I'm happy to announce the release of the Space Combat patch.

First, I just want to say - "I'm not finished with space combat!"

That's right. The goal here was to get all the base systems in. The turrets, effects, ships, ship and equipment vendors, stats and skills, loot and all the rest of the core systems that make up space combat in Stellar Tactics. What do I have planned for the future?

• Point defense systems
  
• Equipment that will give you a quick shield or capacitor charge when you need it.
  
• Warp Drive inhibitors
  
• Sub-system targeting
  
• Branching missions that take you to other systems, then take you to planetary locations, stations, anomalies and space wreckage.
  
• Missions for miners so they can gather rewards for surviving in dangerous systems or for finding rare minerals
  
• Escort missions
  
• More AI ships on various tasks in the systems of the universe.
  
• Perks for space combat. I'm holding off on these until I have more feedback on the core systems from the community

And more...

Before you get started, please review the Space Combat Guide. At least the first section as it gives you a few very important survival tips.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1239665795

With the release of space combat, the game should hold over 200 hours of content to max your crew in the best equipment and to acquire the best ships and gear available. I hope you all enjoy the update and I'm looking forward to all of your feedback on the forums.

I'd like to thank rebelwolf75, nottrusted, nobrien, Roberto and others for testing Stellar Tactics over the last few weeks. They spent a lot of time in the game and made a lot of helpful suggestions and found a good number of bugs that are now fixed.

I've also crushed a good number of bugs unrelated to space combat and made a few enhancements to the game. See the patch notes below.

What's next? I'll be taking another pass at ground combat to remove a few annoyances, perfect the blocking system and tighten things up. I'll likely take a few passes at ground combat before the game is finished.

Following that I have a bunch of content that's been developed in parallel with the space combat patch that I need to get in the game - content that needs to go in so I can open up the FTL gates.

Here are the patch notes:

ADDED - You can now eject stacks of items from your cargo hold while in space. Anything you eject is automatically destroyed and cannot be retrieved. Should make mining runs a bit more profitable.
ADDED - a reminder message will be displayed that micro-warp is disabled in gravity wells and enabled when leaving gravity wells.
UPDATED - If inside the gravity well of any sun, you will start taking damage. First to your shields and when those are depleted, you will take damage to your hull armor. If you stay in the vicinity of the sun your ship will eventually be destroyed.
UPDATED: Weapon impacts, explosions and projectile effects updated for all ranged weapons in ground combat.
UPDATED: On skill-up, messages are now queued and displayed both on the screen and in the log.
UPDATED: Collisions with asteroids are now active.
UPDATED: Cargo can now be sorted by all items, ore/gas, commodities and equipment. Commodities are not in the game yet.
UPDATED: Afterburner speed greatly increased. Capacitor cost decreased.
UPDATED: Ship speed is now based on piloting skill and the equipped warp drive.
UPDATED: Micro-Warp speed increased and is now based on piloting skill and equipped warp drive.
UPDATED: Interactions with chests, objects and npc's are much faster now.
UPDATED: Area exits are now much more obvious. Small panels for area transitions have been removed and replaced with panels that cover doors on rollover and when holding down the highlight key = TAB by default.
UPDATED: Base weapon damage now scales per the level requirement of the weapon every few levels. So, you get bonus base damage depending on the level requirement of the weapon and of course bonus damage based on your skills/perks. Enemies get the same base damage scaling. This change is not retroactive so weapons in your inventory use the old range modifiers.
UPDATED: Pistols, rifles and heavy weapons have had their range increased. This change is not retroactive so weapons in your inventory use the old range stats
UPDATED: You can now mine any asteroid, not just asteroids in asteroid fields.
UPDATED: When purchasing ammo (ship and ground combat), the HUD now displays the maximum amount of ammo you can purchase in the pop-up window and the slider is set to only allow you to buy the maximum purchasable amount for that ammo type.
UPDATED: Second round of visual polish for the Dauntless - Added addition effects, lighting and grime.
UPDATED: Removed the siren effect on all decks except for the VATs - it was annoying while engaging the last part of the Dauntless experience.
UPDATED: All areas of random mission maps are now displayed on the mini-map. As you explore, areas that have been explored turn grey. Areas that have had mission objectives cleared turn green. the area you are currently exploring is black with a small compass indicator. Should help better undestand the scale of the area to be explored for missions.
UPDATED: Removed the option to generated a full party of team members. When you leave the Dauntless, you can choose only one team member and this was confusing and some felt that it was a waste of their time if they did not read the universe creation screen carefully. The loss of crew members after the Dauntless is a key story element for future story content.
UPDATED: Dialog with Dr. Rhamus in ruins revised to add additional dialog options.
UPDATED: Addition of a new mission when receiving your starter ship. You are now sent to the Trade Station to gather your team of mercenaries.
UPDATED: Loot rewards for the Halamis Facility are now more consistent. Reward tokens and faction are less random so you can better gauge the level of reward for a mission type.
Fixed - Can now use F1-F4 in inventory and character info screens to switch team member info when in space.
Fixed - System messages are now queued so all messages are displayed to the screen in order.
Fixed - When approaching the sun, you will now make an emergency stop.
Fixed - A major physics error that could send your ship careening into the sun or elsewhere when you collide with stations and other space objects.
Fixed - A display bugs when dragging team members between ship station slots.
Fixed - A bug in space when selecting objects that could cause objects in the foreground or another object from being selected.
Fixed - You can now re-scan object like planets and ships
Fixed - When leaving the Dauntless, in some cases, the selected final team member's equipment was unequipped and placed in the stash leaving them standing there in their underwear once they arrived in the ruins.
Fixed - Material error on the trade station - too shiny!
FIXED: Ambient audio slider renamed to Music Volume - main menu music volume is not set to your current settings.
FIXED: Combat movement when healing will no longer result in negative AP
FIXED: Movement cursors will no longer be left on the ground in some rare cases
FIXED: When moving, you can no longer loot items. Previously it would appear as if you could loot items from long distances.
FIXED: A bug where landing on a planet could take you to another planet landing location
FIXED: A long standing bug that could cause extra AP to be used in combat when healing targets that you walk to.
FIXED: A long standing bug that could cause your entire AP bar to drain while walking towards an enemy target for attack when wielding a melee weapon or fists.
FIXED: A bug introduced by the new navigation icons could cause the player to arrive at target and then rotate in an arbitrary direction when attacking with melee weapons by clicking on an enemy from a distance.
REMOVED - Motion blur micro-warp effect - replaced with a new effect.
PERFORMANCE: General optimizations for AI in all locations.

I'm happy to announce the release of the Space Combat patch.

First, I just want to say - "I'm not finished with space combat!"

That's right. The goal here was to get all the base systems in. The turrets, effects, ships, ship and equipment vendors, stats and skills, loot and all the rest of the core systems that make up space combat in Stellar Tactics. What do I have planned for the future?

• Point defense systems
  
• Equipment that will give you a quick shield or capacitor charge when you need it.
  
• Warp Drive inhibitors
  
• Sub-system targeting
  
• Branching missions that take you to other systems, then take you to planetary locations, stations, anomalies and space wreckage.
  
• Missions for miners so they can gather rewards for surviving in dangerous systems or for finding rare minerals
  
• Escort missions
  
• More AI ships on various tasks in the systems of the universe.
  
• Perks for space combat. I'm holding off on these until I have more feedback on the core systems from the community

And more...

Before you get started, please review the Space Combat Guide. At least the first section as it gives you a few very important survival tips.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1239665795

With the release of space combat, the game should hold over 200 hours of content to max your crew in the best equipment and to acquire the best ships and gear available. I hope you all enjoy the update and I'm looking forward to all of your feedback on the forums.

I'd like to thank rebelwolf75, nottrusted, nobrien, Roberto and others for testing Stellar Tactics over the last few weeks. They spent a lot of time in the game and made a lot of helpful suggestions and found a good number of bugs that are now fixed.

I've also crushed a good number of bugs unrelated to space combat and made a few enhancements to the game. See the patch notes below.

What's next? I'll be taking another pass at ground combat to remove a few annoyances, perfect the blocking system and tighten things up. I'll likely take a few passes at ground combat before the game is finished.

Following that I have a bunch of content that's been developed in parallel with the space combat patch that I need to get in the game - content that needs to go in so I can open up the FTL gates.

Here are the patch notes:

ADDED - You can now eject stacks of items from your cargo hold while in space. Anything you eject is automatically destroyed and cannot be retrieved. Should make mining runs a bit more profitable.
ADDED - a reminder message will be displayed that micro-warp is disabled in gravity wells and enabled when leaving gravity wells.
UPDATED - If inside the gravity well of any sun, you will start taking damage. First to your shields and when those are depleted, you will take damage to your hull armor. If you stay in the vicinity of the sun your ship will eventually be destroyed.
UPDATED: Weapon impacts, explosions and projectile effects updated for all ranged weapons in ground combat.
UPDATED: On skill-up, messages are now queued and displayed both on the screen and in the log.
UPDATED: Collisions with asteroids are now active.
UPDATED: Cargo can now be sorted by all items, ore/gas, commodities and equipment. Commodities are not in the game yet.
UPDATED: Afterburner speed greatly increased. Capacitor cost decreased.
UPDATED: Ship speed is now based on piloting skill and the equipped warp drive.
UPDATED: Micro-Warp speed increased and is now based on piloting skill and equipped warp drive.
UPDATED: Interactions with chests, objects and npc's are much faster now.
UPDATED: Area exits are now much more obvious. Small panels for area transitions have been removed and replaced with panels that cover doors on rollover and when holding down the highlight key = TAB by default.
UPDATED: Base weapon damage now scales per the level requirement of the weapon every few levels. So, you get bonus base damage depending on the level requirement of the weapon and of course bonus damage based on your skills/perks. Enemies get the same base damage scaling. This change is not retroactive so weapons in your inventory use the old range modifiers.
UPDATED: Pistols, rifles and heavy weapons have had their range increased. This change is not retroactive so weapons in your inventory use the old range stats
UPDATED: You can now mine any asteroid, not just asteroids in asteroid fields.
UPDATED: When purchasing ammo (ship and ground combat), the HUD now displays the maximum amount of ammo you can purchase in the pop-up window and the slider is set to only allow you to buy the maximum purchasable amount for that ammo type.
UPDATED: Second round of visual polish for the Dauntless - Added addition effects, lighting and grime.
UPDATED: Removed the siren effect on all decks except for the VATs - it was annoying while engaging the last part of the Dauntless experience.
UPDATED: All areas of random mission maps are now displayed on the mini-map. As you explore, areas that have been explored turn grey. Areas that have had mission objectives cleared turn green. the area you are currently exploring is black with a small compass indicator. Should help better undestand the scale of the area to be explored for missions.
UPDATED: Removed the option to generated a full party of team members. When you leave the Dauntless, you can choose only one team member and this was confusing and some felt that it was a waste of their time if they did not read the universe creation screen carefully. The loss of crew members after the Dauntless is a key story element for future story content.
UPDATED: Dialog with Dr. Rhamus in ruins revised to add additional dialog options.
UPDATED: Addition of a new mission when receiving your starter ship. You are now sent to the Trade Station to gather your team of mercenaries.
UPDATED: Loot rewards for the Halamis Facility are now more consistent. Reward tokens and faction are less random so you can better gauge the level of reward for a mission type.
Fixed - Can now use F1-F4 in inventory and character info screens to switch team member info when in space.
Fixed - System messages are now queued so all messages are displayed to the screen in order.
Fixed - When approaching the sun, you will now make an emergency stop.
Fixed - A major physics error that could send your ship careening into the sun or elsewhere when you collide with stations and other space objects.
Fixed - A display bugs when dragging team members between ship station slots.
Fixed - A bug in space when selecting objects that could cause objects in the foreground or another object from being selected.
Fixed - You can now re-scan object like planets and ships
Fixed - When leaving the Dauntless, in some cases, the selected final team member's equipment was unequipped and placed in the stash leaving them standing there in their underwear once they arrived in the ruins.
Fixed - Material error on the trade station - too shiny!
FIXED: Ambient audio slider renamed to Music Volume - main menu music volume is not set to your current settings.
FIXED: Combat movement when healing will no longer result in negative AP
FIXED: Movement cursors will no longer be left on the ground in some rare cases
FIXED: When moving, you can no longer loot items. Previously it would appear as if you could loot items from long distances.
FIXED: A bug where landing on a planet could take you to another planet landing location
FIXED: A long standing bug that could cause extra AP to be used in combat when healing targets that you walk to.
FIXED: A long standing bug that could cause your entire AP bar to drain while walking towards an enemy target for attack when wielding a melee weapon or fists.
FIXED: A bug introduced by the new navigation icons could cause the player to arrive at target and then rotate in an arbitrary direction when attacking with melee weapons by clicking on an enemy from a distance.
REMOVED - Motion blur micro-warp effect - replaced with a new effect.
PERFORMANCE: General optimizations for AI in all locations.

The video says it all. Thanks for being patient everyone!

https://youtu.be/rK08QMs7iWE

The video says it all. Thanks for being patient everyone!

https://youtu.be/rK08QMs7iWE

Need to rotate my ship so the other shields are facing fire. A hole in your shields is not good!

Not much progress to report this week, and no fancy videos because...well...space combat is feature complete. That doesn't mean it's bug free and balanced right now. Nope, not yet. Play testing has shown that space combat may be really difficult - really. So, I need to get that fixed. That and a list of bugs. Meanwhile, I thought I would share my TL~DR Space Combat Survival Guide. Here you go:


In the immortal words of Admiral Harnsteaad - "Dammit man! Their shields, destroy their shields or we all die!"

Power is everything. If you find that your capacitor is getting below 1/3 in combat, then you likely have a power problem. If this is the case, you will never break through enemy shields because your turrets will misfire reducing your DPS to the point where enemy shields are recharging at a higher rate than you can tear them down. What can you do?

1) Try adjusting your speed down first and see if that brings your capacitor back up.
2) If you shields are doing well, try lowering the power to your shields
3) If neither of these work, you likely have a bad power ratio meaning your power plant cannot keep up with your weapons.
4) If #3 - run!

What can you do about your power?
1) Find a better warp drive
2) Buy turrets that draw less power or, use light turrets and projectile weapons instead of beam weapons. A heavy beam turret is worthless if you don't have enough power to keep it firing.
3) Find more efficient shields

Ok - let's assume you have enough power to power your turrets now. This is a survival checklist for entering combat:
1) Turn your combat shields on and power them up
2) Set your directional shields forward
3) Approach the enemy with micro-warp (you will be kicked out of micro-warp when close enough for combat)
4) Once engaged - hit the pause key

5) Scan your enemies and find the most powerful - usually the one with the most missiles - and target them.
6) Un-pause and keep an eye on your capacitor - it should never get far below 1/3 - if it does adjust your power to speed and shields so your capacitor recharges at a higher rate.
7) Never let a depleted shield face the majority of fire. Keep rotating your ship to bring charged shields in line with the majority of the fire.
8) If you have a burnt shield, rotate another shield in the direction of fire and set your directional shields to the depleted shield to quickly recharge it - once it's far enough along, rotate that shield in the direction of fire.
9) Never use afterburners unless you are above 3/4 capacitor

Cargo carriers, Merchant ships and some Explorers are not really combat fighters. They need to "turtle" - that means speed is not important - reduce power to thrust to almost zero, center power to your shields and make sure you have enough power to your capacitor to maintain it. If your capacitor is maintaining, raise power to your shields a bit until you are balanced. Never use afterburners unless you have enough power.

One last word of advice - if your capacitor is guttering out, you will not win a fight, ever. You could sit there in a shield standoff forever!

Need to rotate my ship so the other shields are facing fire. A hole in your shields is not good!

Not much progress to report this week, and no fancy videos because...well...space combat is feature complete. That doesn't mean it's bug free and balanced right now. Nope, not yet. Play testing has shown that space combat may be really difficult - really. So, I need to get that fixed. That and a list of bugs. Meanwhile, I thought I would share my TL~DR Space Combat Survival Guide. Here you go:


In the immortal words of Admiral Harnsteaad - "Dammit man! Their shields, destroy their shields or we all die!"

Power is everything. If you find that your capacitor is getting below 1/3 in combat, then you likely have a power problem. If this is the case, you will never break through enemy shields because your turrets will misfire reducing your DPS to the point where enemy shields are recharging at a higher rate than you can tear them down. What can you do?

1) Try adjusting your speed down first and see if that brings your capacitor back up.
2) If you shields are doing well, try lowering the power to your shields
3) If neither of these work, you likely have a bad power ratio meaning your power plant cannot keep up with your weapons.
4) If #3 - run!

What can you do about your power?
1) Find a better warp drive
2) Buy turrets that draw less power or, use light turrets and projectile weapons instead of beam weapons. A heavy beam turret is worthless if you don't have enough power to keep it firing.
3) Find more efficient shields

Ok - let's assume you have enough power to power your turrets now. This is a survival checklist for entering combat:
1) Turn your combat shields on and power them up
2) Set your directional shields forward
3) Approach the enemy with micro-warp (you will be kicked out of micro-warp when close enough for combat)
4) Once engaged - hit the pause key

5) Scan your enemies and find the most powerful - usually the one with the most missiles - and target them.
6) Un-pause and keep an eye on your capacitor - it should never get far below 1/3 - if it does adjust your power to speed and shields so your capacitor recharges at a higher rate.
7) Never let a depleted shield face the majority of fire. Keep rotating your ship to bring charged shields in line with the majority of the fire.
8) If you have a burnt shield, rotate another shield in the direction of fire and set your directional shields to the depleted shield to quickly recharge it - once it's far enough along, rotate that shield in the direction of fire.
9) Never use afterburners unless you are above 3/4 capacitor

Cargo carriers, Merchant ships and some Explorers are not really combat fighters. They need to "turtle" - that means speed is not important - reduce power to thrust to almost zero, center power to your shields and make sure you have enough power to your capacitor to maintain it. If your capacitor is maintaining, raise power to your shields a bit until you are balanced. Never use afterburners unless you have enough power.

One last word of advice - if your capacitor is guttering out, you will not win a fight, ever. You could sit there in a shield standoff forever!

Well, some of you did.

Many of you have asked that I remove the constraint of flying only on a 2D plane in space. For a long time I didn't want commit to this until I had combat in and started play testing the system. I'm happy to say I woke up this morning at 5 AM with an idea that fixed a few problems I had with vector math related to space combat and decided to implement it. The combat patch will include full 3D flight for space exploration and combat.

https://youtu.be/lsVGo2-QXO4

Thank you all for your feedback. As always, I'm listening!

Well, some of you did.

Many of you have asked that I remove the constraint of flying only on a 2D plane in space. For a long time I didn't want commit to this until I had combat in and started play testing the system. I'm happy to say I woke up this morning at 5 AM with an idea that fixed a few problems I had with vector math related to space combat and decided to implement it. The combat patch will include full 3D flight for space exploration and combat.

https://youtu.be/lsVGo2-QXO4

Thank you all for your feedback. As always, I'm listening!

This week I am finally feature, code and content complete for the Space Combat update. Now it's just play testing, bug fixing and once everything is stable and bug free, I'll get the update posted for everyone.

https://youtu.be/dY1fwJGRbrM

This week I worked on the Incursion mission system. Incursion missions take place randomly when you are exploring in space. Stations and AI ships in the system will offer you a reward if you can defeat hostile ships in a specific area. You get a cash reward, faction and of course loot when you defeat the incursion. These missions are temporary and if you dock or land on a planet, the incursion will not be there the next time you enter space. They do persist between save games - so if you have an active incursion and save your game while in space, they will be active the next time you load your save.

Of course, there will be more mission types for Alpha. Once Alpha is released the plan is to add more detailed mission types - an example would be:

You receive a distress signal from a ship orbiting a planet in the current system. You accept the mission and travel to the ship and defeat a group of ships attacking the AI that contacted you. You could then be given another mission to rescue the remaining crew on a nearby planet. Once that mission is resolved, the AI may send you to another sector to take another task.

The mission system is quite powerful and procedural missions like this will keep the game alive long after the main story is completed. In sandbox mode, these missions will be the backbone of exploration.

The other big task this week was Station AI. Stations now launch local ships that mine local asteroid fields. It's just the first of several AI tasks local systems will be performing that will make systems feel alive and populated.

That's all I have for this week. Now it's just a matter of crushing a list of bugs, play testing and making sure everything is stable for the update. Thanks for being patient everyone!

This week I am finally feature, code and content complete for the Space Combat update. Now it's just play testing, bug fixing and once everything is stable and bug free, I'll get the update posted for everyone.

https://youtu.be/dY1fwJGRbrM

This week I worked on the Incursion mission system. Incursion missions take place randomly when you are exploring in space. Stations and AI ships in the system will offer you a reward if you can defeat hostile ships in a specific area. You get a cash reward, faction and of course loot when you defeat the incursion. These missions are temporary and if you dock or land on a planet, the incursion will not be there the next time you enter space. They do persist between save games - so if you have an active incursion and save your game while in space, they will be active the next time you load your save.

Of course, there will be more mission types for Alpha. Once Alpha is released the plan is to add more detailed mission types - an example would be:

You receive a distress signal from a ship orbiting a planet in the current system. You accept the mission and travel to the ship and defeat a group of ships attacking the AI that contacted you. You could then be given another mission to rescue the remaining crew on a nearby planet. Once that mission is resolved, the AI may send you to another sector to take another task.

The mission system is quite powerful and procedural missions like this will keep the game alive long after the main story is completed. In sandbox mode, these missions will be the backbone of exploration.

The other big task this week was Station AI. Stations now launch local ships that mine local asteroid fields. It's just the first of several AI tasks local systems will be performing that will make systems feel alive and populated.

That's all I have for this week. Now it's just a matter of crushing a list of bugs, play testing and making sure everything is stable for the update. Thanks for being patient everyone!