Beta Update 0.8.1.23

Rejoice, the great drone rebalance is here, drones will now have their own damage output rather then an averaged value. Let us know how you experience them after this update.

With this update we also introduce Escalation, increase the difficulty of the game for better rewards, how high can you go?

Update availability

This update is still under active development. As such, it is only available if you switch to the beta branch of Vanguard Galaxy to test out these new changes. Instruction on how to install the beta updates can be found at the bottom of this post.

Added/Changes

• New Ship: Aquila-Class Size 6 Battlecruiser (Stellar Industries)

• New Ship: Aquila Nidus-Class Size 6 Battlecruiser (Stellar Industries)

• Introduced a test arena option in the main menu, only visible with console enabled. Will allow testing of various loadouts and tracking of damage dealt within a set time for two lanes. Useful for testing the balance between different configurations and types of ships. At the moment this is still very experimental, it will be improved over time to be easier to use and give more consistent results. Its currently not always giving very reliable results.

• Removed the UI refresh when ships finish repairing as it doesn't serve a purpose anymore other then annoying the player

• Escalation mechanic. Added a combat focused mechanic where the player can increase the difficulty of the game, in exchange for some better missions credits/xp and hull upgrade kits drops from combat. (You can find the option in the sidepanel -> Captain -> General tab)

• Missions that require counts (kills, ore or scrap) now keep respawning targets if the mission criteria can no longer be met by the currently present units, asteroids or salvage

• Added capture ship and board missions to the Corsair Syndicate mission roster

• Added a crew button border color in ship overview

• Added drone descriptions

• Added some Conquest related tips for ECHO

• Added a map icon for Signal Traps POI's

Balance

• Drone balancing, drones now get individual power rather than the average power distributed for each power stat.

• The drone rebalance uncovered another old mechanic that averaged power stats over all turrets (relative to size), this is now changed to only include substats. Main power stat for turrets is used by that turret only. So harder hitting turrets actually hit harder themselves.

• Fighters will no longer lose crew

• Clear mining and salvage field have a bigger chance to spawn larger ships on higher levels

• Slightly increased difficulty on boarding ships for factions which were easier (Mindus, Steel Vutures, Stellar, Luminate, Kolyatov)

Fixes

• Fixed active abilities not properly resetting when an officer levels up

• Potential fix for fighters staying idle sometimes

• Fixed ShipFilter showing up below Personal Hangar elements

• Fix for upgrade costs for workshop not properly loaded from save data

• Side and Rotational thrust are now proper main substats, so they dont qualify for rerollable stats

• Fix for credits and vanguard marks overflow in some situations

• Fix for issue where fighters could be assigned to carrier, but not show up in the carrier's hangar list

• Fixed hard crash of the game that can happen during ECHO's autosell process during longer sessions

• Fix for resonant boosters bonus stat not being shown in the ship information panel, their activation also does not need a ship reset

Cheers,

Bat Roost Games

Enable the beta version

Make sure to keep an old save game when switching to the beta, just in case. We always make sure that your save games will keep working, but as long as the beta is ahead of the release, the beta save game won't work on the release version until it catches up.

To take part go to Manage and select Properties for Vanguard Galaxy in Steam:

And select the open-beta under Game Versions & Betas as shown below.