New Content Update #6

Hi,

so the game got released to Early Access! It's been a while since the last update announcement. I was too busy bugfixing!

New features

• Every object in game (asteroid, megastructure cube etc.) is now physical and many have angular velocity, which means they rotate. This is the first step to make the sceneries alive.

• Due to some mysterious presence all megastructures deteriorate while the game progresses

• Added two new megastructure sceneries

• Each weapon has been limited to 4 weapon mods. Mods don't stack anymore by default (see below)

• New weapon mod - Extension. If equipped the next slot has 3x capacity. So if you use it, in the next slot you can put 3x Accuracy mods instead of 1x Accuracy mod

• Added a new game settings: Invert Pitch and VSync options

• Improved death mechanic: After respawn if in presence of the nemesis te time is consumed quicker. So you need to kill the enemy that bested you or the exposure will kick in quicker. The weaker the enemy that killed you the stronger the drain. If you were bested by a tough enemy the time consumption multiplier will cap at 120%

Tutorials

• Added new information when the player finishes all the tutorials, giving few more tips.

• After the player finishes the first tutorial they are now encouraged to get into an easy fight to teach the player that the tutorials are optional and can be revisited

• Combat tutorial has been reworked.

Balance

• Nerfed Starborne Nexus. It's using sentinel deathray and scatter starlance in second phase. Greatly reduced rotation rotate so it can be flanked effectively. It's overheat time is much longer giving more time to catch breath

• Nerfed Native Nexus. It can now overheat. Greatly reduced it's rotation rate to enable flanking

• Native Nexus will now dodge and be overall annoying as the rest of the natives.

• Time flows when inventory is open

• Irides are now much evenly distributed in the 'Relics' encounter

• Gamepad has much stronger autoaim now

• All enemies try to approach the player even closer, each species has even more distinct defense/dodge/parry behaviour.

• Silver and gold enemies are much more challenging

Performance

• Fixed performance drops that often occurred during combat and caused unfair deaths

• Disabled framerate smoothing - this feature caused momentary performance last longer

Bugfixes

• Break to match velocity mechanic was broken most of the time which was especially dangerous in the combat tutorial

• Fixed bloom glitches causing graphics artifacts during fights and greatly reducing visibility

• Fixed numerous bugs with gamepad and UI interaction

• Fixed a bug where when fast travelling with inventory open the jump drive would accelerate the ship in opposite direction than desired

• Fixed numerous bugs with scenery displacement. These issues were haunting the game for more than a year. Megastructure elements ended up in wrong spots. This was especially bad in the 'Relics' encounter, where Irides were spawned inside level geometry making the encounter impossible to finish

• Starborne Nexus physics glitching when consuming red shells

• Fixed numerous bugs with collision avoidance logic. These caused enemies to eventually die due to collisions without any shots fired

• Enemies will no longer chase you if you jump drive. This chasing effectively locked the player in encounter and made escaping fights impossible