Greetings Pilots,
Another week, another round of updates as we prepare for launch into Early Access. We've been busy under the hood, overhauling core systems for performance, stability, and gameplay correctness. Here is the breakdown.
We have landed a significant overhaul of the ship physics, armor, and mass bookkeeping systems. Armor meshes have been removed from the rigid-body simulation, which should yield a noticeable performance improvement in heavy combat. Vehicle mass has been split into distinct 'gameplay' and 'physics' pools, giving us more granular control to tune survivability and flight feel independently. As part of this, the spalling damage model has been reworked to prevent exit impacts from double-applying damage, making penetration damage more predictable.
We have also replaced the legacy ship navigation light system with a more efficient Niagara-based implementation. This change reduces the number of components per vehicle, lowering the rendering overhead across the board. Work also continued on optimizing thruster particle effects to reduce their cost in scenes with multiple ships.
The round lifecycle logic for elimination modes has been toughened up. A round can no longer end before all assigned human players have had a chance to spawn. We have also added a server-enforced 30-second timeout to the vehicle selection screen to keep matches moving; fail to select, and you will be deployed in your primary ship.
Based on performance data and feedback, the Railgun has been re-balanced. It was overperforming, so we have introduced a critical hit system that rewards precision. To deal maximum damage, you now need to hit a module's center mass. Glancing shots will see a significant damage penalty.
Other balance changes include:
Kolibri and Shrike armor thicknesses has been re-balanced.
To make the demo a bit more forgiving for new pilots, we've added a temporary damage reduction of 65% for player ships in the demo.
Lighting: We have continued to tune the lighting in several hangar environments to reduce overexposure and improve visual balance.
ImpactFX: A new ImpactFX system has been integrated to provide more satisfying physical responses to collisions.
UI Feedback: We fixed a bug that caused repeating module temperature alerts, restored the correct "green for positive" text color convention, and added a demo-specific training suggestion in the Simulator UI.
Projectile Visuals: A visual glitch causing projectiles to spawn inside or ahead of the firing weapon has been corrected. Tracers should now "grow" from the muzzle more smoothly.
Flair Decals: Special decals from the Flair system will now reliably hide themselves when flair is inactive or the player lacks entitlement.
Ship Frame Editor: The module tooltip for ballistic weapons now correctly displays supported ammo types and calibre.
A major refactor of how we manage player ship data was completed. This enforces a single source of truth for your vehicle list, fixing a class of bugs in the Hangar UI where the quick-bar would not update correctly after selling or modifying a ship.
We fixed a critical bug that prevented contracts with difficulty selection from launching.
An issue with older demo save files causing data corruption has been addressed. The system will now detect and reset these legacy saves to ensure a clean slate.
The round-start logic was hardened to prevent elimination-based endings from firing before all human players have spawned.
Happy hunting!
-Impeller Studios