Another update with important fixes and improvements


Improvements

• Trading station no longer could be out of fuel \ food \ ammo, now it will replenish its stock of these basic resources when the stock will be almost empty, so you are always will have a place where you can buy fuel, food and basic ammo for your ships
  
• Turret in manual mode no longer firing when cursor located on UI element
  
• Large numeric values, such as prices, now displayed in more readable format, for example 12 483 750 CR instead of 12483750 CR
  
• Increased time for mission to 20-30 minutes (earlier it was too hard to complete mission in time)
  
• Tutorial: Changed required condition at "Solar panels" stage, now it needed just to direct solar panel to the star and start generate energy. It solves in issue if consumption higher than production and completion of this stage could be not possible
  
• Tutorial: Added information about possibility to change speed of time

Fixes

• Fixed an impossibility to drag and drop modules near shipyard
  
• Repair on shipyard now works again. Now it restores not only HP of module, but also a broken \ missing parts inside this module. Also, selection of module no longer changed when you are repairing something by mouse click
  
• Now if you will manually disable a radar, detection range of command module will be reduced accordingly
  
• Current amount of goods on the station now correctly displayed after you bought \ sold something
  
• Fixed incorrect behavior of engines of your starting ship during first second after it was spawned
  
• Turrets and NPC ships no longer trying to attack and damage a space stations which are invulnerable
  
• HP of asteroids now properly save \ loaded (early it always had 45 000 HP after loading)

Another update with fixes and improvements for the previously released version 0.88


Improvements

• Now modules which fall off from the NPC ships (due combat, for example), will have proper collisions with your ships as standard (non transparent) modules

Fixes

• Ship hotkeys now works properly on ships which have rotor or piston
  
• Fixed internal error when you are loading a ship with warp drive which previously had a target
  
• Remained science data in planets now properly save \ load
  
• Warp drive works again
  
• Engines now works correctly at x2 \ x4 \ x8 speed
  
• Fixed 1 second delay before engines of a new ship will be ready to use
  
• Fixed wrong symbol of silver, now it Ag, not Ar
  
• Fixed an impossibility to buy resource in a container which already contains the same resource

In the previous update we are rewritten a lot of game systems (for much better optimization), so it is not a big surprise that some systems which worked before, turned out broken, so here is a quick fix for that.

Thanks everyone for quick bug reports!


Improvements

• NPC ships spawned from sandbox mode does not requires an ammo for its weapons, which allows them to use weapon in case if it is an old ship file which does not have ammo in containers
  
• NPC ships spawned from sandbox mode now will properly engage enemies which can be found around
  
• Pirate invasion in starting system is disabled until guards will be implemented, otherwise their attacking right in the beginning of the game is unfair

Fixes

• Quests works again
  
• Fixed error "Out of range of shipyard" when you are trying to repair or sell a module on a shipyard
  
• NPC no longer circling around the same point (usually around station) for no reason
  
• NPC ships no longer crashing in your ships

Hello! We are glad to introduce a big and super important update!
The world of the game no longer empty and lifeless, from now, it is filled with others ships and space stations of different factions.



Now, when you will travel to another sectors, you will encounter an hostile ships and stations which can be captured.



This may sounds simple, NPC ships pretty standard feature for a space game, but since ships in Celestial Command is fully physical, we made a great improvements to AI of these ships.



But the most important it is optimization. Earlier, just a couple of AI ships caused significant FPS drop, but for this update we rewritten and redesigned many various systems of the game, so now you may see 20-40 AI ships around with good performance!



Boost of performance is especially noticeable during combat.
Earlier we used "sphere collider" component, so PhysX engine detected object in range for us, but turned out it is extremely slow in case if each ship made from many physical modules. Turrets had such sphere collider too, as result, two battleships near each other dropped performance to just a few frames per second.



But turned out, simple distance checking algorithm is very effective and much faster than previous solution. Especially if it will be performed only once per second, which is more than enough for functionality of radars.
So now you may observe a battle of massive fleets without any performance issues!

Here you may see how many spherical colliders (green spheres) was in the region which caused an intense drop of performance. Now this issue completely solved!





By the way, new implementation of radars turned out not only more effective, but also it opens a possibilities for new features, for example, we plan to do the next: Each ship will have different radar detection range depending on its size \ emission. Now it is possible to implement and it could be quite an interesting feature. For exmaple, low detection stealth ship will be possible.

Also, we plan to check line of sight to some objects, so it will be possible to hide from radars behind planets and large asteroids.



Note, that it is just a first version of world populated with AI ships. Its logic and behavior is pretty basic, however, we are going to add more interesting features in the nearest update. Cargo ships will move goods between stations, guardians will protects them from pirates and allied fleets will try to engage on enemy sectors.



Also note that AI is not available yet in orbital mode, because implementation of AI was extremely complex task and it is not fully done even in aerodynamic mode, but when it will be properly improved and tested, we will add it to the orbital mode too.



Overall, we made a lot of improvements which are greatly improves many various aspects of the game, please refer to the full change log for more information.

And also, Celestial Command is 25% off during winter sale!
Happy holidays!


Large improvements

• NPC! Game world now filled with life!
  
• Now other system populated with the hostile factions and its station. You may invade their sectors and capture a stations
  
• Super huge optimization of everything! A lot of code was rewritten. Now everything should be much better performance, both in terms of CPU and GPU! Performance no longer dropped to 2 frames per second during combat of several battleships! Completely rewritten radar and turret systems
  
• Changed a way how radars works. Now it acts as "upgrade" module for radar of command module. When additional radar placed anywhere on the ship, it will extend radius of radar of command module. Only 1 additional radar can be active on the ship.
  
• Turrets now works in cooperation with radar. It will search targets from the list of targets visible by radar. If radius of radar will be reduced, turrets will be able to track targets within this new radius, even if weapon range is much larger.
  
• AI now capable to fly on ship which have only 2 main engines
  
• AI now much better in ship rotation
  
• AI now will react on your attack and will fight back
  
• AI will try to retreat from combat in critical situations
  
• NPC Shipyard station new really looks like a shipyard
  
• Station's modules now available for construction!
  
• All warp gates now located on the edge of the region and directed toward the region where it leads
  
• Camera now smoothly follows movement of your active ship, as result it create better feelings of its velocity
  
• Added PvP mode option, if enabled, your ships will consider ships of other players as an enemy faction
  
• Added audio effect on ship collisions
  
• Added audio effect on energy shield impact
  
• Added new module: Small radar RLM-1
  
• Cannons no longer limited by "burst fire" functionality, since it have not too much sense for large ship's cannons. Now cannon may keep their rate of fire without interruptions
  
• Cannons no longer have 100% accuracy, direction of projectile now will have a random deviation, so now, distance of combat is important, cannons is more accurate at close range and fire-fight at large ranges now much more dynamic

Improvements

• Added Christmas lights for NPC space stations. It is added only to allied stations, but enemy stations will have it too after it will be captured. Spread the celebration across the galaxy!
  
• Added detailed description for game modes which explains benefits and features of each game mode
  
• Redesigned HP bars, now they are located closer to the module and scaled down at high zoom level, as result, it looks much more better and much less annoying during combat
  
• Rebalanced speed and damage of rockets so it no longer so overpowered
  
• Turrets in manual mode no longer will fire if not directed at the position of cursor
  
• Added "projectile velocity" info when cannon selected
  
• Improved design of turret range \ angle visualizer
  
• New impact audio effect for light kinetic projectiles
  
• Map now can be dragged by any mouse button
  
• Added option to hide list of stations on the map
  
• Now when you open a system map, camera will be located at the center of system
  
• Switching between main view, system map and galaxy map now much more comfortable since camera located in better positions by default
  
• Research window now can be dragged by any mouse button
  
• When the game started, on the galaxy map will be revealed neighbor systems near a starting system with warp gates (not just systems within specific range)

Fixes

• Fixed various bugs related to broken warp gates and impossibility to save the game after warp gate was broken
  
• A lot of things no longer cause intense FPS drop! Especially during combat, the game should be much more smoother
  
• AI now will properly avoid collision with a warp gates
  
• Info about lasers now translated
  
• Outdated fuel generator removed from tech tree
  
• All weapons now can be properly selected after placed on turret
  
• Ships now properly save \ loaded if it had rotor \ piston which was destroyed recently
  
• Fixed "infinite rate of fire" value for heavy cannon

Hello!
In the previous update we added a tech tree and possibility to scan debris, but this is not enough for science! In this update we are added another way to obtain a science data!

Now you can scan planets and other celestial bodies using special, new module, orbital scanner.



In order to scan, it should be close to the planet and directed on it.
In orbital mechanics mode, "keep your ship always directed to a planet" - it is quite an interesting task.

In order to do that, you should calculate a proper angular velocity. It is quite simple and depends of orbital period (duration of one rotation on a orbit). For example, if orbital period = 120 seconds, it means that your ship should make one full turn (360 degrees) during these 120 seconds. 360 / 120 = 3 deg\s.
So all what you need is to keep your angular velocity at 3 deg\s and your ship will be always directed to the planet!

Later we will add a special tool (unlockable via research tree) which will automatically direct your scanning ship on the planet, but at this moment, you may use a way described above.

Also we want to remind that the game still have 20% discount!

Thanks!
In the next update we are going to add something even more significant.


Improvements

• Added possibility to obtain science data by scanning moons \ planets \ stars \ black holes
  
• Added new module: Orbital scanner
  
• Added more powerful version of mining laser
  
• Starting ship now have a grabber, so you can perform delivery missions using normal way
  
• Changed names of many modules (so now it have more Sci-Fi classification)
  
• Renamed "Allow usage" to "Allow consume fuel" for fuel tanks
  
• Capacity of Cargo container 2 changed from 120 to 280 (so it no longer useless), same for long fuel tank

Fixes

• Long names of the modules now properly displayed in build menu
  
• Fixed incorrect description of some modules
  
• Fixed incorrect empty lines and spaces in some descriptions
  
• "Advanced mining" research no longer useless

Hello!
Today we are gladly to introduce a new update with the new, very important aspect of the game - science and tech tree!



Previously, the modules was unlocked via linear "reputation system", which was pretty boring. You had no a possibility to select what to unlock next and you even didn't saw what will be unlocked next.



But now you can see entire tree of technologies and you are free to select a direction of progression!
Technologies should be unlocked using special research module which requires "science data", which could be obtained using various ways.



Currently there is two ways to get science data:
- You will receive it from missions
- We added a special scanning module which may scan debris with some chance to get science data



Later we will add more applications of scanning module. It could be used for scanning of asteroids, anomalies, planets, stars, black holes, etc.
This science concept with combination of large Galaxy, opens a huge possibilities for explorations in the further updates!



By the way, Celestial Command is 20% off during Steam Autumn Sale!

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Also, today we have another special event. The game was firstly released in Steam on 21 November 2014, so today our project 4 years in Steam!
We are very grateful that you are with us. Thanks to your support, we have a possibility to develop the game better and better!

Many others indies games usually became abandoned after such period of time, or development is not so active as before, so we are really glad that due your supporting we may continue working on the game at full power and we are going to develop a complete, interesting and high quality space game! Thanks you!



Of course we thought that the game will be fully released earlier, but we are 3 developers and it is our first project so we really glad to see how many work has been done and you are happy with what we are managed to achieve!

During this year we did a lot of things, but some of them especially large and important:

1. Galaxy and reliable orbital mechanics! One year ago, game had only single, locked star system. But now game extended to the huge galaxy which opens a very important possibilities for exploration and "feel of space"
2. Improved space graphic, added new backgrounds, stars, various lighting. The space looks much better. It no longer so gray and boring as it was 1 year ago.
3. Working multiplayer! Due new implementation of UPnP and NAT Punch-through technologies, we finally solved an issue with inaccessible servers, so now almost every user is capable to host a server to play with friends. Also network synchronization is better than ever before, movement of ships now smooth and comfortable for connected users.
4. Fully redesigned inventory, trading and production systems

Also, you may check our previous anniversary posts
https://steamcommunity.com/games/CelestialCommand/announcements/detail/3211492895079957897
https://steamcommunity.com/games/CelestialCommand/announcements/detail/710835733884410740
https://steamcommunity.com/games/CelestialCommand/announcements/detail/115201797087397375

Also, for those who would like to check out how the game looked 4 years ago. We added a possibility to launch the most first version of Celestial Command released in Steam.
In order to do that, open properties of Celestial Command, Beta tab and select "old version".

Thanks for your support! It is super important for us! : )




Improvements

• Added a tech tree! Now modules should be unlocked in research module which requires science data which could be obtained by missions of by scanning of debris
  
• Added research module
  
• Added scanning module which could be used in order to scan debris and extract science data required for new researches
  
• Implemented auto cleaner for debris. When there is more than 500 debris in the game, the oldest debris will be despawned which prevent performance issues in a worlds which exist for a long time
  
• Significant optimizations of physics, especially in orbital mode. Now performance should be better in several times
  
• On damage HP bars no longer displayed for objects which have low maximum HP value, such as debris. It improves visual design
  
• Now you can assign custom hotkeys for modules using Ctrl Shift Alt buttons

Fixes

• Fixed incorrect collision damage between piston \ rotor and its second part. Pistons and rotors no longer will explode for no reason!
  
• Rotation speed of module preview now the same at any game speed and not it is possible to rotate preview during pause
  
• Fuel level of nuclear reactor now correctly saved and loaded
  
• Game time label in the top-left corner now bigger and suitable for large values
  
• Cargo icon during drag and drop process no longer stuck if source inventory was destroyed
  
• Inventory transfer panel no longer cause error if one from related storages was destroyed

Hello!
In this update we made very important improvements related to how construction looks!

Some time ago we replaced engineering drones with the robotic manipulators, because this is much more physically realistic and also it could looks better in terms of visual design. However, first version of robotic manipulators looks not very good and we are not too satisfied with its design.

Also we wanted to implement a "classic sci-fi space shipyard" which actually do something. In some sci-fi games and movies you may encounter a big scaffolds with a space ship inside, but usually it is just a decoration, so we want to implement a shipyard with scaffolds which really do something inside using its robotic manipulators with complex animations and visual effects.
We had some kind of shipyard scaffold before, but we removed it because visual design was not very good.

And since construction of space ships it is very important aspect of the game, we decided to significantly improve this aspect!
We presenting you new and improved engineering modules, and modular shipyards!

Added 2 modules for shipyard and 1 new engineering module of bigger size



When these modules combined together, it turns into some huge and impressive constructions!







New engineering modules looks much better than before. Now it much more compact in standby mode and also you can properly paint it in any color



Engineering modules now have much better animation, not so tall during building and also there is a yellow progress bar on top of it



Small engineering modules for small constructions drones also looks much better. By the way, engineering module can't repair itself, so small drones could be useful for that



More drones for deep space engineering operations! Very useful in case if nearest shipyard is too far away



As you can see, now drones it is not just a fake animation, it is a real ships, with fuel tanks, engines, storages and hit points. This is exactly what we wanted to achieve when replaced old "fake" drones with robotic arms.
This could be especially interesting for multiplayer when people will take different roles.
Or in the future addition of capital ships, these drones can be stored inside a capital ship hangar.
Also you can customize a drones like you want and design different models of drones for different tasks.

Overall, we are very satisfied with how engineering modules, construction process, drones and shipyard looks now and we are happy that issue with construction is solved!
A bit later, we will redesign an NPC stations so they will have a new shipyard and its new game mechanics.

Hope you like the update!
Also the game 20% off during Halloween sale!



Improvements

• Added Engineering Module Mk3 (2 times larger than Mk2)
  
• Added two decoration modules which is suitable for construction of shpiyard
  
• New model of engineering modules
  
• Added animation for engineering modules
  
• Added progress indicator on engineering module
  
• UI: Radius circle of engineering modules a bit redesigned
  
• UI: Inventory of container no longer will be displayed when you are trying to deconstruct it with the engineering module
  
• UI: Now the game will warn you if you are trying to create a world or save a file with invalid symbols \ / : * ? < > | "

Fixes

• Now you can change color of engineering bay and grabber (the same as any other module)
  
• Now when you are going to build a module and your ship have more than 1 engineering module, placement will be allowed within a range of all engineering module (not only one of them)
  
• Fixed an error when you are trying to save a game or a ship with invalid symbols
  
• Now when you are going to save a game in file and your are pressing on existed save file - double click on this file will not load a game

Hello!

We decided to redesign how a warp gates works. Now it "teleports" an objects from point A to B instantly, however, activation of a gate now requires some time.



Also we added various visual and audio effects for warp gate and more information on UI about its current state.



What about warp drive - its functionality still the same, the ship really travels inside a warp sphere.

Why it is done? There is a several reasons:


1. In terms of realism, is looks strange that ship which located in a tunnel of warp gates should be located inside a small circle and should not touch a circle. It creates a questions, such as, what is center of circle? In case of warp drive, it is obvious, center of circle - it is a center of warp drive. But in case of warp gate it looks weird.

2. Another example of question about realism, what if two ships departed from two different gates in direction of each other? They will works well, but you may ask, if this is the same warp tunnel, why they are not collided with each other? This is also seems weird.

3. Warp drive will be more epic in relation to warp gates, so when you will achieve your first warp drive and will go to expedition, it will provide you more unique and interesting experience.



Improvements

• Changed a way how warp gates works. Now it have instant teleportation, but not instant activation
  
• Now warp gate activation will cost you a credits
  
• Added a normal UI button to activate selected warp gate and also additional information about selected gate
  
• The second (arrival) warp gate now also have a delay timer after jump
  
• Added lights to warp gate which represents its current status (Ready \ Activation \ Recharging)
  
• Warp gate no longer applies ejection force after arrival. Instead of this, relative velocity of your ship will be the same
  
• If someone going to jump out of warp gate, you will see a special effect on its gate, also it will be temporary unavailable for jump and also the gate will push out all objects inside which may block an arrival
  
• UI: Now you can close inventory transfer window using Esc button
  
• UI: Now you load a game using double click

Fixes

• Now warp gate leads to the correct warp gate in another system (no longer always at the same warp gate)
  
• Added a warning message in case of game error during warp flight or warp gate jump - it should help to fix an issue when sometimes it is not working as intended
  
• Now data about save file will be displayed correctly when loading window is opened (no longer needed to clicks on each file in order to display its data after 1 second application freeze)
  
• Fixed an error with incorrect spawning of static asteroids in asteroids location
  
• Fixed an incorrect rotation of "Center of Thrust" icon for some ships
  
• Ships no longer have incorrect initial velocity after exit warp drive flight in aerodynamic mode
  
• Warp gates now properly works in multiplayer

Hello

We noticed that many negative review have the same reason. People encountering a bug \ flaw in tutorial and abandoned the game at this step. So people even can’t see a amount of features which exist in the game.

Of course, tutorial was still broken after 0.86, and that is not good. But even before that, when tutorial was not broken, still, many people had many issues with tutorial.

Overall, seems like we are underestimated an importance of tutorial, especially for such a complex game like Celestial Command, even during Early Access stage.

Tutorial, it is a first what meets the new users during first launch of the game. It should be nice and clean, and it should show the user all the main aspect of the game.

So we completely redesigned a tutorial!



Currently consist of only 2 stages, but soon we will add more.
Division on the stages is a good approach. So if tutorial will be broken due significant changes in game mechanics, we will redesign only broken stages, not entire tutorial.

Note: New tutorial temporary not available for localizations. If tutorial have flaws and should be redesigned, we want to redesign it first, so efforts of localizations will not be wasted.

Also we added another little feature to the main menu

On this timeline, you may see all a blog posts from our development blog. We thing it is important feature for people who are thinking that we did nothing during 4 years of development.

So here you may see an indicator of change logs (blue) and important posts (orange), and overall it will show how active development is.

What about capital ships which was announced in previous post. Don't worry, this is a big task, we need to add many new modules, so we decided to work on it "on background". Smaller updates also will be released during this process. Besides that, we are discovered a new, super amazing technique of 3D modeling, which should make new modules even better. We will show it soon.



Improvements

• Completely redesigned tutorial. Now the game should be much more friendly for new users
  
• Added a "timeline of blog posts" in the main menu, which shows the development of the game. And also we fixed all broken images in our blog!
  
• Now when you launch the game or exit from the game, there will be smooth to\from black screen transition, which looks nice
  
• New "Loading" label when you are starting a game

Fixes

• Tutorial completely fixed

During entire development of Celestial Command, you saw only a small size ship, a few a bit bigger modules and some bigger modules for space stations (which are not available for construction).

But actually, even before we started a development, we thoughts about ships of much bigger size.
What a space game without capital ships?

So we started to work on a concept for a new modules for capital ships!
Currently it is only a raw 3D sketches, but take a look:



Current, small modules for comparison



Even something like this could be possible : )



This large cargo gate can be opened and will have empty space inside, so current ships may act as a drones or fighters which can be docked right inside the capital ship.

We will keep you informed about progress and will show more images when we will have something new.