Cosmoteer update 0.21.3 is now available! This update has a bunch of miscellaneous quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes. Enjoy!

(For those of you hungry for new features, rest assured! A new "Hyperdrive Beacon" ship part is nearing completion and *should* hopefully be in the next update two weeks from today. You can check out a preview of it on the discord. I am also working on the "crew do ship construction and repairs" feature, for which I am hoping to be able to release a test/preview build within the next couple of weeks. Thanks for your continued patience and support!)

• In Career mode, it is now possible to switch your view to any star system in which you have ships by opening the galaxy map and clicking on the star system. (Star systems in which you have ships will have a blue rocket icon.) In multiplayer, this will transfer the view of *all* players and thus requires a unanimous vote.
  
• Losing all your ships in Career mode will no longer trigger the "ALL HANDS LOST" message if you still have ships in other star systems.
  
• Updated visuals for fire VFX and exterior icons.
  
• New and updated built-in ships:
  - Added two new Monolith ships: Gavel and Sledgehammer.
  - Added two new Fringe ships: Pinion and Splinetooth.
  - Miscellaneous updates to other existing built-in ships.
  
• Lobbies are now separated into "Co-op" and "PvP" categories. You can only host Career and Creative mode games in Co-op lobbies, and you can only host Elimination, Arena, and Domination games in PvP lobbies.
  
• The name used for you in multiplayer can now be customized in the Miscellaneous settings tab. By default your Steam name will be used.
  
• Crew can now enter airlocks at higher speeds, which makes them much better at entering when ships are moving.
  
• Crew now don't slow down quite as much when picking up floating resources, making them just a bit faster at gathering.
  
• Resources thrown out airlocks now have a little bit of random velocity variation.
  
• You can now double-click missions to accept and redeem them.
  
• Ctrl+Q and Ctrl+E are now default hotkeys for decreasing and increasing the game speed. (Page down and page up still work too.)
  
• Added a "Lock Camera To Ship" setting for Direct Control Mode that, if disabled, will allow you to control the camera normally while in Direct Control Mode (except you can't use keys to control the camera). Disabled is the new default behavior. Enabling will revert to the old behavior.
  
• Reduced the size of the red eye focus icon when attacking.
  
• Crew O2 warning icons are no longer clickable and thus will no longer block clicks to anything underneath.
  
• In Creative Mode, you can now press Ctrl+Shift+V as a shortcut for restocking all resources.
  
• When starting a multiplayer game (or resyncing after a desync), a percentage will now be shown to indicate progress sending the game data.
  
• Added a new paint decal (plain68).
  
• Bugfix: When a player left a multiplayer Career game, all their ships would become enemies with all neutral ships.
  
• Bugfix: Railgun accuracy had unintentionally been greatly reduced.
  
• Bugfix: Rare crash when jumping to a star system.
  
• Bugfix: Very rare AI-related crash.
  
• Bugfix: Multiplayer desyncs caused by A.I. ships.
  
• Bugfix: Multiplayer desyncs caused by Tractor Beams.
  
• Bugfix: Copy/pasting resource storage rooms wasn't properly adding their resource type designations to the undo history.
  
• Bugfix: It was impossible without zooming in to jump to hyper-jump beacons within sight of the player's other ships if ship blips were turned off.
  
• Bugfix: When using the "FPS Follows Cursor" framerate display option, the FPS was being rendered farther from the cursor than was intended.
  
• Modding: Almost any sound effect can now play a sound from a random list by using the syntax 'RandomSounds = ["sound1.wav", sound2.wav"]'.
  
• Modding: Almost all sound effects can now be given a fixed or random start time measured in seconds from the beginning of the sound file. Use the syntax 'Start = 1.0' or 'Start = [1.0, 2.0]' depending on whether you want a fixed start time or random range.
  
• Modding: In-game sound effects with a MaxConcurrent set can now be limited to a maximum per-ship instead of a global maximum by setting 'ConcurrencyMode = PerShip'. ('ConcurrencyMode = Global' is the default.)

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.21.3 is now available for testing! (See this post for info on how to test release candidates.)

This updates contains miscellaneous fixes and improvements.

RC1:

• In Career mode, it is now possible to switch your view to any star system in which you have ships by opening the galaxy map and clicking on the star system. (Star systems in which you have ships will have a blue rocket icon.) In multiplayer, this will transfer the view of *all* players and thus requires a unanimous vote.
  
• Losing all your ships in Career mode will no longer trigger the "ALL HANDS LOST" message if you still have ships in other star systems.
  
• Updated visuals for fire VFX and exterior icons.
  
• New and updated built-in ships:
  - Added two new Monolith ships: Gavel and Sledgehammer.
  - Added two new Fringe ships: Pinion and Splinetooth.
  - Miscellaneous updates to other existing built-in ships.
  
• Lobbies are now separated into "Co-op" and "PvP" categories. You can only host Career and Creative mode games in Co-op lobbies, and you can only host Elimination, Arena, and Domination games in PvP lobbies.
  
• The name used for you in multiplayer can now be customized in the Miscellaneous settings tab. By default your Steam name will be used.
  
• Crew can now enter airlocks at higher speeds, which makes them much better at entering when ships are moving.
  
• Crew now don't slow down quite as much when picking up floating resources, making them just a bit faster at gathering.
  
• Resource thrown out airlocks now have a little bit of random velocity variation.
  
• You can now double-click missions to accept and redeem them.
  
• Ctrl+Q and Ctrl+E are now default hotkeys for decreasing and increasing the game speed. (Page down and page up still work too.)
  
• Added a "Lock Camera To Ship" setting for Direct Control Mode that, if disabled, will allow you to control the camera normally while in Direct Control Mode (except you can't use keys to control the camera). Disabled is the new default behavior. Enabling will revert to the old behavior.
  
• Reduced the size of the red eye focus icon when attacking.
  
• Crew O2 warning icons are no longer clickable and thus will no longer block clicks to anything underneath.
  
• In Creative Mode, you can now press Ctrl+Shift+V as a shortcut for restocking all resources.
  
• When starting a multiplayer game (or resyncing after a desync), a percentage will now be shown to indicate progress sending the game data.
  
• Added a new paint decal (plain68).
  
• Bugfix: When a player left a multiplayer Career game, all their ships would become enemies with all neutral ships.
  
• Bugfix: Railgun accuracy had unintentionally been greatly reduced.
  
• Bugfix: Rare crash when jumping to a star system.
  
• Bugfix: Very rare AI-related crash.
  
• Bugfix: Multiplayer desyncs caused by A.I. ships.
  
• Bugfix: Copy/pasting resource storage rooms wasn't properly adding their resource type designations to the undo history.
  
• Bugfix: It was impossible without zooming in to jump to hyper-jump beacons within sight of the player's other ships if ship blips were turned off.
  
• Bugfix: When using the "FPS Follows Cursor" framerate display option, the FPS was being rendered farther from the cursor than was intended.
  
• Modding: Almost any sound effect can now play a sound from a random list by using the syntax 'RandomSounds = ["sound1.wav", sound2.wav"]'.
  
• Modding: Almost all sound effects can now be given a fixed or random start time measured in seconds from the beginning of the sound file. Use the syntax 'Start = 1.0' or 'Start = [1.0, 2.0]' depending on whether you want a fixed start time or random range.
  
• Modding: In-game sound effects with a MaxConcurrent set can now be limited to a maximum per-ship instead of a global maximum by setting 'ConcurrencyMode = PerShip'. ('ConcurrencyMode = Global' is the default.)

RC2:

• Fixed RC1 crash caused by Tractor Beams.

RC3:

• Bugfix: Multiplayer desyncs caused by Tractor Beams.
  
• Modding: Restored the "fire" ship sprite layer.

• Bugfix: Crash when forfeiting a PvP multiplayer battle with the view zoomed out with ship colors set to "Random Per Player".
  
• Bugfix: Crash for a very small number of players when launching the app.
  
• Bugfix: Crash caused by being subscribed to Steam Workshop ships.

Cosmoteer update 0.21.2 is now available! This update has a bunch of miscellaneous quality-of-life improvements, balance changes, and bug fixes. Enjoy!

• Railgun balance changes:
  - Increased Loader mass from 12 to 24.
  - Increased Accelerator and Launcher mass from 24 to 36.
  
• Mine balance changes:
  - Halved iron/ammo cost to manufacture mines.
  - Increased health from 800 to 3200.
  - Increased the number of mine parts that can fit in a tile stack from 4 to 8.
  
• E.M.P. Missile balance changes:
  - Increased E.M.P. missile range from 600 to 700.
  
• Various new and updated built-in ships:
  - 5 new Monolith ships: Accoster, Ambuscader, Bombardier, Quickdraw, and Roughhouser.
  - 4 new Cabal ships: Astraeus, Aurelian, Ejecta, and Eos.
  - 8 new Imperium ships: Austral, Avicida, Black Knight, Elanine, Hercinia, Longspur, Ninox, and Skirath.
  - 8 new Fringe ships: Bigfoot, Chimney Slug, Clockwork, Junk Carver, Nutcracker, Sprocket, Streamliner, and Umbrage.
  - 1 new Medium Imperium Trade Station.
  - Miscellaneous updates to other existing built-in ships.
  
• Ships that are set to "junk" can no longer be controlled, which the U.I. now makes clear with a red icon on the HUD similar to the icon shown when the ship doesn't have enough command points.
  
• Delivery missions will no longer be shown if they don't have enough space to hold the requested resources.
  
• Mining lasers will no longer shoot at parts marked for salvaging when set to Hold Fire.
  
• Collateral damage from area-of-effect weapons will no longer damage neutral ships/stations. This should prevent accidentally damaging stations while trying to rescue them.
  
• Tweaked collision avoidance so that ships will be less likely to interfere with each other when flying around suns.
  
• Changed the default hotkey for toggling the "Toggle Auto Face Cursor" direct control mode option from Ctrl+F to Ctrl+Shift+F to reduce accidental presses.
  
• Ships owned by player can now be abandoned even if there are no crew on the ship.
  
• Added settings to turn off the flying crew and resource pick-up dotted lines.
  
• Using the "Load Ship (Replace Existing)" option in the ship editor will now automatically update the ship's flight direction to match the loaded ship.
  
• Increased the default number of auto-save, quick-save, and lost ship files from 10 to 25. (Only applies to new players.)
  
• Replaced the clock icon (shown next to a player's name in multiplayer when they are slowing the game down for everyone else) with a turtle icon.
  
• Bugfix: Crash in some very specific situations when transferring crew to a junked ship.
  
• Bugfix: Rare crash when jumping to a new star system.
  
• Bugfix: Occasional crashes almost immediately when a multiplayer game desyncs.
  
• Bugfix: After a multiplayer desync, any observers would become like "Player 1" but unable to actually control anything.
  
• Bugfix: On occasion, more crew than necessary could be assigned to deliver batteries.
  
• Bugfix: Ion Beam Prisms were very slow to change targets after destroying their current target.
  
• Bugfix: If a player gets disconnected from a multiplayer game while making an in-system hyper-jump, the jumping ship(s) would disappear until another player travels to near where it jumped to.
  
• Bugfix: Copying, rotating, and pasting groups of parts could break resource and crew assignments when done between non-rotatable parts.
  
• Bugfix: The "Break Formation To Attack" setting was not functioning at all.
  
• Bugfix: Missions that were redeemable at any trade station in a star system would also erroneously show star icons on faction bases.
  
• Bugfix: Typing multiplayer chat messages longer than the text box would cause the text to be offset the next time a chat message was typed.

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.21.2 is now available for testing! (See this post for info on how to test release candidates.)

This updates contains miscellaneous fixes and improvements.

• Railgun balance changes:
  - Decreased Loader cost from 12500 to 10000.
  - Decreased Accelerator and Launcher cost from 7500 to 5000.
  - Increased Loader mass from 12 to 24.
  - Increased Accelerator and Launcher mass from 24 to 36.
  
• Mine balance changes:
  - Halved iron/ammo cost to manufacture mines.
  - Increased health from 800 to 3200.
  - Increased the number of mine parts that can fit in a tile stack from 4 to 8.
  
• E.M.P. Missile balance changes:
  - Increased E.M.P. missile range from 600 to 700.
  
• Various new and updated built-in ships:
  - 5 new Monolith ships: Accoster, Ambuscader, Bombardier, Quickdraw, and Roughhouser.
  - 4 new Cabal ships: Astraeus, Aurelian, Ejecta, and Eos.
  - 8 new Imperium ships: Austral, Avicida, Black Knight, Elanine, Hercinia, Longspur, Ninox, and Skirath.
  - 8 new Fringe ships: Bigfoot, Chimney Slug, Clockwork, Junk Carver, Nutcracker, Sprocket, Streamliner, and Umbrage.
  - 1 new Medium Imperium Trade Station.
  - Miscellaneous updates to other existing built-in ships.
  
• Ships that are set to "junk" can no longer be controlled, which the U.I. now makes clear with a red icon on the HUD similar to the icon shown when the ship doesn't have enough command points.
  
• Delivery missions will no longer be shown if they don't have enough space to hold the requested resources.
  
• Mining lasers will no longer shoot at parts marked for salvaging when set to Hold Fire.
  
• Collateral damage from area-of-effect weapons will no longer damage neutral ships/stations. This should prevent accidentally damaging stations while trying to rescue them.
  
• Tweaked collision avoidance so that ships will be less likely to interfere with each other when flying around suns.
  
• Changed the default hotkey for toggling the "Toggle Auto Face Cursor" direct control mode option from Ctrl+F to Ctrl+Shift+F to reduce accidental presses.
  
• Ships owned by player can now be abandoned even if there are no crew on the ship.
  
• Added settings to turn off the flying crew and resource pick-up dotted lines.
  
• Using the "Load Ship (Replace Existing)" option in the ship editor will now automatically update the ship's flight direction to match the loaded ship.
  
• Increased the default number of auto-save, quick-save, and lost ship files from 10 to 25. (Only applies to new players.)
  
• Replaced the clock icon (shown next to a player's name in multiplayer when they are slowing the game down for everyone else) with a turtle icon.
  
• Bugfix: Crash in some very specific situations when transferring crew to a junked ship.
  
• Bugfix: Possible multiplayer desyncs caused by railguns.
  
• Bugfix: On occasion, more crew than necessary could be assigned to deliver batteries.
  
• Bugfix: Ion Beam Prisms were very slow to change targets after destroying their current target.
  
• Bugfix: If a player gets disconnected from a multiplayer game while making an in-system hyper-jump, the jumping ship(s) would disappear until another player travels to near where it jumped to.
  
• Bugfix: Copying, rotating, and pasting groups of parts could break resource and crew assignments when done between non-rotatable parts.
  
• Bugfix: The "Break Formation To Attack" setting was not functioning at all.
  
• Bugfix: Missions that were redeemable at any trade station in a star system would also erroneously show star icons on faction bases.
  
• Bugfix: Typing multiplayer chat messages longer than the text box would cause the text to be offset the next time a chat message was typed.

• Increased the default number of auto-save, quick-save, and lost ship files from 10 to 25.
  
• Bugfix: Crash in some very specific situations when transferring crew to a junked ship.
  
• Bugfix: Possible fix for multiplayer desyncs caused by Railguns.

Yesterday's 0.21.1 patch had a bug that would occasionally cause crashes during gameplay. This update should fix that bug.

Cosmoteer update 0.21.1 is now available! This update should significantly improve game performance for many players, especially with late-game saves that have a lot of "junk" floating around. Plus it's got a bunch of other fixes and quality-of-life improvements. Here's the full list:

• 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.
  
• Added the winning ships from the Feb. 2023 ship design contest. These ships will not spawn in Career mode but are available to use in Creative mode.
  
• 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.)

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.)