Ahoy Cosmoteers!

Cosmoteer update 0.29.0 is now available for all! This update greatly improves the ship painting capabilities by adding support for resizing, stretching, and inverting decals along with dozens of new decals and a handful of new base paint textures. It also has a handful of other balance tweaks, quality-of-life enhancements, and bug fixes.



We're still working hard on the next *big* update which adds new weapons and a major new ship-design mechanic. And in fact, that update is now in public preview for anyone who wants to test and give feedback on! Head over to our official Discord server for more info. (And yes, we're also still working on Career 2.0, but that will come later.)

Have fun!

- Walt


Full Patch Notes:

• Ships:
  
  • Added 3 new Monolith combat ships: Geironul, Praetor, and Praetorian.
    
  • Added 1 new Imperium combat ship: Knysna
    
  • Added 15 ships from the August 2024 ship design contest. These ships will not spawn in Career but are playable in Creative mode.
    
  • Miscellaneous updates to existing built-in ships.
• Balance:
  
  • Standard Cannon, Large Cannon, Deck Cannon, and Flak Cannon shots will no longer spawn or "phase" inside enemy ships when their cannon barrels are poking inside the enemy.
    
  • HE, EMP, and Nuke missiles now have the same lifetime when dumbfired as when fired with a target.
    
  • Reduced the Power Capacitor's cost from 4000 to 3000 and increased its power capacity from 18 to 24 batteries.
    
  • Reduced the cost of the Heavy Laser Blaster from 6000 to 5000.
    
  • Disruptors now only have penetration resistance when getting hit on the turret.
    
  • Coil, Hypercoil, and Processor factories now allow doors next to all of their storage tiles.
    
  • Small Thrusters will no longer generate power when their ship is classified as junk.
• Ship Painting:
  
  • Most built-in ship paint decals can now be resized and/or stretched up to 4x4 tiles in length and/or width. (Modded decals will likely need to be updated with larger sprites to support resizing.)
    
  • All decals (regardless of built-in or modded) can now be "inverted", meaning that their transparent areas become opaque and their opaque areas become transparent.
    
  • The new resizing, stretching, and inverting features have made many existing decals redundant. Those redundant decals have been removed. Any ships that use those removed decals will be automatically converted to use the new decals. Likewise, "favorite" decals lists will also be converted, though you may notice fewer decals in your favorites if multiple have been combined into a single decal.
    
  • Adding a decal as a "favorite" now remembers the specific size and transparent/opaque inversion selected. Every combination of size/inversion selections can be favorited as desired.
    
  • Likewise, right-clicking on a decal with the "grab" tool selected will now copy the decal's size and inversion.
    
  • The visuals on decal buttons will now update as their size and inversion are changed to reflect the exact combination of size and inversion that will be favorited.
    
  • The naming scheme for decals has been revamped, producing a more intuitive ordering of decals and making it easier for additional decals to be added in the future.
    
  • Many new decals have been added, including basic straights/curves/fades, complex shapes, icons, and text symbols.
    
  • A handful of new base paint textures have also been added.
• User Interface:
  
  • Favorite parts and decals can now be reordered by dragging and dropping them into the desired order.
    
  • Favorites groups for both parts and decals are now lettered A/B/C instead of 1/2/3.
    
  • Railgun and Ion Beam range/direction lines should now be more visible when zoomed out.
• Career:
  
  • Tweaked the dialogue text demanding that the player surrender in the case that the player isn't actually outmatched by the A.I.
• Multiplayer:
  
  • Updated the built-in rulesets for Domination mode to more closely match the rules commonly-used by the community.
    
  • Roof Headlights are now allowed in Build & Battle.
• Performance:
  
  • On computers (typically laptops) with both low-performance (integrated) and high-performance (dedicated) GPUs, Cosmoteer will now automatically configure itself to run on the high-performance GPU. If this is not desired, you can change it in your Windows graphics settings.
• Bug Fixes:
  
  • Crash in some circumstances if a modded resource type no longer exists.
    
  • Ships would sometimes unintionally try to avoid collisions with other ships that they were flying away from. This was especially problematic with ships flying in formation.
    
  • Ships would sometimes stop pathfinding around ion storms and electron clouds.
    
  • Hailing a ship that was already hailing you wouldn't act as accepting their hail.
    
  • Crew would sometimes walk over tiles in certain factories that were supposed to be impassable.
    
  • RAM and VRAM used by ships that no longer exist wasn't being freed as soon as intended.
    
  • In multiplayer Career mode, it was impossible to switch the sector view back to a sector that didn't have any ships belonging to the first player. (This fix is not retroactive for existing saved games. For existing saves, you must first physically jump back to that sector before the fix will take effect.)
    
  • Synchronizing mods with a host or saved game would enable any locally-installed mod with a matching ID instead of downloading it from the Steam Workshop even if the locally-installed mod had the wrong version number.
    
  • The selection boxes for the object selection tool in Creative mode could have odd scaling when zoomed out.
    
  • In blueprint mode, if the only ship modification was to add crew, it was impossible to click the "make it so" button.
• Modding:
  
  • The new decal resizing/stretching feature can only *shrink* the size of the decal. Thus, mods that want to support resizing/stretching their decals will likely need to increase the resolution of those decals.
    
  • The naming scheme of built-in decals has been changed to be much more intuitive. This should make it easier to add new decals that sort logically with the built-in decals.
    
  • The roof_decals.rules file now contains 'Upgrades' and 'DefaultSizes' that mods can add to if they want to upgrade their own decals to the new sizes and/or naming scheme.
    
  • Added a new 'JunkToggle' component that is "on" whenever the ship is junk.
    
  • BulletEmitter now supports an optional 'AntiPhasingRaycastDistance' parameter that, if set, can be used to prevent projectiles from spawning or "phasing" inside enemy ships when fired.
    
  • In developer mode, holding the tilde/backtick key will now display info for any paint decals pointed at by the mouse cursor.

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.29.0 is now available for testing! (To play this release candidate, you must opt in to test it. Please see this post for info on how to test release candidates.)

This release candidate adds new features and decals for painting ships, plus a bunch of other balance tweaks, quality-of-life enhancements, and bug fixes.

We're still working hard at a bunch of upcoming improvements as part of Career 2.0, plus a big new weapon and related ship-design mechanic that will arrive sooner, but we wanted to get these improvements out to everyone sooner rather than later.

Thanks for testing!

RC1:

• Ships:
  
  • Added 3 new Monolith combat ships: Geironul, Praetor, and Praetorian.
    
  • Added 1 new Imperium combat ship: Knysna
    
  • Miscellaneous updates to existing built-in ships.
• Balance:
  
  • Standard Cannon, Large Cannon, Deck Cannon, and Flak Cannon shots will no longer spawn or "phase" inside enemy ships when their cannon barrels are poking inside the enemy.
    
  • HE, EMP, and Nuke missiles now have the same lifetime when dumbfired as when fired with a target.
    
  • Reduced the Power Capacitor's cost from 4000 to 3000 and increased its power capacity from 18 to 24 batteries.
    
  • Reduced the cost of the Heavy Laser Blaster from 6000 to 5000.
    
  • Disruptors now only have penetration resistance when getting hit on the turret.
    
  • Coil and Hypercoil factories now allow doors next to all of their storage tiles.
    
  • Small Thrusters will no longer generate power when their ship is classified as junk.
• Ship Painting:
  
  • Most built-in ship paint decals can now be resized and/or stretched up to 4x4 tiles in height and/or width. (Modded decals will likely need to be updated with larger sprites to support resizing.)
    
  • All decals (regardless of built-in or modded) can now be "inverted", meaning that their transparent areas become opaque and their opaque areas become transparent.
    
  • The new resizing, stretching, and inverting features have made many existing decals redundant. Those redundant decals have been removed. Any ships that use those removed decals will be automatically converted to use the new decals. Likewise, "favorite" decals lists will also be converted, though you may notice fewer decals in your favorites if multiple have been combined into a single decal.
    
  • The naming scheme for decals has been revamped, producing a more intuitive ordering of decals and making it easier for additional decals to be added in the future.
    
  • Many new decals have been added, including basic straights/curves/fades, complex shapes, icons, and text symbols.
• User Interface:
  
  • Favorite parts and decals can now be reordered by dragging and dropping them into the desired order.
    
  • Railgun and Ion Beam range/direction lines should now be more visible when zoomed out.
• Career:
  
  • Tweaked the dialogue text demanding that the player surrender in the case that the player isn't actually outmatched by the A.I.
• Multiplayer:
  
  • Updated the built-in rulesets for Domination mode to more closely match the rules commonly-used by the community.
    
  • Roof Headlights are now allowed in Build & Battle.
• Performance:
  
  • On computers (typically laptops) with both low-performance (integrated) and high-performance (dedicated) GPUs, Cosmoteer will now automatically configure itself to run on the high-performance GPU. If this is not desired, you can change it in your Windows graphics settings.
• Bug Fixes:
  
  • Crash in some circumstances if a modded resource type no longer exists.
    
  • Ships would sometimes unintentionally try to avoid collisions with other ships that they were flying away from. This was especially problematic with ships flying in formation.
    
  • Ships would sometimes stop pathfinding around ion storms and electron clouds.
    
  • Hailing a ship that was already hailing you wouldn't act as accepting their hail.
    
  • Crew would sometimes walk over tiles in certain factories that were supposed to be impassable.
    
  • RAM and VRAM used by ships that no longer exist wasn't being freed as soon as intended.
    
  • In multiplayer Career mode, it was impossible to switch the sector view back to a sector that didn't have any ships belonging to the first player. (This fix is not retroactive for existing saved games. For existing saves, you must first physically jump back to that sector before the fix will take effect.)
    
  • Synchronizing mods with a host or saved game would enable any locally-installed mod with a matching ID instead of downloading it from the Steam Workshop even if the locally-installed mod had the wrong version number.
    
  • The selection boxes for the object selection tool in Creative mode could have odd scaling when zoomed out.
    
  • In blueprint mode, if the only ship modification was to add crew, it was impossible to click the "make it so" button.
• Modding:
  
  • The new decal resizing/stretching feature can only *shrink* the size of the decal. Thus, mods that want to support resizing/stretching their decals will likely need to increase the resolution of those decals.
    
  • The naming scheme of built-in decals has been changed to be much more intuitive. This should make it easier to add new decals that sort logically with the built-in decals.
    
  • The roof_decals.rules file now contains 'Upgrades' and 'DefaultSizes' that mods can add to if they want to upgrade their own decals to the new sizes and/or naming scheme.
    
  • Added a new 'JunkToggle' component that is "on" whenever the ship is junk.
    
  • BulletEmitter now supports an optional 'AntiPhasingRaycastDistance' parameter that, if set, can be used to prevent projectiles from spawning or "phasing" inside enemy ships when fired.

RC2:

• Decals now default to the smallest possible size while maintaining their original aspect ratio.
  
• Processor factories now also allow doors next to all of their storage tiles.
  
• Tweaked the shape_corner_square_1 and shape_corner_square_arrow decals to seamlessly blend with solids at their corners.
  
• RC Bugfix: The new 'symbol_caret' text decal was unintionally rendered as '*' instead of '^'.
  
• RC Bugfix: The old 'fade01' decal was converting to the new 'fade_corner' decal (inverted) with the incorrect rotation.
  
• RC Bugfix: Using the "grab" tool to pick up a decal didn't grab the decal's inverted state.

RC3:

• Changed the version number to 0.29.0 to more appropriately convey the scope of this update.
  
• RC Bugfix: Deck Cannon bullets would sometimes get blocked by their own ship.
  
• RC Bugfix: Mirror mode wasn't working properly with stretched decals in some circumstances.
  
• RC Bugfix: Stretched decals could look abnormally pixelated.
  
• It is now possible to favorite specific combinations of decal, size, and inversion.
  
• Changed the invert hotkey to just 'I' (without Ctrl).
  
• Right-clicking a decal with the grab tool now copies the decal's size and invert state.
  
• Selected decals can now be inverted without having to cut and paste.
  
• The Z key can now be used to open and close the decal resizer.
  
• Added a handful of additional new decals.
  
• Added another skull decal that is very similar to the original small skull decal.
  
• Added a handful of new base paint textures.
  
• Removed a couple more redundant decals.

RC4:

• RC Bugfix: Dragging favorite decals to reorder them broke in RC3.
  
• Shortcuts to rotate, flip, and invert decals now work while the decal resizer popout is open. (Including right-click to rotate.)
  
• Pressing the Z key to open the decal resizer will now popup the resizer underneath the mouse cursor, wherever that is.
  
• Right-clicking or middle-clicking to favorite a decal will now favorite the specific size and inversion combination as well. (The star button added in RC3 was thus made redundant and has been removed.)
  
• The visuals on decal buttons will now update as their size and inversion are changed to reflect the exact combination of size and inversion that will be favorited.
  
• Favorites groups are now lettered A/B/C instead of 1/2/3.
  
• Added a couple more fade decals, removed a few low-usefulness fade decals, and tweaked another couple of fade decals to be more useful.
  
• Added 15 ships from the August 2024 ship design contest. These ships will not spawn in Career but are playable in Creative mode.
  
• Modding: Changed the format for automatic decal upgrades so that decals with special characters in their names can be upgraded.

Cosmoteer update 0.28.2 is now available! This update has new ships, balance tweaks, user interface improvements, and bug fixes.

We're still working hard on more improvements as part of Career 2.0, as well as a very cool new weapon and major ship mechanic that is nearing completion, but we wanted to get these fixes and improvements out to everyone sooner rather than later.

Enjoy!

Full patch notes:

• Ships:
  
  • Added 3 new Monolith combat ships: Attractor, Bluescreen, and Reginleif.
    
  • Added 3 Monolith crew transports: Minor Connector, Bulk Connector, and Mass Connector.
    
  • Added 1 new Monolith trade station: Large Monolith Trade Station II.
    
  • Added 6 Cabal crew transports: Trailblazer, Pioneer, Wayfarer, Cicerone, Originator, and Pathfinder.
    
  • Added 6 Imperium crew transports: Ardeola, Bacchus, Agami, Botaurus, Ardea, and Butorides.
    
  • Added 1 new Imperium defense platform: Medium Nuke Platform.
    
  • Added 2 new Fringe combat ships: Bulkhead and Tenderizer.
    
  • Added 3 Fringe crew transports: Target Practice, Packed Like Sardines, and Khrushchevka.
    
  • Added 1 new Fringe trade station: Small Fringe Trade Station II
    
  • Miscellaneous updates to existing ships and stations.
• Balance:
  
  • The calculation that determines how many resources are needed to repair a damaged part now rounds up (again) to the nearest whole number of resources instead of down, because rounding down was causing repair costs to be far lower than intended.
    
  • Huge thrusters no longer have a ramp-down time.
    
  • Asteroids are now always visible inside gas clouds even to ships outside the cloud.
    
  • Increased the Electron Cloud's energy weapon buff from 75% to 90%.
    
  • Decreased the Electron Cloud's reactor debuff from 80% to 40%.
    
  • 2-way and 3-way Small Thrusters no longer have 5% lateral thrust. (This was supposed to have been removed back when lateral thrust was removed from other thrusters, but we forgot.)
• User Interface:
  
  • You can now save up to three different custom sets of "favorite" parts or decals. To do this, open the ship or paint editor, right click on the button for the part or decal, and then select which favorites set you want to add it to or remove it from. You can also middle-click on the part or decal to quickly favorite or unfavorite it. When a favorites set has any parts or decals in it, it will appear as a tab to the left of all the standard part/decal tabs.
    
  • Split the "shapes" decals group into "straights", "curves", and "fades".
    
  • When using the 'select' tool in paint mode, holding Shift will now suppress the 'grab hand' just like it does when using the 'select' tool in build mode.
    
  • Added a note to the Tractor Beam Emitter's tooltip to clarify that force and power usage varies based on the target's distance.
• Career:
  
  • Added a new "High Electron Cloud Density" type of star system that is covered predominantly by Electron Clouds. (These star systems will not appear in existing saved games.)
    
  • All four factions now have "crew transport" ships that are similar to trade ships but focus on crew capacity over resource capacity. Players can still trade and hire crew from these ships, and they will refill station crews faster than regular trade ships.
    
  • A.I. trade ships will no longer stop in ion storms or sun heat zones to repair themselves.
• Bug Fixes:
  
  • Crash if an under-construction part is selected in the supply-chain assignment mode as it finishes construction.
    
  • Crash in some rare circumstances when transferring crew while the game is paused.
    
  • Diagonal ships could sometimes have difficulty getting into and staying in formation.
    
  • Electron Clouds or Ion Storms that overlapped with sun damage zones could cause ship pathfinding issues.
    
  • Selecting a starter ship with a missile launcher would require all four missile/mine blueprints to be unlocked/purchased instead of only the one(s) required for the selected missile/mine type(s).
    
  • A.I. ships would sometimes demand that the player surrender if the player had any unarmed ships, even if those ships were being protected by other armed ships nearby.
    
  • In supply chain assignment mode, it was unintentionally possible to assign a reactor to a storage room (or vice-versa) by selecting both the reactor and a storage room and then right-clicking on a different storage (or reactor).
    
  • Randomly-generated crew names could sometimes have non-alphabetical characters.
    
  • The Flak Array's "Dmg vs Shots" stat was showing the incorrect value.
    
  • The description for the Launcher's 'Mines' mode was showing the text "Proximity Mines" instead of the full description.
• Modding:
  
  • Saved games containing ships that no longer exist due to disabled or updated mods should now be loadable. The missing ships will in most cases simply not exist after loading.
    
  • Mods can add (or remove) part and decal favorites sets.

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.28.2 is now available for testing! (To play this release candidate, you must opt in to test it. Please see this post for info on how to test release candidates.)

This release candidate has a lot of quality-of-life improvements, balance tweaks, new ships, and a handful of bug fixes.

We're still working hard at a bunch of upcoming improvements as part of Career 2.0, plus a big new weapon and related ship-design mechanic, but we wanted to get these improvements out to everyone sooner rather than later.

Thanks for testing!

RC1:

• Ships:
  
  • Added 3 new Monolith combat ships: Attractor, Bluescreen, and Reginleif.
    
  • Added 3 Monolith crew transports: Minor Connector, Bulk Connector, and Mass Connector.
    
  • Added 1 new Monolith trade station: Large Monolith Trade Station II.
    
  • Added 6 Cabal crew transports: Tourist, Pioneer, Wayfarer, Cicerone, Originator, and Pathfinder.
    
  • Added 6 Imperium crew transports: Ardeola, Bacchus, Agami, Botaurus, Ardea, and Butorides.
    
  • Added 1 new Imperium defense platform: Medium Nuke Platform.
    
  • Added 2 new Fringe combat ships: Bulkhead and Tenderizer.
    
  • Added 3 Fringe crew transports: Target Practice, Packed Like Sardines, and Khrushchevka.
    
  • Added 1 new Fringe trade station: Small Fringe Trade Station II
    
  • Miscellaneous updates to existing ships and stations.
• Balance:
  
  • The calculation that determines how many resources are needed to repair a damaged part now rounds up (again) to the nearest whole number of resources instead of down, because rounding down was causing repair costs to be far lower than intended.
    
  • Huge thrusters no longer have a ramp-down time.
    
  • Increased the Electron Cloud's energy weapon buff from 75% to 90%.
    
  • Decreased the Electron Cloud's reactor debuff from 80% to 40%.
    
  • 2-way and 3-way Small Thrusters no longer have 5% lateral thrust. (This was supposed to have been removed back when lateral thrust was removed from other thrusters, but we forgot.)
• User Interface:
  
  • You can now save up to three different custom sets of "favorite" parts or decals. To do this, open the ship or paint editor, right click on the button for the part or decal, and then select which favorites set you want to add it to or remove it from. You can also middle-click on the part or decal to quickly favorite or unfavorite it. When a favorites set has any parts or decals in it, it will appear as a tab to the left of all the standard part/decal tabs.
    
  • Split the "shapes" decals group into "straights", "curves", and "fades".
    
  • When using the 'select' tool in paint mode, holding Shift will now suppress the 'grab hand' just like it does when using the 'select' tool in build mode.
    
  • Added a note to the Tractor Beam Emitter's tooltip to clarify that force and power usage varies based on the target's distance.
    
  • Removed the "Dmg vs Shots" stat from the Flak Array because it was identical to the "Max Damage" stat and misleading.
• Career:
  
  • Added a new "High Electron Cloud Density" type of star system that is covered predominantly by Electron Clouds. (These star systems will not appear in existing saved games.)
    
  • All four factions now have "crew transport" ships that are similar to trade ships but focus on crew capacity over resource capacity. Players can still trade and hire crew from these ships, and they will refill station crews faster than regular trade ships.
    
  • A.I. trade ships will no longer stop in ion storms or sun heat zones to repair themselves.
• Bug Fixes:
  
  • Crash if an under-construction part is selected in the supply-chain assignment mode as it finishes construction.
    
  • Crash in some rare circumstances when transferring crew while the game is paused.
    
  • Diagonal ships could sometimes have difficulty getting into and staying in formation.
    
  • Electron Clouds or Ion Storms that overlapped with sun damage zones could cause ship pathfinding issues.
    
  • Selecting a starter ship with a missile launcher would require all four missile/mine blueprints to be unlocked/purchased instead of only the one(s) required for the selected missile/mine type(s).
    
  • A.I. ships would sometimes demand that the player surrender if the player had any unarmed ships, even if those ships were being protected by other armed ships nearby.
    
  • In supply chain assignment mode, it was unintentionally possible to assign a reactor to a storage room (or vice-versa) by selecting both the reactor and a storage room and then right-clicking on a different storage (or reactor).
    
  • Randomly-generated crew names could sometimes have non-alphabetical characters.
• Modding:
  
  • Saved games containing ships that no longer exist due to disabled or updated mods should now be loadable. The missing ships will in most cases simply not exist after loading.
    
  • Mods can add (or remove) part and decal favorites sets.

RC2:

• Asteroids are now always visible inside gas clouds even to ships outside the cloud.
  
• Restored Flak's "Dmg vs Shots" stat and fixed it to show the correct value of 1750.
  
• (Bugfix): The description for the Launcher's 'Mines' mode was showing the text "Proximity Mines" instead of the full description.
  
• (RC Bugfix): Crash when creating a new ship in multiplayer.
  
• (RC Bugfix): The order of part/decal favorites could sometimes change when switching between favorites tabs.
  
• Renamed a couple of ships.

• (Tech/Performance): Upgraded to .NET 9 (again) because we believe we have resolved the issue that was causing Cosmoteer to not boot for some players. Please let us know if you're still having issues. (And if you are, try updating your Windows.)
  
• (Balance): 1x3 armor/structure hybrid wedges had lower penetration resistance than was intended. They now match the regular 1x3 armor wedge.
  
• (Balance): All three reactors were generating power at very slightly different speeds than was intended. (This should have no noticeable effect on game balance.)
  
• (Bugfix): Multiplayer desyncs caused by ship formations avoiding collisions.
  
• (Bugfix): When attacking an enemy from a specific direction, sometimes the ship A.I. would appear to intentionally ram the enemy ship.
  
• (Bugfix): Ships could sometimes have difficulty getting in formation due to the recent collision avoidance changes.

• Downgraded from .NET 9 to .NET 8 because we suspect .NET 9 was preventing the game from booting for some players. If you were one of those players, please let us know if this solves the problem.

Cosmoteer update 0.28.1 is now available! This update has a lot of quality-of-life improvements, some balance changes, improvements to ship collision avoidance, and a handful of bug fixes.

We're still working hard on more improvements as part of Career 2.0, but we wanted to get these fixes and improvements out to everyone sooner rather than later.

Enjoy!

Full patch notes:

• Built-In Ships:
  
  • Added 4 new Monolith combat ships: Ambassador, Averter, Middleman, and Praefectus.
    
  • Added 7 new Cabal combat ships: Alcor, Atria, Chasing Wind, Decrux, Lazurite Tear, Menkalinan, and Zaurak.
    
  • Added 3 new Cabal trade stations: Small Cabal Trade Station III, Med Cabal Trade Station III, and Large Cabal Trade Station III.
    
  • Added 5 new Imperium combat ships: Ani, Dromiceius, Sulla, Swallowtail, and Tinamou.
    
  • Added 1 new Imperium trade ship: Penguin.
    
  • Added 3 new Imperium arms depots: Tiny Imperium Arms Depot II, Small Imperium Arms Depot II, and Med Imperium Arms Depot II.
    
  • Added 3 new Fringe combat ships: Clytemnestra, Kenesary, and Quicksilver Scout.
    
  • Miscellaneous updates to many other existing ships and stations.
• Balance:
  
  • Small Thrusters (all variants) now have a small dynamo that generates power very slowly. This allows Small Thrusters to operate while disconnected from crew/power sources, but the rate of power generation isn't enough to perpetually sustain the thruster.
    
  • Increased the 1x3 Armor Wedge's penetration resistance from 2 to 4.
    
  • Increased EMP Missile's launch cooldown from 2 to 4 seconds.
    
  • Mines are now much more visible and clearly show their detonation trigger range.
• Ship A.I.:
  
  • Improved collision avoidance when avoiding moving ships/objects.
    
  • Improved collision avoidance when avoiding multiple ships/objects simultaneously.
    
  • Improved collision avoidance when trying to move away from very close ships/objects.
    
  • Improved collision avoidance of ships in a formation.
    
  • Ship formations should now do a better job of navigating around suns and storms.
    
  • A.I. ships will no longer deliberately target roof lights or headlights.
• Career:
  
  • Repairing damaged parts was much more expensive than was intended. Repair cost (steel/coils only) has been reduced from 57.5% of base cost to the intended 7.5%.
    
  • It was unintentionally often cheaper to fully deconstruct and rebuild a part than it was to repair it. This has been fixed.
    
  • Defense platforms will no longer surrender to players.
    
  • Stations will no longer hail the player from outside the player's sensor range, because that was confusing.
    
  • Fires will no longer be regarded by the A.I. as breaking a surrender truce.
• User Interface:
  
  • Translation updates for all supported languages.
    
  • Enemies will no longer automatically slow or pause the game speed when spotted if they had previously been spotted within the past minute.
    
  • When a weapon's target goes out of sight range, it will now be automatically re-targeted when coming back into sight range. (Unless in the meantime the target is changed by the player.)
    
  • Small thrusters now display a yellow warning instead of red error when they don't have door, crew, or power access. (Because they no longer strictly require power.)
    
  • The U.I. Scaling setting will now be remembered per resolution or window size.
    
  • Except for Creative Mode, "lost ships" will now only be saved for ships that the player actually controls.
    
  • Added tooltips to the Resource Desired & Limits dialog that explain the functionality of the "Desired" and "Limit" numbers.
    
  • Updated the Large Shield Generator's description to make it clearer what it can and can't be projected through.
    
  • Crew distance warning icons can now be "clicked through".
    
  • Velocity arrows will no longer display for off-screen ships.
    
  • "Delivery" missions are now called "Procument" missions to clarify that the player is expected to gather the desired resources from wherever they can.
• Multiplayer:
  
  • Reduced the amount of clouds and storms that will appear when using "Varied (Sparse)", "Varied (Dense)", "Ion Storms (Sparse)", and "Ion Storms (Dense)".
    
  • If a player joins, leaves, or changes teams, the players in the game will no longer be automatically changed to "not ready".
• Performance:
  
  • Updated to Microsoft .NET 9.0. This may slightly improve overall performance. Please let us know if you have any compatibility issues running Cosmoteer.
    
  • Texture and shader caching can now be disabled with the --no-cache launch argument.
• Bug fixes:
  
  • Crash when loading a multiplayer save in single-player and then trying to transfer money to another player.
    
  • Very rare crash caused by crew being automatically unassigned from certain jobs.
    
  • Multiplayer desyncs caused by transferring resources to a ship with no crew.
    
  • Nuke explosions could occasionally "phase" into the ships that they hit.
    
  • In multiplayer, engaging an inter-system hyper-jump while another player is on the galaxy map would prevent the jump from happening and could ultimately lead to a crash.
    
  • In Creative Mode, it was unintentionally possible to tell a junk ship to salvage itself, which would then crash.
    
  • A.I. ships would sometimes spawn inside storms due to a pathfinding bug.
    
  • Ships could sometimes erroneously try to avoid collisions with objects that were farther away than their destination.
    
  • A.I. ships that had surrendered to the player were sometimes not exit the star system as intended.
    
  • When thrusters were attached to Engine Rooms, they were not correctly lighting up as possible power supply chain targets in the resource management screen.
    
  • The wrong ship name would be displayed when an ally was hailed by the A.I.
    
  • The names of ships and stations in the Comms list would sometimes appear smaller than intended.
    
  • Using the "Transfer Excess Resources" options would work but then make it impossible to reset or make any further changes to the amount of resources to transfer.
    
  • The chat/message log unintentionally had a non-function text-entry box and send button when playing in single-player.
    
  • Ship icons and crew warning icons were being unintentionally rendered on top of the mission list and chat/message log.
    
  • The ship velocity arrow for the selected ship could be extremely long when viewing the build, paint, crew, or resource screens.

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.28.1 is now available for testing! (To play this release candidate, you must opt in to test it. Please see this post for info on how to test release candidates.)

This release candidate has a lot of quality-of-life improvements, some balance changes, improvements to ship collision avoidance, and a handful of bug fixes.

We're still working hard at a bunch of upcoming improvements as part of Career 2.0, but we wanted to get these improvements out to everyone sooner rather than later.

Thanks for testing!

RC1:

• Built-In Ships:
  
  • Added 4 new Monolith combat ships: Ambassador, Averter, Middleman, and Praefectus.
    
  • Added 7 new Cabal combat ships: Alcor, Atria, Chasing Wind, Decrux, Lazurite Tear, Menkalinan, and Zaurak.
    
  • Added 3 new Cabal trade stations: Small Cabal Trade Station III, Med Cabal Trade Station III, and Large Cabal Trade Station III.
    
  • Added 5 new Imperium combat ships: Ani, Dromiceius, Sulla, Swallowtail, and Tinamou.
    
  • Added 1 new Imperium trade ship: Penguin.
    
  • Added 3 new Imperium arms depots: Tiny Imperium Arms Depot II, Small Imperium Arms Depot II, and Med Imperium Arms Depot II.
    
  • Added 3 new Fringe combat ships: Clytemnestra, Kenesary, and Quicksilver Scout.
    
  • Miscellaneous updates to many other existing ships and stations.
• Balance:
  
  • Small Thrusters (all variants) now have a small dynamo that generates power very slowly. This allows Small Thrusters to operate while disconnected from crew/power sources, but the rate of power generation isn't enough to perpetually sustain the thruster.
    
  • Increased the 1x3 Armor Wedge's penetration resistance from 2 to 4.
    
  • Increased EMP Missile's launch cooldown from 2 to 4 seconds.
    
  • Mines are now much more visible and clearly show their detonation trigger range.
• Ship A.I.:
  
  • Improved collision avoidance when avoiding moving ships/objects.
    
  • Improved collision avoidance when avoiding multiple ships/objects simultaneously.
    
  • Improved collision avoidance when trying to move away from very close ships/objects.
    
  • Improved collision avoidance of ships in a formation.
    
  • Ship formations should now do a better job of navigating around suns and storms.
    
  • A.I. ships will no longer deliberately target roof lights or headlights.
• Career:
  
  • Repairing damaged parts was much more expensive than was intended. Repair cost (steel/coils only) has been reduced from 57.5% of base cost to the intended 7.5%.
    
  • It was unintentionally often cheaper to fully deconstruct and rebuild a part than it was to repair it. This has been fixed.
    
  • Defense platforms will no longer surrender to players.
    
  • Stations will no longer hail the player from outside the player's sensor range, because that was confusing.
    
  • Fires will no longer be regarded by the A.I. as breaking a surrender truce.
• User Interface:
  
  • Enemies will no longer automatically slow or pause the game speed when spotted if they had previously been spotted within the past minute.
    
  • When a weapon's target goes out of sight range, it will now be automatically re-targeted when coming back into sight range. (Unless in the meantime the target is changed by the player.)
    
  • Small thrusters now display a yellow warning instead of red error when they don't have door, crew, or power access. (Because they no longer strictly require power.)
    
  • The U.I. Scaling setting will now be remembered per resolution or window size.
    
  • Except for Creative Mode, "lost ships" will now only be saved for ships that the player actually controls.
    
  • Added tooltips to the Resource Desired & Limits dialog that explain the functionality of the "Desired" and "Limit" numbers.
    
  • Updated the Large Shield Generator's description to make it clearer what it can and can't be projected through.
    
  • Crew distance warning icons can now be "clicked through".
• Multiplayer:
  
  • Reduced the amount of clouds and storms that will appear when using "Varied (Sparse)", "Varied (Dense)", "Ion Storms (Sparse)", and "Ion Storms (Dense)".
    
  • If a player joins, leaves, or changes teams, the players in the game will no longer be automatically changed to "not ready".
• Performance:
  
  • Updated to Microsoft .NET 9.0. This may slightly improve overall performance. Please let us know if you have any compatibility issues running Cosmoteer.
    
  • Texture and shader caching can now be disabled with the --no-cache launch argument.
• Bug fixes:
  
  • Crash when loading a multiplayer save in single-player and then trying to transfer money to another player.
    
  • Very rare crash caused by crew being automatically unassigned from certain jobs.
    
  • Multiplayer desyncs caused by transferring resources to a ship with no crew.
    
  • Nuke explosions could occasionally "phase" into the ships that they hit.
    
  • In multiplayer, engaging an inter-system hyper-jump while another player is on the galaxy map would prevent the jump from happening and could ultimately lead to a crash.
    
  • In Creative Mode, it was unintentionally possible to tell a junk ship to salvage itself, which would then crash.
    
  • A.I. ships would sometimes spawn inside storms due to a pathfinding bug.
    
  • Ships could sometimes erroneously try to avoid collisions with objects that were farther away than their destination.
    
  • A.I. ships that had surrendered to the player were sometimes not exit the star system as intended.
    
  • When thrusters were attached to Engine Rooms, they were not correctly lighting up as possible power supply chain targets in the resource management screen.
    
  • The wrong ship name would be displayed when an ally was hailed by the A.I.
    
  • The names of ships and stations in the Comms list would sometimes appear smaller than intended.
    
  • Using the "Transfer Excess Resources" options would work but then make it impossible to reset or make any further changes to the amount of resources to transfer.

RC2:

• Translation updates for all supported languages.
  
• Velocity arrows will no longer display for off-screen ships.
  
• Bugfix: The chat/message log unintentionally had a non-function text-entry box and send button when playing in single-player.
  
• Bugfix: Ship icons and crew warning icons were being unintentionally rendered on top of the mission list and chat/message log.
  
• Bugfix: The ship velocity arrow for the selected ship could be extremely long when viewing the build, paint, crew, or resource screens.
  
• RC Bugfix: Error when trying to load saved multiplayer games from previous versions.
  
• RC Bugfix: The chat box was causing off-screen ship icons to be farther from the edge of the screen than intended, even when the chat box wasn't being displayed.

• Bugfix: Memory usage could in some circumstances continuously increase almost indefinitely during gameplay.

• (Bugfix): When loading a saved game in multiplayer (or resuming after a desync), an auto-save could be triggered while loading/transferring the save file which would then cause a crash.
  
• (Bugfix): Dragging the game window between monitors could cause the window to become unusably and unfixably small.