Version History

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

Alpha 4

Alpha 4 (unofficially "Cash Integer Overflow and Northern Pennies") was released on 22 June 2023 along with an update video. Information on some of the bugs mentioned in the changelog below can be found on the bug tracker.

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 (dubbed Will and Harry) was released on 11 May 2023 along with an update video recorded on 7 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 (dubbed Fred & Barny) was released on 30 March 2023 along with an update video.

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

The first Early Access build was released on 27 January 2023 to 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.