Jun 23, 2023

Crew Construction & Resource Collectors (Update 0.23.0)

Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander - Walt Destler

Ahoy Cosmoteers!

At long last, the much-anticipated "Crew Construction" update is complete and ready to be played by all! Thanks so much to all the players who tested all the preview and release candidate builds!

This update adds a major new game mechanic (crew-based construction & repairs) and a very useful new ship part (the Resource Collector). There are also an assortment of bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, balance tweaks, and modding features. Read on to learn more!

New (Optional) Game Mechanic

Crew-Based Construction & Repairs

If you've played prior versions of Cosmoteer, then you doubtless know that any changes you made to your ship's design would happen instantly; resources were instantly teleported from your storage bays and new modules appeared spontaneously as if by magic. But with this update, your crew will now carry out the actual construction, deconstruction, and repairs of your ship. They'll carry the necessary materials from your storages to the construction site and then zap the new part into existence.

While certainly fast and convenient, the old "instantaneous building" mechanic had a of couple downsides:

It was immersion-breaking. In a game where every other mechanic was fully simulated by the physics and crew systems, ship construction stood out as the one mechanic that wasn't simulated. Many players rightfully pointed out that it was weird how crew had to manually carry scavenged or mined resources back to the ship's storages but that those same resources could then teleport instantly when making additions or repairs to their ship. We agree with the community on this and believe crew-based construction helps restore that immersion.
It was easy to exploit without arbitrarily restricting its use. If it was possible to make instantaneous changes or repairs to your ship at any time, then it would be extremely easy to exploit this by instantly repairing your ship during battle or changing your design to perfectly counter the enemy. This would be no fun! In the past we've arbitrarily prohibited ship changes during combat in Career mode and outlawed ship changes altogether in PvP multiplayer. But now with crew-based construction, choosing to stop and make changes is a gamble, not an exploit, and so we are now able to remove those arbitrary restrictions in both Career and PvP. Choosing to take the chance on ship upgrades or repairs mid-battle adds some extra strategy and we’re excited to see what the community does with this.

But if you don't like this new feature and prefer the old instantaneous ship building, then rest assured, crew-based construction is entirely optional in all game modes:

When starting a new Career Mode game, crew construction will be enabled by default, but you can disable it (use the old instant-build mechanic) by turning on the "I Hate Crew Construction" advanced game option either when starting a new game or afterwards.
When loading an existing Career Mode game, crew construction will be disabled (use the old instant-build mechanic) by default, but you can enable it by turning off the "I Hate Crew Construction" advanced game option.
In Creative Mode, crew construction will be disabled by default, but you can enable it by unchecking the "Free Build Mode" option.
In PvP Multiplayer, crew construction will be enabled by default and in all official rulesets, but the host can disable it on the match setup screen.

You may be wondering why we chose to add crew-based construction before other features such as new ship parts or more content for Career mode. That's a very fair question, and there are some good reasons, so we'd like to explain:

It's a foundation for upcoming content. We have many ideas for new Career mode missions (repair distressed ship or station before it's destroyed; help a faction build a new fleet before an invasion), ship parts (construction drones), and multiplayer modes (build-and-fight) that are made possible by crew-based construction. Without it, none of those future features will be able to exist.
It was already almost finished. Before launching on Steam, we were already working on crew-based construction and it was already about 75% completed. (We were actually planning to include it at launch but it didn't get done in time.) It was more efficient in the long run to finish the feature now than delay it even more, because the longer we delayed it the more work it was going to take to integrate its code branch into the main code branch.
We can now work on multiple features at once, thanks to the successful Steam launch allowing us to hire several more team members. The new Resource Collector (see below) was developed simultaneously with crew-based construction, and the upcoming Chaingun has also been in development and isn't far behind.
Players want it! While perhaps not as frequently requested as some other features (we're looking at you, "boarding" and "docking"), crew-based construction was one of the more commonly-requested features. It was also on the roadmap at launch, and while it's true that the roadmap is subject to change, we think it's best not to deviate from what players are expecting without a really good reason.

New Ship Part

Resource Collector

This update also adds the Resource Collector, a new ship utility part that has four miniature resource collection beams that can each "grab" resources floating in space and deposit those resources in the ship's storage bays.

Using the Resource Collector will make gathering resources after a battle or during mining both faster and safer for your crew.

Each of the four collection beams is controlled independently by one crew. Although the Resource Collector has room inside for four crew, not all four crew are required for any of the beams to operate. Fewer crew will simply mean fewer operating beams. Crew will only go to and operate the collection beams if there are any resources floating nearby that the player has marked for collection.

Note that for balance reasons, Resource Collectors cannot take resources out of storage. This would have been potentially exploitable, allowing players to bypass the crew simulation altogether.

A Note About Mods

Due to the significant changes made by this update, many existing mods may be incompatible or not function correctly (especially with regard to the new crew-based construction). While we always try to avoid breaking mods, sometimes it is simply not possible.

As a result, all mods will be automatically disabled after updating, though you may attempt to re-enable them. It generally shouldn't be difficult for mod authors to fix their mods, but you may have to wait for them to do so before being able to play with them again with this new version of Cosmoteer.

If you want to keep using any incompatible mods, then open Cosmoteer's properties on Steam, click on the Betas tab, and then select 0.22.1 from the drop-down. This will revert your Cosmoteer version back to the previous version so that you can keep using those mods, but you won't be able to use the new features from this update.

Looking Forward To The Future

While crew-based construction and Resource Collectors are the big new features of this update, we have plenty more planned on the roadmap that we're really excited about. This includes a new weapon, the Chaingun, which we're hoping to finish very soon!

Thanks again to everyone who tested the preview and release candidate builds! As always, we welcome and encourage your feedback, which you can post on the Steam discussion boards or on our Discord.

Patch Notes

Here are the full patch notes for this update (0.23.0):

Crew can now perform construction and repairs instead of those happening instantly. Any changes made to the ship in the ship designer will prompt its crew (and the crew of any nearby stations) to deliver any required resources to the construction site and then build or repair. This is an optional new feature.
- This feature defaults to on for new Career games but can be turned off by enabling the "I Hate Crew Construction" option.
- This feature defaults to off for existing Career games but can be turned on by disabling the above option.
- This feature defaults to off for Creative Mode but can be turned on by disabling the "Free Build Mode" option in the Creative Mode hamburger menu. (Asteroids always use Free Build Mode.)
Added a new "Resource Collector" ship part. This is a 2x2 room that has four small tractor beams on top. Instead of pulling in ships, these beams will automatically pull in any floating resources marked for collection and deliver them to any storages on the ship that have exterior access hatches. Each collector beam is individually crewed.
All PvP multiplayer modes now allow ships to be modified during combat if they have the necessary resources, in which case their crews will exit the ship to make the modifications. This is enabled in all official rulesets but can be disabled by the host.
All PvP multiplayer modes now have a "Resource Loot Drops" option that will cause ships to drop resource nuggets when their parts are destroyed. This is disabled in all official rulesets but can be enabled by the host.
Roof weapons can now shoot over friendly ships in addition to their own ship.
Doubled Flak Battery turret rotation speed.
Weapons will no longer ever target enemy crew.
All factories that produce or consume ship construction materials now have top hatches from which crew can deliver materials or access them for construction.
In Domination mode, ships that are below the minimum ship value can no longer capture control points.
Added a warning in the ship editor that is shown if the ship is missing any vital parts such as airlocks, command rooms, reactors, crew quarters, or fire extinguishers. This warning can be disabled in the settings.
Marking a part for repair will now allow crew to exit the ship and put out any fires in it from the outside.
When marking floating resource nuggets for collection, they will now usually be first stored in storage bays with exterior hatches before being moved to whatever weapon or part wants those resources.
Stations and trade ships will now automatically repair themselves using any available resources.
Removed the sulfur requirement to build explosive charges and increased the coils used from 4 to 6. (The total credit cost of explosive charges remains unchanged.)
Using the "Save Attack Defaults" option will now save the angle of attack as well as the distance and rotation.
When loading blueprints into an existing ship, there is now an option to load the flight direction and attack defaults.
When transferring resources between your own ships, there are now "restock" options for both the left and right ships, similar to the trade screen.
The title screen now has a "CONTINUE" button that can be clicked to load the most recent save file. (This is identical to the existing Ctrl+L hotkey. If there are no saves yet then the button will not be shown.)
Updated the ship construction and repair tutorials with info about crew leaving the ship to perform the tasks.
Removed the "Automatically Hire Crew" setting as this was mostly leftover from the Classic versions in which crew was purchased instantly. (The game now always behaves as if this setting were enabled, which was the default.)
The "Share Team Credits" will no longer be displayed in free-for-all games.
A handful of updated sound effects, including thruster rumble, airlock enter/exit, and shield hit.
New and updated ships:
- Added 4 new Monolith combat ships: Contender, Knave, Quad, and Ternion
- Added 1 new Monolith trade ship: Atlas Freighter
- Added another Minor Monolith Arms Depot.
- Added 14 new Cabal combat ships: Aludra, Bellatrix, Canopus, Cepheus, Dschubba, Flicker Flare, Helioblade, Menkent, Rastaban, Sainted Pyre, Sol Calidus, Starblessed Vow, Suhail, and Vela
- Added 1 new Imperium combat ship: Torgos
- Added 2 new Imperium trade ships: Guillemot and Murrelet
- Added 2 new Fringe combat ships: Crankshaft and Tax Evader
- the Renegade has been renamed to Recusant.
- Various updates to other existing ships.
Bugfix: Hailing friendly ships could sometimes open the dialog with the incorrect ship on the right side.
Bugfix: In PvP multiplayer, the ship icons in the lower-left corner were using player colors instead of friend-or-foe colors.
Bugfix: In the crew management screen, hovering the mouse cursor over a crew who was delivering to a Missile & Mine Launcher would show the text '&' instead of '&'.
Modding: Added a 'BlendSpriteGrid' part component that is essentially a combination of BlendSprite and SpriteGrid.
Modding: Added a base_part_terran_structure.rules file that should be used instead of base_part_terran.rules for any modded structure parts. (It uses different construction graphics/vfx than regular parts.)
Modding: BlendSprite components now support an OperationalToggle.
Modding: Blend sprites now support 'AlwaysBlendWithSelf' to allow blending with its own part even if it doesn't match the BlendsWithCategories.
Modding: All blend sprites now support RandomDamageLevels.
Modding: CreatePartWhenDestroyed and CreatePartPerTileWhenDestroyed have been renamed to UnderlyingPart and UnderlyingPartPerTile, but the old names are still supported for backwards-compatibility.
Modding: Added a new 'CollectNuggets' target type for TurretWeapon that will cause the weapon to aim and shoot at floating resources that are marked for collection.
Modding: Added a CollectNugget hit effect that can be used to draw in floating resource nuggets that have been marked for collection.
Modding: TurretWeapon now supports a 'PreventOverlappingTargets' parameter that if set to true will prevent it from (in most cases) picking the same target as another TurretWeapon that also has PreventOverlappingTargets set to true.
Modding: TurretWeapon now supports an 'AllowRotationToggle' that can be hooked to any toggle component to determine whether the turret is allowed to rotate.
Modding: TurretWeapon and FixedWeapon now support a 'ToggleOnMode' parameter that can be used to control when the component is considered "on" when used as a toggle. The valid options are 'WantsToFire' (the default, which is identical to the existing behavior where the component is only "on" when it is actively firing) and 'HasTarget' (the component is "on" when it has a target even if it is not actively trying to fire at the target).
Modding: 'SourceShipLowCollisions' and 'SourceShipHighCollisions' have been renamed to 'FriendlyShipLowCollisions' and 'FriendlyShipHighCollisions' and will now also prevent the bullet/beam from colliding with friendly ships, not just their own ship. The old names are still supported for backwards-compatibility but have the new behavior.
Modding: Added 'NonFriendlyShipLowCollisions' and 'NonFriendlyShipHighCollisions' to SimpleHit, PenetratingHit, and BeamEmitter components.
Modding: 'IgnoreSourceShipLowLOSChecks' and 'IgnoreSourceShipHighLOSChecks' have been renamed to 'IgnoreFriendlyShipLowLOSChecks' and 'IgnoreFriendlyShipHighLOSChecks' and will now also prevent line of sight from being blocked by friendly ships, not just their own ship. The old names are still supported for backwards-compatibility but have the new behavior.
Modding: The maximum size of the crew and space background sprite atlases is no longer limited to 2048x2048 and is now limited to the maximum texture size supported by the player's GPU. This is typically 16384x16384 on modern GPUs but may be lower on older GPUs.