Major Test Universe Update

It's time for our first Starbase update in quite some time and it's a pretty big one!

All of you who have purchased Starbase now have a separate app in your Steam library called "Starbase Test Universe" aka the STU, and it is now open. This replaces the old PTU beta branch, so now you won't need to swap between builds when playing on the Live Universe and on the Test Universe.

Full Patch Notes:

New features

Ship Warp

• A method of fast travel usable on all ships, pressing X while seated on a Pilot Chair brings up the menu.
• Can warp to a map target, warp ping, navigation chip location or pointing a ship at a direction and manually determining warp distance.
• Ship warp has a five minute cooldown after usage and during the time warp is charged ship must remain close to the spot charging was started at.
• A charge can be held for five minutes before it is released and propellant is used during charging, which is not refunded if the charge is allowed to expire.
• Added Ship Warp Signal settings under Transponder settings
• Ship warping is prevented while another ship is in tow
• Warping creates a warp signal for 10 minutes so other players can see and warp to the same location if they are near enough

Universe Map

• Added an interactive map that can be opened via default bind "M"
• Stations and Capital ships are discovered when a player is nearby to them, and remain in the map after the fact.
• If changes happen in universe to for example station location, the map updates these only when player has been in range to see these changes for himself.
• The map can be moved around by clicking on planets and stations with Mouse1, or by using WASD/space/control
• Players are able to add custom markers in their map and use them for ship warping with Mouse2 (while sitting on pilot chair)
• Warp Pings also appear in the map if players are within range to see them (300km), and can be selected for warp like with custom markers

Station Editor

• Capital ships, moon bases and stations can now be edited in a new station editor which can be accessed from Esc-menu while within a station's area.
• Currently for the PTU no resources are needed to build any parts inside the Editor
• Changes made in the editor are instantly reflected into the universe.
• Stations can be saved as blueprints to make repairing and setting up new ones faster.

Station Blueprints

• Station Editor has a similar dropdown menu as SSC, and in the File tab, you can choose to Save new blueprints or open existing ones
• Pressing Save As, saves the currently opened station into a blueprint name of your choice
• While you have your station open, accessing the open or manage menu of blueprints and right clicking a blueprint allows you to replace the current station with a saved blueprint
• Station Editor can also be opened in the "Station Planner" mode, which is accessible anywhere in the universe, allowing you to save and modify blueprints but not replace stations with them
• Stations cannot have docked capital ships and cannot be moon bases, in order for the blueprint save to work. (Moon Bases are not supported in this system.)

Ship Reconstruction (Ship Insurance)

• Ships can be repaired for free (at the moment), with just a one hour wait, can be done when within a Station's area.
• Ship Reconstruction can be accessed and performed in the "Ships" UI by right clicking a ship in the "Owned Ships" screen.
• Ships Reconstructed this way will be sent and repaired to the current station the player is at when reconstruction begins.
• Ship Reconstruction can also be initiated from a repair panel at Origin Spaceship Designer Hangar or at Hangar Hall's panel.
• It is possible to queue multiple ships that will be repaired after the last one has finished.

Planets

• Fixed an issue where ships could hit invisible collisions above the surface
• Fixed the moon killzones interacting with ships that came close to the surface and deleting them erroneously

Binds

• Changed default ship blueprint toggle bind from "M" to "Y"

Ships

• Implemented a fix to prevent ships from being sent to "other station" during despawn
• Fixed ships sometimes spawning into origin Spaceship Designer instead of hangar hall it was bought from
• Fixed transponders of ships not existing in universe appearing in space (Ships expire and are removed from universe after 365 days of being inactive, be sure to store them on station!)
• Adjusted loaded remote ship rendering distances to show full rendering later (when ship is closer) but with less delay (5s->2s)and avoid switching back to lod later (when ship has been outside rendering range for longer (5s->10s)
• Increased max loaded ships (3->5), load distance (300m->400m), and max loaded ship showroom ships (2->3), and asteroid load distance (200m->400m)
• Increased the speed limit at which other ships stay fully loaded.
• Fixed ships leaving behind transponders when no longer present in the universe.
• All current ship transponders are removed from the universe once the update hits. Ships need to be hosted for their transponders to show up as before again. This resolves the Ghost Transponders issue.

Spaceship UI

• Added station location for spawn panels and ship menu to show where the ships are despawned at.
• Ships that have despawned incorrectly are now displayed as "Lost".

Stations

• Fixed an issue where players would be pushed out of station zone when resigning a station
• Increased maximum amount of loaded station areas to 20
• Added a setting for adjusting station load distance, this can be found in settings under Graphics
• Fixed station LODs not showing up past 1 km distance, they should now be observable over 100 km away (Though you may not notice them without weapon zoom at that distance!)
• Fixed ships merging with station part if a station part is in its spawn location
• Optimized object placement on moon bases to reduce FPS spikes during placement
• Hangar hall despawn timer has been increased to 10 minutes
• Fixed an issue where moon bases would not load correctly and parts would start disappearing due to structural failure.
• Added error highlight for capital ship frame modules that are not part of the main frame.
• Made it so that foundations are no longer recyclable.

Spaceship Designer

• Added confirmation message when deleting blueprints
• Fixed localization for building budget being exceeded when placing an object that goes over the limit
• Changed localization of "Highlight overlapping objects" option to reflect its actual performance impact.
• Added fixed torpedoes and missiles to asset browser. (Fixed = consists of one part, non-modular)
• Removed old store ships from spaceship designer premade ship list
• Added Mako_Mk1, Ke-1, Skytanker A1 Alien, Scythe Elysium, Hellfire Laser and Askannon Laborer 2 to spaceship designer premade ship list

Inventory

• Fixed navigation chips not being searchable in the station inventory by their custom name set via navigation logger.
• Added station inventory space counter.
• Fixed trying to delete all of specific multipart objects causing all multipart objects to be deleted instead.

Ship easy build mode

• Fixed an issue where ship modules were not properly checking snapping and allowed them to overlap

Sieges

• Added localized errors messages to siege panel

Devices

• Optimized YOLOL chips
• Optimized network usage of Mining Laser and Grid displays
• Fixed Large Generator Exorium Tank Core emptying when dropped into universe from inventory
• Lowered tow beam electricity requirement from 5 to 2 electricity per 1,000 kg
• Increased plasma cannon magazine ammo capacity from 150 to 200
• Increased autocannon magazine ammo capacity from 500 to 700
• Increased autocannon container ammo capacity from 3500 to 5600
• Increased rail cannon container ammo capacity from 700 to 800
• Increased laser cannon container ammo capacity to from 4200 4800
• Increased plasma cannon contain ammo capacity from 1050 to 1400
• Reduced visual effect of laser turret hits.

Lod Generation

• Increased generated lod quality especially for ships

Asteroids

• Reduced ship collision damage from collisions with asteroids by 50%

Auction House

• Fixed not being able to receive more than 92,233,720 credits from a single auction.

Social

• Fixed new players not being able to be invited to groups after completing the tutorial

Tutorial

• Added a ship reward for each of the three starting job tutorials
• Each starting job tutorial gives a different version of laborer as reward.

Crashes

• Fixed Nvidia Surround causing a crash on wide enough resolutions (possibly affected AMD Eyefinity too).
• Fixed a crash that happened when attaching torpedo/missile to a station.

PTU/STU

• Regular and Public Test Universe version of Starbase have been separate to their own products on steam library
• Added missing ores, weapons, mags, empire armors, kingdom armors, endo kits and station foundation to cheat inventory
• Added extra siege options to the siege panel for ease of testing. Most of these are visible when siege is active.
• Made it possible to update station siege schedules instantly.

Known Issues

• Bloom has become blurry
• Universe Map camera is upside down
• Asteroids visually disappear at certain position and angles while in asteroid field
• Ship Reconstruction does not work for Company Ships
• Station Replacing can cause the new station to appear kilometers away from the player's current location.
• Warp pings may not show on the map after using editor(s)
• For more, less severe, known issues the official Starbase Discord has an STU known issues category

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Roadmap

Below you'll find a roadmap of things that are currently in testing on the STU, and what things we're working on before we can update the Live Universe.