Patch 0.8.5.0 (Thursday 15th July 2021)

Hey everybody, here's a new intermediary patch focusing on balance changes and quality-of-life improvements. The next big item on our TODO list is revamping the navigation system (the "tunnel helper" showing up during warp) and generating waypoints for players and bots to navigate through the solar system. This is an important milestone that will eventually allow the AI to fly between points of interests, instead of warping in/out "magically" as it currently does. We will also introduce new tools available to players to set up a "flight plan", to better coordinate attacks and follow objectives. This will tie into the next big feature we'll be working on during summer: the squad/fleet system and VOIP.

-Flavien Brebion

Balance / gameplay changes

• Railguns now consume energy in addition to normal ammo (Note: it was originally intended to be a hybrid kinetic/energy weapon, but due to lack of time the energy consumption couldn't make it into the previous patch)
  
• Added repair/resupply field to the carrier (Note: does not work on other capital ships, only light ships. The range and rate are slightly more efficient than the corvette's repair/resupply fields)
  
• Reduced base cost and mass of carrier to take into account repair/resupply fields (Note: the goal here was to get the same mass/cost than in the previous versions, repair/resupply fields included)
  
• Removed tech level requirement to mount a weapon or component on a ship (Note: this constraint was frustrating to some players. Tech levels are still in game but currently do not affect anything. If we keep this change, we're planning on introducing team abilities in the future that will be unlocked by the tech level)
  
• Multiplied by x5 the repair rate of weapons/turrets from repair fields (Note: a corvette repairing a capital ship's turrets was extremely slow. We're testing this multiplier to see if it works better)
  
• Significantly increased shield regen rate on all capital ships (Note: shields were regenerating at an extremely slow rate. With this change, regeneration is still relatively slow and will take many minutes to reach 100%, but it'll give a chance of getting back a bit of shields while the ship is in transit)
  
• Missile launchers on capital ships now have 12 missiles (from: 6)
  
• Torpedo launchers on capital ships now have 12 torpedoes (from: 3); torpedo damage is now set to 5000 (from: 3500) to be coherent with bomber's torpedoes (Note: the mismatching torpedo damage was likely a typo in the config file)
  
• Slight increase of AMS laser damage to 2 (from: 1) (Note: as cruisers now have more missiles and torpedoes, this will likely increase the spam on the battlefield, so AMS laser damage needs to be more powerful to counter them in time)
  
• Increased EMP missile damage to 350 (from: 100) (Note: EMP missiles were not dealing enough damage, giving no reason to favor them over kinetic missiles. This might also give a chance to deal some damage to capital ship's shields)
  
• Repair robot and repair crew now self-repair their ship up to a max HP % (50% for repair robot, 25% for repair crew) (Note: most players were confused by this ability. It will now behave as expected, but the amount of damage repaired is capped)
  
• Extra missiles upgrade now add +50% missiles (from: +33%)
  
• Extra missiles and torpedoes now only cost +5% mass (from +10% and +20%) (Note: +20% mass for some extra torpedoes was a bit extreme, especially on capital ships..)
  
• Light repair field repair rate increased to +6 HP/s (from +4 HP/s)
  
• Added repair robot parts upgrade, which increases the max repair HP to 100% (from 50%). This requires the repair robot upgrade
  

Battle reports / ratings

We revamped the scoring and rating system for battle reports and statistics. The previous system emphasized team performance, which caused frustration if you were joining a lost battle (in which case you'd lose rating points even if you did well in battle). The new scoring system should be more fair, giving a chance for players performing well to earn points even if they lost the battle. Another major change is the normalization of the scoring calculations. In the previous versions, the score was calculated by weighting in the kill count, assists, deaths, damage and repair/resupply dealt. Kills in particular were all identical: a destroyer killing a dozen interceptors counted as 12 points, while a cruiser killing a cruiser only counted as 1 point. The new system better takes into account ship classes into account, and a capital ship destroying another capital ship will bring more points than, say, an interceptor killing another interceptor. Another problem was that the old formula was too weighted towards damage, which naturally favored capital ships play. The new formula still takes damage into account, but the weighting is lower, giving a chance for light crafts to earn as many points as capital ship players.

The new rating formula is no longer based on the difference between team ratings, but on the individual score performance during the battle, to which a bonus/malus of +15/-15 is added based on the battle result. This means that the best players on the winning team should earn the most, while bad players can potentially lose some rating points, even if they were on the winning team. In the same way, the best players on the losing team can still get a positive rating if they performed well. Let us know in the comments if you think the rating system is going in the right direction or if you feel there are still some major issues to address.

Quality-of-life improvements

• Fixed no chaff left message on capital ship, now explicitely tells that chaffs aren't available
  
• Added half-cruiser ship wreckage upon explosion (note: this is a cruiser-specific debris, instead of the generic debris introduced in the previous patch)
  
• Ships that dock & refund do not generate a kill or griefing notification/increase kill stats upon ships that had fired at them anymore
  
• Tweaks to ship loadout screen: rank requirements and costs are now displayed even if already in game (not just on spawn)
  
• Revamped coloring rules for weapon/component cards to be more consistent: blue=available, green=already mounted, orange=max reached but mountable, red=unavailable (rank requirement, not enough credits etc..)
  
• Weapon/component cards and info panel now show the rank requirement level and icon
  
• The take-over-AI confirmation dialog will now popup from the mission screen upon clicking on the deploy button for a given mission
  
• Repair robot/crew now displays the "repair in progress" alert on the HUD
  
• Added lights to the new station's modules
  

Bug fixes

• Fixed dock & refund option not available to carriers
  
• Fixed eject button not being properly grayed-out while dying/ejecting
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the asteroid-processing facility (Perseus Stn) to mess up the background halo size on the starmap, making the whole starmap covered by a single color
  
• Fixed corvette missile hardpoints firing upwards instead of frontwards