Struggling to come up with ship designs, or want to share your designs with others?

The Galactic Shipyard is now live! Players on Discord have already started filling it with designs, so there’s plenty to check out.

Link: https://star-vortex.com/ships.php

In a future update, players will be able to upload designs and import others’ creations directly in-game. It's not on the roadmap yet, but one feature I'd love to add someday is special events where player-designed ships jump in to fight.

Anyway, back to the game updates I go. Enjoy!

Apologies for the length of this news post. There are quite a large number of very unrelated changes in this one as I've been working through all the feedback I've been receiving.

Probably the most requested feature is now in the ship designer. Each part can now have its brightness adjusted. This allows you to add details and the illusion of depth, as shown below.

Ship designed by TzeroX, one of the Game Testers on our Discord.

When playing through the game, my least favourite encounters were not Rescues, they were Warzones. The consecutive waves of enemies didn't add much over a normal Skirmish, and no matter how strong you are, they always took too long.

Waves have been removed entirely, and they now consist of more Conclave ships and multiple enemy factions, which will even fight each other in your absence. This has raised a few performance issues for some factions that I'll be reviewing for the next update.

Trying to avoid spoilers, but in the final boss fight of each sector, you get joined by a friendly ship. This was supposed to be a cool event and not a rescue mission where you had to defend them, but that's what it turned into.

As such, if your ally is getting low and about to be destroyed, it will now just jump away to safety and leave you to finish the fight. I don't know why I didn't think of this one sooner.

Firstly, all enemy damage has been reduced by 20% but consumable cooldowns have been increased from 10s up to 12.5s. This should make the game less punishing on normal difficulty.

On top of this, the damage scale applied when fighting higher or lower level enemies has been greatly widened. The below panel is visible in-game by clicking the question mark in the top right of the Navigation if you want more details on how it works now. This used to only go up / down 5 levels and be much more punishing.

All enemy and encounter levels are colored using the above scale. You should now be able to fight much higher-level enemies without being as heavily punished, and also farm lower-level enemies without it being quite as easy as it used to be.

I don't usually like revealing Legendary items, but this one was added to accommodate a certain playstyle that some players prefer.

You'll need to find one to get access to the 'No Heat / Invulnerability' modifier, but once you find it, you can transfer it onto any thruster you like. The result is a thruster that does not generate heat, can still boost even when overheated, but does not grant boost invulnerability.

Vipers and other enemies built from multiple smaller ships now behave the same as others when it comes to their threat tables. This means if you hit any part of them, you should be able to pull their aggro off rescue targets.

Speaking of rescue targets, they now live for a minimum of 15 seconds, increased from the previous 10 seconds.

Elite enemies now also get diminished returns on consecutive disables like bosses.

Shield Battery consumables now prevent your shield from going on cooldown while active.

And lots more listed in the full patch notes below!

I've got a load more things to work through from feedback, so if your requested change isn't in yet I haven't forgotten about it. Enjoy!

• Friendly ships that join you for boss fights now flee before being destroyed.

• Ship designer can now adjust the brightness of parts, including thruster.

• All existing ship designs have been updated to utilize the new brightness option.

• Warzone encounters no longer have waves and contain multiple factions.

• Legendary Cryo Thruster added with a unique heat-related boost modifier.

• Added AI-translated Portuguese as a placeholder for future human translation.

• Damage has been GLOBALLY reduced by 20% for all enemies.

• Reduced the sell value and repair cost of legendary weapons by 25%.

• Cooldown on all consumables has been increased from 10 to 12.5 seconds.

• Damage bonuses/penalties for level difference have been vastly reduced.

• Experience bonuses/penalties for level difference have been vastly reduced.

• Rescue ships will now survive for 15s under heavy fire, increased from 10s.

• Elite enemies now also get diminishing returns on being consecutively disabled.

• Increased hull of all drones by 20% and maximum range by 50m.

• Shield regeneration from consumables is no longer removed if your shield hits 0.

• Shields will no longer go offline while regeneration is active.

• PDL weapons will no longer switch between drones if some get closer than others.

• Increased size of 'on kill' surges from weapons by +50%.

• Further increased the sensor range of aggressive enemies on higher difficulties.

• Heat generated from thrusters now increases like heat capacity with primary slots.

• Updated level difference colors with white being a good match for your level.

• Reduced volume of tractor beams by 50% as much louder than other sound effects.

• Vastly improved aiming and accuracy of player drones using projectiles.

• Fixed memory leak from repeatedly attaching sound effect players to explosions.

• Roach Drones no longer fire seeking projectiles, reducing need for target scans.

• Vipers and other segmented ships now respond properly to player aggro.

• Item drag and drop fixed properly after the previous fix was reverted.

• Control binding panel now locks its ratio on wide-screen displays.

• Black holes will no longer drop ships onto obstructions or debris.

• Fixed bug where friendly ships hitting a black hole would warp the player.

• Fixed bug where some enemy ships would not wrap when hitting black holes.

• Black holes now render on top of obstructions instead of behind them.

• Ships summoned by enemy beacons no longer grant experience.

• Fixed bug where unlinked slots would sometimes activate other slots.

• Thrusters can no longer be destroyed in the Assembler while in use.

• Fixed bug that could eject Sector Keystones if cargo was full.

• Chained tesla bolts will no longer persist after deactivation.