0.1.3 - Battle Lines

Battles are something you can read now, moons are places you actually visit, and the fights themselves are worth watching. Here are the highlights of VoidCraft 0.1.3 - Battle Lines.

New

• Fleet formations. Send your fleet in Wedge, Line, Envelop or Screen. They counter each other in a cycle, so reading the attack coming at you and picking the right answer genuinely blunts it.
• Battle reports that explain themselves. The report names both formations and says outright whether your defence countered the attack, was countered by it, or neither.
• A battle you can watch. Ships that die leave wreckage behind, you can see which ships are actually engaged, and a hostile fleet's composition comes into focus as it closes.
• Moons you can use. Your moon turns under the telescope, its structures look like the build menu, and it is reachable straight from the command deck.
• Space Dock berths, shown before you commit. The build screen lists what each ship costs in berths, so you can size the dock before committing to something the size of a Death Star.
• Trade routes with the worlds you meet. Set up recurring trade with the systems you have made contact with.
• Pirate Attack Potential on every mission. Every mission shows its interception risk before you launch, and explains how the number is worked out.

Balance

• Recycling takes real time now, and the dwell you pick decides the haul. A full hold is still a full hold, but filling one costs you time on station, and Mining Lasers buys that time back.
• Hyperspace Drive is much cheaper to push deep. It is still the most expensive of the classic technologies, as the gateway to capital ships should be, but the fastest engines are reachable again.
• Moons are much harder to come by. A battle now needs to leave a serious debris field before a moon can form at all. Very large clashes are unchanged and still the best way to get one.
• Moons have a real storage ceiling, and both moon dossiers show it. Nothing already banked is taken away, and cargo that does not fit rides home rather than being destroyed.

Fixes

• Your chosen attack formation now actually reaches the battle. Picking Wedge, Line, Envelop or Screen used to show in the send screen and then never make it to the fight.
• Market prices load in busy trading sectors instead of giving up on you.
• Research that needs a sensor array warns you before you buy it, not after.
• Loading ammunition is its own control now, with a LOAD MAX button.
• The first quest tells you what it unlocks. The Solar Plant upgrade gates research, warships and expeditions, and it now says so.
• Steam sign-in no longer gives up when Steam is slow to answer. It waits, asks a second time, and lets you through.

VoidCraft is cosmetic-only, never pay-to-win.