The biggest, most exciting news to announce is that I've brought on my good friend Paul O'Rourke (https://twitter.com/8ighty6ix) to do all of Stellar Nomad's audio. Paul's audio credits include The Cave, Hack 'n' Slash, Costume Quest 2, Broken Age, Day of the Tentacle: Remastered, TiltBrush, Psychonauts: In the Rhombus of Ruin, Punch Planet, Psychonauts 2, and Double Fine's latest, RAD. I'm super excited to have him on board, and he's already plugged a few new SFX into the game.

On to the game goodies!

New ship!

New planet models, with oceans!

Ships explode into chunky bits!

Sensors, ship detection, heat signatures, and stealth!

This was a fairly major system rework that in the end won’t feel all that different yet - previously every ship knew about every other ship in the system at all times. I wanted to accommodate playstyles that were sneakier, like blockade running and smuggling, and you just can’t be sneaky if everyone always knows where you are.

Now, every ship has a sensor range and a heat signature - your heat signature can be reduced by not firing weapons or using your ships main engines (RCS thrusters are fine). If one ship’s heat signature overlaps another ship’s sensor range, then that ship is detected. This has the knock on effect of allowing you to drop aggro by running (potentially) as well as situations where ships of enemy factions don’t see one another and don’t engage all the time.

There is also one ship in the game that has passive stealth equipped; see if you can spot it! Passive stealth ship upgrades will be coming for players to purchase in the 0.3 update!

Balance Tweaks:

• Shuttle turn speed is significantly higher
• Electron Laser DPS is tripled
• Added Gryphon to the Federation, Civilian and Marauder spawn lists
• The Galaxy has had its movement stats slightly enhanced to make it less punishing to fly
• The Galaxy has had its cargo capacity increased to make it more worth the money
• Added the Galaxy to the Civilian spawn list

Visual Upgrades:

• Spiffier shaders for all planets
• Ship and weapon icons have been regenerated to include all the post processing effects the game itself has
• All stellar bodies have been spaced out by about 25%, making systems larger overall
• Overhauled most weapon VFX to be more glowy and cool
• Overhauled most explosion VFX to be more glowy and cool

General Quality of Life Improvements:

• Shipyard now sorts ships by price, low to high
• Shipyard and outfitter icons now highlight on hover
• Added dynamic camera and associated option to menu (defaulted to off)
• Added new audio to the UI
• The map now gives you quite a bit more information about where you can jump
• The FTL Route line in the map is directional and animated so there’s no confusion where you’re going
• You can no longer set a route to immediately double back on the map, preventing some confusing behavior
• Systems you can reach have a pulsing white outline, as well as a line drawn to each
• Right-clicking in the map removes the last jump node in the current route
• Clicking on the last jump node again will also remove it

Misc:

• Added description text to the Gryphon
• Added description text to the Hammer

Bugfixes:

• Fixed shield shader to look consistent on every ship and not change based on viewing angle to the camera
• Fixed an issue that could cause your ship to show up in the outfitter in stealth mode
• Fixed an issue that caused your shield bubble to occasionally appear in the outfitter
• Fixed an issue that would give you (a lot) of free cargo
• Improved loading time by changing the way audio loads
• Fixed a crash related to quest target markers
• Fixed a bug that was preventing the player from hailing ships or planets
• Fixed a text issue in the Light Freighter
• Fixed the UI sounds being too quiet in-game
• Fixed a bug that could cause fleets to spawn in the main menu