Version History

This article contains changelog information for the Early Access period of The Last Starship, which followed the closed playtest.

Alpha 11

Alpha 11
Burke and Vasquez
Update video
Release date	30 August 2024
GitHub Bugs	Milestone 8

NEW HUD

The placeholder HUD has been revamped and almost completely replaced with a new design.

• Critical resources are now shown bottom left of the screen.
• The toolbar is replaced with a set of icons.
• The different views are now a vertical stack of buttons in the bottom right of the screen.
• A new indicator top left shows the ship name, author, Hull status, Atmosphere status, and Power status.
• Shipyard services now appear at the top of the screen. (Repair ship, Buy ship, Sell ship, Fabricate ship)

Note: The old HUD is still used temporarily in two areas that are unfinished:

• Construction popup
• Fleet orders popup

Story Episodes changes

• Completely revamped introduction (much shorter), with a new ship and a new tutorial.
• The Stargate industry introduction has been removed. It will return as a story episode soon.
• All story episodes are now "discovered" on the sector map, rather than the Contracts screen.
• New gold highlights and tooltips for all special episode locations on the sector map.
• "Black Hole Sun"
  • Part 3 Hidden until Julian calls you when he is ready to rescue his brother. The episode is then automatically accepted.
  • The Black Hole Sun 3 'Short Hop' system is no longer a large distance away across the map.
  • Fix Julian's ship from Black Hole Sun 3 being able to jump to any system.
  • Fix any ship being able to rescue Marcus in Black Hole Sun 3, and not just Julian.
• "The trouble with Tiddlets" has returned, and is now a playable episode (Part 1 only, for now).

SMALL CHANGES

• NPC ships will now order critical supplies when in a trading location (Fuel, Oxygen, Water, Crew, Spacesuits) when required.
• When highlighting any piece of equipment, the extra tooltip information will only show when the ship is one of your fleet.
• Allow to transfer/cancel transfer entire stack by ctrl clicking.
• You can now freely select text in an input field by holding 'SHIFT'.
• You can now select all text in an input field by pressing 'CTRL+A'.
• Selected text is preserved when the input field is deselected.
• Ship Editor: Destroying cells now destroys any equipment in those cells.
• FTL drives on the selected ship are now preferred when choosing a drive for a hyperspace jump.
• The camera is now attached to the ship when in TACTICAL view, the same as normal view.
• Clicking a Location Link in the Missions Window or Missions Summary now also sets that system as an FTL destination.
• Location Links for mission objectives will no longer appear in the Missions Summary after that objective has been completed.
• You can now collapse mission summaries the same way as rating, by right-clicking to close and left-clicking to open.
• You can now filter search in all tabs of the trade window.
• The trade window now defaults to 'all items' instead of being blank.
• Change the end of the introduction tutorial to fit with new episode discovery.
• Galaxy map now has special indicators for episodes:
  • Episode starting systems are now gold.
  • Regular systems you need to visit as part of an episode have a gold outline.
  • Any system with a Location Link to it as part of an episode now has a tooltip on the map to see what you need to do there.
• The 'STARGATE' location now has a normal location name - NG0.
• Drones now treat actual salvage as higher priority over raw materials.
• When you start a New Game your ship is now 'inside' a shipyard.
• Save files are now filtered when saving a game.

BUG FIXES

• Issue #217: Fleet Logistics still makes drones faff when preparing to jump.
• Issue #283: Short Robot Arm won't unload Black Box Recorder from Drone Bay onto Track.
• Issue #293: Hydroponic garden won't grow.
• Issue #292: Cargo items stacking to silly sizes.
• Crash when removing a piece of track that was in a loop.
• Fix crash in Main Menu when viewing long file lists.
• Fix crash in Tiddlet fire.
• Fix cargo being moved around unnecessarily. If a job exists to move cargo to a storage zone, and you place a new storage zone that is at least as good under it, the job to move it is now cancelled.
• Fix storage window not placing any storage when it is first opened.
• Fix A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing Part 3 not being playable after completing Part 2.
• Fix A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing Part 3 pirate attacking you in another mission's system.
• Fix shuttle leaving on reload.
• Only the FTL drive responsible for jumping will light up during a jump.
• Only the FTL drive responsible for jumping will consume the contents of its FTL charge.
  • This caused the FTL resource counter to be off-by-one when you have multiple FTL drives on a ship.
• Fix Audio bug after the opening text when starting a new game.
• Fix objects remaining silent when you switch system and should hear them again.
• Fix some objects, such as engines, not pausing correctly when the main menu is open.
• You can no longer sell Julian's ship from Black Hole Sun at a Shipyard.
• Fix FTL window saying 'NO FTL FOUND' when you have no ship selected to travel.
• Fix Trade window telling you you cannot afford a trade when it is for the exact amount of cash you have.
• Fix Black Hole Sun 3 game crash when trying to take control of Julian's ship outside of the Black Hole system.
• Fix Mouse clicks from game world being detected on the sector map.
• Fix ships undocking from each other when they are all FTL jumping in survival and creative mode.
• Fix the tutorial window blocking input to the game world after the tutorial is over.
• Fix it looking like you have placed a storage zone in the output of a docking port. Instead, the visual is cancelled immediately.
• Fix bug where you cannot interact with the tutorial window while the map is open.
• Fix bug where the tutorial window highlight for the FTL button is the wrong color.

New community ships added to the base game - thank you!

• JOHNNY STRUGGLES - Improved Industrious
• Omega Naval Station
• Belfast Shipyard

Alpha 10

Alpha 10
Release date	24 June 2024
GitHub Bugs	Milestone 7

New Episodes

Work continues on a series of hand crafted story episodes, designed to pull new players into the game and provide some excellent adventures for existing players.

• Black Hole Sun - Part 1
• Black Hole Sun - Part 2
• Black Hole Sun - Part 3
• A wolf in Sheeps Clothing - Part 3

New Tutorials

These are short tutorials and are generally incorporated into the story episodes. But will pop up whenever you are trying to do these things for the first time:

• Docking Tutorial
• Mining Tutorial
• Combat Tutorial
• Crew transfer Tutorial

Performance

• Large improvement to drones when searching for repair works.
• Reduced the particle density on ships arriving and departing, to help with performance
• Make FindNearby only look at given layer and given object type if object type given. Helps with drone performance.
• Calculate incoming quantities of each container only once in TryStoreCargo, improves WorkQueue Update performance.

Text Input

• You can now filter any long list of files/saves/ships etc by typing a short word
• You can now freely move the cursor in a text field and delete characters in any position.
  • 'LEFT' or 'RIGHT' to move the cursor backwards or forwards one character.
  • 'HOME' or 'DOWN' to move the cursor to the beginning of the input.
  • 'END' or 'UP' to move the cursor to the end of the input.
  • 'DEL' now forward deletes text in a text input field.

SMALL CHANGES

• The game mode 'Survival' is now locked until the player completes phase 1 of the stargate
• The game mode 'Free Roam' is now locked until the player completes the 'Flight Ready' mission in Creative or Survival mode
• Nb. Both modes can be easily unlocked by editing the preferences.txt file:

   UnlockSurvival    true
   UnlockFreeRoam    true

• Battle Stations button is now available in Tactical mode
• Changed drone behaviour to look to use any available Drone Bays
• FTL user interface improved. You can now include other ships after clicking the Prepare Jump button
• Clicking Prepare Jump from the System Map will now prepare a jump with just that ship, even if another jump is in progress.
• The OPPOSITION system that sends hostiles to attack the Stargate on a timer has been completely disabled (it sucked)
• Mining Laser now require to be installed either in a wall (like the guns) or on a piece of scaffold.
• When installing Mining Lasers they will now auto-rotate to fit the wall/scaffold.
• Allow to buy/sell entire stack by ctrl clicking.

BUG FIXES:

• Issue #258: In creative mode, when entering ship name / author name the key strokes execute in the background
• Issue #259: If you outgun the pirate you can kill the ship leading to a hardlock and game CTD.
• Issue #260: Docking Tutorial window doesn't go away when you click skip.
• Issue #261: The Wolf in sheep clothing mission is available to start from the beginning after completing it.
• Issue #267: Only selected ship rotates to align for jump in creative / survival / free roam.
• Issue #241: Orders not saved correctly in stargate mode because not copying system id when copying orders.
• Issue #243: Meteor shower during resin collection phase of tutorial.
• Issue #277: Scavenger still hails you even if destroyed.
• Issue #247: Some imported/bought ships will have the crew dying of suffocation.
• Issue #161: Install order disappearing when closest box of desired item to install is on a track.
• Issue #233: Netural fighters attacking player when in meteor shower.
• Issue #229: Turning with thrusters uses engines when another ship is preparing a jump.
• Issue #231: If a window is open (eg: FTL jump) and you go to tatical mode, tactical mode stops tracking cursor.
• Issue #279: Docking Port flipped on reloading ship, if placed at top of grid in edit mode.
• Issue #288: Rescue mission does not fail and disappear if the ship is destroyed.
• Issue #225: Weapons consoles not activating connected weapons
• Issue #221: Hostile ship not attacking after some ships jump away
• Issue #198: Can jump ship when docked with other ship that isn't jumping but ships stay docked.
• Issue #234: Stargate progress is incorrect.
• Issue #153: Money duplication glitch when buying ship at shipyard.
• Fix spelling mistake in the title of the Tech Tree Window: 'RESERACH' -> 'RESEARCH'.
• Fix window not closing when window close button is pressed.
• Performance slow down with ships arriving / leaving. Should be better with improvements to particle and layer rendering.
• Fix flightready mission causing crash when selling original ship and FTL jumping with another ship.
• Fix camera moving to wrong place when switching out of tactical if ship moved while in tactical.
• Fix tutorial coming back after skipping tutorial.
• Preserve ids of layers and objects when restoring a system archive, but still rebase time.
• Fix crash on loading a rescue mission on a ship that has been archived.
• Docking tutorial now dismisses itself if the target ship is derelict or non-existent.
• Track performance in certain situations improved.
• Fix install FTL objective not completing in flightready mission.

Alpha 10c

Alpha 10c
Release date	16 July 2024

Alpha 10c was released slightly later to Alpha 10 and fixed some critical bugs relating to missions:

• Fix crash when removing a piece of track in a loop.
• Fix crash in Main Menu when viewing long file lists.
• Fix crash in Tiddle particle creation when they catch fire
• Fix crash in Drone rendering.
• Fix Wolf 3 episode not showing up in contracts selection when loading older save games.
• Fix analytics not reporting for Wolf 3.
• Fix Blackhole 2 issues (repeating phone call, impossible to complete in some circumstances)

Alpha 9

Alpha 9
Atreides and Harkonnen
Update video
Release date	13 March 2024
GitHub Bugs	Milestone 6

New mission interface

• We have substantially upgraded and improved the mission system and all associated screens.
• We can now create rich, detailed missions with multiple stages and multiple objectives.
• The Communicator has also been upgraded and better integrated with the mission screen.
• Characters can now call you with information and instructions, and a log of those calls will be added to your mission screen.

Quality of Life improvements for the Mission Summary (top left of the screen):

• You can now 'Turn In' any completed mission directly from the mission summary
• A new diamond shaped location icon has been added to any objective that specifies a destination. Clicking the diamond will immediately bring up the sector map and highlight that location. This makes it very easy to navigate to the required locations for a mission.
• There is now a 'Prepare to jump' button in the Sector Map, for quick and easy alignment
• All mission types updated to take advantage of these new buttons.

New Story Episodes

• We have begun work on a series of story-based episodes.
• The general idea is to tell short stories with a rich cast of characters, and each story episode will be broken down into 2 or 3 parts.
• This involved the creation of a new Episode Manager system and a substantial upgrade of the Mission system.
• Story Episodes will automatically become available in the Mission Interface at the appropriate time.
• We have plans to add many more story episodes, now that this system is complete.
• Nb. Story episodes are available in Stargate mode, and in Free-roam mode. They are not available in survival mode. The Tiddlets mission remains available in Survival mode only.
• New Episodes:
  • A Wolf in sheep's clothing - part 1
  • A Wolf in sheep's clothing - part 2

Docking Tutorial

• A new Docking tutorial has been created, and is used directly in the episode Wolf Part 2.
• The tutorial will also show whenever a player is attempting a rescue mission.

SMALL CHANGES

• The time between waves of hostile forces attacking the Stargate has been tripled
• New graphics for crew in a space suit when they are outside the ship
• Reduced the radius at which a system blocks your FTL flight path (from 15 down to 4)
• The star background now shifts into an angry red when 'Battle Stations' is enabled
• Crew now walk 33% faster, and are slowed down less when carrying cargo
• New graphics for dead crew
• After loading a saved game, any ships where the crew are all dead due to suffocation will be recalled automatically under autopilot, and will leave the system

NEW AUDIO WORK

• Battle stations!
• Gun Turrets extending, retracting
• Mission Interface
• Music for the new story episodes

New community ships added to the base game - thank you!

• DOCTORX - DRX Helican Omicron

DRX Helican

DRX Psychopath

DRX Abyss

DRX Scarab

• JOHNNY STRUGGLES - The Altair Citadel

BUG FIXES

• You can no longer pause the game during the introductory flyby
• Fixed: Weapons Consoles are now correctly powered as part of the Weapons power category, not the Science power category
• Fix for drones incorrectly returning home when another ship in the local fleet is planning to jump to hyperspace
• Fixed: Fleet logistics transfers of the same item in opposite directions now cancel each other.
• Fix crash caused by invalid Researching Node.

Alpha 9c

Alpha 9c
Release date	14 March 2024

Alpha 9c is a hotfix build for Alpha 9 fixing UI issues with the Tactical screen.

Another build of Alpha 9c was released for Windows on 7 May 2024, but it is unclear what changed.

Alpha 8

Alpha 8
Update video
Release date	18 December 2023
GitHub Bugs	Milestone 5

New Equipment & Items

• Fusion Reactor
  • Uses Deuterium fuel pods and requires at least 500Mw for about 10 seconds to activate.
  • Produces a power output of 50-500Mw.
  • Deuterium (fuel pod)
  • Deuterium Recipe (Chemical Lab)
• Solar Panels
  • Must be installed on the outside of the ship, built onto scaffold beams.
  • Produces 10Mw normally.
  • This reduces to 5Mw in a nebula, and 0Mw in Hyperspace.
  • Solar Panel recipe (Assembly Table)
• Tutorial (continued)
  • Work continues on the in-game tutorial for new players.

New audio work

• Suit radio chatter for crew when they are wearing spacesuits
• New UI sounds for construction, pipes, cables, installation, deconstruction
• New ambiences for common equipment: reactors, fabricators, smelters, assembly tables
• Delivery shuttle engine sounds

New 'Exterior' graphics

• New graphics for all gun turrets when viewed from exterior
• Docking port exterior view improved
• Thrusters now more visible in exterior view and tactical view
• New exterior graphics for Small Tank, Medium Tank, Large Tank, Battery
• Gun Turrets can now be distinguished in Tactical View
  • Railgun - a long single line
  • Cannon - two medium-length parallel lines
  • Gatling gun - three short parallel lines

New community ships added to the base game - thank you!

• ZORBANE
  • DragonFly-A
• RUSH
  • Andromeda's Fury
• R0NALXD
  • Chakrali Corvetter
  • Chakrali Frigate
  • Chakrali Miner
  • Chakrali Starbase
• JOHNNY STRUGGLES
  • Big Martha
  • Defense Platform MK1/MK2/MK3
  • The Gas Man
  • The Wild Goose
  • Fat Duck Fighter
  • The Leviathan
  • Scavenger JS
  • Florence Bulk Hauler
  • Angry Frog Mining Rig
• ORION INDUSTRIES
  • Bellatrix Frigate
  • Hawk Light Fighter Mk1/Mk2
  • Krait Mk2 Fuel Rat
  • Mighty Miner
  • Minor-Miner Mk1/Mk2
  • Orthrus
  • Procyon Cruiser
  • Rescue Shuttle
  • Rigel Heavy Corvette Mk2
  • Roadrunner Corvette
  • Starhopper
  • Trident Heavy Fighter

SMALL CHANGES

• The PAUSED and SLOWMO messages will now flash, to minimize players not realizing why the game has stopped
• New STARGATE games will no longer generate a distress call in the starting map. This is because new players would often get very confused trying to do the rescue - without thrusters and without any skills in docking. Nb. Rescue Missions are still generated in the mission board
• Fleet orders for gathering salvage, gathering minerals, and repairing hull now default to ON
• Drones will now automatically return to their home ship if that ship is preparing to jump to FTL, regardless of Fleet Orders
• Hostile forces in stargate mode will now correctly attack the player, and not random NPC vessels
• Deconstruction UI effects improved
• If the player destroys a Neutral ship, all other neutral ships in the system will immediately turn hostile to the player
• Added a new Fleet Order: 'Mining'. This enables and disables all active mining from Mining Lasers within the current system.
• Schematic view has been made more tidy and clear.
• Improved the visuals when laying pipes and cables - removed unnecessary distracting visuals
• Weapons Officers now wear a RED uniform, to distinguish them from regular crew
• Weapons Consoles now support up to four guns, without requiring any research. Removed the research tree for Weapons Console Additional Slots.
• Player-owned ships will now always render on top of other ships, derelicts, etc
• Derelicts will be removed from the list of all ships after 3 minutes
• Derelicts now slowly erode away to nothing over time
• Damaged and Destroyed engines now belch flames

BUG FIXES

• FIXED: The equipment panel will now close if you select another ship or another location
• FIXED: issues with the Equipment Panel not popping up when you right-clicked because it was 'blocked' by the open construction menu
• FIXED: Missing pickup and drop sounds when crew is working
• FIXED: The tick sound effect when installing equipment was wrong when the equipment had an even width or height
• FIXED: Issue with Delivery Missions with a difficulty of 84 and 890 boxes!
• FIXED: Main Menu ambience continued to play after clicking Import Friendly or Import Hostile
• Issue #175 - After an FTL-jump, the suits are turned off. Orders are now carried through from system to system when FTL jumping unless you already have a fleet at the destination.
• Issue #179 - (Survival) Cross-sector passenger missions can never be delivered
• Issue #183 - Tutorial text modal not advancing correctly. Fix overlap problem and tutorial loop.
• Issue #188 - Derelict ships will now automatically remove themselves from the layer list after some time.
• Issue #190 - Fighters can attack a ship in another system
• Issue #195 - Fuel canisters aren't getting loaded. Validate existing fleet transfers to ensure that they are still satisfying requests.
• Issue #194 - A full "circular" track gets jammed and doesn't move. Allow tracks to move more freely.
• Issue #196 - Can't see all ships in logistics screen. Fix a bug where the ships were overflowing the window. Present ships in the same order as the ship list on the right.

Undocumented changes (not shown in original changelog

• Max zoom level is now 5000 (rather than unlimited)
• Percentages removed from tanks in schematic view (only absolute values displayed)
• Hyperspace isotopes can be refined into stable isotopes, which can be turned into deuterium in the chemistry lab
• Stranded Ships from Rescue contracts are NeutralShips instead of Derelicts

Alpha 7

Alpha 7
Release date	17 November 2023

Alpha 7 is an interim build with no update video, GitHub milestone, or nickname. Changes are covered in the update video for Alpha 8.

Multi-system Simulation

Multiple locations within a sector are now simulated all at once.
This means you can split up your fleet, have ships in one system mining an asteroid belt, while your combat vessels in another system do battle.
You can freely and instantly move focus between different ships of yours within all active systems.
Different collections of ships can be in FTL at the same time, travelling to different destinations.
You can (for example) create mining and gathering ships and leave them in a nebula or asteroid belt, and they will continue to mine and operate while you attend to other locations.

• NPC ships updated. Star systems are now much more busy, as NPC ships come and go. NPC ships will also engage in mining and salvage where appropriate.
• All NPC ships are now based on either official ship designs or community ships, or ships you have subscribed to on Steam Workshop.
• NPC ship system 'faking' has been largely removed. You can now see inside any NPC neutral ship, and observe the crew and equipment operating normally.
• NPC ships will turn hostile if you attack them, but will generally try to escape rather than fight to the death.
• Subscribe to more ships via the Steam Workshop, and these ships will appear in your game world.

Tutorial / on-boarding

The tutorial continues to be updated, with the aim to provide a complete introduction to the game and the STARGATE PROJECT.
It is still a work in progress, but takes the player all the way up to receiving a second ship.
The primary aim is to bring entirely new players into the STARGATE industry mode.
You can now skip the entire tutorial by clicking the X in the top right of the tutorial window.

Stargate Project

The stargate project now has six working phases that must be completed, each building on the last.
All phases have been redesigned and rebalanced.
All production times for Fabricators and Assembly tables have been shortened and balanced.
Multiple phases of the stargate project now require research unlocks to progress.
Enemy forces will now attack any ships engaged in the stargate project, starting around phase 3. Each subsequent attack will be more dangerous than the last.

• The game now automatically starts in STARGATE mode on first playthrough
• Introductory flyby sequence updated
• The TRADE screen now shows sellable Stargate parts highlighted in GOLD
• Fabricator buildings no longer produce outputs endlessly, filling up your cargo space (eg frames, coils).

Instead they will produce an item and then wait until that item has been taken to be used somewhere before producing another.

• The stargate sector now contains hostile fleets (difficult!), distress calls, derelict ships, asteroid belts, gas clouds, as well as colonies and shipyards.

Mission System - New missions are now continuously generated at all locations in the sector - Old missions are removed after some time, if nobody claims them. - All mission types scale in response to your ratings within the appropriate category. - STARGATE industry mode now has all mission types available: delivery, passenger, combat, rescue, production, mining - Completed Missions are now removed from the contract board after 60 seconds

Game controls

• Spacebar now pauses the game.

This is to allow for more consideration and precision during space battles.

• You can hold SHIFT for dramatic slow-mo. You can toggle slow-mo with Caps-Lock
• Tactical mode camera no longer tracks position or rotation of any ship. You can freely pan around.
• Normal view mode automatically tracks position and rotation of the current ship, aligning automatically so you can see the interior.
• The compass / toggle tracking button has been removed
• Tactical mode: Weapons list now scales when there are lots of weapons, to ensure they all fit on screen

BUG FIXES

• Issue #164 - Cargo Space not recognising new zoning
• You can no longer try to install boxed equipment on a ship that the box isn't on
• Thousands more bug fixes but honestly we lost track somewhere along the way

Alpha 7c

Alpha 7c
Release date	18 November 2023

Alpha 7c is a hotfix build for Alpha 7 fixing some FTL issues.

• Loading an older save game (pre-alpha 7) will now automatically enable multi-system simulation. This fixes an issue where loading an older save game didn't enable multisystem simulation, preventing you from making FTL jumps with more than one ship at a time.

• This enables multiple ships to do an FTL jump together in industry mode. Click on the STAY/JUMP button to toggle which ships are included in the jump. At least one ship in the group must have an enabled FTL drive.

• Multi-system simulation is not yet enabled for the other game modes - SURVIVAL, FREE ROAM and CREATIVE. In those modes all ships will now jump together, as used to happen. This fixes the issue of only a single ship jumping.

Alpha 6

Alpha 6
Frodo & Sam
Update video
Release date	13 September 2023
GitHub Bugs	Milestone 4

Buying ships at a shipyard

• Any ship from the ship library can be bought in a system with a station or shipyard

Tutorial

• Beginnings of a Tutorial for Industry Mode.

NEW EQUIPMENT

• Weapons Control Centre => Can connect to up to 4 weapons remotely and be controlled by a weapons officer, so that the connected weapons no longer require crew
• New Crew Type - Weapons Officer needed to crew the Weapons Control Centre

SMALL CHANGES

• Robot Arms now use Jobs to Move, Load, and Combine objects. This allows robot arms and crew to communicate, so they no longer compete to complete the same jobs at the same time.
• Robot Arms now stop moving an object if the destination can’t receive it anymore. If arm gets stuck like this, you can now cancel the arm in the right-click menu. Arms are now only stuck when an item is on the floor of the target cell.
• Missions that are in progress when you Hyperspace Jump are now returned to the open missions list so that you can return to the destination and finish them at a later date.
• Robot Arms now unload objects from factories that are not needed by the current recipe.
• When the current research project finishes a popup notification appears
• The atmospheric pressure is now shown as a percentage in a tooltip when hovering the mouse
• New Storage Zone UI
• Better job allocation/assignment to ensure that jobs can be completed by the entities that they are assigned to. This is noticeable when there a ship is divided into isolated areas.

BUG FIXES

• Mission Cargo/Passengers/Refuges and Trade Deals that are in progress when you hyperspace jump are now cancelled correctly and not taken to the Docking Port
• Crew and Scientists take off spacesuits when doing longer jobs in a breathable atmosphere
• Factories will cancel jobs when the recipe changes and the jobs object is no longer required
• Changing/Removing a storage zone will now cancel any job coming to it if the new storage at the location is no longer compatible with what is coming to it.
• Equipment installation jobs will stop any movement jobs to storage zones in the same location. When/if the equipment gets fully installed, the storage zones are removed.
• Equipment installation will highlight the closest accessible box that will be used to install the equipment.
• You can no longer place a storage zone in the location of an in-progress equipment installation
• Research stations only draw power when required for the current research project (1MW standby draw otherwise)
• Research station blue light now blinks
• For exterior jobs crew no longer pick up and drop the item before acquiring a space suit
• For exterior dismantling jobs, the box is now brought inside by the crew after dismantling
• Visual fix to adjacent tracks connecting incorrectly. Tracks now only connect if they interact with each other.
• Issue #108: Fixes transferring crew when requesting to transfer a spacesuit and all spacesuits are worn
• Issue #109: Fixes logistics window scaling with the number of layers, rather than the number of friendly layers
• Issue #10: Integer overflow with cash and ship value
• Issue #95 and #95: Friendly ships added to fleet for free when flying to a shipyard
• Issue #114: Powergrid settings are saved
• Issue #104: Logistics screen now updates when the selected layer is switched
• Issue #81: Mouse click and drag in the research window can no longer move the game camera
• Issue #92: Objects can no longer be stored in non-exact cell positions
• Issue #122: Robot Arms can now combine containers when they are on tracks
• Issue #72: Robot Arms now indicate when they are stuck, and can be canceled.
• Issue #16: Difficulty installing equipment in walls.
• Issue #66: Jobs get created in inaccessible locations and get “stuck”
• Issue #53: Crew try to store objects in a place they can’t access

Alpha 5

Alpha 5
Schwarzenegger & Stallone
Update video
Release date	28 July 2023
GitHub Bugs	Milestone 3

SCIENCE / RESEARCH SYSTEM
There is a research & development system allowing you to unlock advanced technologies.
All R&D is performed by Scientists (a new entity type) and uses Science Stations and Supercomputers.
You can unlock equipment blueprints, performance enhancements, and Stargate Updates.

NEW EQUIPMENT : Science station
NEW EQUIPMENT : Super computer
NEW EQUIPMENT : Energy Transmitter
NEW CREW: Scientists

A new research screen allows you to direct your science team efforts.

INDUSTRY MODE AND STARGATE PROJECT, CONTINUED
Phases 3 and 4 of the Stargate project are now available for completion.

Phase 3 requires science research to complete.
Phase 4 requires an energy test, with your ships providing sufficient energy to the stargate for a fixed period.

Opposition - There are now hostile forces within the sector who oppose the construction of the stargate. Their threat level will slowly increase as you make progress.

The central stargate system will now 're-stock' periodically on critical equipment and resources
Asteroid minerals will now be merged into larger stacks when there are so many in space that it begins to affect performance (>1000 minerals close together)

NEW EQUIPMENT: Small Robot Arm - A Robot Arm variant with an arm length of 1
NEW EQUIPMENT: Smart Robot Arm => A Robot Arm that only picks up specified objects

SMALL CHANGES
Robot Arms now require 1MW of power each
Robot Arms now combine containers of the same type like Entities
New & Improved FTL window

BUG FIXES
Issue #24: Battle stations button missing
Issue #29: Mission cargo not unloading (partially fixed in Alpha 4, but not with tiddlets)
Issue #39: Destroyed spacesuit remaining on entity
Issue #30: Fusion reactor rendering weird effects on ship
Issue #60: Crew no longer invisible when deleting spacesuit
Issue #51: Robot Arms can now add and remove fuel cannisters from fuel loaders. Robot Arms can now add and remove Compost and Seeds from Hydroponic Garden. Robot arms can now add and remove FTL Charges from FTL Drives. Robot Arms can now add drones to and remove Cargo from Drone Bays.
Issue #52: Crew in Spacesuits can no longer be picked up by Robot Arms or carried by Tracks
Issue #61: Robot Arms picking up each other's items
Issue #73: Robot Arms can no longer pick up items through walls
Issue #54: Fixes Drones picking up Entities Issue
Issue #65: Tracks no longer get stuck and unable to move an item into an 'empty' space
Issue #67: Fixes Storage Areas not persisting in save games if there is a track on top of them
Issue #56: Craftable equipment no longer thinks it's a factory and is no longer right clickable
Multiple jobs can no longer have the same Id

Alpha 4

Alpha 4
Cash Integer Overflow and Northern Pennies
Update video
Release date	22 June 2023
GitHub Bugs	Milestone 2

Industry mode
An entirely new game mode with new starting conditions and new objectives.
You are joining a mega-project to construct a Stargate to the Andromeda Galaxy.
Industry, production and automation take centre stage.

• New 'Industry' game mode selector in New Game screen
• New starting ship, which is more of a ruined space station
• Starting ship contains 'Ruined Equipment' which can be dismantled for Scrap Metal.
• There is only one Sector in industry mode

• Stargate Project in the main menu. Shows what parts require manufacture to advance.
• Currently only Phase 1 and 2 of the Stargate have been created
• Sell your Stargate Parts at any trade station to earn money and progress the project.

• NEW EQUIPMENT:
• Fabricator => Makes components out of raw materials: Frame, Motor, Coil
• Assembler => Makes Boxed equipment out of components (Eg Battery, or Stargate parts)
• Robot Arm => Automatically lifts components and resources into and out of equipment
• Track => Automatically moves components and resources along the direction of travel

• Gas clouds and asteroid mineral nodes contain 100x as much raw material in Industry mode

Balance / Small changes

• Gas Clouds now contain 10x as much gas in non-industry game modes
• Hydroponics now uses half as much water
• Hydroponics now loses 25% of compost per harvest. Previously 50% of compost was lost
• Gatling Guns are now unmanned, and will automatically extend and fire when 'Battle Stations' is called
• Munitions Factory has been renamed to Munitions Bench, as it is operated by a crew member
• The 'Battle Stations' button will no longer show until you have at least one weapon system installed
• Added "--safe-mode" command line argument to start game in windowed mode
• The Install menu now auto-selects the next identical type of equipment,
  and groups all identical equipment into a single row

You can now begin a new game straight from within Creative Mode.
As soon as you perform your first FTL jump, creative mode ends
and you are placed into 'Free Roam' mode with $150k credits

Steam Workshop
Updated subscribed and published items kick off updating local corresponding preview images
All previously-updated subscribed and published items, prior to the above feature, will have their preview images also updated

Bug fixes

• Crew trade themselves and turn invisible if they are wearing the spacesuit nearest to a docking port when a spacesuit is sold
• Fixed: Refinery, Chemical Lab, Munitions Factory can be placed outside the ship or in walls
• Fatal error when the ship grid is clicked in spawn mode and no equipment is selected
• Hard rescue missions being generated early in the game (self-destruct timer/moving under thrust)
• [ and ] able to rotate ship without thrusters
• Fix audio glitch when mousing over overlapping buttons.
• Fix phantom crew members that block job execution after transferring crew between ships
• #41 Crash on hyperspace jump
• #20 Ship/Ftl limit - buttons now appear at top of the list and are always clickable
• #32 Crew is abandoned when jumping
• #15 Dismantling airduct leads to immediate loss of all oxygen to the ship

Alpha 3

Alpha 3
Will and Harry
Update video recorded on 7 May 2023
Release date	11 May 2023

FULL CHANGE LIST

Hydroponics
New 'Hydroponics Garden' equipment is now available to buy.
Requires power, piped water, compost (from Waste Processing), and Seeds (also available to buy).
If all of these ingredients are provided, vegetables will be grown in the individual plots.
If water or power is cut during growth, the crop will suffer.
Eventually the vegetables will be harvested, producing Food and more Seeds.

Crew stations
Some pieces of equipment now require crew to operate.
The crew station can be seen in schematic view as a green circle, and must be clear from obstructions
These include:

• Gatling Guns
• Cannons
• Railguns
• Munitions table

More will be added in future.

Battle Stations
All weapon systems in your fleet now default to 'inactive', and will appear retracted into the ship.
To activate your weapons, click the 'Battle Stations' button in the bottom right of the screen.
Each weapon system requires one crew member to operate, before it can fire.
Nb. The order to Battle Stations is fleet wide.
As soon as you disable Battle Stations, crew will return to normal duties and all weapon systems will retract.

Small Changes

• You can now sell any of your ships at a Shipyard.

Just click the SELL button next to the layer name, top right of the screen.

Nb. You cannot sell your final ship - ie you always need one ship in the fleet.

• Added Vertical Symmetry to Ship Editor

• Ship Editor state saved/restored between sessions

• Docked ships can now be included when exporting a ship

• Fixed crash with docking cycles (they can also no longer be created)

• Settings menu now has options for Windowed/Fullscreen/Resolution

Steam Workshop

• Published items are cached locally
• Published items and preview images get downloaded if not already cached locally (such as on a reinstall of the game or using the game on another computer)
• Remotely updated published items get updated locally
• Remotely updated subscribed items get updated locally

Alpha 2

Alpha 2
Fred & Barny
Update video
Release date	30 March 2023

NEW CONTENT

Industry

New industrial equipment has been added to the game, permitting self-sufficient creation of many critical resources. New resources have also been added, with new methods of gathering those resources

• New Resource : Metreon Gas Clouds - found randomly across a sector, and visible from the map

• New Resource : Metallic Minerals - found in asteroid belts

• New Resource : Hyperspace Isotopes - gathered when in Hyperspace

• New Equipment : Gas Collector => Metreon Gas

• New Equipment : Hyperspace Scoop => Hyperspace Isotopes

• New Equipment : Refinery

Metreon Gas => Refined Metreon

• New Equipment : Chemical Lab

Refined Metreon => Fuel

Refined Metreon => Explosives

Hyperspace Isotopes + Refined Tilium => FTL Charge

• New Equipment : Munitions Factory

Metal Ingots + Explosives => Cannon Shells

Metal Ingots + Explosives => Bullets

Metal Ingots => Railgun slugs

• Smelter

Metallic Minerals => Metal Ingots

Scrap Metal => Metal Ingots

Tilium Ore => Refined Tilium

Precious Ore => Precious Metals

• New popup panel for all Industrial equipment. Right click to access.

Shows the process underway and the status of inputs and outputs.

Allows for changing the Recipe if the equipment supports multiple recipes.

• All trade prices rebalanced to ensure the market is sensible.

(Roughly 100% markup for each stage of production)

• New Production Mission

You will be asked to produce X stacks of a specific resource.

You are free to buy or gather or refine the resource through any means.

The buyers will pay a premium of around 30-50% over the market price.

Intership Logistics

You can now transfer resources, crew, drones & equipment between your ships
Click on the 'Logistics' button in the main toolbar (Available once you have two or more ships)

• Drones will perform the requested transfers, if both ships have functioning Drone Bays

• Can be enabled / disabled in the Fleet Orders list

• Ship Docking : You can now dock your ships together by aligning their docking ports in Tactical View.

Once docked, you can use the same Logistics menu to transfer items and crew between docked ships

• Loaders can now be configured to run in three possible modes. This allows you to extract resources stored in tanks into carryable containers, then use the Logistics System to transfer those containers to other ships.

LOAD : The contents of the container are pumped into the pipes (previous default)

UNLOAD : Containers are filled from the connected pipes

STOP : Don't do anything

Game Modes and starting conditions

You can now select the game mode when creating a new game from the main menu.

SURVIVAL - The previous game mode - stay ahead of the Anomaly

FREE ROAM [NEW] - There is no Anomaly to run from - a more chilled experience

CREATIVE - Unlimited budget and instant construction

• You now start the game with $150k cash

• You automatically receive a delivery of equipment worth $450k :

Engines x 2, Reactor, FTL drive, Fuel x 2, FTL charges x 2

• You can start in any saved ship (community, steam workshop, or your own creation) with a value up to $1M

• The game will also let you start in any ship hull, so long as the hull value is less than $1M.

All equipment and cargo will be removed from the ship when starting a game this way.

In this scenario you will also start with $150k cash and $450k equipment delivered.

Performance

Lots of big rendering performance wins - the game will now render much smoother when in a busy system.
Fixed serious frame drop when loading in a big ship for the first time (generating exterior panels)
Large improvements to rendering performance of ships

SMALL CHANGES

• Creative Mode: When using the SPAWN tool to create equipment and items, you can now Right-Click on any equipment or item to instantly destroy it

• Creative Mode: You can now 'Import Friendly' to add a saved ship directly into your fleet

• Trade screen now shows 'out of stock' items (greyed out) at the bottom of the list

• Rescue Mission removed from the Mission lists, and changed to a 'Distress Call' visible in the sector map

• New graphics for Comets, Asteroids, Minerals, all new Industrial equipment

• New exterior view graphics for engines, drone bays, thrusters, docking ports

• You will now receive an alert when there is no available storage for an item that is blocking equipment

• Damaged armour is now automatically added to your ship editor plan, so you can easily repair it at the next shipyard

• Volume settings in the Main Menu are now saved

• Equipment will now power down and stop working if its position is invalid. For example if a Gun Turret becomes blocked by a wall.

• In the Tactical View, the maneuvering controls widget now allows for finer grained control of the thrusters (no longer just on or off)

• Armour made more resilient against Gatling Guns, but less effective against Railguns and Cannons

• Fuel usage has been roughly halfed across the board:

Reactors now use half as much fuel (1 fuel/sec for 100Mw max output)

Reactors can now idle at a low of 2MW, wasting much less fuel (previously 10MW minimum)

Engines now use half as much fuel (2 fuel/sec at max thrust)

Engines now require half as much power when idling (2MW)

(Nb. Engines still require 40MW at max thrust)

• New community ships:

Tokelvian Starbase - Johnny Struggles

Starbase Callisto - Johnny Struggles

Elara Shipyard - Johnny Struggles

Inverse Mk1 - Ed the Loon

Meteor - Ed The Loon

Vork Maraug - Brot Groggers

Goteque Imperial Luxline - Brot Groggers

BUG FIXES

FIXED: Empty ship layers (created in the Ship Editor) will no longer prevent your fleet from doing an FTL jump

FIXED: You can no longer apply modifications to your ship using the Ship Editor when in Hyperspace

FIXED: Using the Destroy tool in the editor would cause equipment in the removed area to become broken and bugged

FIXED: The Nomad special mission was paying out 10x the desired amount. You will now received a $10k bonus for the first 10 crew.

FIXED: Crash bug in the Mission List if you had no ship selected

Alpha 1D

Alpha 1D
Release date	27 January 2023

Alpha 1D was the first Early Access build and was released on Steam, GOG, and Humble Store. This marked the end of the playtest and rejoined the game modes from Alpha1C and Demo Alpha1C. No other changes were made.