Cosmoteer release candidate 0.27.2 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 handful of bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, and other minor changes.

We're still working hard at a bunch of upcoming improvements as part of Career 2.0, but we wanted to get these smaller improvements out to everyone sooner rather than later.

Thanks for testing!

RC1:

• Built-In Ships:
  
  • Added 1 new Monolith combat ship: Tempest
    
  • Added 6 new Fringe ships: Blood Reaper, Brave One, Ice Cutter, Jaws, Poor Yorick, and Vulcan.
    
  • Miscellaneous updates to existing built-in ships.
• Multiplayer:
  
  • Asteroids can now be turned off by the host in Domination mode.
• Crew A.I.:
  
  • Crew running low on O2 that can't access an airlock on their own ship will no longer try to use airlocks on other friendly ships if the other ship is moving.
    
  • Increased the default "operate" and "supply battery" priorities for Sensor Arrays to 9 and 8, respectively.
• User Interface:
  
  • Added a Japanese translation. (Please report any issues with the Japanese translation on our Discord, the Steam discussion boards, or using the in-game F11 feedback feature.)
    
  • The "Assists With Construction" toggle is now called "Construction Assistance" and it now has three modes: "Off", "My Ships Only" (the new default), and "All Allied Ships".
    
  • Players can now set a "Desired" amount for each type of resource. When set, this will give factories permission to produce up to that amount (or the resource limit, whichever is less) and will also be used when trading/transferring excess or needed resources.
    
  • Whenever a resource limit has been set, the capacity for that resource will now always be shown in orange. (In addition to the existing asterisk, which is still shown.)
    
  • Hovering the mouse cursor over the crew count in the ship designer will now show the number of operators.
    
  • In the ship designer, if a ship has negative command points, the negative number will now be shown in red.
    
  • Updated the screenshot in the fires tutorial to match the updated fire VFX.
• Performance:
  
  • Added an option to limit the framerate while Cosmoteer is in the background.
• Bug Fixes:
  
  • Crash that could occur when editing text (such as a ship's description) that has already reached its maximum length.
    
  • Projectiles could occasionally "phase" through ships and hit parts inside ships that they weren't supposed to be able to hit when another projectile destroyed the part that the first projectile would otherwise have hit. This seemed to be most common with nukes.
    
  • Crew being assisted by Manipulator Beams could sometimes "wobble" and overshoot their destination.
    
  • Very small fires weren't doing damage to their part, which made it impossible to put out the fire by repairing the part.
    
  • If the lead ship of a formation with 3 or more ships broke into multiple pieces, the positions of all of the follower ships would get changed to the same overlapping location.
    
  • If a Modular Rocket Thruster had some extenders with fuel pods and some without, the extenders with fuel pods would use more power than the extenders without.
    
  • Mining Lasers could cause a very high-pitch and annoying sound when playing on high game speeds.
    
  • The Mine Factory was unintentionally missing a "parts per mine" stat.
    
  • In some circumstances, the crew count displayed in blueprint mode could appear as a negative number.
    
  • Removing a resource limit that was already at least the available physical capacity wouldn't remove the asterisk (*) on the resource button in the resource management screen.
    
  • Dragging a box with the salvage/collect or Creative Mode selection tools while the camera is focused on a rotating ship would cause the origin point of the box to unintentionally rotate with the ship.
    
  • Rare errors loading some saved games.
• Modding:
  
  • Fixed ToggledComponents crash if any of its sub-components are ChainedTo another component defined later in the rules file.
    
  • Fixed crash when a ToggledComponents is hooked up to a blueprint-incompatible toggle even if IncludeInBlueprints is set to false.
    
  • MultiToggle and MultiValue now properly support ViaBuffs. (This was always intended to work but was previously bugged.)
    
  • MultiResourceStorage wasn't updating its resource count properly as ViaBuffs connections were added and removed.
    
  • ResourceStorageProxy and MultiResourceStorage components now support an optional 'LimitMaxResources' that, if set, will cause the component to act as if it can store no more than that amount of resources, even if the components it refers to can actually store more.
    
  • Identifiers in rules files can now contain dot (.) characters as long as the identifier isn't only dot characters.

RC2:

• Crew will now automatically consolidate resource stacks in undesignated storage tiles to maximize the number of available free tiles.

Cosmoteer update 0.27.1 is now available! This update contains a good handful of bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, and other minor changes. Plus it changes how fires grow and spread to be less random and more natural.

We're still working hard at a bunch of upcoming improvements as part of Career 2.0, but we wanted to get these fixes and improvements out to everyone sooner rather than later.

Enjoy!

Full patch notes:

• 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".
    
  • The Title Screen's "MORE" button now has a link to open the Early Access Roadmap.
    
  • Updates to translations for all supported languages.
• 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.
    
  • Some sprites (such as the EMP Missile) had noticeable artifacts along the edges related to texture compression. (Note that this fix requires all sprites to be re-imported, so you will likely experience a longer load time the first time you boot Cosmoteer after this patch.)
    
  • 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 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.
    
  • 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.

Ahoy Cosmoteers!

I'm excited to announce that we've teamed up with the kind folks behind Dyson Sphere Program and Space Engineers, both awesome space building games, to offer a bundle where you can buy the games together for 10% off. (Or if you already own a game, you can "complete the set" and grab the others for 10% off too.) Definitely check it out!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/43732/Space_Builders/

If you like Cosmoteer there is a very good chance you'll like Dyson Sphere Program and Space Engineers too!

---

This year the Cosmoteer team has been hard at work, and we've also added a few more people to help speed development along. So far in 2024 we’ve released almost 30 updates. These included a few big updates, major performance optimizations, a new Build & Battle PVP mode, tons of new ships, new ship parts, many quality-of-life improvements, improved modding support, and hundreds of bug fixes.

In the coming months, you can expect even more cool updates, including an awesome new weapon (sorry, we're not quite ready to announce it yet) and more mission variety and quality-of-life improvements for Career mode.

The community has been key in helping us constantly improve Cosmoteer. A big thanks to everyone who provided feedback, reported bugs, or supported in any way! We couldn’t do this without you!

If you have not joined it yet, our friendly Discord[discord.gg] has over 23k Cosmoteers. Please come and say hello!

Happy starship building,

Walt

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.