Alpha 16 is here! It doesn't seem like long since Alpha 15 was released, but the pace of updates continues. We have a brand new exterior painting tool that we think you'll absolutely love, along with new crew furniture, asteroid cracking, and lots of small changes and fixes.

Here is the video demonstrating the new features.

New Ship Painting Mode

A new painting mode has been added to the shipeditor.

The painting mode allows you to colour the exterior of your ships.

What can be painted?

    - Hull / Habitation / Scaffolding

Paint can be applied diagonally, allowing up to 2 colours per gridcell. Scaffolding can only have 1 colour applied to it per cell.

Eyedropper tool:

While using the painting tool, if you press the shift key, you will switch to the eyedropper tool. Using the eyedropper tool, you can select any point on your ship, and the paint tool will select the paint applied at that spot.

Paint Palettes:

• Paints are stored in a palette, and can be dynamically altered after they have been applied to your ship

• Palettes can be exported or uploaded, for easy reuse

• Palettes can be imported from palette or ship files

• Arena mode will also apply a simple paint palette to each team, ensuring they have matching colours. This overwrites the standard paints, as well as the base unpainted hull colour

Asteroid cracking

You can now crack any asteroid into smaller parts by targetting it with Cannons.

This will generate new mineral patches on the new smaller asteroids.

Nb. This only works on asteroids that once contained mineral patches.

Cannons will fire on manually targetted asteroids even when 'Battle Stations' is not enabled.

Furniture

New cosmetic furniture is available to buy from any good trading post. Crew will use this furniture to relax when they are not needed for work.

There is also a Pot Plant which takes some time to grow. It will slowly die if there are water or oxygen shortages on the ship.

Nb. The pot plant does not actually consume water or oxygen.    

  Added Table, Chair, Sofa, Small Table, Pot Plant

Translation Work

- Updates to German (Thanks to Michael Wäsch)

- New translations:

    - Turkish

    - Norwegian

- Exposed 'Accent Insensitive Search' and 'Translator Search' in the Other settings.

Small Changes

• Research for Stargate Phase 6 and 7 components are slightly cheaper

• Research for Stargate Phase 7 is now hidden until Phase 6 is unlocked

• Empty tanks reset their held resource when empty

• Tiddlets will hop towards the port in Tiddlets 1

• Removed the confusing weapon FIRE/HOLD button in the tactical screen.

• Gatling guns will now target drones repairing hostile ships

• Gatling guns will now automatically fire during meteor storms, without requiring 'Battle Stations'

• Destroyed drones now leave behind a processor and some scrap metal

• Auto-trades can now be disabled per ship from the ORDERS menu

• The settings menu has been redesigned and categorised into Visuals / Audio / Gameplay / Other

• A new micro tutorial helps players to activate Battle Stations mode for the first time when required

      

• Exit saves - The game will now automatically create "exitsave.space" when you quit a game for any reason

      

• UI Highlight bounce effect - All UI buttons now bounce slightly when highlighted.

  Nb. You can disable this effect from the settings menu

      

• There is now a Command line tool to calculate ship stats, as requested by Zenrath.

  Run the game with the command line "--calculate-ship-stats {path to ship/folder of ships}"

  Stores results in appdata save folder.

Bug Fixes

    - Fix Andromeda Project Part 3 unlock text including Phase 6

    - Fix install jobs not being assigned on newly created ships until a reload

    - Fix DSI Part 1 not taking stargate frames from storage crates

    - Fix incorrect station name in DSI Part 2 objective

    - Fix multi-system simulation sometimes being enabled on modes other than Boldly Go

    - Fix storage crates getting stuck in dumping mode

    - Fix some mission objectives not being shown in the mission summary

    - Fix ships rescued in survival mode sometimes not having any crew

    - Fix resolution and language scrollbars not scrolling in game settings

    - Fix auto-sold items sometimes not cancelling when an auto-trade is cancelled

    - Return ability for players to decide if a ship thumbnail is exterior or interior

    - Issue #242 - Key bindings can now be edited in UI and also in keybindings.txt.

    - Issue #487 - Unable to complete distress mission

    - Issue #496 - Crash Loading a Save Game in OS X with Rescue Mission in progress.

    - Issue #518 - Disable manoeuvring thruster keyboard shortcuts when in the editor / install menu.

    - Issue #519 - Stargate vanishes after Phase 7

    - Crash when creating a storage crate if its contents no longer exist