Last Starship Alpha 13
Posted by John on 18th December 2024

NEW STORY EPISODES
Work continues on a series of hand-crafted story episodes, designed to pull new players into the game and provide some excellent adventures for existing players.

• The trouble with Tiddlets, Part 4
  The final part of the Tiddlets saga is ready to play.
  
• Deep Space Industrialists (continued)
  
  • Stations in DSI are no longer taken away from the player when the episode is completed successfully.
    
  • The contract with Alexander Elistar can now be terminated by the player, ending the episode. (The button is in the contracts screen.)
    
  • The Stargate Project can now be independently unlocked in the Research screen, bypassing the DSI episodes entirely.
    
• Black Hole Sun - Part 3
  New sound and music added for the climactic rescue in BHS Part 3.
  

Storage Crates
Two new pieces of equipment to facilitate better organization of products in your ships.
The Storage Crate is 4x3 and has a storage capacity of 70 items or stacks.
The Small Storage Crate is 3x2 and has a storage capacity of 36 items or stacks.
Storage Crates can be accessed by crew or by robot arms.
Right-click on a Storage Crate to set its properties:

• Choose the product to store inside. Note: Storage Crates can only store one type of item.
  
• You can use the plus and minus controls to set a limit on items to be stored inside.
  
• There is a tickbox for 'Crew Loading', which permits crew members to load items in. (Otherwise only robot arms can.)
  
• There is a tickbox for 'Crew Unloading,' which permits crew to take items from the crate. (Otherwise only robot arms can.)
  
• There is a toggle for controlling priority:
  
  • Prioritize Zones: Your crew will store items in storage zones until they are full before using this crate.
    
  • Prioritize Crate: Your crew will store items in this crate in priority to storage zones.
    
• The recipe for storage crates can be unlocked from the Research Tree, meaning you can fabricate your own.
  

Deflector Beams
A new defensive technology that deflects incoming cannon shells using an energy beam.
They have a maximum range and angle as with any turret. The nearest incoming cannon shell within that cone will be diverted.
Deflector beams use a great deal of power when they are deflecting and can be easily overloaded with too many incoming rockets.
Deflector beams cannot be purchased. They must first be unlocked in the Research Tree, then fabricated on an assembly table.
NEW RESEARCH
The research tech tree has been heavily overhauled, with many new research items added.

• Drone batch gathering - drones will gather up entire stacks of a resource before returning to a drone bay.
  
• Drone top speed (1.5x/2x).
  
• Drone Assembly recipe (build your own drones!).
  
• Track Speed (2x/3x).
  
• Robot Arm Speed (2x).
  
• Mining Laser Accuracy - each blast releases twice as many minerals.
  
• Increased Metallurgy bonus to +50% and +100% (Smelters produce more output from the same input).
  
• Reactor Efficiency (1.1x) - increases the power output of all reactors.
  
• Fixed bug with researched performance boosts not reloading properly.
  
• New component: Processor (Copper + Precious Metals).
  
• You can now fabricate your own Logistics Drones! Requires Frame, Motor, Coil, Lens, Processor.
  
• Fabricating batteries now requires precious metals.
  
• Stargate phases are now locked behind three tiers of research (or can be auto-unlocked by completing the DSI episodes).
  
• Older saves will automatically have all 3 tiers of the Stargate research unlocked.
  
• Storage Crate assembly is now found under Logistics.
  
• Deflector assembly.
  

SMALL CHANGES:

• When losing control of a ship (e.g., selling a ship, getting it destroyed), all non-episode missions assigned to it are failed.
  
• Episodes can no longer be assigned to ships from other episodes (e.g., A.J.E Foundry).
  
• FTL toolbar icon now shows alignment progress for jump.
  
• Jumps that are ready can be performed by right-clicking the FTL icon.
  
• Research toolbar icon now shows progress towards current research.
  
• After completing the tutorial and making your first FTL Jump, Cmdr Harken will call you with a request for help.
  
• All mineral patches now contain 100x as many minerals as before.
  (Note: 'Boldly Go' mode already had this setting, so this only affects Creative/Survival/Free Roam modes.)
  
• The recipe for Deuterium now produces twice as much Deuterium as before.
  
• Stable Isotopes are now faster to produce (4 secs instead of 6).
  
• Some additional items will now be found at derelicts: Ingots, Deuterium, Components.
  
• In the Trade Window, if you search, the list shows ALL items that match that search filter, ignoring any category you have selected.
  
• You can now right-click on any item moving on a Track to remove it from that track. The crew will then store it appropriately.
  
• The Fuel Loader can now be rotated.
  
• Track now takes 3 seconds to assemble, down from 10 seconds previously.
  
• The range of weapons is now shown as a light circle when highlighting that weapon.
  
• You can no longer use the REPAIR option at a shipyard if there is active combat underway in that system.
  
• Hostile ships will now launch fighters quicker.
  

BUG FIXES:

• Fix wrong mission being accepted when more than one can be accepted in the mission summary window.
  
• Fix inability to enable battle-stations when a non-friendly ship is selected.
  
• Fix incorrect tutorial highlights during FTL stage of the introduction tutorial.
  
• Fix passengers getting stuck before being collected by shuttle on passenger missions.
  
• Fixed issue with Flight Recorders sometimes being completely unsalvageable, blocking the Wolf mission chain.
  
• Fixed issue with hostile ships unable to fire their weapons (ship exported with auto-target disabled on those weapons).
  
• Improved performance for AMD GPUs.
  
• Fix issue where an abandoned drone would drop unsalvageable cargo in free space.
  

New community ships added to the base game - thank you!
JOHNNY STRUGGLES - Mini Beast

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