Patch 62: First Boss Boost, Control Schemes and Fixes

The first patch after eXoSpace released to Early Access! So far the release goes well, I see some rather awesome ship designs being created, and get a lot of useful feedback, so thank you all.

Boss Boost

One of the things I am working on now is improving the bosses. The goal if this is to make them less "tanky", and more interesting, for example by adding phases and new mechanics. As a small first step I have updated the Master Thief boss a bit. It is now quite a bit weaker in the hitpoints department, but now periodically launches exploding drones, fires neutron flames in a circular pattern and more.

New Designs

I want to highlight a bunch of really awesome new designs added to the Independent Privateers that you can encounter during your missions. These were made by Kepler:

New Control Scheme

A new way to control your ships has been added: the "Mouse rotates (absolute)" control scheme. This requires a little explanation: "absolute" here means that the keyboard controls (WASD by default) move the ship relative to the screen. In other words: press "W" and the ship goes towards the top of the screen.

Remember, you can cycle quickly through the control schemes by pressing R.

Another addition is a setting for making thruster boost toggle on and off when you press the boost key, instead of only activating while you hold the key down.

As always, a lot more is on the way!

Full changelist

Changes:

• Improved Master Thief boss (Deep eXoSpace Starbase): less tanky, more surprises. Improving the bosses is work in progress, so keep your eyes open for the next updates!

• Added a number of cool privateer designs by Kepler.

• Improved default AI: aggressiveness increases when damaged, slight tendency to avoid edge and nearby friendlies.

• Repair boost drop now allows full speed repairs while recently damaged.

• Drop attract range scales with ship size.

• Show "stardust" when zoomed in to help gauge speed.

• Added Salvo 9 missile launcher module.

• Added Blue Sun Shipworks and T-Corp factions to Robotic Plague assignments. Added Blue Sun and T-Corp trader encounters.

• Asteroid storms now come in varying densities and velocities.

• Added a setting for changing the thruster boost control to toggle on and off instead of having to hold it down.

• Added new control scheme: mouse rotates, keyboard moves ship relative to screen (i.e. up on keyboard is move towards top of screen).

• Added help popup to ship editor explaining some editing mechanisms.

• Added news in main menu.

• Show workshop EULA if it needs to be agreed to before uploading items.

Balancing:

• Starbase core has less extreme armor.

• Plasma throwers have higher DPS and lower exotics cost.

• Halved unique module drop chance.

• Traders have a much higher chance of selling a weapon now, especially if you have few. Reward blueprints are more likely to be a weapon if you have few.

• Brawler starting set now has aiming joints, making it much more useful.

• Starting encounter now has 3 containers instead of targets, giving some extra starting resources and a (weapon) blueprint.

Bugfixes:

• Medium missile launcher used no energy.

• Trader hover texts were incorrect or incomplete sometimes.

• A design saved in-mission with a unique part could not be loaded.

• Next/previous variants for many parts were incorrect.

• Clicking on the edge of the "Hyperjump" button did not work.

• Mirroring selected parts made rotation inversed.

• Angry owners of stranded transport ship did not attack.

• Lyrithian ship jumped out, giving an epic module for free.