The Universe IS Yours!

I'm very happy to announce that the Stellar Tactics universe is now open - from one system to 160,000+ systems. I'm very happy with the progress and this is a major milestone for the game. I hope you enjoy it. Prepare for a wall of text... I want to set some expectations. This is the first pass of the universe sandbox. There are likely to be bugs, though we've done some heavy testing over the last three weeks and things seem stable. That doesn't mean there won't be edge cases that cause problems. If you do find any bugs, please post them on the bug forums and I'll address them as soon as I can. https://steamcommunity.com/app/465490/discussions/7/ So, what is this patch? --This is the first pass at the sandbox universe. Over time I'll be adding a lot of content including discovery missions from logs, distress transmissions and much, much more. Think of this as the beginning of something much larger. --There is no new story content, just missions everywhere, places to explore, mine, engage in exploration discovery encounters on planets and stations against various factions. Plenty to do and explore. --What will I be doing after the patch releases - a lot. The goal is to get to Alpha as soon as possible. to get there I need to finish a few more of the games core systems. I'll list all of that in the "What's next" and "Roadmap" posts on the forums. --Tuning - the game needs to be tuned, both for ground and space combat. First, perks need to be in place, special attacks need to be finished and itemization and the economy needs to be addressed. It's important that I point out that I do have plans to add (soon) a way for you to right click enemies and choose the target body part, review enemy information (resists and possibly more information) based on your perception stat. One thing I've never liked about the current system is that it does not give you an alternative method for targeting enemies - this will be addressed.

And now for the patch notes:

IMPORTANT: MOUSE INTERACTION HAS BEEN CHANGED. The mouse now uses left click to interact with objects, NPC's, combat attacks, movement and movement cursor rotation. Right click is reserved for camera rotation. I've adjusted this so it conforms with the standard. I find a lot of new players are confused by the old system which felt out of place. I think it works much better so thank you everyone who suggested this change. You can now travel through the entire Stellar Tactics Universe. Traveling between systems is done in FTL Space - a 3D representation of the entire Stellar Tactics universe. To travel to FTL space, you no longer need to approach a jump point. You can enter FTL space anywhere in a star system as long as you are not in combat. Jump points are now used for translocating between systems where you have placed a data beacons. More on that below. When you can FTL to the Star Map, an icon will be displayed in the upper left System Info UI if that UI is opened.
Once in FTL Space, approach any system and a new icon will be displayed in the upper left of the screen under the System Information menu. Pressing that icon will drop you from FTL Space into the selected Star System. To enter FTL space, you need to have a FTL drive equipped on your ship. These are the requirements to enter FTL space: 1) If you are in your starter ship, you must have completed the "Speak with Scarby Hurzog" mission line through completion of the mission given to you by "Phestus". You can then buy a FTL drive from Phestus that you will need to equip on your ship. 2) You can purchase a new ship. All new ships are equipped with FTL drives. 3) You must return Dr. Rhamus and Dr. Jensen to the "Achmedius Trade Station" or you will not be able to enter FTL space I've blocked entry to some systems for story content that will come during ALPHA and BETA. When trying to enter these systems a message is displayed letting you know that you cannot enter. Considering the overall number of systems (between 160,000 - 200,000 + depending on your random seed) you won't come across these often. Level cap raised to level 60 - Skill cap raised to level 100 A new user interface for ground exploration and general information UI's. The space UI has not been changed other than some minor edits. I still have some cleanup to do on the UI and I'm looking through everything to make small adjustments. Line of sight indicators that are displayed when hovering over movement locations. They indicate visible enemies from that position and provide you with an idea of whether or not that location provides cover. More work to do on this including displaying the indicators when you press TAB. Closest team member interaction: When interacting with objects in the environment, the closest team member to that object, NPC, chest, loot object etc. will always interact. This resolves situations where you may be blocked getting to the object and need to move your team members around. There are a couple of important notes here: 1) When interacting with vendors, regardless of who selects the vendor, the team member in your active team with the highest CHA will be used in vendor price calculations. 3) When hacking you will need to select the team member with the hacking tool. The closest team member will interact, however, the selected team member with the tool will actually hack the item, provide skill bonuses and receive the experience. All ships are now available to purchase. Vendor inventory is random so check vendors for new ships. Your key-binds have been reset. The farther you travel out into the universe, the more difficult enemies become. Faction mission agents can be found on stations in primary faction systems - that is Halamis, Varadyn, Cilivon, Conrair, Shikaru and Aralion. You can see which faction is controlling a Star System on the Star Map in the log by rolling over or clicking on a system. You can gather missions from agents that will send you to nearby systems. Returning for your reward will net faction, tokens and rewards. If you enter a station with a faction agent and that system is way above your level/capability, the faction agent will not issue missions. There are also agents in sub-faction systems like The Kchor, The Coven etc. Neutral systems do not have faction agents, these systems are reserved for faction warfare. I'll be expanding on these missions, the mission descriptions and more over time. The difficulty of a particular Star System is indicated in the Log->Star Map area. When you roll over a system, information will be displayed in the lower right of the Star Map displaying: --The name of the system --Reputation (hostile, wary, neutral, etc.) --The primary Faction for that system --The sector X,Y coordinates --The difficulty of that system displayed my minimum level requirement --If the system has station services I'll be doing much more work on the map for an upcoming update. In FTL Space, combat is disabled. I'll be adding various discovery locations, skirmishes and faction warfare in the future. System labels in FTL Space are color coded as follows:

• Green Border: System has leveled content if there are landing locations and faction mission agents.
• Yellow Border: A challenge. The content in these systems is slightly above your level. With good gear and a skilled team you will survive. Faction agents are likely to have missions for you in these systems.
• Red Border: Likely impossible - but who knows? Give it a try and see. Faction agents will not offer missions in these systems.
• Purple borer with solid dark blue background: You have a agent mission to complete in this system.
• Yellow border with solid green background: You completed a mission and an agent is waiting for you to return for your reward in this system.

Star systems on the Star Map in your log are now colored by faction. Red systems are hostile, blue neutral, yellow wary and green are friendly. When entering hostile systems, ships will spawn and intercept you. They will continue to launch ships as long as you are in a system. You can stay and fight, scan planet surfaces for stations and event locations, board hostile stations or leave the system. They will continue to hunt you until you destroy them or leave the system. Landing on a station or ground station in a hostile system will set that location hostile and exploring those locations will result in combat. Clearing one of these locations will net you rewards and faction. No tokens are rewarded. Ships will occasionally spawn in all systems and harass you. Mining for ore now has an added degree of risk. You are less likely to be harassed in systems that are controlled by factions that are not hostile towards you. They will continue to hunt you until you destroy them or leave the system. Equipping your mining vessel with good shields and armor and making sure you have one or two dedicated weapon turrets is usually enough to fend off the enemies if you are in lower level systems. Destroying these ships will spawn loot so - bonus! If you see the message "Enemy ships inbound" and you are not yet ready for space combat, I'd head for the nearest station or FTL to FTL space. Scanning planets in systems may reveal exploration opportunities. If you clear an exploration location you will get a reward and faction. No tokens are rewarded.
Two new faction armor sets, one for Varadyn and one for Shikaru. Doing agent missions for these factions will net you tokens that you can use to buy this armor. I'll be adding faction weapons in a future patch. A new keybind that takes you directly to the ship UI, "K" by default. PageUP and PageDown now zoom the camera in and out incrementally when exploring ground locations.
The crew manager has been added to the game. You can access the crew manager on the ground and in space using the "M" key. The crew manager is only available once you return Rhamus and Jensen to the Trade Port in Achmedius. You can find new crew members on the Achmedius trade station and stations across the universe. They are usually located in the sleeping quarters area of stations and ground facilities. Speak to NPC's you find and some may choose to join you. Accept their offers and review their skills in the crew manager. If you don't like their initial stats, you can dismiss them and find another.

• The crew manager can be accessed when in space or on the ground.
• The left side of the crew manager window displays all of your crew members. A total of 10 crew members can be in your crew at any time. Crew members can be recruited on friendly stations across the universe.
• You cannot move crew in or out of your ground crew while on the ground. You can only assign new crew to your ground team in the crew manager while in space.
• Selecting a crew member in the left list displays important stat and skill information for review in the center pane of the crew manager.
• You can assign, replace and remove crew members by dragging them from the left crew list to the right team rosters.
• You can remove crew members by dragging them from the active roster to the crew list on the left. This allows you to solo ground missions or limit the number of crew members you have in your active ground team.
• Your ship and ground crew members can be separate. That is, you can have dedicated ground and space crew or you can mix and match team members from both rosters.
• You cannot replace your main character. He/she is dedicated to the first slot in the ground team roster and will always be a member of your ground team.
• You must have at least one crew member assigned to your space crew roster.
• You can dismiss a crew member by selecting the crew member in the left crew list. Dismissing a crew member is permanent (at least for now). You will prompted when dismissing a crew member and notified that dismissal is permanent.
• Setting station assignments in the ship UI [K] will re-arrange your ship crew. It does not affect your current ground team roster. Those changes will be reflected in the crew manager.

Data Beacons: These can be purchased from ship equipment vendors. If you approach a FTL point you will notice a new icon in the lower left of the screen. If you have data beacons in your inventory, you can drop a beacon in a system. You can then teleport back to that system from any other system in the universe instantly by approaching a FTL point, selecting the beacons icon and then selecting your destination from the list. I recommend picking a home system and placing a beacon there. It can be a place where you store your ships.

• To place beacons or translocate, you must be in the vicinity of a FTL point.
• Once you place a beacon, the system the beacon is placed in will be listed in the beacons UI.
• You must have at least 5 Fusion Cells (ground type ammo) to translocate
• You can delete beacons using the beacons UI
• Beacons will eventually also feed trading data into the Trade-Net

CTH system revised. If you have over a 75% chance to hit, you will always connect. You will either get a "Grazing hit" (ranged) or "Glancing blow" (melee). Damage is scaled down based on the CTH value. Between 50% and 75% CTH you still get a second roll that has a low chance to connect with the enemy. Let's give that a try for a while. I'll make adjustments based on player feedback. Note that grazing hits and glancing blows can still be mitigated. At lower levels if the damage value is very low, enemy damage mitigation can reduce this damage to zero. Updated radar: The radar has updated icons and now displays the position of gather items and boss enemies. Vendors have unique icons and mission agents are clearly displayed when they enter the radar. Friendly fire is now off by default. You can turn it on/off in the Options->Gameplay menu at any time, even while in combat.
Tutorials are now a Guide. The guide can be found by press "H" and selecting the "Guide" button at the top of the displayed screen. I've added new topics to the guide that cover space combat, mining and more. I'll be expanding the in-game guide over time. Video's have been removed and replaced with illustrations. Note that most of the guide topics have multiple pages as listed at the bottom center of the guide screen. IMPORTANT: Get yourself a "translocator". All Halamis faction merchants carry them including the faction merchant in the Abandoned Research Facility staging area. They are free and instantly teleport you out of any mission location back to space.

General bug fixes:

GENERAL BALANCE: --Weapon burst mode damage increased --Some balancing to ship combat. A major tuning pass will go in the game with ship perks soon. --Below level 10, ship combat is much easier. It should give you time to get used to the combat system and upgrade your ship. You should still consider upgrading your starter ship as soon as possible. The Dr's didn't really leave you with the best equipment. --Enemies drop better loot overall. More rare and legendary drops everywhere. --Weapons with mod slots are more common as loot drops and from vendors. FIXED: A bug that was preventing doors displayed on the outside edge of the radar from highlighting mission map locations. FIXED: A bug that could make door icons on the radar unresponsive. FIXED: The system info menu opens on the first click now ( instead of 2 clicks the first time) FIXED: The mysterious ghost hair bug is now resolved. Hair was being left in the scene occasionally when a merc joined your team. FIXED: You can cancel the end turn options screen using the ESC key once again. FIXED: A major repeatable crash bug related to opening and closing the load/save menu and then transitioning between areas. FIXED: Music volume settings persist between loading of areas. FIXED: You can no longer attach mods to weapons that do not have mod slots - thanks JODEGAFUN! FIXED: Damage mods can now be equipped correctly to heavy weapons and all damage bonus mod types have received a scaled boost to damage output. Adjusted damage bonus is not retroactive so you will need to find new mods if you want the new adjusted bonuses. FIXED: When adding a new crew member to your team, you will no longer get a default duplicate portrait for that new crew member. FIXED: A bug related to the display of power related to reload speed in the ship UI if no crew member assigned to the weaponry station. FIXED: If stash was full, and you dragged and dropped a item in your pack to the stash, the item disappeared. Thanks Captain Electric! FIXED: Enemy ships would occasionally get stuck circling and ignore the player ship if it was in range. FIXED: In some cases enemy ships could be destroyed, leaving their UI stuck on the left of the screen. FIXED: Some of the cave areas that had bad ground stone object placement. Some other fixes in cave areas. FIXED: DPS and other stats in turret rollover when rolling over turrets on main UI now match the displayed stats in the ship UI. FIXED: Enemy ship UI's on left of screen are reset after combat. FIXED: A bug that was causing enemy burst and full-auto shots to fail on occasion. FIXED: Mining turrets now apply the correct turret reload speeds modified by mining skill to mining beams. Mining turrets are now generated using the same power requirements as regular combat turrets. This change is not retroactive. UPDATED: Random missions (missions not related to the story) are no longer added to the completed missions list. If you had previously completed random missions, they will still be in the completed missions list. UPDATED: Weapon scaling adjusted. Weapons now have an obvious increase in base damage as you level. For example, a 1hand weapon (slash, pierce, blunt) has a base damage at level one of MIN 3, MAX 5. A similar weapon at level 10 has a based damage of MIN 6, MAX 8 depending on the quality of the weapon. Of course, your actual damage is modified by your stat assignments, current weapon skill in that weapon type, perk selections and a few other factors and then mitigated by the enemies shields, armor, stats etc. UPDATED: When exiting a station, you can micro-warp without needing to leave the gravity well. UPDATED: You can now travel to FTL space from anywhere in a star system as long as you are not in combat or a inside a planets gravity well. Jump points are now only required for transolocating between systems. Translocating requires that you place a data beacon in a system. Once a data beacon is placed, you can translocate to that system from any other system. Translocating requires 5 fusion cells. UPDATED: FTL points in systems can now be targeted and approached. UPDATED: Removed auto camera switching while in combat. The view now stays fixed where you placed it during combat. UPDATED: Doubled the number of fusion cells you can carry at one time. They are used for both ship and personal translocation so I wanted to make sure you could carry enough inventory. UPDATED: Increased the number of ground based rockets, flamer fuel ammo and mini-gun mags you can carry. UPDATED: Increased the number of shotgun shells you can carry from 200 to 500. UPDATED: Mission objectives for gather missions and eliminate missions are now displayed on the radar. UPDATED: When in a eliminate mission, as you clear the various locations, the mission status display shows the room as cleared by displaying a green overlay similar to other mission types. UPDATED: Key binds UI in options menu updated so I can expand key binds in the future. UPDATED: By popular request - autosaves now use only 4 save slots (and save files). Each autosave overwrites the oldest available autosave. All previous autosaves are still on your drive in case you need/want them. I'll work on sorting of load/save lists so autosaves are displayed at the top of the list in a future patch. I recommend always having it on. You can find the setting in the options->gameplay menu. UPDATED: You can access the inventory, character info, log and ship info UI's while in space if not in combat without pausing the game so mining and travel will continue while browsing those UI's. UPDATED: Heavy weapon ammo has higher chance to drop and be found in chests. UPDATED: Star Map system icons are now color coded by faction. I'll be adding a way to indicated other useful information in a future patch. UPDATED: The Star Map indicates the location of missions. Selecting a mission in the active mission list centers the map on the target location and sets that system as the target in the upper left info UI while in space. You can then click the approach button to fly to that Star System. UPDATED: Area transitions in the ruins are now automatic and do not require you to click the exit panels. UPDATED: Ion weapons do very little damage to ship hull armor. Other weapon types do less damage to ship shields. UPDATED: Recruited Mercs now have reduced secondary skills when you find them. Previously they were receiving a bonus to the allocated secondary skills for space and general skills. UPDATED: Vendor ore prices vary slightly from system to system. I'll be doing a lot more work on this for the commodities and trading patch. UPDATED: The challenge level increases in systems that have a minimum level requirement of 20. Additional 1, 2 and 3 dot enemies are added to enemy combat groups. More challenge = more reward - they drop better loot more often. UPDATED: Enemy ships are less likely to collide with your ship in space combat. UPDATED: Weapon mods need to be shift-clicked and removed before you can add a new mod. The UI currently displays incorrectly that you can drag and drop a new mod to replace an old mod. I'll get that fixed. UPDATED: A weapons damage type for each hit is displayed in the game log window. Helpful for those occasions when you are wondering why enemies are hitting you for so much damage. Shields mitigate damage types (thermal, kinetic, etc.). If you have low thermal mitigation at higher levels and an enemy is ripping you apart, you can now check against the damage type in the log. UPDATED: Skill experience from hacking increased. KNOWN BUG: Exiting from the Abandoned Research Facility via the entrance door inside the facility places you in space in orbit around the planet the facility is located at. Using the translocator teleports you to the correct location in the facility staging area. And something for those of you who braved the wall of text - for a future patch. Colin has done an amazing job and I'll be getting these in the game as soon as I can.

[ 2018-09-21 20:11:15 CET ] [ Original post ]