Major Update 01: Treasures from the Deep (Version Number "Early Access 0.5.8433")

[Gary]

We have released a Major Update, called "Treasures from the Deep".

This pulls together all of the new content and systems we had been trialing in the Beta Branch over the last few weeks.

Important!

Before we dive into the latest changes, some important house-keeping: Because we’ve had to change the world to accommodate these new systems, your saves from previous versions will not work with this latest update.

If you are mid-playthrough on the original version and wish to continue it, then you may switch over to this older version of the game via the Beta Branches system:

1. Go to your Steam Library
   
2. Right-click on Abandon Ship and select "Properties"
   
3. Go to the tab marked "Betas"
   
4. In the drop-down box, select the one called "0.5.8082 - Launch Version"
   
5. Wait for the game to finish updating, you should see the branch name listed after the game name.

Treasures from the Deep Update

The main areas of focus for this update were addressing the following problems:

1. Offering players ways to get out of the negative downward spiral that can occur (i.e. when things go from bad to worse)
   
2. Supplementing the save system outlined in the Roadmap.
   
3. Implementing an alternate solution to insta-killing crew in events
   
4. Adding a "Quick Start" way to commence playing, that skips the opening section

This post lists all of the changes in this update:

Major New Systems & Content

The major new systems make up the bulk of the changes in this update. Rather than list each individual change associated with these, it'll be better to read their descriptions, which can be found here:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/3275682189139112231

• Captain's Log
  
• Magistrate Menu
  
• Magistrate Saves (i.e. Manual Save System that requires Captain's Logs)
  
• Quick-Start Mode
  
• Crew Traits System
  
• Badly Hurt System to replace instant crew death
  
• Apothecary Menu to revive badly hurt crew and heal them of their negative physical traits
  
• Diving Bell Upgrades
  
• Shipwrecks and shipwreck events, including Golden Variety
  
• Prison Menu
  
• New Tutorial adjustments to teach new players the Badly Hurt, Traits, Apothecary, Prison, Magistrate and Magistrate Saves systems.
  
• New ship classes: Cruiser & Corvette

Difficulty Changes

• Hard mode now spawns more difficult enemy ships
  
• Exploding Haliphron now reduced health versus standard Haliphron.
  
• Haliphron are weaker in Easy mode.
  
• Cult timer is slower in Easy mode.

Camera

• Made the transition into and out-of the full exploration map view much faster.
  
• New cameras at boarding range, or Lone Ship Boarding scenarios that are closer in.

Balancing

• Rejigged the events that occur in the third map and replaced with 6 new bespoke events instead, so there should be zero repetition of events in the first 3 maps.
  
• Reduced the number of maps between Landfall and Devilrock by 1, to improve flow.
  
• Made Cult Aggro events count towards gate opening
  
• Balanced the ship class ranges to be larger, giving greater variety of ships player could potentially face
  
• Cult chase timer resets when entering a new map.
  
• Exclamation event markers now have positive events.
  
• Added a harder event where the player can be hit before the battle, and starts with some negative effect (i.e. a section put into the red, or some random fires or hull cracks on the deck).
  
• If the AI are repairing and that section is repaired part-way into Green Health, the priority will drop very low so they will switch to another, more important task.

Bugs

• Fixed an issue where exiting out of the game during the coastal bombardment tutorial and then loading back in fails to take you back to the correct place.
  
• Fixed being able to use the exploration zoom mode and Journal hotkeys while in a Monologue (or other fullscreen UI)
  
• Fixed Difficulty system not being reset when exiting to the main menu
  
• Fixed sniper weapons being able to target dead characters
  
• Fixed events spawning in inaccessible areas, and islands spawning too close to the map frame, that in specific situations could block gates.
  
• Fix for Kraken Chase in Custom Map 2 - chase quest logic could break in specific situations in between events 3 and 4.
  
• Selection Box UI - fixed it flicking on in its old position as a tiny box when a new drag starts
  
• When the player boards the enemy ship, they will not move away until all boarders have been repelled (thus reducing the chances of the players crew being left on the enemy ship)

Misc Polish / Improvements

• The World Seed is now displayed on the in-game menu
  
• After saving, the Save Games list is re-sorted so that the most recent save is at the top
  
• Frontend Continue Button now disables itself if all the saves are deleted
  
• New mouse cursor that should be readable in fog.
  
• New Newsletter names added, filtered through the offensive / inappropriate ones, removed people who have unsubscribed or have been a hard bounce and fixed most, if not all of the strange character issues.
  
• Shop and Journal UI now has a background that fills the screen, so the menus will appear correctly across all aspect ratios.
  
• Message Box UI now maintains it's 16:9 aspect ratio so it doesn't stretch/squash at non-16:9 resolutions
  
• Hooked up two Story Monologues with associated art pieces
  
• Improve visibility in boarding by adding a red outline around enemy crew when you select them to attack in melee.
  
• Implemented keyboard shortcut for returning crew to saved positions. Updated the existing keyboard shortcut descriptions on the game-launcher Input tab.

This is one step along our Early Access voyage, there are many areas we wish to improve and many new cool things we want to add. Thank-you for your support and feedback, it is greatly appreciated.

If you are interested in knowing what the current focus for the dev-team is, visit this sub-forum:

Latest Dev-Team Focus

For the longer term plans, visit this sub-forum:

Early Access Roadmaps