The Biggest Cosmoteer Update Yet

Greetings, Cosmoteers! I'm Walt, the creator of Cosmoteer, and I'm here to tell you that The Meltdown Update, our biggest update ever, is now live! This massive update introduces an entirely new gameplay mechanic for both ship design and combat: heat management.

Check out the trailer!

Heat: The Thermal Battlefield

The Meltdown Update is all about heat: both managing the thermal output of your own ship systems and wielding devastating heat-based weapons against your enemies. This isn't just about adding new content; it's about giving you a new optional layer of strategy for how you approach ship design, combat strategy, and tactical decision-making.

Your ships have become a thermal battlefield. You can now deploy new heat management technologies on your ships and exploit the enemy’s thermal vulnerabilities with heat-based weapons of your own. The heat generated by your ship’s systems and enemy weapons spreads between ship tiles, and hot tiles are more vulnerable to enemy attacks and can ignite into huge fires.

Introducing the Thermal Resonance Lance

The new Thermal Resonance Lance is a massive roof-mounted heat ray that represents the pinnacle of thermal warfare technology. This isn't just another weapon; it will reshape how battles are fought.

The Thermal Resonance Lance melts through enemy armor, starts cascading fires, and makes their systems more vulnerable to your conventional weapons. Connect it to the new Lance Dilation Pumps to expand its thermal area-of-effect, or use Lance Amplification Pumps to intensify its thermal output.

Watching enemy ships melt under focused thermal bombardment is awesome. But here's the catch: the Lance generates enormous amounts of heat on your own ships, and that heat is just as deadly to you as it is to your enemies. Activate the Lance without proper heat management, and you might find your own ship melting down in spectacular fashion.

Master the Art of Heat Management

To prevent your ship from becoming a molten wreck, you'll need to master a suite of new thermal management systems:

• Heat Pipes create networks throughout your ship, transferring thermal energy between connected parts.

• Radiators safely exhaust heat into space, but their effectiveness depends on having clear space in front of them; no hiding your cooling systems behind armor!

• Heat Exchangers suckdangerous heat from your ship's hull and transfer it into your pipe network.

• Thermal Batteries provide heat storage capacity for your pipe systems, absorbing thermal spikes during combat.

The key is building efficient heat networks that can handle your ship's thermal output while remaining protected from enemy fire. It's an engineering puzzle as much as it is combat tactics. The team and I hope you’ll find it a satisfying new dimension to Cosmoteer.

Thermal Canister Missiles: Turning Heat Into Ammunition

Not all heat needs to be exhausted as waste. The Missile Launcher now launches Thermal Canister Missiles that actually use your ship's excess heat as a payload. These specialized heat-inflicting missiles can turn your thermal management challenge into a tactical advantage.

The hotter your ship runs, the more Thermal Canister Missiles you can launch. It's a risk-reward mechanism that lets skilled commanders turn potential weaknesses into strengths. That excess heat from your overclocked systems isn't just a problem to solve: it's ammunition to unleash.

Overclock Mode: Power at a price

This update isn’t just about brand-new weapons and systems. Nearly every existing weapon, defense, and ship system now feature Overclock Modes that dramatically enhance their performance while twisting their functionality in interesting new ways. Here are just some of the many overclock modes you can unleash:

Weapons Get Wild:

• Ion Beams destabilize near targets, creating chaotic lightning strikes that devastate large areas. (But can't directly hit their original target!)

• Large Cannons fire shells that explode into multiple incendiary fragments, each continuing to penetrate deeper into enemy ships.

• Chaingun projectiles become explosive-tipped for massive splash damage, but need to rest after every salvo.

• Laser Blasters fire instantaneous energy beams at high speed, trading individual shot power for an overwhelming volume of fire.

Defense Systems Transform:

• Small Shield Generators let you choose between massive area coverage or concentrated, nearly impenetrable protection.

• Point Defense Systems generate their own power through dynamos, firing indefinitely without batteries.

• Flak Arrays leave lingering shrapnel clouds that damage projectiles and block energy beams.

Even Utilities Get Upgrades:

• Tractor Beams can overcharge to emit massive gravitational pulses in all directions.

• Thrusters improve power efficiency and thrust force, but consume more energy.

• Factories work at blazing speeds while generating waste heat from their accelerated production.

Almost every overclocked system behaves differently. This opens up entirely new combat strategies and ship designs. But all this extra power generates heat that must be managed, creating many interesting risk-reward decisions.

Meet the Great House Io

Finally, the Meltdown Update introduces The Great House Io, a faction that has mastered heat-based warfare and overclock technology. This is a completely new faction that adds over 90 new combat ships, 13 civilian trade and transport vessels, 9 defense platforms, and 7 space stations.

Great House Io ships are built around thermal warfare, utilizing advanced heat management systems, thermal weapons, and overclock modes. Fighting them isn't just about overwhelming firepower; it's about understanding and countering their heat-based strategies while managing your own thermal systems.

These thermal warfare specialists will appear in newly-created Career games, though they won't retroactively appear in existing saves.

Ready to Melt Some Ships?

Whether you're a veteran commander or a new arrival, the Meltdown Update offers new challenges and new ways to design ships and demolish your enemies. The team and I can't wait to see the heat-based ship designs the community creates and the new tactical innovations that emerge from mastering thermal warfare.

And lastly, I want to thank everyone who made this update possible, including the rest of the dev team, the ship architects, the balance council, and you, the Cosmoteer community. This update took longer than any of us anticipated, but without your hard work and support, it would not have happened at all. We're in this for the long haul, and we're now turning our focus to finishing and launching Career 2.0 as soon as possible. Thanks again for your support and patience!

The Meltdown Update is available now!

Full Patch Notes

• New Gameplay Mechanic: Heat Management

  • Some new weapons and part effects now apply "heat" to the hull of individual ship tiles.

  • Heat spreads out between tiles and slowly decays over time.

  • If a tile has enough heat, a fire can start.

  • Parts that are very hot will take more damage from enemy weapons.

  • Heat can also be stored within some parts transferred between parts, and radiated away using new heat management parts (see below).

  • Crew can now "repair" parts with hull heat even if the part has taken no direct damage.

• New Gameplay Mechanic: Overclock

  • Most existing weapons and functional ship systems now have an alternate "overclock" mode that enhances its power/functionality and twists is functionality, but produces waste heat as a byproduct. (See below for list of new overclock modes.)

  • In Career games, overclock modes must be unlocked for individual weapons/parts by purchasing them from a station's blueprints tab.

  • In Build & Battle games, overclock modes must be purchased separately from the base weapon/part and will not be offered until the base weapon/part has been purchased.

• Updated Gameplay Mechanic: Fires

  • Fires can now be started by heat in addition to being sparked by weapons and explosions.

  • In most cases, fires will no longer completely destroy most ship parts. Instead, a part that is sufficiently burned will become "scorched" and unable to function until repaired. The exceptions are parts that contain explosive munitions such as cannon ammo.

  • When a Fire Extinguisher puts out a fire, it will now leave anti-fire foam that will temporarily prevent any new fires from appearing where the foam is.

• New Part: Heat Pipe

  • Instantaneously transfers thermal energy between connected parts.

  • Can be connected to most parts in specific locations which will be indicated by yellow connection points in the ship editor. (In most but not all cases these are the same locations where doors can be added.)

  • All parts that are connected via pipes are part of the same "heat pipe system" and can share/transfer heat between themselves.

  • Comes in three variants: Interior Pipes, Exterior (structure) Pipes, and Crew Crossing Pipes (which allow crew to walk underneath).

• New Part: Radiator

  • Dissipates thermal energy from the connected heat pipe system.

  • Dissipation effectiveness is reduced if the area in front of the radiator is blocked.

• New Part: Heat Exchanger

  • Absorbs heat from the hull, transferring it to the connected heat pipe system while generating some additional waste heat.

• New Part: Thermal Battery

  • Safely contains large amounts of thermal energy, providing additional heat storage to the connected heat pipe system.

• New Weapon: Thermal Resonance Lance

  • A roof-mounted turret that fires a beam of pure heat energy but also produces a great deal of its own waste heat.

  • Can store a limited amount of its own waste heat, or the waste heat can be transferred to a connected heat pipe system.

• New Weapon Module: Lance Dilation Pump

  • Increases the heat area-of-effect for all Thermal Resonance Lances connected to the same heat pipe system.

• New Weapon Module: Lance Amplification Pump

  • Increases the heat intensity for all Thermal Resonance Lances connected to the same heat pipe system.

• New Weapon: Thermal Canister Missiles

  • Guided missiles that take waste heat from their own ship and apply it to their target's hull in a small area.

  • Fired from the Launcher like the other missile types.

  • The Launcher must be connected to a heat pipe system and supplied with heat in order to fire.

• New Factory: Thermal Canister Missile Factory

  • Manufactures Thermal Canister Missile parts that can be delivered to the Launcher to fire Thermal Canister Missiles.

• New Faction: Great House Io

  • A new, 5th faction whose ships specialize in using heat management, heat-based weapons, and overclock modes.

  • Will spawn as a faction in new Career games. (Will not appear in existing Career save files.)

  • Adds 92 new combat ships.

  • Adds 12 new civilian trade and transport ships.

  • Adds 8 new defense platforms.

  • Adds 11 new space stations.

  • Adds 1 new hyper-jump beacon.

  • Added lore to the Codex describing the history of this faction and why it has suddenly appeared.

• New Overclock Modes:

  • Laser Blaster: Increases the rate of fire and replaces the laser bolts with instantaneous energy beams, but lowers the damage of each shot.

  • Heavy Laser Blaster: Increases the damage of each laser bolt and adds splash damage, but reduces the rate of fire.

  • Disruptor: Allows disruptor bolts to phase through solid materials and causes the energy drain effect to linger after the initial impact, but reduces shield penetration and the instant energy drain on initial impact.

  • Ion Beam Emitter: Causes the ion beam to destabilize near its target, creating chaotic and powerful lightning strikes in an area around it, but prevents the beam itself from directly hitting its target.

  • Standard Cannon: Fires salvos of multiple shells at higher velocity and longer range.

  • Large Cannon: Causes each cannon shell to break apart upon impact into multiple smaller incendiary shells that each continue penetrating into the target ship.

  • Deck Cannon: Increases shell damage, velocity, and accuracy, but lowers rate of fire and stops penetration once its damage potential is exhausted.

  • Railgun: Improves the efficiency of longer Railguns and increases projectile speed and damage, but requires a charge-up before firing and stops penetration once its damage potential is exhausted.

  • Chaingun: Projectiles become explosive-tipped, causing splash damage and greater overall destruction, but reduces rate of fire and requires the Chaingun to rest briefly after every four shots.

  • Small Shield Generator: Enables choosing between expanding the shield to cover a larger area or shrinking the shield to cover a smaller area while becoming stronger.

  • Large Shield Generator: The energy shield shrinks to cover a smaller area but becomes stronger and loses less power per hit.

  • Point Defense System: Turns on a dynamo that slowly regenerates power, allowing the Point Defense System to fire for short periods without ever receiving batteries.

  • Flak Array: Flak shells are packed with shrapnel that lingers in space for a short while after detonation, damaging any projectiles and blocking any energy beams that pass through.

  • Small Thruster (all variants): Greatly increases thrust and power efficiency while significantly improving dynamo power generation, but also increases power consumption.

  • Standard Thruster: Greatly increases thrust and power efficiency without affecting ramp times, but also increases power consumption.

  • Large Thruster: Greatly increases thrust and moderately improves power efficiency without affecting ramp times, but also increases power consumption.

  • Huge Thruster: Greatly increases thrust and minorly improves power efficiency without affecting ramp times, but also increases power consumption.

  • Boost Thruster: Greatly increases thrust and moderately improves power efficiency without affecting ramp times, but also increases power consumption. Additionally allows the Boost Thruster to be refueled while boosting.

  • M.R.T. Nozzle Module: Reduces the impact of Extender Modules on ramp-up time.

  • M.R.T. Extender Module: Increases both the Nozzle Module's base thrust and the thrust of every attached Extender Module.

  • Engine Room: Improves power efficiency when distributing power to attached thrusters, but forces all attached thrusters into Overclock mode. Additionally collects waste heat from attached thrusters, but produces additional waste heat while doing so.

  • Small Reactor Core: Increases maximum power capacity and generation rate.

  • Medium Reactor Core: Increases maximum power capacity and generation rate.

  • Large Reactor Core: Increases maximum power capacity and generation rate. Additionally increases battery size from triple-capacity to quadruple-capacity.

  • Power Capacitor: Triples the power capacity of both the Power Capacitor itself and the individual stored batteries.

  • Mining Laser: Adds an area-of-effect to both mining beams.

  • Tractor Beam Emitter: Significantly increases gravitational force in all modes, but restricts the force to always act upon the target's center of mass. Additionally, allows the emitter to be overcharged, depleting its energy and emitting a massive wave of gravitational energy in all directions.

  • Sensor Array: Increases the visual range of the Sensor Array.

  • All Factories (except Diamond): Significantly increases production speed. Produces waste heat while manufacturing resources.

• Balance:

  • Increased most projectile speeds by 20%.

  • Increased Point Defense and Flak damage vs projectiles by 20%.

  • Greatly increased the speed of construction and salvaging.

  • Greatly increased the speed of crew flying in space.

  • Greatly increased the speed of manipulator beams.

  • Greatly increased the damage of mining lasers when salvaging junk.

  • Ships no longer have a minimum hyper-jump distance.

  • The sun now applies heat to ships instead of direct damage.

• Crew:

  • If a crew is ejected from a ship because the room they are standing/walking in is destroyed, they will now be unassigned from whatever their current job is, allowing a different (now likely much closer) crew to be assigned to that job.

• Career:

  • Increased the size of the galaxy from 50 to 75 star systems.

  • Great House Io and its ships have been added as a new faction.

  • Reduced the drop rate of steel, coils, and hypercoils by 20%.

  • Trade station guard ships will now spawn farther from the station to prevent them from spawning on top of the player.

  • Police ships will no longer surrender to the player.

• Build & Battle:

  • One unlock slot will now always be reserved for an overclock mode.

  • Increased the number of available unlocks in the first round by 1.

• Domination:

  • It is now possible to remove crew quarters when inside the spawn circle. (Any crew deleted as a result will not be refunded.)

• User Interface:

  • Translation updates for all supported languages.

  • All weapons/parts with multiple sub-modules have been combined into single "part sub-tabs" that will expand when clicked. (Armor and the Launcher+Factories have also been put in sub-tabs.) Both the entire sub-tab or individual parts within them can be favorited.

  • Moved all thrusters to their own new "Thrusters" tab.

  • Combined armor and structure into a single tab.

  • The various metrics shown on the right side of the ship editor can now be individually turned on and off.

  • Added a toggle to display the ship's center of mass in the ship editor. (Due to technical limitations, the center of mass cannot be displayed in blueprint mode.)

  • If a tooltip is too large to fit on the screen, you can now hold Alt and use the mouse wheel to scroll the tooltip. For part tooltips, doing so will also show the stats.

  • Descriptions and stats for overlock modes in part tooltips can now be toggled by pressing the Ctrl key.

  • The stats for the Small and Large Shield Generators now show the stats for the shield arcs themselves in their own sections.

  • The Disruptor's shield penetration stat now shows penetration in "meters equivalent" units.

  • Right-clicking with the grab tool to select a part or decal type will now prefer to select it in a favorites tab if possible and it isn't selectable in the currently-opened tab.

  • Part toggle/mode changes made in blueprint mode will now only be applied to the physical ship once the "MAKE IT SO" button is clicked.

• Graphics:

  • Updated fire VFX and icons.

  • Centered the symbol_dash text decal.

  • Some ship parts such as corridors and crew quarters will now dim when their ship is junk or loses command.

  • The visual effects for ion beams, thermal resonance beams, and mining beams should now appear smoother.

• Bug Fixes:

  • Crash if a station is destroyed while the player is in comms with it and the Hire Crew tab is selected.

  • Crash when loading some saved game files with extremely high numbers of star systems.

  • Rare crash with error message "The 'takeFrom' pool had more objects than we had capacity for".

  • In Career mode, adding a part and then undoing it was not refunding any resources purchased from stations.

  • In some circumstances, ships moving at high velocities could fail to collide with each other.

  • Parts that take salvage damage while queued for repair would unintentionally cost resources to repair.

  • In some specific circumstances, replacing a ship's blueprints could load incorrect crew roles.

  • At low framerates, mouse clicks could sometimes be detected in the wrong location.

  • Explosions could sometimes break surrender truces.

  • Changes to "Log Deaths of Favorite Crew" setting wouldn't allow settings to be applied.

  • Developer menu options weren't working if U.I. animations were disabled.

  • Possible fix for the incorrect taskbar icon being displayed.

  • Ships that were heading to a jump gate after surrendering were not properly avoiding enemy stations.

  • Police ships weren't leaving the star system when no longer hunting the player.

  • In Domination games, ships that were jumping didn't count towards the player's maximum fleet value.

  • Ion Beams unintentionally did double damage to neutral ships.

  • The Small Imperium Trade Station III was missing its standard resource loadout.

• Modding:

  • In developer mode, can now press Ctrl+Shift+Tilde/Backtick to open up a side-menu from which part/tile statuses such as heat and fire can be applied and modified.

  • Added a whole new "part network" system that allows parts to connect to each other and share resources. This system is used for heat pipes and transferring heat between parts.

  • Added a whole new moddable "status system" that allows new per-tile or per-part "status effects" to be created. This system is used for both hull heat and the new fire mechanics.

  • All values that were previously "buffable" are now "modifiable" and support a wider range of ways to dynamically modify them and combine modifiers, including by the new status system.

  • BREAKING CHANGE: Due to the above "modifiable values" change, effect scales are no longer applied applied by default. Mods that use effect scales will need to be updated to properly apply them.

  • Shader files now support 'geom' (geometry) sub-shaders.

  • In developer mode, saved game files can now be drag-and-dropped into Cosmoteer to load them.

  • Many new components, effect types, and small modding features as part of all the new gameplay features. (There are too many to be listed individually; please see game rules files for examples.)