Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander - Walt Destler
Cosmoteer release candidate 0.27.1 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 contains a good handful of bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, and other minor changes. Plus it changes how fires grow and spread.
We're still working hard at a bunch of upcoming improvements as part of Career 2.0, but we wanted to get these ones out to everyone sooner rather than later.
Thanks for testing!
RC1:
Fires:
Fires in individual tiles now have dynamic sizes which will start small and grow over time before spreading to adjacent tiles. Smaller fires will do less damage and take less time to extinguish.
Fires VFX have been updated to support the new dynamic fire sizes.
Built-In Ships:
Added a new starter ship, the Model-M, which features a mining laser and increased storage capacity.
Added 3 new Monolith combat ships: Collider, Project Dainsleif, and Zweihander.
Added 1 new Cabal combat ship: Risha
Added 3 new Cabal trade ships: Ecclesiarch, Minister, and Pontiff.
Added 2 new Cabal trade stations: Med Cabal Trade Station II and Large Cabal Trade Station II.
Added 5 new Imperium combat ships: Damocles, Harpy, Raven, Saladin, and Vajra's Valor.
Added 6 new Imperium trade ships: Cygnus, Gannet, Gull, Skua, Stenidae, and Thalassarche.
Added 1 new Imperium trade station: Small Imperium Trade Station III
Added 4 new Fringe combat ships: Big Iron, Brutalizer, Revenant, and Rustbloom.
Added 2 new Fringe trade ships: Harmattan and Shamal.
Miscellaneous updates to many existing ships and stations, including adding empty storages to many combat ships. (These empty storages will be used in upcoming mission types.)
Balance:
Reduced Mining Laser damage per second from 1200 to 1000.
Huge Thrusters and Engine Rooms no longer require tri-steel. (Their total credit cost is unchanged.)
Heavy Lasers, Large Cannons, Disruptors, and Mining Lasers now require Hyper-Coils in addition to Steel and Coils. (Their total credit cost is unchanged.)
Ion Prisms that are targeting prisms of other friendly ships will no longer be blocked by their shields.
Increased Manipulator Beam range from 200 to 450.
Manipulators Beams will now stop helping asteroid mining crew once they reach the asteroid.
Manipulator Beams no longer reveal their own ships when used inside gas clouds.
Ion Storm lightning strikes will no longer originate from within 50 meters of any ship.
Ship sight and radar ranges are now increased by the radius of the ship. This should help large ships inside gas clouds see a little better.
Career:
High Nebula Density and Supernova Aftermath systems will no longer occur before difficulty tier 5.
Supernova Aftermath systems will now appear half as frequently.
A.I.:
A.I. ships will no longer follow enemies into ion storms or sun damage zones.
Crew will no longer exit the ship while either their own ship or their job location is inside of a sun's damage zone.
Graphics:
Tweaked Ion Storms to make their shapes more distinctive when zoomed out.
Custom markers are now brighter, and the legibility of all point-of-interest icons has been improved. This should make them a bit easier to see when inside clouds.
The unexplored regions of the map are now a simple dark gray instead of a cloudy appearance. (This was done to differentiate them more from gas clouds.)
User Interface:
Using the "pickaxe" tool, holding shift+alt, and clicking on a floating resource will now deselect all resources of the same type currently on-screen.
When dragging a box to collect floating resources, the text showing how many of each resource will be collected will now show multiple types of resources on each line.
Added options to the Transfer Crew / Resources dialog to transfer excess resources from one ship to another, similar to the existing "Sell Excess" option when trading.
The Mining Laser's description has been updated to indicate that it is a roof-mounted weapon.
Roof lights (but not headlights) now support brushes.
Changed the text for "Formation Order" to "Formation Priority".
Bug Fixes:
Crash in some circumstances when transferring crew after loading a saved game file.
Crash in some circumstances when loading modded saved games without some/all of the mods and selecting a ship with missing parts.
Deleting all parts on a ship could cause a freeze/crash if it was being attacked by other A.I. ships.
In direct control mode, ships were not rotating as responsively as was intended.
Large shields going offline or being destroyed could cause ship positions to suddenly shift.
It was unintentionally possible to go into unlimited debt when constructing by using blueprint mode and holding the Ctrl key to force-start construction.
In some circumstances, the crew of very small ships (such as a ship with only a single shield, reactor, and crew quarters) could stop doing all tasks.
Railguns that were targeting friendlies would often fail to fire at even when lined up with the target.
A.I. ships that weren't near the player had a tendency to often fly into ion storms.
A.I. ships that weren't near the player could sometimes get stuck very close to suns and then die if the player ever went near them. This was especially common with trade ships.
It was unintentionally possible for ships to use floating resources hidden in gas clouds for construction.
It was unintentionally possible to hail enemy ships that were out of sight range. (It is still possible to hail friendly/neutral ships and stations.)
Weapon fire cooldowns were unintentionally resetting when their ship exits a hyper-jump.
When hovering the mouse cursor over ship parts in the picture-in-picture, the tooltip was being displayed in the wrong location.
Enabling the "Lock Ship Rotation" for the picture-in-picture (PiP) would cause incorrect parts to be targeted in the PiP and issues using the middle mouse button to adjust the PiP's view if the ship in the PiP had any flight direction other than up.
The "Storage Full" message would be displayed when dragging a collection box around resources where some but not all of the resources were already marked for collection.
Using the arrow keys to change the text cursor position while composing text in Asian languages (such as Chinese and Japanese) wasn't working properly and could produce malformed results.
The size of megaroid tiles in meters was shown as 1/4 their actual size.
Some parts would make blueprint sounds when placed even when not in blueprint mode.
Added a '--single-threaded-planets' launch argument that, if specified, will cause planet generation to use only one CPU thread, which may solve crashes when starting/loading games that some players have been experiencing. Using this launch argument will make load times longer but should otherwise have no effect on gameplay or visuals.
Modding:
Improved the speed at which the Mods Manager opens when many mods are installed.
Added options to the Mods Manager's hamburger menu to activate, deactivate, and uninstall all mods at once.
The ProhibitTargetPartsFilter will now cause the weapon to act as if it has no target for the purposes of shooting through shields and effect filters if the target matches the filter.
Added a 'ResourceConsumingStorage' part component that consumes resources and triggers when enough resources have been consumed. (Currently unused in vanilla but will be used in the future.)
Fixed crash if a ContinuousEffects component has 'ParentToShip = true' and only audio effects.
Fixed a bug where MultiResourceStorage wasn't functioning correctly if it was only linked to ViaBuffs storages.
Fixed bug where SourcePartCollisionDelay wouldn't work if bullet velocity was too high relative to the physics tick rate.
Parts that uses StaticToggle and StaticMode components will no longer prevent their ships from appearing in the ship library.
Any parts added by mods will now show the mod name beneath their stats. (This should work for 99% of mods but may not work if the mod is adding the part in a particularly unusual way.)
Part IDs are now shown in the part stats when running in developer mode.
RC2:
The Title Screen's "MORE" button now has a link to open the Early Access Roadmap.
(RC Bugfix): "Storage Full" could be erroneously displayed when dragging a box around resources with multiple ships selected.
(RC Bugfix): Ion Beam Prisms that were targeting another prism weren't properly aiming at it.
(Bugfix): Some sprites (such as the EMP Missile) had noticeable artifacting along the edges related to texture compression.
(Modding): Added an 'AllowAimAtProhibitedTarget' parameter to TurretWeapon that, if true, will allow the turret to aim and fire at prohibited targets but will still keep the target from being passed on to the emitter.
We noticed players had a few complaints about the loading screen for older PC models, so we have hired alpha testers & have fixed any issues and even optimized the game to all sorts of graphic cards!
1)Right click to place way-point icon on map (also press ESC to exit map) ☑️
2)Reset aggro of NPCs after death ☑️
3)Map UI bug fixed ☑️
4)Terrain glitches clipping through floor fixed ☑️
5)Made swimming faster ☑️
6)Active quest while on map ☑️
7)Horse unable to fly glitch fixed ☑️
8)Fixed death glitch respawning with 0hp bug that occured rarely ☑️
9)Removed the starting health potion so not to be confused with quest item potion ☑️
10) fixed horse mounting bug (sometimes wouldn't let you re-mount horse after dismounting) ☑️
We also fixed small bug with stairs not being able to walk up them only run, and some quest bugs added snow near snow troll cave.
In the near future, we hope to include even more quality of life updates to make the game fun. Based on your feedback and the testers of the game, we want to extend a sincere thank you to all who have had the patience to help us with this early access title. We look forward to not disappointing you and bringing you a game. You will continue to find new fun content every update!
-Added "zoom mode", which can be used to get a closer look at puzzles as needed -Improved general readability of tile marking visuals -Tiny camera tweak to optional Ruins puzzle -Fixed fast bloom quality setting, which was not having any effect -Fixed a small bug where tutorial hints might not show correctly -Fixed a bug where Gardens metapuzzle would play sounds when a save game was loaded
V0.0032 update log New 1.New language [Traditional Chinese] optimize 1. Optimize some English translation issues 2. Optimize some text descriptions 3. Adjust the button position for Extend Modified 1. Reduced the monster's health for difficulty 1 2. Slightly reduced the damage of some Missile Piercing skills 3. Skill [Drowner] now has a larger summoning attack range 4. Halve the original effect of level 2 that bond various elements, but add corresponding [5] points of element damage enhancement to it, making it more suitable for excessive use in the early stages 5. In order to build the maze faster in the early stage, the first four waves will now receive an additional number of building choices (you don't have to always stay in the corner) 6. Fixed the issue where the damage of the skill [Summoning Flame Demon] did not decrease correspondingly after increasing the fireball penetration 7. Reduced the number of leader wolves in the level [BatWolf] 8. Reduced the health of some flying monsters 9. In the first five waves of events, events were added to construct buildings for the power and kinetic energy groups, allowing for better access and learning of sources of power and kinetic energy in the early stages (two relatively less useful events were removed in the early stages)
We've got some delicious updates to share with you this month. From the much-anticipated Open Beta announcement to significant strides in our tutorial system and gameplay mechanics, August has been a tasty mix of progress and excitement.
So grab your favorite snack (burgers, anyone? 🍔), and let's get into the latest developments!
Open Beta in September! 😍
Yes, you read that right! After months of hard work and countless iterations, we're ecstatic to announce that a limited Open Beta will be live from September 13th to 15th.
This is your chance to experience the latest version of the game with all the new features, and give us your valuable feedback before the demo release in October.
But there's a catch. 😉
Slots are limited, and keys are flying out the door on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you haven't requested beta access in the last two weeks, sign up now to register.
Our goals for this playtest are simple:
Gather your feedback to fine-tune the gameplay.
Iron out any hiccups before the official demo.
Build a stronger connection with our amazing community—you!
We absolutely can't wait to have you onboard and hear your thoughts!
Now, onto the exciting behind-the-scenes work we've been doing.
Tutorial System Design Challenges
Designing a tutorial for a strategy game is no walk in the park, especially when you’re trying to satisfy both Achievers who crave structured guidance and Explorers who love to discover things on their own. To strike the right balance, we created a two-part onboarding system that that caters to both styles of play.
Navigational Guide
First, we implemented a skippable navigational guide to help new players get familiar with the game’s interface.
We know how overwhelming a strategy game UI can be, especially when you're first starting out, so this guide aims to make that initial learning curve a bit smoother.
However, for those of you who love diving straight into the action, you can skip this guide right from the get-go.
Gameplay Discovery
Next, Instead of handholding you through each mechanic, we set mini-goals and provide tips that help you discover the game's mechanics by doing. Completing these challenges will earn you experience points that can be used to unlock items in the research tree.
We believe this method works exceptionally well for tycoon and management game players, as it mirrors the decision-making and strategic planning that are core to the gameplay.
Core Considerations
While building this tutorial, we've kept three key considerations at the forefront: player autonomy, a rewarding experience, and clarity. We want you to feel empowered to discover the game your way, with just enough guidance and meaningful rewards.
New Game Setup Screen
We’ve also overhauled the game setup screen to give it a fresh, spacious layout with a more vibrant color palette. Here's how the previous version looked:
In the latest version, essential elements like weather conditions, starting funds, GDP, and interest rates are now prominently displayed, giving you a clearer sense of how they’ll impact your game’s difficulty.
Additionally, the new difficulty gauge resolves a previous usability issue where players attempted to adjust the difficulty setting by interacting directly it.
Preventing Unintended Consequences
Another QoL improvement we made was to implement informative pop-ups that help prevent unintended consequences.
Whether you’re tweaking a recipe after placing an inventory order or starting a new research queue, these pop-ups will now warn you of any potential impacts on your strategy.
This way, you can make informed decisions and avoid any unintentional slip-ups.
Discarding Inventory
A longstanding pain point we've seen during gameplay has been the management of surplus ingredients that take up more storage space than necessary.
Previously, the only solutions were to either incorporate surplus items into recipes where they didn't really belong or to cease ordering them altogether, hoping to balance the stock manually over time.
Neither approach was particularly satisfying or realistic.
To address this, we've implemented a new 'Discard Inventory' function that allows you to delete either a portion or the entirety of any ingredient that's cluttering your storage.
That's it for August! 🥂
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After receiving lots of feedback from the players and of course reading the reviews both negative and positive i improved the game's flow, especially from the beginning where most players struggle to complete/progress.
Here are some additional update notes:
Game has now a saving system, yay no more progress lost.... This however is a per level save, example given, when you load the fifth level its going to save the game from the start of the level, not your actual progress inside that level.
Menu settings have been re-coded from almost scratch, the UI has not changed but the code is way more stable and clean. Also the CONTROLS section like disabling camera shake/motion blur/FOV etc is now way easier to access.
Translation has improved as well, character unicode issues and specific characters where missing but now i think its all good. If you think the translation for your language is very bad or completely wrong, feel free to contact me on Discord so we can improve the translation of your country's language.
Game Compile Warnings have been fixed as well.
The Powerplant 007 Puzzle is way easier to solve, you can either solve it with the math way given by the note, or find the value from the computer.
Its also now way easier to find the light switch/distribution board as well as the powerplant 007 battery.
An Async Loading Screen has been added to the game whenever you open a new level so you know that your game has not froze
About the Poolrooms level/level after level 0 If the loading issue still persists the game now saves your progress instantly from the start of the poolrooms level. So if it takes too much just close the game with alt+f4,re-open it and press continue!
That's pretty much it! If you feel like the game is lacking something or its still buggy in some places, feel free to contact me on Discord!
