Hello commanders! A small update today to address feedback from some very helpful players. Please keep the suggestions coming, and a review is always appreciated.

If you experience any issues, please follow the steps in this thread to report them.

• Lance moved up a level on the tech tree, and research cost reduced.
  
• Odyssey research now requires the Oslo to be researched first.

• Repair ships ignored repair orders for ships that do not have turrets, such as APCs.
  
• On the starmap, some enemy ship lists for missions were inaccurate.

Hello commanders! After every update, I keep a close eye on player feedback and work to fix issues as quickly as possible. The Reinforcements Update was no exception, and I've been able to release fixes sometimes within hours of them being reported thanks to your feedback.

I also want to say that I've been really pleased by the response since The Reinforcements Update came out - thanks to everyone who has been making great suggestions, helping me uncover issues, and writing reviews. And as always, I ask that you please do leave a review if you can. I can't overstate how much even a single review can help small indie games like Dust Fleet.

If you find a bug, there's advice on the discussion forums on how to report it.

All patch notes are available on Discord as soon as any update is released, but I release fixes so regularly I don't post them all here. Instead, I do round-ups like this one!

First of all, here's the lowdown on today's release:

• When capturing/dropping off resources/docking, target ship backs off.
  
• Hubs and roamers were capturable on mission "The Way Out" when they should not be.
  
• In sector assault, some ships may jump out of the wormhole immediately in rare circumstances, without being ordered to by the player.
  
• Captured ships auto-launch fighters when in combat. For ships affected by this in existing saved games, they will be corrected after their next battle.
  
• Cruiser not being awarded in "Heist Part 2" when it survives.
  
• Upgrading ships to loadouts with no fighters would not correctly remove the fighters, but still award the resources.
  
• D-SEC-controlled Honshus not equipped with fighters in Sector Assault.
  
• In the mission preview for "Heist Part 1 " and "Heist Part 2", D-SEC ships are incorrectly listed as UEN ships.
  
• "Enforcer Part 1" does not list any ships on the mission preview.
  
• Minor text errors.

Here's a round-up of other fixes since The Reinforcements Update was released.

• The new D-SEC ships (Orca Mk II, Wolf Mk II, Honshu) could not be reverse engineered.
  
• Pre-"Reinforcements Update" saved games did not show the new ships in the loadout editor.
  
• Enemy ships will stop attacking in some circumstances when a ship exits the play area.

That's all for now, commanders - keep safe out there!

Hello Commanders!

If you were thinking about getting the game, now is a great time to do so. You can add the game to your collection for 40% off starting with the Steam Summer Sale on June 27th and ending an additional week after most sales end on July 19th!

Make sure to check out other great indie titles on sale to kick off your summer gaming!

Now it's time to unveil Update #4 - a milestone we have named The Reinforcements Update!

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Missions: Five new side-missions for the main campaign.

• Battle against D-SEC and powerful new enemies to earn unique mission rewards.
  
• These new missions start to appear after playing "The Way Out" mission. These missions won't trigger on any in-progress campaigns - you'll need to start a new campaign to get them.

Ships: new ships are available on the tech tree and for reverse engineering.

• UEN: Oslo - a light carrier-cruiser, an improvement on the Copenhagen.
  
• UEN: Bergen - an upgrade to the Reykjavik, with better weapons and armour.
  
• UEN: Knight Mk II - an upgrade to the Knight, with twice the firepower and improved maneuverability.
  
• D-SEC: Honshu - a dedicated light carrier.
  
• D-SEC: Wolf Mk II - to keep up with the Knight Mk II, D-SEC are deploying this improved Wolf design.
  
• D-SEC: Orca Mk II - The most devastating version of the Orca, with tougher armour and an extra heavy weapon slot.
  
• Unknown: Two powerful new boss-level enemies in the extra missions.

Sector Assault improvements:

• Sector Assault now has a comprehensive settings screen.
  
• Edit map size, enemy aggression and starting resources to create the challenge you want.

Starmap improvements:

• Station icons: At-a-glance starmap icons for identifying station types without having to click on a location.
  
• Ship type icons: Seperate symbols for warships and mining ships, so you can tell instantly if you have any mining ships at a location.
  
• Quick access: It's now possible directly click the ships or station icons at a location to immediately jump to the relevant tab.

Capturing improvements:

• The capture order can now be given against a group of enemy ships, just like attack orders.
  
• Enemy ships will now prioritise attacking armed opponents, making it possible to distract enemies while you sneak your APCs in.

Move and keep attacking (Alt): outflank ships to attack their less armoured side and rear quarters.

• Hold down Alt when giving a move order to attacking ships, and they will keep facing and attacking their target as they move around it.
  
• This replaces the previous behaviour where happened automatically, but only after the first movement order given after an attack order.

Improved tooltips for items on the tech tree and mission info screen.

• Ships now list which type of shipyard they must be built at.
  
• Ship turret sizes and numbers are now included in the details.

Other New Features

• Mission tracker: easily keep track of which missions are available and where to find them.
  
• Bigger explosions for large ships and stations, and improved lighting effects on beam weapons.

• Rapid fire missile launcher was incorrectly very overpowered - damage reduced by 75%
  
• Starmap fleet list will now auto-scroll when dragging ships to the edge.
  
• Confirmation dialog for unsaved changes in the loadout editor.
  
• Some turrets have been reduced in size - this is a cosmetic change only.
  
• Shipyards have been renamed to accommodate the newly added ships
  
  • Cruiser shipyard is now the Standard shipyard.
    
  • Carrier shipyard is now the Advanced shipyard, and now also builds all of the advanced-tier ships in the new update.

• Ship health bars were only showing when the cursor was over them. Now they also appear when a ship is damaged.
  
• DPS values for ships were not including fixed/non-editable weapons. This affected stats tables and auto battles only.
  
• When repairing a damaged ship that has damaged turrets, or when given the order to do so, repair ships will only fix one turret then stop.
  
• Ships with a mix of repair beams and offensive weapons were not responding to repair orders correctly.
  
• Turrets on newly promoted ships would appear to be damaged.
  
• Ship stances were not saved in savegame files.
  
• In battles, the average health bars for ships grouped under a single button was not always accurate.
  
• A Hub was incorrectly set as capturable in the "Spare Parts" mission.

---

As always, I am excited to see what suggestions come out of these updates and will use them to continue to improve the plan and direction of Dust Fleet. Don't forget to join our community Discord[discord.gg] and share your experiences!

I would also love to see your honest thoughts of the game through a Steam review. Steam reviews can have a massive impact on indie games like Dust Fleet and I love reading your experiences in reviews.

That’s all for now, Commander - see you in space!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/406160/Dust_Fleet/

Welcome to Monday, commanders. Here's the patch notes for the latest Dust Fleet update addressing some feedback from the community.

• The flak turret now only requires a light turret port instead of a medium.

• Some ships captured during missions may not respond to orders. This is fixed for future occurrances, but any affected ships in saved games will remain affected.
  
• Destroyed squadron fighters being immediately rebuilt with low health upon docking, instead of waiting for other ships to complete build/repair first.
  
• Captured ships continue their attack orders on allied ships until given a new order.
  
• Allied ships continue attack orders on captured ships until given a new order.
  
• Holding right mouse button to pan the camera when a cutscene starts results in the camera pan still being active afterwards, until the right mouse button is pressed again.
  
• Tokara loadout has heavy missile launchers when it only has ports for medium. Tokara's default loadout now changed to use medium missiles. Note that these are much stronger against frigates than the heavy missiles.
  
• Using chaff opens pop-up camera view notification.

Patch notes are always available on Discord[discord.gg], but for commanders who don't use it, I'll leave you with a round up of other recent fixes and improvements. Until next time, commanders!


(Released 20th April 2024)

• The game will no longer automatically minimize when you alt-tab away from it, making for a smoother desktop experience.
  
• The taskbar executable icon has been updated.

• When given an order involving a specific ship part (eg a turret or landing pad) ships are unable to proceed if the target was destroyed or removed after the order was created.
  
• Fixes for some minor cleanup errors when ships were destroyed in certain circumstances.
  
• Some users were experiencing errors with the Epic overlay. These should now be corrected with this release.

(Released 22nd April 2024)

• When saving a game while capturing, the saved game may become invalid.
  
• When saving a game during a mission-related APC docking, the progress bar may become stuck or instantly complete when reloaded later.
  
• Error when loading a saved game from the latter half of mission "Eyes".

(Released 23rd April 2024)

• Unable to close the "low power" notification manually.
  
• More improvements for edge case situations around loading saved games.
  
• When merging fleets, the merged fleet may sometimes be called "new fleet" instead of using the custom names for any of the fleets being merged.

Hello commanders. Just a couple of small updates today for some recently reported issues. Some commanders reported ships going missing while combining fleets. That issues should now be resolved with this update, but please do post any issues you see to the Discord[discord.gg] or to the discussion board here on Steam.

Onto the patch notes!

FIX: Ships disappearing when fleets merging
FIX: If the console is brought up accidentally, the keyboard shortcut closes it correctly but the "hide" command does not.
FIX: Various issues with the fleet sidebar on the starmap, including with selection and scrolling.

That's all for today. Take care out there, commanders!

Hi everyone - if you were thinking about getting the game, now is a great time to do so.


Make sure to check out Freedom Games Publisher Sale page to pick up some awesome indie games at great prices. Whether you like to play alone or with friends, there are some great deals you won't want to miss out on!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/406160/Dust_Fleet/

Hello commanders! Dust Fleet v4.6 has just been pushed live. The main purpose of this update is to fix the issue with the main campaign ending unexpectedly. Thanks to everyone who sent in bug reports and saved games to help me track this one down!

Here are the changes for v4.6 in full.

• Game ends unexpectedly with message about Channar station having fallen when it has not.
  
• Slowdowns in some battle situations.

Hello commanders! A few minor changes, fixes and improvements for you today. As always, thanks for your feedback, I pay close attention to all of it.

tl;dr: Change notes are at the end of this post!

The main purpose of this patch is to smooth over some issues with the new "set direction" modifier for move orders. With this patch, the attack command will no longer become active when you're trying to set move direction with Left Control. And ships will adopt the chosen direction at the beginning of the move instead of at the end. This makes it much easier to sneak around ships while keeping your armour facing them.

I've also added an additional speed level to the game speed control. It now runs x1 -> x2 -> x3.

Here are the change notes in full.

NEW: The game speed controller now has an additional step for x3 game speed.
CHANGE: Giving a move order with a direction will now cause ships to turn in the given direction from the beginning of the move, instead of at the end.
FIX: Unable to use Left Ctrl to apply the direction modifier to a move order.
FIX: Incorrect spelling of "Reykjavik".

Hello Commanders!

If you were thinking about getting the game, now is a great time to do so as we are part of the Steam Spring Sale! From March 14th until the 21st, the game will be on sale for 35% off! Make sure to check out Freedom Games' Steam Spring Sale page to pick up some great games to play.

It's time to unveil the patch notes for Update #3, a milestone we have named The Tactics Update!

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• Achievements are now available!
  
• Armour: Ships are now more armoured at the front, and have least armour on the back. Deal more damage by positioning your ships behind enemies or to their sides.
  
• Move while attacking: After giving an attack order, the next move order will keep ships aligned to the target they are attacking. Give another move order to cancel this behaviour and switch to a regular move order.
  
• Move backwards: ships can now be ordered to move backwards to a destination, useful for keeping their strongest armour facing an enemy. The default shortcut for this is N.
  
• Set direction: Hold CTRL+RMB when giving a move order to set the direction ships should face when they arrive.
  
• Engage at maximum range: For ships with mixed weapons, you can use this new button to tell them to engage with only their longest range weapons instead of approaching until all weapons are in range. Shorter range weapons will still engage any nearby targets that approach.
  
• Engage in formation: When a group of ships are given an attack order, they now arrange into a formation instead of jostling for a free space independently.
  
• Stances: Ships can be set to aggressive or defensive modes. Aggressive provides bonuses to weapon damage at the expense of speed and armour, with defensive providing the opposite - more speed and armour, less firepower.

Main campaign changes (available for new playthroughs started with this version):

• D-SEC now gain access to the off-map galactic power network after mission 3, so they no longer have low power warnings early in the campaign.
  
• The main campaign map has a few extra locations to enable both AI and player to spread out a little.

Balance changes to accommodate the new armour mechanics. Where ships have reduced hull, this is to compensate for the new frontal armour. Where ships have increased hull, this is to reduce disparity against equivalent enemy ships.

• Knight has less hull (3400 -> 2700)
  
• Wolf has less hull (3700 > 3000)
  
• Rekjavik has more hull (16000 -> 18000)
  
• Copenhagen has more hull (13000 -> 15000)
  
• Ocelot has less hull (2400 -> 1400)
  
• Orca has more hull (25000 -> 28000)
  
• Jackal has less hull (7200 -> 6400)

Helpful notes:

• On the mission info screen, if no ships are present, players are reminded that ships are required to start the mission.
  
• On the prelude, notifying players that the tech tree is reduced compared to the main campaign.

Other changes:

• Lots of UI improvements to the starmap.
  
• Fighters are now available to the AI in non-mission battles in later parts of the campaign and sector assault. These will appear in new playthroughs started with this version.
  
• Updates to the strategic AI, making it more of a challenge in sector assault mode and thge campaign.
  
• Added on-screen tips for controls while issuing move orders.
  
• Tutorial modified to include demonstration of the "Engage at max range" command, as well as discussing armour and moving backwards.
  
• Reduced how close the camera needs to be to a turret before it can be selected as a target, to reduce incidence of accidentally selecting a turret when attacking. The "attack turrets" command can still be used at any distance.
  
• New starmap shortcuts: Next turn, Station and fleet tabs, Reverse Engineer, Tech tree and Loadouts can now all be accessed via keyboard shortcuts.
  
• Auto-resolving battles now runs asynchronously, so the game can communicate that it's busy calculating the outcome instead of freezing until it's done.
  
• In sector assault, enemy ships guarding wormholes will now start closer to the center of the battle area, so players have more time to deploy their fleet.

• Resources don't reset when a mission is restarted more than once.
  
• Build menu doesn't work properly during tactical pause.
  
• Tactical pause ends when escape menu is toggled.
  
• Tactical pause doesn't work after escape menu is used during tactical pause.
  
• Can give tactical orders if tactical pause is enabled before opening escape menu.
  
• Building a ship with an unpopulated turret slot causes the turn update to run endlessly.
  
• Can capture Braddock's ship on last mission.
  
• Tokaras unable to move after being captured on some missions.
  
• Repair ships can keep a ship alive even if the hull reaches zero.
  
• Ship loadout name persists in shipyard even after changed in loadout editor.
  
• Ships continue being attacked after being captured.
  
• Capturing a station that has fighters can cause errors on subsequent turns.
  
• Some mission-provided ships show incorrect loadout information during battles.
  
• Fighters sometimes cancel their orders when the lead fighter in a squadron is destroyed.
  
• Braddock's fighters do not fire on Antilia in the final mission.
  
• Camera position judder when following fast-moving ships such as fighters.
  
• Flak-equipped ships close distance to the range of their flak guns when attacking capital ships, which is closer than necessary.
  
• Some ships temporarily stop moving during a battle if an order is given with an exploding ship selected.
  
• Extremely slow turn processing speeds on large sector assault maps.
  
• Game sometimes fails to complete turn processing on large sector assault maps.

---

As always, I am excited to see what suggestions come out of these updates and will use them to continue to improve the plan and direction of Dust Fleet. Don't forget to join our community Discord[discord.gg] and share your experiences!

I would also love to see your honest thoughts of the game through a Steam review. Steam reviews can have a massive impact on indie games like Dust Fleet and I love reading your experiences in reviews.

That’s all for now, Commander - see you in space!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/406160/Dust_Fleet/