PULSAR: Lost Colony update for 31 May 2019

Hey everyone!

Devlog 81:

Beta 24 is now out! The main focus for this update is Steam integration and some ship combat variety!

To start off, the game now supports new features when playing on Steam.

We’ve added support for Steam friends including the ability to directly join a friend’s game and invite other players into your crew through Steam. You can also see information about a friend (role and crew level) in the Steam friends list while they are playing.

When logged into Steam, the host can now optionally start a Secured Game, which offers some additional account-based features for crews. This allows in-game kicks to be more permanent, and the game lobby shows you games where your friends are playing as well as games where people who you have blocked or previously kicked are playing. You can now also add your crewmates as Steam friends via the Tab menu.

Steam achievements can now be earned. Some of these may be immediately achieved based on your previous statistics, but others will not. We’re starting with 26 achievements and we’ll likely be adding more as we continue to develop the remaining parts of the game.

Steam Cloud Support allows saves, progress data, AI priorities and input bindings information to be saved on the cloud so they can be accessed on a different computer.

As for ship combat variety, we have added quite a few more enemy ship modifiers for unmanned drones. The modifiers change various aspects of the enemy ships and stats. For example, ships with the “irradiated” modifier can impart radiation into your ship when they deal hull damage, and ships with the “corrupted” modifier continually broadcast the corruption virus and can attack ships of the same faction. Some of the other new modifiers are negative modifiers that weaken enemy stats, which we hope adds another layer of decision making to the fight.

The negative modifiers are more likely to exist near the lower chaos levels to help keep the difficulty curve from being too harsh. We’ve also taken the time to rename the drones in the game. While the previous names were practical, we thought there was additional room for variation. Additionally, faction-specific drones have slight differences between them.

We will be working on an issue with bot pathfinding for a hotfix in the near future. A content / polish pass of planets is planned for Beta 25.

Additions

• Steam Friends: You can now join games from the friends list. As host, you can invite friends to your crew from the friends list, and you can add friends in-game through the Tab menu. Additionally, friends of the host do not need to type in the correct password to join their private game.
• Secured Games: Hosts can pick the secured game option when starting or loading a game. Secured games enable Steam account-based online features like friends, persistent kicks as well as viewing which games in the lobby have friends or people you have kicked previously. Secured games require players to be playing through Steam in order to join.

NOTE 1: Secured games are also susceptible to Steam activity (if it goes down for maintenance, then secured games will too).The normal game mode is still available for those not playing on Steam, and Steam players can join normal games.

NOTE 2: Kicking a player in a secured group will block them from all future games you host. If you wish to undo this you must find their steam ID and remove it from the “Blocked ID’s section of your settings.xml file. Alternatively you can just delete the entire settings file and it will reset all blocked Steam IDs.

• Steam Cloud Support: Support for saves, progress data, AI priorities, and bindings files
• New Drone Class: Drone Overseer - This drone can coordinate field repairs to other drones in the sector mid-fight. The other ships will need to lower their shields for a brief period of time in order to receive the repair, which opens up a window for your crew to deal some direct hull damage!
• New Drone Modifier: Corrupted - Continuously broadcasts the Corruption virus. It also attacks any ship it detects regardless of faction. It is also flagged so no reputation loss with occur if you defend yourself.
• New Drone Modifier: Irradiated - When a ship with this modifier deals hull damage to your ship, it imparts radiation inside your ship.
• New Drone Modifier: Legendary - This ship is a better version of the “Elite” modifier. Its ship components are better and finely tuned. Be careful when choosing to fight a ship with this modifier.
• New Drone Modifier: Secure - A ship with this modifier has a much higher cyberdefense and can resist being infected with viruses very well.
• New Drone Modifier: Vulnerable - This ship has armor and shield weaknesses, both are reduced by 50%
• New Drone Modifier: Neglected - A ship with this modifier hasn’t been maintained in a while and it’s starting to show. Turret damage and charge speeds are reduced by 50%.
• New Drone Modifier: Brutal - A ship with this modifier is finely tuned to deal as much damage as possible.
• New Drone Modifier: Frozen - surrounded by cooling gas which helps manage its heat, if you fly very close you might also benefit from the effect.
• New NPC: The Sylvassi Skiah has a structure set up in Cornelia Station in the hopes of getting daring crews to take out some Sector Commanders.
• New Mission: “Defeat 3 Sector Commanders” - Assigned by Skiah in Cornelia Station. This offers a few rewards, one of which will be a Lost Colony Data Fragment when implemented.

Steam Achievements

• Steam Achievements: Now possible to unlock. The game has 26 achievements listed below:
• Veteran Crew: Reach Crew Level 25
• Galaxy In Chaos: Reach Chaos Level 6
• The Wasted Wing: Complete the Colonial Union faction mission line
• Call of The Void: Defeat the V’uurog
• The Swarm: Defeat the Swarm
• Researcher: Research 10 talents
• Pacifist: Reach crew level 10 without dealing any damage
• The Madman’s Mansion: Complete the Alliance of Gentlemen faction mission line
• Dice Champion: Win a game of Liar’s Dice
• Hold Still: Heal 5,000 hit points on your allies
• The Grim Cutlass: Defeat the Grim Cutlass
• The Great Biscuit Race: Win the Fluffy Biscuit sales competition
• The Forsaken Flagship: Complete the W.D. Corporation faction mission line
• The Ancient Sentry: Defeat the Ancient Sentry
• Extortionist: As captain, extort 25 ships
• Explorer: Make 150 jumps
• Diplomat: As captain, pacify 25 hostile ships
• Seeking Death: Defeat a deathseeker
• The Caustic Corsair: Defeat the Caustic Corsair
• Leap of Faith: Blind jump 5 times in a single game
• Biscuit Madness: secret
• Master Chef: Perfectly cook 5 biscuits in a row
• Big Spender: Spend 100,000 credits in a single game
• Sandscarred: Win the Sandscar Arena
• No Questions Asked: Complete Rumibard Warger’s artifact collection missions
• First Place: Win the Ion Races

Changes

• Renamed common drone ships in galaxy based on faction owner:
• C.U. Scout Drone >>> C.U. Ranger
• C.U. Security Drone >>> C.U. Guardian
• C.U. Tactical Drone >>> C.U. Arbiter
• W.D. Scout Drone >>> W.D. Scout
• W.D. Security Drone >>> W.D. Warrior
• W.D. Tactical Drone >>> W.D. Vindicator
• Bandit Scout Drone >>> Bandit Clunker
• Bandit Security Drone >>> Bandit Ripper
• Bandit Tactical Drone >>> Bandit Marauder
• C.U. Ranger, W.D. Scout and the Bandit Clunker have a chance to have obsolete hulls, making them easier to defeat.
• Bandit specific drones will generally have stronger sensors, be harder to detect, and move slightly faster.
• CU specific drones will generally have 15% faster charging shields.
• WD specific drones will generally have stronger weapons with 15% more damage.
• Research materials from probes can now be any type.
• Other ships you encounter can now be damaged when you first encounter them.
• UI tweaks - Enemy health bars should be easier to differentiate from allies.
• The above-player crew health bars have been removed, although you can see information about their health if you have a hand-held scanner equipped.
• Load game UI has been tweaked
• Drone modifiers are much more likely to appear
• Significant tweaks to how enemy ship components are leveled up as chaos increases, the result should be certain ship components spike up in level more often while the average component level is the same

Fixes

• Spreadshot turret should be firing in a proper spread now
• Sensor screen tweaks to help prevent incorrect order of UI elements especially when scanning for components
• Heal grenade launcher model updated
• Fixed an issue regarding autosaves
• Fixed an issue that caused Fluffy Biscuit mission “Deliver Biscuits to Restricted CU Site 881” to fail upon start
• Fixed a collision issue found in the Caretaker’s room on the Estate.
• Fixed a collision issue found on the abandoned robot factory planet
• Fixed a texture error found on the abandoned robot factory planet
  -The “Compare Ship Components” shop menu now correctly shows a decrease in min shield integrity as a positive and an increase in Min for QT shields as a negative.

Beta 24.1 Release Notes

Beta 24.1 is now out! This addresses some of the early feedback and reports we received so far from Beta 24. As always, thanks for your feedback and suggestions!

Changes

• You can now change your in-game online player name when logged into Steam. In the game options you can type whatever name you want to appear in game and it should work in secured games. If you want to use your steam handle you can leave the field blank.

Fixes

• Destroying unclaimed ships now doesn’t cause reputation loss
• Hunt The Resolution mission should no longer cause rep loss

Beta 24.2 Release Notes

Beta 24.2 is now out! It contains a handful of tweaks and fixes based on the feedback and reports we’ve gotten!

Changes

• For those who want to keep their privacy, there is a new option to play secured games more anonymously. You can toggle the “Allow Crewmates To View Steam Profile” in the game options to control the ability of fellow crewmates to view your profile or request to add you as a friend while playing in secured games.
  -Tweaked the material properties for some planet creatures

Fixes

• Unsecured games should no longer have Steam profile / friend options in the TAB menu
• Shield generator tooltip now shows correct shield recharge rate

Beta 24.3 Release Notes

Beta 24.3 is now out! This one is focused on improving AI navigation on foot.

Changes

• Updated default AI priorities for PiBot to disable Align Ship To Sector when the Captain hasn’t set a waypoint
• Bot pathfinding / jetpack use tweaked to help avoid some situational issues we found
• Crew bots movement and animation speed tweaked to be a little slower

Fixes

• Certain achievements related to completing missions were not triggering properly. This should be fixed now for the Wasted Wing, Forsaken Flagship and other achievements.

Thanks for your time!

Best,
The Leafy Games Team