing up certain vessels.
• CHANGE: All inspecting players should now see a Trader's spacebucks count correctly.
• CHANGE: EVA action keys to 1 = Combat Laser and 2 = Repair Beam.
• CHANGE: Top Right Button tray is now uncollapsed by default.

Fixes

• FIX: Possible stackoverflow in weapon logic
• FIX: An issue that was causing some UI images to have a slight blur.
• FIX: /spawnbeacon now obeys owneruid parameter if at warp
• FIX: UI events are disabled if game window doesn't have focus
• FIX: Added some safety checks to the UI that should reduce the likelihood of the whole UI breaking if an error occurs.
• FIX: A rare issue that occurred when certain types of ingame events occurred immediately before or after dying.
• FIX: Reflector Cannons should no longer behave weirdly when bouncing inside of shields.
• FIX: An error with the paper doll incorrectly not appearing when it should appear.
• FIX: A number of input box related issues with certain keys.
• FIX: An issue with hologram gameobjects being incorrectly recycled. This was originally causing all sorts of rare issues, including phantom ships appearing.
• FIX: A rare issue on player connect that was causing desync and requiring a game restart/rejoin.
• FIX: An issue where playing a single player universe and then joining a multiplayer universe (without restarting the game program) was causing unintended issues.
• FIX: An error caused by removing the final lab from a vessel, while using text filtering and then closing Manufacturing panel was causing the UI to be unable to reopen Manufacturing. Say that five times fast.
• FIX: An issue with tracked missions disappearing from the Mission Panel under certain conditions.
• FIX: A number of general item performance issues.
• FIX: An issue with some button colliders being incorrectly offset once pressed.
• FIX: Double click incorrectly registering when clicking two different elements quickly.
• FIX: "Send Player Money" popup not always appearing when it should.
• FIX: Respawning now checks to make sure you have the target region and system before allowing respawn.
• FIX: An issue on the region server that was resulting in extra log spam when tractors were being used.

Removals

• Removed "Energy Available" from Reactors' tooltips
• Removed the old mini tutorial has been removed.
• Removed Point-Defense Lasers

COMING IN BETA 7

We feel we met our goals for BETA 6 in terms of improving the new player experience along with other improvements, and we further set the stage for future balancing improvements and early game changes. We did touch upon Distress Calls a bit, but we still want to do more. So coming up for BETA 7 we are going to focus specifically on further improving Distress Calls, as well as setting a target release date of: on or before December 31st.