Beta Phase 2

Stellar Conflicts Reforged
Beta Phase 2

Version v0.2.0-rc4

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Countermeasures and Combat

Flares and Seekers

  • Every ship now has dedicated flare equipment which hopefully takes it from “why would anyone waste a slot for this” to something people might use.
    • Flares no longer occupy a Special slot.
    • They have unlimited uses subject to energy and a 30-second cooldown
    • They can be fired with E or from the weapons panel.
    • Existing ships receive Flare I automatically, because “let’s just delete your ship because we changed one thing” was an unsatisfactory solution.
  • Deploying a flare immediately redirects every hostile seeker locked onto your ship. It can consume multiple missiles now throughout its lifetime.
  • When a flare expires, surviving missiles may reacquire their original target, but only if that target is still visible or has been detected. Cloaking or Stealthing while the missile is distracted is therefore a strategy now.
  • AI pilots, including drones, decided that perhaps flying directly at bases and getting instantly killed by seeking missiles isn’t a great strategy. They will deploy flares when targeted by seekers and perform a short evasive turn.
  • Seekers can no longer be launched into the void in order to become expensive dumb-fire missiles when no valid targets exist.
  • EMP now removes shield and energy access and prevents weapon use for its duration rather than doing absolutely nothing in the last phase.
  • Disrupters and Pulsars prevent steering, thrust, and firing.
  • Affected HUD bars display an OFFLINE countdown, and targeted ships report their disabled systems, allowing attackers to distinguish a successful electronic assault from someone who is AFK with no shields.
  • Hardshields and undock invulnerability now block negative status effects. Ordinary shields do not. Gotta get R&D on that.

Other Specials

  • Pulsar I, II, and III now carry the intended maximum of 3, 2, and 1 charges respectively. The prices are not adjusted. You can blame shrinkflation.
  • Cloak and Stealth now use their intended success rates instead of panicking and checking it 3x as often for no good reason.

Ships, Targeting, and Suspicious Dots

  • A remote ship now occupies one place at a time so you should actually be able to shoot people this phase. Fun fact.
  • Remote movement now uses adaptive interpolation based on each ship’s update cadence, follows turns more naturally, stops extrapolating silent ships forever, and refuses to smoothly interpolate obvious teleports.
  • Remote players and AI ship movements have been completely overhauled. You should be able to see their actual ship movements and the movements will now be more accurate to what they’re actually doing.
  • F3 debug visuals now distinguish the rendered hull/collision position from the raw server position and display projectile colliders, including the current size of expanding Pulsars. Combat debugging has been upgraded from “I swear that hit” to diagrams proving why it did not.
  • Cloaked and stealthed ships no longer advertise their confidential location on an observer’s sector map unless that observer is allowed to see them.
  • Player names now appear beside visible ships and use the same relationship color as their targeting reticle. AI names can be enabled separately in Settings for pilots who want to know why [Bravo-4214] won’t speak to them anymore.
  • The target panel now shows the actual ship model instead of generic icon art and displays a countdown when the target’s systems are offline.

Chat and Interface

  • There’s been a huge overhaul on the Chat Log this release. You can put your magnifying glass away, folks!
  • Chat collapses into a movable left-edge handle while undocked and expands automatically while docked. New conversational messages produce an unread indicator; worry not, though, routine combat noise does not demand your immediate attention.
  • The chat panel can be resized, moved vertically, and zoomed from 6–16px text. Size and zoom are shared, docked and undocked positions are remembered separately, and a Reset Chat Layout button is available for players who successfully drag it somewhere innovative and can’t find it.
  • Chat input can now deliberately lose focus after sending, cancelling, pressing Escape or simply clicking anywhere else so that pilots may resume operating their spacecraft.
  • Cross-zone chat now resolves actual player names. Don’t worry folks, you can toss that notepad that said P100000=RAY.
  • Cross-zone whispers also resolve by name, and clicking a player’s bracketed name prepares a whisper automatically.
  • The docked screen has received a classic-style station background and starfield presentation.
  • Allied and local mines now default to 55% opacity instead of the former 20%, with a persistent 20–100% slider in Settings.
  • Checkboxes in the settings are no longer cloaked when unchecked.
  • The velocity bar now displays its intended blue styling.