Interstellar Rift - Conquintor
It's here! The long awaited weapons overhaul! This massive update brings with it a whole slew of new weapons, defensive options and balance changes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDqnjoR2xyg&feature=youtu.be
First up we have our new light arsenal. The way weapons work has been altered quite a bit.

Weapons now require CPU power. Which means players will now have to install a weapon CPU onboard their ships in order to make use of their weapons.

The weapon CPU determines how many offensive and defensive systems can be active at any given time, and thus also determines how many weapons can be fired at once. Players will need to consider whether they want to have more firepower or more defense. Weapons, shields, and the new armor generator among other devices, requires weapon CPU power.
The new weapons we have added are all of the gimbal weapon variety. Which means they aim at where your mouse cursor is pointing while in the cockpit. This makes it so hitting fast moving targets is easier and should make combat a lot more fun and engaging.



The new weapons we’ve added are the light autocannon, the light pulse laser and the light missile launcher.
The autocannon is similar to the old forward facing autocannon but it does less damage. It does however use the same ammunition. The light pulse laser fires a short laser beam. This weapon has no projectiles which means that it can hit what it is aiming at directly. And thus players will not need to lead the target. The pulse laser also does extra damage against shields.



And lastly the light missiles launcher fires small missiles in rapid succession which track the target. For this we’ve introduced the new missile locking mechanic. When the missiles are active when you hold on your mouse cursor over your currently selected target you will see a the missile lock indicator start to lock. Once missile lock has been acquired you will be able to fire the missiles. The torpedo launcher has also had this mechanic added.



One of the new devices we’ve added is the armor generator. These devices determine how many hitpoints your ship has. They also slowly repair your ship over time if you supply them with nanobots. The armor generator was added for balance reasons so that ships are no longer virtually immortal. They provide an upper limit to how many hit points any ship can have so that we are not balancing against infinity. We feel this will make combat much more engaging and fair.



Lastly we have also added new countermeasures, the EMP generator allows you to disable missiles. Also if another ship is within an 800 meter radius the EMP will damage their shields and partially drain their batteries. Once fired the EMP needs to recharge for a bit before it can be fired again.

These are some of the changes and new things in this patch. For all the changes please see the patch notes.

As always, we’d appreciate any feedback you’re willing to provide, it will only help us make the game better. We have a discord server which you can join!
Feel free to drop by and have a chat, we’d love to hear your opinion and feedback!


Thank you all for playing and see you starside!

-The Split Polygon Team

Patch Notes for IR Alpha 0.1.62

Feedback thread

IR Discord Channel
Interstellar Rift - Hurles
We will be streaming some Interstellar Rift tonight at 22:00 CEST (20:00 UTC) in Dev Stream #21 at https://www.twitch.tv/splitpolygon

We'll be playing the new small missile launchers, EMP devices and talk about new things added in the past week, and upcoming features.

Join us if you would like to see us play, ask a question or would just like to hang out with us :)

- Hurles
Interstellar Rift - Conquintor
We will be streaming some Interstellar Rift tonight at 22:00 CEST (20:00 UTC) in Dev Stream #20 at https://www.twitch.tv/splitpolygon

We'll be playing with larger ships with the new weapons, talk about new things added in the past week, and upcoming features.

Join us if you would like to see us play, ask a question or would just like to hang out with us :)

- Conquintor
Interstellar Rift - Conquintor
Today we are introducing the first part the Interstellar Rift combat upgrade to the experimental branch. We are adding in two new weapons, the new CPU system, and the armor generator system.

First up in the editor you will see two new weapons that you can mount on your ships, the light autocannon and the light pulse laser, these two weapons work in a different manner from the weapons you are used to. They track the position of your cursor and fire in that direction. Meaning it should be easier to hit your targets.
The autocannon fires projectiles similar to the old guns meaning the bullets have a travel time. And the lasers are hitscan, so they hit what they are aiming at when you press the button.

Additionally ships now require a CPU in order to operate equipment and weapons. So we added two new types of devices, a power CPU, and a weapons CPU. These control ship devices and weapons. Even though a ship in itself has a power CPU and weapon CPU, by default these are nowhere near as powerful as the additional CPUs you can install. For weapons only one CPU can be active at a time.

And lastly there is the armor generator. This new device determines the armor level of your ship and it needs to be equipped with the new nanobots resource. When the generator is equipped with nanobots it will slowly repair the armor overtime. Even when not equipped with nanobots the ship will still have armor so long as the device is active.

And lastly your ships hull has been downgraded to basically paper. It will offer very little protection once the armor has been destroyed, and can only tank 100 instances of damage.

These new progression systems will be iterated upon in the next few updates, so your feedback is very valuable, please let us know what you think!

For full patch notes, and to leave feedback, see here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/363360/discussions/4/1741090666222995319/

Instructions on how to join the experimental branch can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/363360/discussions/4/350542145693906320/

Thank you all for playing and see you starside!

-The Split Polygon Team
Interstellar Rift - Hurles
We will be streaming some Interstellar Rift tonight at 22:00 CEST (20:00 UTC) in Dev Stream #18 at https://www.twitch.tv/splitpolygon

We'll be showing you some new in-development stuff on the new weapon systems.

Join us if you would like to see us play, ask a question or would just like to hang out with us :)

- Hurles
Interstellar Rift - Hurles
We will be streaming some Interstellar Rift tonight at 22:00 CEST (20:00 UTC) in Dev Stream #17 at https://www.twitch.tv/splitpolygon

We'll be showing you some new in-development stuff on the new weapon systems.

Join us if you would like to see us play, ask a question or would just like to hang out with us :)

- Hurles
Interstellar Rift - Conquintor
BUG FIXES

- fixed a desync when skrill and drones select a target

- added extra crash logging

- added extra performance logging

NOTES

- Servers will have to be updated and restarted.
Interstellar Rift - Conquintor
FUNCTIONALITY

- outdated drivers popup no longer shows on standalone servers

- added more performance logging

- added more profiling options to find performance issues

- F9 no longer outputs a compare state, now has a /compareFrame command instead, to avoid accidental activation which could lead to immense performance issues.

BUG FIXES

- fixed a bug where the captain chair would claim control over the ship and never give it up when a piloting player would leave the pilot seat, transferring control over to the captain chair.

- fixed a crash in the AI behavior of drones

- fixed a server crash on iteration

NOTES

- Servers will have to be updated and restarted
Interstellar Rift - Conquintor
FUNCTIONALITY

- players can now sit in the captain chair in the large cockpit, note that old versions of the cockpit need to be replaced to have this functionality

- added more ways to find performance issues on servers

- S3 Resource Collection Hub now has infinite power

BALANCE

- illegal acts rebalanced, destroying a ship or drone reputation loss severely decreased

BUG FIXES

- fixed tutorial sometimes picking a system with a tier above zero to rift to

- fixed a clamping issue when receiving negative reputation where it could snap you back to the first reputation tier

- fixed reputation changes not always being visible on the grip

NOTES

- Servers will have to be updated and restarted.
Interstellar Rift - Conquintor
FUNCTIONALITY

- added extra perfomance logging

- reputation gain from handing in system build events now shows on your hud

BALANCE

- removed negative reputation impact because of faction relations

- reputation gain is back for build system events, although capped at 100 for normal stations and 200 for faction headquarters

- monetary reward from build system events buffed to be a little above standard price, but less rewarding than finding good trades

BUG FIXES

- fixed a crash in the cargo lift

- fixed a crash in the welcome message on ghostclients

- fixed some teleporter offsets

- fixed a bug where there were no price stats for quartz and crystal vectronium

- fixed an issue with sitting in cockpits and on benches when using the grip which could lock the camera

- fixed an issue with the holotable UI when a ship is destroyed


NOTES

- Servers will have to be updated and restarted.
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