Attention Captains,
We have uploaded a minor version to the beta branch that allows those who are a little more technical minded to tinker with Astra Protocol 2.
There are two main components to this patch:
The biggest change of this build is that you can set the value that the game uses to seed the random number generation, this means that on boot (and boot only) you can ensure that you always start in the same sector, location, and initial spawn without needing to mess around with save files etc.
This can be enabled by putting the value "seed=X" (where X is a non-zero, positive number, e.g. seed=5) into the Launch Options in Steam - however this only occurs on game boot. If you die and restart in the same session, you will not start in the same sector.
The other change was actually introduced into an earlier build but wasn't publicised. In this build, we've added in a _config.config file that can be used to control a lot of the variables used in game, such as the algorithms generating planets, probe speed, strength of the fauna etc. If this file is renamed to config.config the values in that file will override the defaults in the game. It involves playing around with xml, and also risks affecting your game experience, so use with caution.
We're leaving this in beta for a while to gauge opinion on whether we need to roll it out.
Please let us know how useful you find either of these features as it will help steer the direction of future improvements.