• Added an "I Hate Clouds & Storms" option for Career mode. If enabled, clouds and storms will not be spawned in new Career mode games or in any newly-visited star systems for existing save files.
  
• Crew will no longer automatically exit a moving ship to deliver resources or operate parts.
  
• (Multiplayer): "Varied (Sparse)" and "Ion Storms (Sparse)" should now have fewer tiny ion storms.
  
• (Bugfix): Random crashes and collision detection issues that were frequently experienced by a subset of players. (These crashes appear to have been caused by the upgrade from .NET 7 to .NET 8, so we've rolled back to .NET 7 until we can figure out what's going on.)
  
• (Bugfix): Random crashes caused by A.I. ships/stations trying to repair themselves while taking damage.
  
• (Bugfix): Ships that were completely surrounded by Electron Clouds or Ion Storms could get stuck trying to pathfind out of them. (This was common with trade ships but could happen with all ships.)
  
• (Bugfix): A.I. ships would only aggro within visual sight range even if they were intended to aggro within radar range.
  
• (Bugfix): Destroying a ship with a bounty mission could sometimes change the displayed difficulty tier of that mission.

Ahoy Cosmoteers!

Cosmoteer update 0.27.0 is now available for all! The headline feature of this update is "Clouds & Storms": three new types of outer-space environments that will change and challenge how you design and command your ships. The three new types are:


Gaseous Clouds are a thick fog that will open up new kinds of tactics for ships that choose to take advantage of them. Flying into a Gaseous Cloud will hide the ship from enemies outside but also reduce its sight and radar range while inside. Using Gaseous Clouds, you can lay traps for enemies or sneak up undetected to ambush them. But of course, there is the risk that they will do the same to you!


For ships that operate within them, Electron Clouds will change how they must be designed and commanded in ways both harmful and beneficial. They are full of electrically-charged particles that will short-circuit your ship's reactors, reducing their power output by 80%, but they will also boost energy weapon damage by 75% as well as ship speed. When designing ships to fight inside Electron Clouds, you'll need to think about possibly building extra capacitor storage and whether it's better to rely on low-power projectile weapons or risk taking advantage of the damage boost that power-hungry energy weapons receive.


Ion Storms contain massive amounts of pent-up ion energy, striking any ships that dare to enter with powerful bolts of ion lightning. Unlike Gaseous Clouds and Electron Clouds, you'll rarely want to venture inside unless you have no other choice; it's usually much better to go around. While some ships may be able to survive, those that do are likely to take extreme damage unless they are specifically designed to withstand the ion lightning, which itself is a difficult and expensive proposition.


These three new types of outer-space environments are supported in all game modes including Career, Creative, and as a host option in all PvP modes. For existing Career Mode saved games, you should encounter some clouds and storms in any unvisited star systems, though if you start a new saved game you will encounter two new types of star systems with very different amounts and shapes of clouds and storms. And looking into the future, these new types of space environments will serve as a foundation upon which new kinds of missions, encounters, and content for Career 2.0 can be built.

Lastly, as with nearly every major Cosmoteer update, this 0.27.0 update also has a ton of other bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, balance changes, modding features, and new built-in ships, which you can read about in the full patch notes below.

Have fun!

- Walt


Full Patch Notes:

• Major Feature: Clouds & Storms
  • Added Gaseous Clouds, which reduces ship sight range and sensor range, but also hides ships so that they can't be seen by other ships outside the cloud (except when firing weapons).
    
  • Added Electron Clouds, which reduces reactor production by 80% but buffs energy weapon damage by +75% and increases ship speed. They also prevent hyper-jumps in or out.
    
  • Added Ion Storms, which rain powerful ion lightning strikes upon any ships brave or foolish enough to enter.
• Built-In Ships:
  • Added 2 new Monolith combat ships: Macerator and Throne
    
  • Added 1 new Monolith station: Med Monolith Trade Station II
    
  • Added 1 new Cabal station: Small Cabal Trade Station II
    
  • Added 3 new Imperium combat ships: Ceyx, Kanishka, and Tytonidae
    
  • Added 7 new Fringe combat ships: Black and Bruised, Glisterling, Liability, Nettlesome, Opponent of Commerce, Ossipon, and Pogoo
    
  • Updated many of the existing trade stations to have Manipulator Beams.
    
  • Tweaked Model-L starter ship to be a bit better defensively.
    
  • Miscellaneous updates to other existing combat ships.
• Career Mode:
  • All star systems in Career mode will have at least a few clouds or storms. Some star systems may have much more. (In existing saved games, star systems that have already been visited will not have any clouds or storms.)
    
  • New star system type: High Cloud Density, which has a high density of Gaseous and/or Electron clouds. (Only available in new Career games.)
    
  • New star system type: Supernova Aftermath, which has no sun but has a high density of Ion Storms. (Only available in new Career games.)
    
  • Each trade station now has a defensive ship patrolling around it to help protect it.
    
  • Station guards will now patrol the perimeter around the station and generally shouldn't cut through too close to the station.
    
  • Increased starting funds in Career by 150 to account for the Model-L's changes.
• Creative Mode:
  • Clouds and storms can be added from the doodads box.
    
  • When starting a new Creative Mode game, there is now an option to automatically generate clouds and storms.
    
  • The "Clear Objects" command can now clear all clouds and storms.
• Multiplayer:
  • All PvP multiplayer modes have clouds and storms by default. This can be customized by the host in the pre-game settings.
    
  • In Domination mode, some control points will have large asteroids inside them.
• Balance:
  • Increased Small and Heavy Laser Blaster turrets' penetration resistance from 3 to 5, but reduced their main penetration resistance from 3 to 1. (This should be a buff in most situations.)
    
  • Increased the range at which ships with Small and Heavy lasers will default to attacking small enemies from 60 to 90.
    
  • Ships will now fire at neutral/junk mines and projectiles when friendly-fire is enabled.
• User Interface:
  • When a ship is inside a cloud or storm, an icon indicating the type of cloud or storm will now be displayed underneath the ship's name near the bottom-left.
    
  • Ships that are hidden because they are inside a Gaseous Cloud will now have an 8-segment selection ring instead of the normal 4-segment ring.
    
  • The crew EVA icon no longer replaces the speedometer when displayed. It now appears to the right of the speedometer and command distance icons.
    
  • When a ship part has multiple valid warning states (such as no-crew, no-power, and no-ammo), the icon will now cycle through all current warning states.
    
  • When the "There are uncommitted modifications to this ship's blueprints" dialog is displayed, there is now an option to save the blueprints before discarding them.
    
  • The ship editor will now display whether new parts have door access or not similar to how it already displays whether the part has access to crew and power/munitions. However, this works for all parts in which crew can enter, not just those that directly use crew or power/munitions.
    
  • While dragging a box to collect floating resources, the quantity of each resource to be collected will now be shown underneath the mouse cursor. If the ship is out of storage for that type, that will also be indicated.
    
  • The icon on the pause button now changes to a "play" icon while the game is paused.
    
  • Renaming an existing custom marker will now start with the existing name already entered.
    
  • Tweaked the Engine Room's description to clarify that it also increases power consumption.
    
  • Updates to all language translations.
• Ship A.I.:
  • Ships will now automatically pathfind around the new Electron Clouds and Ion Storms. (They will not pathfind around Gaseous Clouds.) This can be disabled in the settings or suppressed by holding the X key.
    
  • A.I. ships will generally be unwilling to enter Ion Storms at all.
    
  • Ships will now fly normally when exiting sun damage zones.
• Graphics:
  • The vision circles around ships now smoothly change their size when the sight distance changes.
    
  • Tweaked the Mine Launcher tube doors to open and close more logically.
• Bug Fixes:
  • Crash if the game is saved while the "all hands lost" message is shown.
    
  • Multiplayer desyncs caused by ship formations.
    
  • Ships could sometimes fail to pathfind around suns.
    
  • Ships could have difficulty navigating around binary suns and could sometimes get stuck in the "armpits" created by the overlapping damage zones.
    
  • The path and distance to the nearest power source wasn't being shown for any thrusters.
    
  • Possible door locations weren't being displayed in blueprint mode if there were any destroyed parts adjacent to the door location.
    
  • Mirror mode for crew assignments wasn't working properly for the new Crew Barracks.
    
  • Right-clicking near but not directly on another ship while parts are selected would issue a command to attack or follow that other ship.
    
  • Right-clicking-and-dragging to issue a rotated move command would be ignored if the mouse button was released while the cursor was over another ship that was already being followed by the selected ship.
    
  • Clicking-and-dragging with the repair tool to queue multiple parts for repairs could unintentionally cause already-existing repair orders to be canceled.
    
  • The stats for the Standard and Large Cannons now properly show their actual rate of fire.
    
  • In Arena mode, if the "point tick" sounds were playing at the same time as the game ends and returns to the setup screen, the tick sounds would keep playing indefinitely.
    
  • Using right-click to start any ship movement command and then dragging the mouse cursor over an asteroid could display the asteroid's name twice.
    
  • Crew Barracks weren't available in Build & Battle. (They are now always available without needing to unlock.)
    
  • In Build & Battle during the build phase, the player's money would temporarily increase while firing a chaingun.
    
  • The title screen tips mentioned the incorrect default number of quick-save and auto-save files.
• Modding:
  • FYI: In rules files, clouds and storms are called "nebulas".
    
  • Clouds and storms (nebulas) can cause various effects to ships inside, such as make ships hidden, give ship-wide buffs, change sight/sensor range, change damping, and cause lightning strikes. See the rules files for the current nebula types for examples.
    
  • Clouds and storms can have multiple render layers above and below ships that each use their own shader and textures.
    
  • Clouds and storms support an "active effects" system. The currently supported active effect types are LightningStrikes, DamageShips, and DamageCrew.
    
  • Star system generators now support spawning nebulas.
    
  • Most star system spawners now support requiring minimum and maximum distances from specific nebula types.
    
  • BulletEmitter and BeamEmitter components now support an optional 'RevealsShip' parameter (defaults to true) that, if set to false, will prevent the emitter from revealing its ship in a nebula when firing.
    
  • Added a WholeShipBuffProvider which provides a buff to the part's entire ship.
    
  • BuffToggle components will now properly start in the "on" state when spawned and have 'Invert = true'.
    
  • A.I. ships now support a 'MinPatrolRadius' parameter.
    
  • The IndicatorSprites component will now cycle through all valid indicator icons simultaneously. To make one icon suppress and hide another, use the new 'HidesIndicators' parameter.
    
  • Removed the "indicators" ship render layer because it is no longer used by vanilla. (And is unlikely to be used by mods either since IndicatorSprites no longer uses the layers system.)
    
  • If 'IncludeInBlueprints = true' is specified for a ToggledComponents, then its sub-components will now *always* be rendered in its blueprints regardless of the toggle state. Use 'IncludeInBlueprints = dynamic' to restore the old behavior (check the toggle state).
    
  • In developer mode, you can now click on a star system to jump the view to it even if the player has no ships there.
    
  • Mod actions that use 'CreateIfNotExisting = true' will now give a more informative error if the path trying to be created is a file root.

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.27.0 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 is for the long-awaited "clouds and storms" update, which adds three new types of environmental clouds or storms: Gaseous Clouds, Electron Clouds, and Ion Storms. Please see the patch notes below for more info, or just check them out for yourself!

Thanks for testing!

RC1:

• Major Feature: Clouds & Storms
  • Added Gaseous Clouds, which reduces ship sight range and sensor range, but also hides ships so that they can't be seen by other ships outside the cloud (except when firing weapons).
    
  • Added Electron Clouds, which reduces reactor production by 80% but buffs energy weapon damage by +75% and increases ship speed. They also prevent hyper-jumps in or out.
    
  • Added Ion Storms, which rain powerful ion lightning strikes upon any ships brave or foolish enough to enter.
• Built-In Ships:
  • Added 2 new Monolith combat ships: Macerator and Throne
    
  • Added 1 new Monolith station: Med Monolith Trade Station II
    
  • Added 1 new Cabal station: Small Cabal Trade Station II
    
  • Added 3 new Imperium combat ships: Ceyx, Kanishka, and Tytonidae
    
  • Added 7 new Fringe combat ships: Black and Bruised, Glisterling, Liability, Nettlesome, Opponent of Commerce, Ossipon, and Pogoo
    
  • Updated many of the existing trade stations to have Manipulator Beams.
    
  • The Model-L starter ship now has a Power Capacitor adjacent to its three laser blasters.
    
  • Miscellaneous updates to other existing combat ships.
• Career Mode:
  • All star systems in Career mode will have at least a few clouds or storms. Some star systems may have much more.
    
  • New star system type: High Cloud Density, which has a high density of Gaseous and/or Electron clouds.
    
  • New star system type: Supernova Aftermath, which has no sun but has a high density of Ion Storms.
    
  • Each trade station now has a defensive ship patrolling around it to help protect it.
    
  • Station guards will now patrol the perimeter around the station and generally shouldn't cut through too close to the station.
• Creative Mode:
  • Clouds and storms can be added from the doodads box.
    
  • When starting a new Creative Mode game, there is now an option to automatically generate clouds and storms.
    
  • The "Clear Objects" command can now clear all clouds and storms.
• Multiplayer:
  • All PvP multiplayer modes have clouds and storms by default. This can be customized by the host in the pre-game settings.
• Balance:
  • Increased the range at which ships with Small and Heavy lasers will default to attacking small enemies from 60 to 90.
    
  • Ships will now fire at neutral/junk mines and projectiles when friendly-fire is enabled.
• User Interface:
  • When a ship is inside a cloud or storm, an icon indicating the type of cloud or storm will now be displayed underneath the ship's name near the bottom-left.
    
  • Ships that are hidden because they are inside a Gaseous Cloud will now have an 8-segment selection ring instead of the normal 4-segment ring.
    
  • The crew EVA icon no longer replaces the speedometer when displayed. It now appears to the right of the speedometer and command distance icons.
    
  • When a ship part has multiple valid warning states (such as no-crew, no-power, and no-ammo), the icon will now cycle through all current warning states.
    
  • When the "There are uncommitted modifications to this ship's blueprints" dialog is displayed, there is now an option to save the blueprints before discarding them.
    
  • The ship editor will now display whether new parts have door access or not similar to how it already displays whether the part has access to crew and power/munitions. However, this works for all parts in which crew can enter, not just those that directly use crew or power/munitions.
    
  • While dragging a box to collect floating resources, the quantity of each resource to be collected will now be shown underneath the mouse cursor. If the ship is out of storage for that type, that will also be indicated.
    
  • The icon on the pause button now changes to a "play" icon while the game is paused.
    
  • Renaming an existing custom marker will now start with the existing name already entered.
    
  • Tweaked the Engine Room's description to clarify that it also increases power consumption.
• Ship A.I.:
  • Ships will now automatically pathfind around the new Electron Clouds and Ion Storms. (They will not pathfind around Gaseous Clouds.) This can be disabled in the settings or suppressed by holding the X key.
    
  • A.I. ships will generally be unwilling to enter Ion Storms at all.
    
  • Ships will now fly normally when exiting sun damage zones.
• Graphics:
  • The vision circles around ships now smoothly change their size when the sight distance changes.
    
  • Tweaked the Mine Launcher tube doors to open and close more logically.
• Bug Fixes:
  • Crash if the game is saved while the "all hands lost" message is shown.
    
  • Ships could have difficulty navigating around binary suns and could sometimes get stuck in the "armpits" created by the overlapping damage zones.
    
  • The path and distance to the nearest power source wasn't being shown for any thrusters.
    
  • Right-clicking near but not directly on another ship while parts are selected would issue a command to attack or follow that other ship.
    
  • Right-clicking-and-dragging to issue a rotated move command would be ignored if the mouse button was released while the cursor was over another ship that was already being followed by the selected ship.
    
  • Clicking-and-dragging with the repair tool to queue multiple parts for repairs could unintentionally cause already-existing repair orders to be canceled.
    
  • The stats for the Standard and Large Cannons now properly show their actual rate of fire.
    
  • In Arena mode, if the "point tick" sounds were playing at the same time as the game ends and returns to the setup screen, the tick sounds would keep playing indefinitely.
    
  • Using right-click to start any ship movement command and then dragging the mouse cursor over an asteroid could display the asteroid's name twice.
    
  • The title screen tips mentioned the incorrect default number of quick-save and auto-save files.
• Modding:
  • FYI: In rules files, clouds and storms are called "nebulas".
    
  • Clouds and storms (nebulas) can cause various effects to ships inside, such as make ships hidden, give ship-wide buffs, change sight/sensor range, change damping, and cause lightning strikes. See the rules files for the current nebula types for examples.
    
  • Clouds and storms can have multiple render layers above and below ships that each use their own shader and textures.
    
  • Clouds and storms support an "active effects" system. The currently supported active effect types are LightningStrikes, DamageShips, and DamageCrew.
    
  • Star system generators now support spawning nebulas.
    
  • Most star system spawners now support requiring minimum and maximum distances from specific nebula types.
    
  • BulletEmitter and BeamEmitter components now support an optional 'RevealsShip' parameter (defaults to true) that, if set to false, will prevent the emitter from revealing its ship in a nebula when firing.
    
  • Added a WholeShipBuffProvider which provides a buff to the part's entire ship.
    
  • BuffToggle components will now properly start in the "on" state when spawned and have 'Invert = true'.
    
  • A.I. ships now support a 'MinPatrolRadius' parameter.
    
  • The IndicatorSprites component will now cycle through all valid indicator icons simultaneously. To make one icon suppress and hide another, use the new 'HidesIndicators' parameter.
    
  • If 'IncludeInBlueprints = true' is specified for a ToggledComponents, then its sub-components will now *always* be rendered in its blueprints regardless of the toggle state. Use 'IncludeInBlueprints = dynamic' to restore the old behavior (check the toggle state).
    
  • In developer mode, you can now click on a star system to jump the view to it even if the player has no ships there.
    
  • Mod actions that use 'CreateIfNotExisting = true' will now give a more informative error if the path trying to be created is a file root.

RC2:

• Increased Small and Heavy Laser Blaster turrets' penetration resistance from 3 to 5, but reduced their main penetration resistance from 3 to 1. (This should be a buff in most situations.)
  
• Ion lightning strikes will no longer come from outside the ion storm.
  
• Removed the Power Capacitor from the Model-L and tweaked it's design to be a bit better defensively.
  
• Increased starting funds in Career by 150 to account for the Model-L's changes.
  
• Bugfix: Ships could sometimes fail to pathfind around suns.
  
• Bugfix: Possible door locations weren't being displayed in blueprint mode if there were any destroyed parts adjacent to the door location.
  
• Bugfix: Mirror mode for crew assignments wasn't working properly for the new Crew Barracks.
  
• RC Bugfix: Ship pathfinding could break when ships are very close to a nebula while also being close to their destination.
  
• RC Bugfix: Ship status icons weren't properly scaling with camera zoom.
  
• RC Bugfix: Ship status icon colors weren't fluctuating as intended.
  
• RC Bugfix: Ship status icons were being shown for non-player ships.
  
• RC Bugfix: Ship status icons were being shown even if the setting was disabled.
  
• RC Bugfix: No-missiles status icons weren't being displayed.
  
• Modding: Removed the "indicators" ship render layer because it is no longer used by vanilla. (And is unlikely to be used by mods either since IndicatorSprites no longer uses the layers system.)

RC3:

• Domination maps will now be generated with much more interesting nebula patterns. These patterns will usually be pretty symmetric in order to be fair to all teams, though some asymmetries may occur because of technical restrictions.
  
• Tweaked ion storm generation in the other PvP modes to make more interesting storm shapes.
  
• Ion Storms now have ambient audio while the view is zoomed in and inside of them.
  
• Added sound effects when a (selected) ship becomes hidden or revealed by a gaseous cloud.
  
• Updated sound effects for ion lightning and electron reactor sparks.
  
• Updates to all language translations.
  
• Bugfix: Multiplayer desyncs caused by ship formations.
  
• Bugfix: In Build & Battle during the build phase, the player's money would temporarily increase while firing a chaingun.
  
• RC Bugfix: Electron nebula reactor sparks would drift away and become misaligned when a ship was accellerating or decellerating.

RC4:

• The type and variety of clouds/storms can now be customized in Domination just like all the other PvP modes.
  
• Tweaked generation of clouds and storms in PvP modes.
  
• Bugfix: Crew Barracks weren't available in Build & Battle. (They are now always available without needing to unlock.)
  
• RC Bugfix: Electron Cloud discharge VFX for Large Reactors was centered on the wrong location.

• Bugfix: Likely fixed multiplayer desyncs (mostly in Career mode) caused by some players having certain CPUs.
  
• Bugfix: Crashes caused by running out of room in the text font atlas. (This is still theoretically possible but should be much less likely now.)
  
• Updated translations for all supported languages.

• Possible fix for frequent multiplayer desyncs in Career mode.

• Bugfix: Crashes caused by trade ships jumping into Hyper-Jump Gates right after the player either jumps out of the star system or moves far enough from the gate that it temporarily despawns.
  
• Bugfix: Crash in Build & Battle if there are any team slots with no players followed by a team slot with at least one player.

• Bugfix: Crashes related to calculating resource refunds.
  
• Bugfix: Crashes related to using Manipulator Beams during combat.

Cosmoteer update 0.26.2 is now available! This update adds two new ship parts, plus a ton of other fixes, balance tweaks, and quality-of-life enhancements.

The two new ship parts are the Crew Barracks and the Manipulator Beam.

The Crew Barracks is a new larger 3x4 crew room with beds for up to 24 crew. A single door may be added at each end.


The Manipulator Beam is actually a replacement for the Resource Collector. Like the old Resource Collector, it can still collect floating resources, but now it has 16 beams instead of only 4. Plus, it can also "boost" friendly crew flying outside, helping them fly faster as they carry out tasks such as construction and trading. All existing saved ships and games with Resource Collectors will be automatically upgraded with Manipulator Beam Emitters.


We're also hard at work finishing up the upcoming "Clouds & Storms" update, which is currently in testing and we expect to be ready for release within a couple of weeks!

Enjoy!

Full patch notes:

• New Ship Parts:
  • Added a Crew Barracks, a new 3x4 crew room that has beds for up to 24 crew.
    
  • Replaced the Resource Collector with the Manipulator Beam Emitter. It can still collect resources but now has 16 beams (4 per crew operating it) and can also boost friendly flying crew as they do tasks such as construction and trading. All saved ships and games with Resource Collectors will be automatically upgraded to Manipulator Beam Emitters. Their cost is unchanged but now use hypercoils instead of regular coils.
• Built-In Ships:
  • Added 4 new Monolith combat ships: Glaive, Sovnya, Validator, and Verificator.
    
  • Added 6 new Cabal combat ships: Elagabalus, Gaze, Glare, Grus, Jabbaj, and Sadalmelik.
    
  • Added 5 new Cabal trade ships: Ascetic, Pilgrim, Seeker, Supplicant, and Trinity.
    
  • Added a new Tiny Cabal Arms Depot II.
    
  • Added 3 new Fringe combat ships: Bomb Anchor, Master of None, and Shin Hanabi.
    
  • Miscellaneous other updates to many existing ships.
• Career Mode:
  • Some star systems will now have binary (two smaller) suns instead of one larger sun.
    
  • Defense platforms will no longer spawn around stations that are under attack.
• Balance:
  • Doubled the speed at which crew salvage junk and deconstruct their own ships, which is then doubled again when salvaging/deconstructing armor.
    
  • Cockpits, Small Hyperdrives, and Large Thrusters now require coils instead of hypercoils to construct. (The total credit cost of each is unchanged.)
    
  • Small Laser Blaster:
    • Increased damage from 400 to 500.
      
    • Increased shot speed from 320 to 340.
      
  • Heavy Laser Blaster:
    
    • Increased damage from 900 to 1000.
      
    • Increased shot speed from 240 to 300.
  • Ion Beam Emitter:
    • Increased range from 300 to 350.
      
    • Reduced damage falloff at maximum range from 30% to 20%.
  • Mining Laser:
    • Reduced rotation speed from 30 to 20, but it can now rotate while firing.
      
    • Reduced power usage per second from 1.2 to 0.6.
      
    • Increased damage vs ship junk from 1200/sec to 9600/sec.
  • Chaingun:
    • Reduced opening time from 1.2 to 0.6 seconds. (Closing time is unchanged.)
  • Modular Rocket Thruster:
    • Reduced base ramp-up time from 6 to 4 seconds.
      
    • Reduced power consumption by 25%.
      
    • Reduced the Extender cost from 7500 to 6000.
  • Nuclear Missile Factory:
    • Reduced cost from 30,000 to 25,000.
      
    • Reduced power usage per full missile from 6 to 4.
      
    • Increased power capacity from 4 to 6.
      
    • Increased production speed by 50%.
  • Explosive Charge:
    • Reduced cost from 1000 to 600.
• User Interface:
  • The "Repair All" button is now available even if the player doesn't have enough resources. Clicking it will cause crew to repair as much as possible.
    
  • Valid and invalid door locations are now much more visually obvious when adding parts to ships.
    
  • The game will no longer auto-save while paused if no user inputs have been given.
    
  • In the load/save game dialog, saved games where the player is in debt will now show their negative credit amount in red.
    
  • Hiding a news alert on the title screen will no longer prompt to confirm.
    
  • Added hotkeys to increase and decrease the U.I. Scaling.
    
  • Clarified the Power Capacitor's description to make it clear that crew still have to deliver the power.
    
  • Disabling tutorials will now automatically activate/deactivate any settings that would have been automatically changed when viewing the now-disabled tutorials.
    
  • Hailing your own ships will now open the crew/resource transfer window instantly.
    
  • The "Mining Beam" stats have been renamed to "Double Mining Beams" to clarify that the stats are for both beams combined.
• Ship A.I.:
  • A.I. ships will now put more priority on attacking closer targets instead of powerful targets.
    
  • If one A.I. ship is already targeting a ship, other A.I.s will now be less likely to target it instead of something else.
• Graphics:
  • Projectile trails for Railguns and missiles will now render regardless of zoom level for better visibility.
    
  • Tweaked Chaingun loaded bullet sprites to more accurately convey whether bullets are loaded into the Chaingun.
    
  • The Chaingun Magazine now appears to have the correct number of bullet loading holes.
    
  • Factory animations will now speed up when the factory is buffed.
• Tech:
  • Upgraded to the Microsoft .NET 8 runtime. This may slightly increase performance. If you're playing on Steam Deck or Linux and can no longer play because of this change, please make sure you're using the latest "experimental" Proton.
    
  • Cosmoteer will no longer run on DX9-era GPUs. This probably won't impact anyone since those are EXTREMELY old GPUs, but please let us know if this causes problems for you.
• Bug Fixes:
  • Crash when using certain combinations of screen/window resolutions and U.I. scaling settings.
    
  • Crash if for some reason the size of the game window's render area becomes zero. (May happen when dragging the window between monitors or when disconnecting a monitor.)
    
  • Rare crashes caused by the the crew O2 warning icons appearing or disappearing.
    
  • Ships traveling at very low speeds could "jitter", often as they approached their intended destination.
    
  • The dotted boxes around crew quarters in the crew U.I. were not displaying properly.
    
  • In some circumstances, Engine Rooms could fail to deliver batteries to connected thrusters.
    
  • Ion Beam Prisms weren't retargeting as quickly as was intended.
    
  • Modular Rocket Thrusters with 30 or more extenders were not using as much power as was intended.
    
  • In some cases, ships weren't properly blocking Large Shield arcs on other ships.
    
  • Manipulator Beams (Resource Collectors) could sometimes grab more resources than were intended.
    
  • A money duplication exploit triggered by jumping to a different star system and back.
    
  • Wreckage in ship graveyards would be magically "repaired" after salvaging when leaving and returning.
    
  • Resources pre-purchased from stations for construction weren't being properly marked as available again if the pre-purchase was canceled due to flying away.
    
  • A station that was destroyed could still sometimes retain a "claim" to nearby resources that it was trying to use to repair itself, making those resources impossible to collect.
    
  • It was possible to give roof lights invalid color/alpha values in build mode by selecting and adjusting the color of multiple lights simultaneously.
    
  • Loading a saved game with partially-constructed parts would show those parts with glowing blue elements until the game was unpaused.
    
  • Thrusters and other visual effects could appear to flicker when at the edge of the player's sight range.
    
  • It was unintentionally possible to drag-and-drop ship files into the Built-In Ships section of the ship library.
    
  • The crew squad assignment U.I. could flicker while the ship was moving.
• Modding:
  • Career mode now supports different randomly-chosen "sector types" for each star system which can be used to change how objects are spawned within each type. They can also dictate which background styles will be used.
    
  • The 'Doodads' spawner's ScaleFactor parameter can now be a random range.
    
  • The spawner 'Conditions' blocks now support 'OnlySectorTypes' and 'ExcludeSectorTypes'.
    
  • Added a WholeShipBuffProvider which provides a buff to the part's entire ship.
    
  • Added a 'Repeating' hit effect that repeats a set of sub-hit-effects a certain number of times with an interval between them. Can also spawn media effects for every repeat.
    
  • Fixes to InlineResourceConverter bugs that were causing it to incorrectly convert resources in some situations.
    
  • Fixed freezes and/or low FPS that could occur when salvaging if parts didn't have any colliders overlapping the center of the part.
    
  • When running in Developer Mode, changes to shaders, wav files, and non-ship textures will be automatically reloaded without have to reload the whole game.

Cosmoteer release candidate 0.26.2 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 adds a new larger Crew Barracks, and it also replaces the Resource Collector with a new better-and-more-versatile Manipulator Beam. Plus it's got a ton of other balances changes, tweaks, and bug fixes.

Thanks for testing!

RC1:

• New Ship Parts:
  
  • Added a Crew Barracks, a new 3x4 crew room than has beds for up to 24 crew.
    
  • Replaced the Resource Collector with the Manipulator Beam Emitter. It can still collect resources but now has 16 beams (4 per crew operating it) and can also boost friendly flying crew as they do tasks such as construction and trading. All saved ships and games with Resource Collectors will be automatically upgraded to Manipulator Beam Emitters.
• Built-In Ships:
  
  • Added 4 new Monolith combat ships: Glaive, Sovnya, Validator, and Verificator.
    
  • Added 6 new Cabal combat ships: Elagabalus, Gaze, Glare, Grus, Jabbaj, and Sadalmelik.
    
  • Added 5 new Cabal trade ships: Ascetic, Pilgrim, Seeker, Supplicant, and Trinity.
    
  • Added a new Tiny Cabal Arms Depot II.
    
  • Added 3 new Fringe combat ships: Bomb Anchor, Master of None, and Shin Hanabi.
    
  • Miscellaneous other updates to many existing ships.
• Career Mode:
  
  • Some star system will now have binary (two smaller) suns instead of one larger sun.
    
  • Defense platforms will no longer spawn around stations that are under attack.
• Balance:
  
  • Doubled the speed at which crew salvage junk and deconstruct their own ships, which is then doubled again when salvaging/deconstructing armor.
    
  • Cockpits, Small Hyperdrives, and Large Thrusters now require coils instead of hypercoils to construct. (The total credit cost of each is unchanged.)
    
  • Small Laser Blaster:
    
    • Increased damage from 400 to 600.
      
    • Increased shot speed from 320 to 340.
      
  • Heavy Laser Blaster:
    
    • Increased damage from 900 to 1200.
      
    • Increased shot speed from 240 to 300.
      
  • Mining Laser:
    
    • Reduced rotation speed from 30 to 20, but it can now rotate while firing.
      
    • Reduced power usage per second from 6.0 to 3.0.
      
    • Increased damage vs ship junk from 1200/sec to 9600/sec.
      
    • Reduced damage vs enemies from 1200/sec to 600/sec.
      
  • Chaingun:
    
    • Reduced open/close time from 1.2 to 0.6 seconds.
      
  • Modular Rocket Thruster:
    
    • Reduced base ramp-up time from 6 to 4 seconds.
      
    • Reduced power consumption by 25%.
      
    • Reduced the Extender cost from 7500 to 6000.
      
  • Nuclear Missile Factory:
    
    • Reduced cost from 30,000 to 25,000.
      
    • Reduced power usage per full missile from 6 to 4.
      
    • Increased power capacity from 4 to 6.
      
    • Increased production speed by 50%.
      
  • Explosive Charge:
    
    • Reduced cost from 1000 to 600.
      
• User Interface:
  
  • The "Repair All" button is now available even if the player doesn't have enough resources. Clicking it will cause crew to repair as much as possible.
    
  • Valid and invalid door locations are now much more obvious adding parts to ships.
    
  • The game will no longer auto-save while paused if no user inputs have been given.
    
  • In the load/save game dialog, saved games where the player is in debt will now show their negative credit amount in red.
    
  • Hiding a news alert on the title screen will no longer prompt to confirm.
    
  • Added hotkeys to increase and decrease the U.I. Scaling.
    
  • Clarified the Power Capacitor's description to make it clear that crew still have to deliver the power.
    
  • Disabling tutorials will now automatically activate/deactivate any settings that would have been automatically changed when viewing the now-disabled tutorials.
• Ship A.I.:
  
  • A.I. ships will now put more priority on attacking closer targets instead of powerful targets.
    
  • If one A.I. ship is already targeting a ship, other A.I.s will now be less likely to target it instead of something else.
• Graphics:
  
  • Projectile trails for Railguns and missiles will now render regardless of zoom level for better visibility.
    
  • Tweaked Chaingun loaded bullet sprites to more accurately convey whether bullets are loaded into the Chaingun.
    
  • The Chaingun Magazine now appears to have the correct number of bullet loading holes.
    
  • Factory animations will now speed up when the factory is buffed.
• Tech:
  
  • Upgraded to the Microsoft .NET 8 runtime. This may slightly increase performance. If you're playing on Steam Deck or Linux and can no longer play because of this change, please make sure you're using the latest "experimental" Proton.
    
  • Cosmoteer will no longer run on DX9-era GPUs. This probably won't impact anyone since those are EXTREMELY old GPUs, but please let us know if this causes problems for you.
• Bug Fixes:
  
  • Crash when using certain combinations of screen/window resolutions and U.I. scaling settings.
    
  • Crash if for some reason the size of the game window's render area becomes zero. (May happen when dragging the window between monitors or when disconnecting a monitor.)
    
  • Rare crashes caused by the the crew O2 warning icons appearing or disappearing.
    
  • Ships traveling at very low speeds could "jitter", often as they approached their intended destination.
    
  • The dotted boxes around crew quarters in the crew U.I. were not displaying properly.
    
  • In some circumstances, Engine Rooms could fail to deliver batteries to connected thrusters.
    
  • Ion Beam Prisms weren't retargeting as quickly as was intended.
    
  • Modular Rocket Thrusters with 30 or more extenders were not using as much power as was intended.
    
  • In some cases, ships weren't properly blocking Large Shield arcs on other ships.
    
  • A money duplication exploit triggered by jumping to a different star system and back.
    
  • Resources pre-purchased from stations for construction weren't being properly marked as available again if the pre=purchase was canceled due to flying away.
    
  • A station that was destroyed could still sometimes retain a "claim" to nearby resources that it was trying to use to repair itself, making those resources impossible to collect.
    
  • Loading a saved game with partially-constructed parts would show those parts with glowing blue elements until the game was unpaused.
    
  • Thrusters and other visual effects could appear to flicker when at the edge of the player's sight range.
    
  • It was unintentionally possible to drag-and-drop ship files into the Built-In Ships section of the ship library.
• Modding:
  
  • Career mode now supports different randomly-chosen "sector types" for each star system which can be used to change how objects are spawned within each type. They can also dictate which background styles will be used.
    
  • The 'Doodads' spawner's ScaleFactor parameter can now be a random range.
    
  • The spawner 'Conditions' blocks now support 'OnlySectorTypes' and 'ExcludeSectorTypes'.
    
  • Added a WholeShipBuffProvider which provides a buff to the part's entire ship.
    
  • Added a 'Repeating' hit effect that repeats a set of sub-hit-effects a certain number of times with an interval between them. Can also spawn media effects for every repeat.
    
  • Fixes to InlineResourceConverter bugs that were causing it to incorrectly convert resources in some situations.
    
  • Fixed freezes and/or low FPS that could occur when salvaging if parts didn't have any colliders overlapping the center of the part.
    
  • When running in Developer Mode, changes to shaders, wav files, and non-ship textures will be automatically reloaded without have to reload the whole game.

RC2:

• (Balance) Reverted the Mining Laser's damage nerf vs enemies.
  
• (Balance) Increased the Ion Beam's range from 300 to 350, and reduced its damage falloff at maximum range from 30% to 20%.
  
• (RC Bugfix) Crashes and desyncs caused by having and using Manipulator Beams on multiple ships simultaneously.
  
• (Bugfix) Manipulator Beams (Resource Collectors) could sometimes grab more resources than were intended.
  
• (Bugfix) It was possible to give roof lights invalid color/alpha values in build mode by selecting and adjusting the color of multiple lights simultaneously.
  
• (Bugfix) The crew squad assignment U.I. could flicker while the ship was moving.
  
• (Modding) The new 'AlreadyTargetedByAllyFactor' parameter of the AggroEnemies AI module is now optional and defaults to 1.0 if omitted. (Maintains backwards-compatibility with some mods.)

Bugfix: Crash in Career mode when jumping to some already-visited star systems.