Update 1.8

Large battles now spawn. Head to the marked location on the map and you’ll find a large skirmish between the Empyrean and Vanguard. The outcome of this battle will influence the nearest planet, if the winner owns the planet the contracts will be reset and the credit rate will increase, if the planet is owned by the losing side the planet change ownership to the winning faction. An achievement has also been added, ‘Commander’, which is earned when you win 5 of these battles.

UI has been further iterated on, with new, more readable fonts, reorganised HUD elements, and overall better readability on smaller screen sizes.

Added item levels, with levels going from 1 to 10. These levels influence the items stats, such as weapon damage, shield strength, repair rate, or thruster speed.

Added NPC levels, with levels going from 1 to 24. This level impacts their health, weapon damage, and flight speed. The higher their level the more XP is awarded to the player when destroyed, as well as dropping better loot.

Vendors now have a sell rate that influences the price of all their sold items (fuel cost is not affected), the lower the better. Destroyed vendors can also now be found, you won’t be able to sell or refuel at these partially destroyed vendors, but you will find a few items left there to scavenge for free. This will also bypass the usual level requirements required for certain items, giving players a chance to get higher level loot than normally possible!

Updated all asteroid sprites to be more distinguishable and better representative of each respective type (crystal, scrap, ore). All wreckage sprites have been updated to have their own unique sprites as opposed to a re-colour.

Bug fixes/small changes:

• Menu buttons renamed.
• Increased maximum amount of minimap icons.
• Nerfed most default item stats to compensate for the new level system.
• Type-3 shield level requirement lowed to 18.
• Reduced capital ship shield/impact effect scale and fixed it getting stuck on the last animation frame.
• Default lock-on distance increased.
• Buffed mining drill and blaster.
• Increased minimap icon limit to 64.
• Wreckages now identified as ‘Target’ when locked-on, instead of displaying the same information as an NPC.
• Squad NPC’s now follow from a further distance, preventing collisions.
• Bounty cooldown increased.
• Adjustments to tutorial text.
• Replaced minefield map icon.
• Nerfed plasma blaster damage.

1.8.1 Patch:

• Nerfed planet defence turrets.
• Autosaving prevented when near a hostile planet with active defence turrets.
• Updated battle state message strings.
• Improved world spawning logic when dealing with needing specific objects.
• Optimised battle and contract NPC spawning & despawning.