Cosmoteer release candidate 0.24.3 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 variety of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements.

Thanks for testing!

RC1:

• Added 3 new Monolith defense platforms: Chaingun, Deck Cannon, and Railgun.
  
• Added 1 new Cabal combat ship: Mebsuta.
  
• Added 3 new Cabal defense platforms: Dual Ion, Heavy Laser, and Point Defense.
  
• Added 1 new Imperium trade station: Large Imperium Trade Station II.
  
• Added 1 new Imperium defense platform: Heavy Laser.
  
• Added 2 new Fringe defense platforms: Flak and Large Cannon.
  
• Miscellaneous updates and tweaks to existing built-in ships.
  
• Crew will no longer be automatically unassigned from their bunk rooms if the path back to their room gets disconnected.
  
• Delivering resources to a station before accepting a delivery mission will now count those resources towards completion of that mission.
  
• Ships with diagonal flight directions should now be much better at strafing.
  
• Ships without an operational control room are now able to hail other nearby ships or stations up to 400 meters away.
  
• Point Defense turrets now have collision. (They are also slightly heavier as a result.)
  
• The "Any unsaved progress in the current game will be lost" confirmation dialog will now show how long it has been since the game was last saved and will also explain that Auto Save and Quick Save slots are shared between all game modes, are not synced to Steam Cloud, and will eventually be overwritten.
  
• The number of active mods will now be displayed in red on the "MODS" button on the title screen.
  
• New Creative Mode games now default to the starry black background, which will improve creation/load times.
  
• Cosmoteer will now wait for any in-progress Steam Workshop downloads to finish before loading game data. This should hopefully make it possible to use mods when playing on Geforce Now.
  
• The health bars in Elimination mode now looks less janky.
  
• The various part-specific tutorials (such as the cannons tutorial) will now only appear once the player has defeated their first enemy.
  
• The game speed can now be adjusted using hotkeys while the game is being saved.
  
• Bugfix: Crash if an explosion damages a shield and somehow destroys the shield generator itself on the very same tick. (Probably only possible with mods.)
  
• Bugfix: Crash if a saved game file was selected to load in multiplayer but was deleted outside of Cosmoteer before launching the game. An error message will now be shown instead.
  
• Bugfix: Redeeming multiple missions in rapid succession could cause the credits display to show more credits than the player actually has if any of the redeemed missions caused the player's faction reputation to rank up.
  
• Bugfix: Right-clicking on an enemy ship and dragging away from it to set a distance/direction would cause the rotation to be automatically changed even if a specific rotation was saved using "Save Attack Defaults".
  
• Bugfix: Command adjustment handles were clickable even when underneath other U.I. elements.
  
• Bugfix: Railguns were unwilling to shoot at junk ships and asteroids.
  
• Bugfix: Railguns were unwilling to shoot at structure tiles of enemy ships even when those structure tiles were explicitly targeted.
  
• Bugfix: Shields could sometimes fail to block a portion of sun damage.
  
• Bugfix: Resource delivery missions could be exploited by buying the required resources from the station *before* accepting the mission and then selling those same resources back to it after accepting the mission.
  
• Bugfix: Loading a Creative Mode game in multiplayer, saving over that saved game file, returning to the game setup screen, and relaunching without changing the saved game file would cause it to load the old original game data from before the file was overwritten.
  
• Bugfix: A recent Discord change broke the ability to drag ships straight from Discord into Cosmoteer. This should now work again.
  
• Bugfix: Typing long messages into text boxes and then deleting that text could cause the text insertion caret and any subsequently typed text to become offset.
  
• Bugfix: Minor graphical glitches caused by asteroid/megaroid 1x1 wedge tiles.

Ahoy Cosmoteers!

The Steam Awards have started again, and this year Cosmoteer is eligible for the "Labor of Love" award. Please consider nominating Cosmoteer! (I've been working on Cosmoteer for over TWELVE YEARS! If that's not a Labor of Love, then what is??)

Thank you for your consideration! :)
Walt

• Bugfix: Crash when loading multiplayer saves in single-player.
  
• Bugfix: Crash when starting a PvP multiplayer game if there are any observers or AI players.

Cosmoteer patch 0.24.2 is now available! This patch has a handful of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements.

Enjoy!

• All factory munition and resource storages now have roof hatches, allowing flying crew and Resource Collectors to access those storages from outside the ship.
  
• Ship control groups (F1-F8) will now be saved and restored for all players when loading a multiplayer saved game or resyncing after a desync.
  
• Resource type filters for each ship are now synchronized between all players in multiplayer and will be properly restored when loading a saved game or resyncing from a desync.
  
• Reduced mining laser oscillation by 1/3 to account for its recently increased range.
  
• Increased the search range for new fires to put out after a crew finishes putting out a fire or the part they were on the way to was destroyed. This should make crew less likely to drop fire extinguishers when there are still fires to be put out.
  
• Weapons will now be willing to fire through asteroids/megaroids when targeting other asteroids/megaroids.
  
• Stations whose Hyper-Jump Beacons were destroyed will now become jumpable again once you travel far enough from them such that they despawn from the game simulation, at which point they are assumed to repair themselves. (Previously you would have to return to the station for them to become jumpable again.)
  
• Using "Clear Everything" in Creative Mode will now clear all dead crew and particle effects.
  
• The four buttons at the bottom of the Battle Helper will now resize themselves if necessary to fit their text.
  
• You can now press the Spacebar while the game is saving to pause (or unpause) once the save is finished.
  
• Added a title-screen tip that explains how to change the difficulty level while playing.
  
• Bugfix: Multiplayer desyncs that could be caused in some situations when a part is salvaged and the ship being salvaged is selected by one or some but not all of the players.
  
• Bugfix: Point Defenses were unable to shoot down projectiles fired from ships that have since become junk.
  
• Bugfix: Salvaging a storage pod and then flying far enough away from it would cause the storage pod to unintentionally respawn with all of its resources after returning to it.
  
• Bugfix: In certain situations, crew could get "stuck" trying to construct wedge armor or structure if it was impossible to start construction on the wedge without splitting the ship.
  
• Bugfix: Salvaging (without actually deconstructing) structure wedges could cause "temporary" structure tiles to spawn in their place which the ship's crew would then immediately try to deconstruct.
  
• Bugfix: Ships with Resource Collectors would spawn with crew already manning the Resource Collectors, even though Resource Collectors aren't supposed to be manned until they have a target to collect.
  
• Bugfix: If a Chaingun with a specific aim direction is copied and then pasted over another Chaingun that had a different specific aim direction, then that Chaingun would display multiple aim locations when selected.
  
• Bugfix: Copying a Chaingun with a specific aim location, mirroring/flipping it, and then pasting it could cause the aim location of the new Chaingun to be incorrectly mirrored.
  
• Bugfix: Transferring resources to a friendly ship wouldn't cancel properly if the destination ship was destroyed or removed.
  
• Bugfix: If the game is saved and reloaded in between a thruster's ship losing command and the thruster shutting down as a result, then upon reloading the saved game the thruster would appear to fire indefinitely but exert no actual force or use any power.
  
• Bugfix: If the save data for a particular star system is corrupted or unloadable for whatever reason, trying to travel to or load it will no longer crash the game. Instead, the star system will be regenerated from scratch.
  
• Bugfix: Hovering the mouse cursor over the "NO WORK NEEDED" button would then prevent the construction cost breakdown from being displayed once work is actually needed.
  
• Modding: All non-grid resource storage components now support optional 'ExternalPickUpLocation' and 'ExternalDeliveryLocation' parameters which will set the location where crew must go when picking up or delivering resources from outside the ship. (These override the existing 'PickUpLocation' and 'DeliveryLocation' parameters when picking up or delivering externally.)
  
• Modding: Mod changes that would previously cause saved games to fail to load with the error message "Unexpectedly not standing on a part" will now instead simply cause those crew to be ejected into space instead of preventing the save from being loaded.

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.24.2 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 variety of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements.

Thanks for testing!

RC1:

• All factory munition and resource storages now have roof hatches, allowing flying crew and Resource Collectors to access those storages from outside the ship.
  
• Ship control groups (F1-F8) will now be saved and restored for all players when loading a multiplayer saved game or resyncing after a desync.
  
• Resource type filters for each ship are now synchronized between all players in multiplayer and will be properly restored when loading a saved game or resyncing from a desync.
  
• Reduced mining laser oscillation by 1/3 to account for its recently increased range.
  
• Increased the search range for new fires to put out after a crew finishes putting out a fire or the part they were on the way to was destroyed. This should make crew less likely to drop fire extinguishers when there are still fires to be put out.
  
• Weapons will now be willing to fire through asteroids/megaroids when targeting other asteroids/megaroids.
  
• Stations whose Hyper-Jump Beacons were destroyed will now become jumpable again once you travel far enough from them such that they despawn from the game simulation, at which point they are assumed to repair themselves. (Previously you would have to return to the station for them to become jumpable again.)
  
• Using "Clear Everything" in Creative Mode will now clear all dead crew and particle effects.
  
• The four buttons at the bottom of the Battle Helper will now resize themselves if necessary to fit their text.
  
• You can now press the Spacebar while the game is saving to pause (or unpause) once the save is finished.
  
• Added a title-screen tip that explains how to change the difficulty level while playing.
  
• Bugfix: Multiplayer desyncs that could be caused in some situations when a part is salvaged and the ship being salvaged is selected by one or some but not all of the players.
  
• Bugfix: Point Defenses were unable to shoot down projectiles fired from ships that have since become junk.
  
• Bugfix: Salvaging a storage pod and then flying far enough away from it would cause the storage pod to unintentionally respawn with all of its resources after returning to it.
  
• Bugfix: In certain situations, crew could get "stuck" trying to construct wedge armor or structure if it was impossible to start construction on the wedge without splitting the ship.
  
• Bugfix: Salvaging (without actually deconstructing) structure wedges could cause "temporary" structure tiles to spawn in their place which the ship's crew would then immediately try to deconstruct.
  
• Bugfix: Ships with Resource Collectors would spawn with crew already manning the Resource Collectors, even though Resource Collectors aren't supposed to be manned until they have a target to collect.
  
• Bugfix: If a Chaingun with a specific aim direction is copied and then pasted over another Chaingun that had a different specific aim direction, then that Chaingun would display multiple aim locations when selected.
  
• Bugfix: Copying a Chaingun with a specific aim location, mirroring/flipping it, and then pasting it could cause the aim location of the new Chaingun to be incorrectly mirrored.
  
• Bugfix: Transferring resources to a friendly ship wouldn't cancel properly if the destination ship was destroyed or removed.
  
• Bugfix: If the game is saved and reloaded in between a thruster's ship losing command and the thruster shutting down as a result, then upon reloading the saved game the thruster would appear to fire indefinitely but exert no actual force or use any power.
  
• Bugfix: If the save data for a particular star system is corrupted or unloadable for whatever reason, trying to travel to or load it will no longer crash the game. Instead, the star system will be regenerated from scratch.
  
• Bugfix: Hovering the mouse cursor over the "NO WORK NEEDED" button would then prevent the construction cost breakdown from being displayed once work is actually needed.
  
• Modding: All non-grid resource storage components now support optional 'ExternalPickUpLocation' and 'ExternalDeliveryLocation' parameters which will set the location where crew must go when picking up or delivering resources from outside the ship. (These override the existing 'PickUpLocation' and 'DeliveryLocation' parameters when picking up or delivering externally.)
  
• Modding: Mod changes that would previously cause saved games to fail to load with the error message "Unexpectedly not standing on a part" will now instead simply cause those crew to be ejected into space instead of preventing the save from being loaded.

Bugfix: Crash with error message "The specified sink does not belong to this ship", usually caused by ships with Chainguns splitting in two.

Cosmoteer patch 0.24.1 is now available! This patch has a bunch of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements.

Enjoy!

• Added 3 new Monolith ships: Broadsword, Conciliator, and Intercessor.
  
• Added 3 new Fringe ships: Can Opener, Graverobber, and Unclassified Misdemeanor.
  
• Added 1 new Cabal ship: Luminary.
  
• A handful of other miscellaneous ship updates.
  
• Increased Mining Laser range from 100 to 150.
  
• Ships will now "lock in" their final rotation when they get close enough to their intended destination to automatically switch to strafe mode. This should reduce issues that some ships have when trying to stop at their final destination.
  
• Updated the Hyper-Coil graphics to better stand out from regular Coils.
  
• Fires can now spread to all tiles on the Chaingun.
  
• Fires will now be rendered above the bullets in the Chaingun Magazine.
  
• The Battle Helper in Creative Mode now shows the total cost and crew for each team with more than one ship.
  
• Holding the Shift key when clicking Load Game will now bypass the confirmation popup.
  
• Double-clicking an Airlock now selects all Airlocks on the ship regardless of their rotation.
  
• Changed the default hotkey for "Launch Mines" from N to Ctrl+N to prevent it from conflicting with the hailing hotkey.
  
• Changed the "Restrict Shape Mode" hotkey from Ctrl to Slash to prevent it from conflicting with other hotkeys.
  
• The "Cancel Hyper-Jump" hotkey has been removed by default to prevent it from conflicting with other hotkeys. (It can still be manually added.)
  
• The Fire Extinguisher tooltip and tutorial now mention that they have limited capacity.
  
• Bugfix: Possible fix for multiplayer desyncs caused by making in-system hyper-jumps.
  
• Bugfix: Possible fix for some other random-seeming multiplayer desyncs in Career mode.
  
• Bugfix: If station (or trade ship) crew ran low on oxygen while carrying resources as part of a trade, this could cause the crew to "steal" those resources and prevent the player from getting paid or given mission credit for those resources.
  
• Bugfix: Trade ships whose resources had been purchased by the player but not yet delivered or in transit (usually because construction isn't ready to begin yet) were able to fly off before delivering those resources. This could cause construction to fail to complete.
  
• Bugfix: Extreme lag spikes in Career mode caused by loading nearby NPC ships.
  
• Bugfix: Penetration damage wasn't being correctly calculated versus certain types of ship parts, resulting in less damage than was intended.
  
• Bugfix: Mines targeted on junk or asteroids were not detonating in proximity to enemies.
  
• Bugfix: Exploding ship parts such as reactors wouldn't damage nearby ships if the destruction of that part caused its own ship to become junk.
  
• Bugfix: When crew construction was disabled, sometimes an insufficient number of resources would get consumed if some of those resources were being held in storages that were being deconstructed.
  
• Bugfix: Crew and resource assignments could break when copy/pasting parts while rotating or flipping them and the destination part wasn't rotatable or flippable.
  
• Bugfix: It was possible to enable "I Hate Salvaging" without having "I Hate Crew Construction" enabled by disabling "I Hate Crew Construction" after enabling "I Hate Salvaging".
  
• Bugfix: In the multiplayer pre-game setup screen, switching game modes could cause observers to appear to become non-observers on non-host computers.
  
• Bugfix: Hotkey conflicts weren't being properly detected in all cases for part abilities that were shown even when the part is not selected.
  
• Bugfix: The crew priorities for Storage Bays were being listed under "Storage Bay (4)" even though they applied to all Storage Bays.
  
• Bugfix: The "Mass" stat for all megaroid parts was being displayed as 1/16 their actual mass.
  
• Bugfix: The "Mass" stat for the Missile Launcher was incorrectly showing 6.0 tonnes instead of its actual mass of 8.0 tonnes.
  
• Modding: FlexResourceGrid now supports a 'OverridePriorityKey' parameter.
  
• Modding: ResourceConsumer, FlexResourceGrid, and PartCrew components now all support a 'OverridePriorityName' parameter. (This was supposed to already be supported for ResourceConsumer and PartCrew but would crash when used.)
  
• Modding: The PenetrationRectType parameter is now unused and can be safely removed.

Exactly one Earth-year ago (that's 365 Earth-days ago for you non-Earthlings), Cosmoteer launched in Early Access on Steam!

Cosmoteer has been a huge success, and I want to take this moment to thank all of you for supporting Cosmoteer over this past year. So here's a brief video message from me to you:
https://youtu.be/AXJA8Vasrgs

A year ago feels like yesterday, and yet so much has happened in the Cosmoverse! Like you, I wish that development of big new features had been able to start sooner and progress faster, and yet I'm still proud of the many accomplishments our little team has pulled off so far! Let's take a brief look back at some of the many improvements made to Cosmoteer this past year:

• Hundreds of bugs fixed (too many to count!), including crashes, multiplayer desyncs, and various gameplay bugs. (Please keep reporting all the bugs you run into! The #1 way to get a bug fixed is to report it, ideally with a saved game that demonstrates the bug.)
  
  
• Hundreds of quality-of-life improvements, like ship-wide resource limits and building new ships from scratch in Career mode.
  
  
• A couple hundred new built-in ships (219 if my count is correct) across all four factions.
  
  
• Major improvements to performance and multiplayer connection reliability. Although there's still plenty of room for improvement, the performance of late-game Career mode has been greatly improved over the past year. And multiplayer connections are also much more reliable and less likely to disconnect than they were at launch.
  
  
• Over a dozen new ship parts, including the Chaingun, the Resource Collector, the Hyper-Jump Beacon, and a handful of aesthetic-focused parts such as roof lights and armor/structure hybrids.
  
  
• Improvements to the non-English language translations, including a complete re-translation of Simplified Chinese.
  
  
• "Crew Construction", a major new game mechanic where crew perform all ship construction and repairs by manually delivering resources and zapping ship parts into existence. This creates a more immersive experience and allows for more creative and emergent strategies.

And the best is yet to come! I'm excited to announce that work on "Career 2.0" is now fully underway, which we are actually planning to split into *two* big updates:

• "Career 2.0": This first update will focus on creating a much greater variety of content, including many new types of misions and new types of environments such as black holes and nebulas that will affect how you design and play. We're hoping to release this update early-ish next year (2024).
  
  
• "Career 2.5": This update will focus on faction-vs-faction conflicts, allowing you to enlist with a faction and help them conquer the galaxy. (We're also of course thinking about letting you create your own faction, though we can't promise support for that in 2.5 at this time.) We're hoping this update will launch a few months after Career 2.0.

I'm *also* excited to announce that we're simultaneously working on a new PvP multiplayer mode, tentatively called "Build & Battle". Played over several rounds, competitors build or upgrade their ship using a randomly limited selection of parts and then battle against the other players. We're expecting to launch this mode *before* Career 2.0, hopefully before the end of the year!

Peering further into the future beyond Career 2.0/2.5, you can look forward to awesome new features like drone/fighter carriers, crew boarding, transforming ships, and a variety of additional new weapons and other ship parts. You can read about much of that on the roadmap.

Thank you again for supporting Cosmoteer. Without your support, Cosmoteer's future wouldn't be nearly so bright.

Over and out,
Walt

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.24.1 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 variety of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements.

Thanks for testing!

RC1:

• Added 3 new Monolith ships: Broadsword, Conciliator, and Intercessor.
  
• Added 3 new Fringe ships: Can Opener, Graverobber, and Unclassified Misdemeanor.
  
• Added 1 new Cabal ship: Luminary.
  
• A handful of other miscellaneous ship updates.
  
• Increased Mining Laser range from 100 to 150.
  
• Ships will now "lock in" their final rotation when they get close enough to their intended destination to automatically switch to strafe mode. This should reduce issues that some ships have when trying to stop at their final destination.
  
• Updated the Hyper-Coil graphics to better stand out from regular Coils.
  
• Fires can now spread to all tiles on the Chaingun.
  
• Fires will now be rendered above the bullets in the Chaingun Magazine.
  
• The Battle Helper in Creative Mode now shows the total cost and crew for each team with more than one ship.
  
• Holding the Shift key when clicking Load Game will now bypass the confirmation popup.
  
• Double-clicking an Airlock now selects all Airlocks on the ship regardless of their rotation.
  
• Changed the default hotkey for "Launch Mines" from N to Ctrl+N to prevent it from conflicting with the hailing hotkey.
  
• Changed the "Restrict Shape Mode" hotkey from Ctrl to Slash to prevent it from conflicting with other hotkeys.
  
• The "Cancel Hyper-Jump" hotkey has been removed by default to prevent it from conflicting with other hotkeys. (It can still be manually added.)
  
• The Fire Extinguisher tooltip and tutorial now mention that they have limited capacity.
  
• Bugfix: Possible fix for multiplayer desyncs caused by making in-system hyper-jumps.
  
• Bugfix: Possible fix for some other random-seeming multiplayer desyncs in Career mode.
  
• Bugfix: If station (or trade ship) crew ran low on oxygen while carrying resources as part of a trade, this could cause the crew to "steal" those resources and prevent the player from getting paid or given mission credit for those resources.
  
• Bugfix: Trade ships whose resources had been purchased by the player but not yet delivered or in transit (usually because construction isn't ready to begin yet) were able to fly off before delivering those resources. This could cause construction to fail to complete.
  
• Bugfix: Extreme lag spikes in Career mode caused by loading nearby NPC ships.
  
• Bugfix: Penetration damage wasn't being correctly calculated versus certain types of ship parts, resulting in less damage than was intended.
  
• Bugfix: Mines targeted on junk or asteroids were not detonating in proximity to enemies.
  
• Bugfix: Exploding ship parts such as reactors wouldn't damage nearby ships if the destruction of that part caused its own ship to become junk.
  
• Bugfix: When crew construction was disabled, sometimes an insufficient number of resources would get consumed if some of those resources were being held in storages that were being deconstructed.
  
• Bugfix: Crew and resource assignments could break when copy/pasting parts while rotating or flipping them and the destination part wasn't rotatable or flippable.
  
• Bugfix: It was possible to enable "I Hate Salvaging" without having "I Hate Crew Construction" enabled by disabling "I Hate Crew Construction" after enabling "I Hate Salvaging".
  
• Bugfix: In the multiplayer pre-game setup screen, switching game modes could cause observers to appear to become non-observers on non-host computers.
  
• Bugfix: Hotkey conflicts weren't being properly detected in all cases for part abilities that were shown even when the part is not selected.
  
• Bugfix: The crew priorities for Storage Bays were being listed under "Storage Bay (4)" even though they applied to all Storage Bays.
  
• Bugfix: The "Mass" stat for all megaroid parts was being displayed as 1/16 their actual mass.
  
• Bugfix: The "Mass" stat for the Missile Launcher was incorrectly showing 6.0 tonnes instead of its actual mass of 8.0 tonnes.
  
• Modding: FlexResourceGrid now supports a 'OverridePriorityKey' parameter.
  
• Modding: ResourceConsumer, FlexResourceGrid, and PartCrew components now all support a 'OverridePriorityName' parameter. (This was supposed to already be supported for ResourceConsumer and PartCrew but would crash when used.)
  
• Modding: The PenetrationRectType parameter is now unused and can be safely removed.

• Bugfix: Occasional 'ConvertDestinationToExternal' crashes, most often occurring during construction or trading.
  
• Bugfix: Occasional 'DiscardCarriedResources' crashes.