Ahoy Cosmoteers! Did you know that you can try out new features and improvements early by helping test out "release candidate" preview builds? Here's how:

First, open Cosmoteer's game properties on Steam by clicking the gear icon and selecting Properties.


Then, click on the Betas tab and select the unstable branch from the dropdown.


Steam will then automatically download the latest "release candidate" build of Cosmoteer (if any) which may have new features and improvements for you to try out and test. Please be aware that these builds may be very buggy! (The branch is called "unstable" for a reason!) Please report any issues with release candidate builds on the Cosmoteer Discord in the #dev-updates channel (I will usually make a thread in #dev-updates specific to the release candidate) or use the in-game feedback report feature (F11).

The plan from now on is that (almost) every Friday there will be either a new "release candidate" to test (only for those who wish to opt-in) or a new "stable release" based on the previous Friday's release candidate (for everyone). Additional release candidates may be released throughout the week between the initial release candidate and the stable release as necessary. Release candidates and stable releases will generally alternate Fridays so that every two weeks there will be a new stable release made available for everyone.

And as of the Friday of this post, there is a new release candidate (0.21.1 RC1) ready for testing! Here are all the changes and improvements it has:

• Greatly improved performance when there are a lot of "junk" ships, such as with many late-game saves.
  
• Upgraded to Microsoft .NET 7, which may further slightly improve overall performance. (Please let me know if you have any crashes or other issues playing Cosmoteer, especially if you are using Windows 7 or 8.)
  
• When loading blueprints from a saved ship design into the ship editor, you will now be given options to also load that ship's paint design, crew roles, crew assignments, and/or resource assignments. (When pasting instead of replacing, the paint and role options will not be available.)
  
• The game will no longer slow down automatically when an enemy is detected if there are already enemies within detection range.
  
• Added options to turn off the crew and resource assignment arrows for non-selected crew and resource rooms. These options are in the dropdown menu in both the crew and resource management screens.
  
• It is now possible to salvage your own ships by holding the Ctrl key.
  
• You must now hold Ctrl to delete damaged parts because they do not refund full resources.
  
• Multiplayer lobbies will now be named using the format "A-123" instead of a randomly-generated station name.
  
• The light size toggle for the new exterior lights is now changeable in the ship editor just like the color already is.
  
• If the player's ship is too far from a station to hire crew, the user interface for doing so will be disabled and a message will be shown to explain.
  
• Damage scaling based on difficulty level no longer applies to damage (or salvage) done to junk.
  
• When playing on Imagineer economic difficulty, crew can now be hired from stations at zero cost and as if the player had maximum fame.
  
• Ion Beam Prisms will no longer redirect incoming ion beams when powered off. This fixes an exploit where it was possible to aim a prism and then power it off to reduce its command point usage.
  
• It is now possible to attack a ship that you are already following.
  
• It is no longer possible for the host to force start a Career mode game if not all players are ready.
  
• Added a warning when VSync is enabled while also using a Minimum Target F.P.S. of 60, which is known to cause performance issues.
  
• Clearing debris in Creative Mode will no longer remove jump gates.
  
• Added 15 new faction ships and stations.
  
• Miscellaneous updates to several dozen existing ships.
  
• Various updates to the existing language translations. (Thanks community translators!)
  
• Bugfix: Loading a ship design from the ship editor was not properly loading crew roles and assignments.
  
• Bugfix: AI ships were over-emphasizing the firepower of each potential target ship compared to its distance.
  
• Bugfix: AI ships were over-estimating the firepower of ships with ion prisms.
  
• Bugfix: The "ALL HANDS LOST" game over message would be displayed when the player's control room was destroyed even if they still had crew.
  
• Bugfix: Trying to upload some ship fleets to the Steam Workshop could result in an error if the ship file chosen for the preview image was too large.
  
• Bugfix: When a ship didn't have any parts, its mass would be shown as 1.0 tonnes.
  
• The title screen logo ship was missing a door. (Literally unplayable.)

Cosmoteer update 0.21.0 is now available! This is a small feature update that adds two varieties of aesthetic roof lights with configurable colors, plus a handful of bug fixes.

I am hard at work on performance optimizations and the upcoming "crew do construction" feature, but I wanted to get the above small update out in the meantime. Thanks for your ongoing patience!

Full patch notes:

• Added an "Exterior Light", a 1x1 part that brightens the roof around it with customizable color and size. Has no functional benefit.
  
• Added an "Exterior Headlight", a 1x1 part that brightens the roof in a specific direction with customizable color and size. Has no functional benefit.
  
• In blueprint mode when you have a ship design loaded that has parts whose blueprints haven't been purchased yet, the red text on the button will now say "MISSING PART BLUEPRINTS" instead of "MISSING BLUEPRINTS".
  
• Changed the default hotkey for deleting all doors to Shift+Del (from Ctrl+Del) so that it doesn't conflict with holding Ctrl to confirm deletion of parts that only give a partial refund.
  
• A.I. ships will now use any attack distance and rotation saved with their design when above 50% health.
  
• Added nine new built-in ships: Erponis, Eviscerator Reborn, Intrepid, Klepht, Scintillator, Yuhina, Daedalus, Goshawk, and Spectre.
  
• Miscellaneous updates to other existing built-in ships.
  
• Bugfix: Crash with error message "An item with the same key has already been added" that could occur in some circumstances when issuing a command after a ship splits into multiple pieces.
  
• Bugfix: Crash when right-click on a non-building part with the "grab" tool selected in build mode. (Currently only affects mods with non-buildable parts.)
  
• Bugfix: Some saved games could fail to load if they were saved while crew are salvaging ships.
  
• Bugfix: In some circumstances it was possible to lose all crew in Career mode without triggering an "ALL HANDS LOST" game over message.
  
• Bugfix: Some sprites (such as batteries in factories) were being rendered in the incorrect location when the room is flipped.
  
• Bugfix: Dragging a box to select ship parts was not selecting mining lasers along with other weapons.
  
• Modding: Added a 'UIColor' part component which allows the player to pick a color from a color wheel. It works very similarly to UIToggle and UITrigger.
  
• Modding: TurretWeapon and FixedWeapon no longer require an emitter. (Useful if the weapon doesn't actually shoot anything.)

• Bugfix: Random multiplayer desyncs caused by the ship's power/resource distribution A.I.
  
• Bugfix: Queuing a large number of junk parts for salvaging or floating resources for pick-up would cause the ship's crew to respond much more slowly to their own ship's needs. In particular, this could cause mining lasers to frequently run out of power when mining or salvaging large objects.
  
• Bugfix: Crashes with the error message "Unable to add character to the font atlas", most frequently occurring when using a high U.I. scale setting. (If you play with very high U.I. scaling then you might notice slightly fuzzy text due to this fix.)
  
• Bugfix: Rapidly toggling the galaxy map on and off would cause the player to get stuck viewing the galaxy map.
  
• Bugfix: Pirate bases could spawn very close to Hyper-Jump Gates, which would cause trade ships to refuse to jump out of the gate.
  
• Bugfix: Pressing Ctrl+A while using the selection tool in Creative Mode would not select all floating resources.
  
• Added three new built-in ship designs that will spawn in Career mode: Iconoclast (Monolith 10), Haymaker (Monolith 12), and Orion (Cabal 18).
  
• A handful of other ship updates.
  
• Updated Tractor Beam VFX.

Bugfix: Ships were often not awarding fame when destroyed.

Bugfix: Unable to transfer crew between ships. (This was a bug in patch 0.20.34)

Happy new year!

• Added several 1x3 fade decals.
  
• H.E. Missiles, Nukes, and Explosive Charges now show their damage stat as "Max Damage" to make it clearer that the damage is a theoretical maximum and not guaranteed.
  
• The nuclear and biohazard decals are now properly centered.
  
• Bugfix: Exploit in multiplayer where it was possible to transfer crew to players to give them more crew than their fame was supposed to allow them to have.
  
• Bugfix: Exploit where crew inside ships during a hyper-jump didn't count against the player's maximum crew as determined by their fame.
  
• Bugfix: After deleting a sun in Creative Mode, and sun damage vfx on ships within the sun's damage zone would not disappear.
  
• Bugfix: On Civilian difficulty, flying crew belonging to the player's ships could still be killed.
  
• Bugfix: Area of effect weapons such as H.E. Missiles and Nukes were incapable of destroying ship parts on Admiral and Grand Admiral difficulties.
  
• Bugfix: Steam Cloud saves weren't working if the user's Saved Games folder was in a non-standard location. For new users, Cosmoteer will now ask the operating system for the location of the Saved Games folder instead of assuming it is located in the user's home folder. If there is already an existing Saved Games folder within the user's home folder, it will continue to be used, meaning that cloud saves will continue to not work if they were not yet working. If you are one of those users, you will need to temporarily move or rename the Cosmoteer folder inside of Saved Games, which will force the game to switch to the new location. Then move or copy over the contents to the new location.

Bugfix: Freeze when clicking on the "Missions (Continued)" tutorial while the U.I. Scaling is at 175%.

Bugfix: Ion Prisms without explicit targets were having their output strength unintentionally scaled with combat difficulty in Career mode.

Bugfix: In rare instances, it would become impossible to save the game after jumping to a new star system.

Bugfix: Ion Prisms were non-functional in Career mode when playing on Civilian difficulty.