Dear Station Designers,Back in late November we released Space Station Designer version 0.5.90, which focused exclusively on polishing the overall game experience. After nearly four months of work, today we're unveiling Space Station Designer version 0.5.130, featuring dozens of improved gameplay mechanics, QoL additions, bug-fixes, and general improvements. If you're interested in the details, you can find the full release notes here.
Astronauts' Special Skills bonuses
The Astronauts' Special Skills have an impact across a wide range of areas, including Commercial Services engagements, space station modules repairs, enabling bonuses in the Earth Facilities, and more. As part of this new update, we've added the following rules:
- Having at least one astronauts with the 'Guidance, Navigation & Control' special skill aboard the station improves the 'attitude control' score, lowers the chances of failure during a 'Debris Avoidance Maneuver' (DAM), and improves the chances of success of resupply spacecraft launches.
- Astronauts with the 'Endurance' skill now get a +2 Autonomy bonus.
- Having an astronaut on-board the station with the 'Emergency Healthcare' special skill now completely prevents health-related random events from happening.
Bear in mind that astronauts can only be trained in up to four Special Skills, and each one of these skills increases their monthly salary, so manage them accordingly.
'Keep Clear' area for Space Tourism spaceports
Up until this version, it was possible to install a module that could technically obstruct the docking of a Space Tourism Shuttle. This new update introduces the concept of 'Keep Clear' areas around Space Tourism spaceports, which are represented by large red cuboids. This adds another layer of design considerations that need to be taken into account when installing modules.
Contractors
We've made a few improvements in the 'Contractors' screen and added a mechanism that tracks the amount of money spent on them, either by procuring modules or by ordering refurbishments. We've also added a tooltip that clearly communicates how a Contractor's level affects their output.
Lastly, we've also changed the game's behaviour so that Contractors who have reached the maximum level no longer accumulate further experience points. Moreover, their level is now shown as 'current level/maximum level', which makes things more clear.
Additional fine-tuning of gameplay mechanics
In addition to the changes described earlier, we've made a series of smaller gameplay additions. Some of these include:
- If the Lunar Orbit Station drifts too far from the L2 point, it will enter into deficit and progress on the Lunar Space Elevator Megaproject will be put on hold.
- Players can now select a specific Contractor when requesting a module refurbishment. Previously, the refurbishment would be carried out by the same Contractor who built the module.
- Entering Phases II and III, which happens after acquiring the 'Expansion in LEO' and 'Expansion Beyond LEO' Research Technologies, now unlocks the additional extra slots for placing Limit Orders.
- Keeping a Casino module operational throughout the whole duration of a Space Tourism engagement now grants an income bonus.
- Special skills are now taken into consideration when calculating the Astronauts' salaries.
- Partially inoperative 'Electricity' and 'Cooling' modules now work at reduced capacity.
- Manufacturing modules can no longer be included as part of Module Leasing engagements.
- The Lunar Orbit station no longer requires 'orbit control'/'drift from L2' management after the ribbon to the Lunar Surface Terminal is in place.
QoL Improvements
We started another playthrough of the Campaign mode in early January and, as always, we keep finding small areas of improvements that can help create a smoother game experience. This is particularly important in the late stages of the game, where we have to manage multiple stations and a large number of astronauts. These are some of the main improvements we're including as part of this update:
- Added extra information in the tooltips used in the Research Tree and Space Station Modules Acquisition screen so that the prerequisite technologies and the technology path required to acquire a given module are clear.
- Added a label with the maximum conversion allowance in the 'Funds <=> Research Points' conversion dialog, and a visual indicator in its associated button that shows the number of months left before the end of the cooldown period.
- Added a 'transfer all' button in the Dispatch Resupply Spacecraft screen that transfers as many astronauts as possible starting with those with the lowest remaining autonomy.
- Added a mechanism that prevents dragging the sliders of the propulsion modules in the 'Debris Avoidance Maneuver' (DAM) setup screen into a value that can cause a negative Service Life after the maneuver is over.
- Added a mechanism to display the 'local time' in the main game screen. This is particularly useful to make sure you don't go to bed late during a weekday!
- Added a mechanism to list the sum of the required inputs across all Production Lines. This can be accessed via a 'Magnifying Glass' button in the Production Lines screen.
New content
As part of this update, we've added the missing descriptions from a few space station modules, along with reduced the descriptions of the Lunar Space Elevator Megaproject's components. In addition to this, we rewrote the descriptions of all the Industrial R&D technologies, which can be accessed via the 'Information' button in the Industrial R&D research tree.
Bug-fixing
No update is complete without a list of bug-fixes! Many of them only affected the late stages of the game, and they were caused by the fact that our initial ambitions for Space Station Designer were way smaller, and we weren't expecting to stretch the game systems this much.The full list of bug-fixes can be found in the public release notes document here. Some of these include:
- Astronauts who are assigned to Earth Facilities now get automatically unassigned when they reach retirement age.
- Fixed the 'Request resupply spacecraft' so that it can handle the large numbers required in the late stages of the game.
- Fixed various edge cases related to 'Modules Leasing' and added functionality in order to prevent the player from including modules that are disabled, inoperative, etc.
- Fixed the display of floating point numbers, which was causing issues in certain scenarios due to rounding inaccuracies.
- Fixed a limitation in the Commercial Goods Market screen, which was failing to handle large values.
- Fixed the code that handles the assignment of astronauts to the various milestones of the Lunar Space Elevator in order to prevent the assignment of those who are close to retirement age.
Closing thoughts
We hope you enjoy all the improvements brought by this new update. We're currently running a closed beta, so if you want to give it a go, please consider applying by using the following link.For the next update, we'll be focussing on further gameplay additions, new content, and more QoL improvements. We continue monitoring our Discord server and the forums, so don't hesitate to let us know if you have any feedback or comments.--Ignacio, Mauricio, and Nicolas (Polar Motion)