Hey everyone!
The time has finally come! Here is the next big update for Planet S! The update will include a new end game mechanic, a creative mode, scenario support and most importantly: Support for our first DLC "Planet S - A New Horizon" which adds a story campaign to the game.
NEW Dyson swarm
You can now research a new technology called "Dyson swarm" which will unlock a new building with which you can launch Dyson probes to build a Dyson Swarm.
The Dyson swarm will not be an unlimited energy source for regular buildings but will instead grant you Warp gate capacity. More on that in the next section.
Every player can produce and send probes but there is a limit of 2000 probes at which point the swarm will be complete. Probes can be traded through diplomacy in multiplayer matches.
NEW Warp gate
The Warp gate is a new building which can be unlocked by researching the corresponding technology. Each Warp gate requires a Warp gate capacity point. You get one point per 200 Dyson probes.
Warp gates act as a shortcut for all your ships. Your ships will calculate the shortest path when send somewhere and they will also incorporate Warp gates if they provide a faster route to get from point A to B.
All of your Warp gates are connected to each other.
NEW Creative mode
Update 1.2.0 also adds a Creative mode to Planet S. You can load existing savegames or create new savegames and modify the system without any resource or unlock restrictions.
You can spawns ships, change item storage levels, adjust names or colony ownership and a lot more.
Creative mode is currently only available in singleplayer.
Bots
Bots have been greatly overhauled and are now a lot more capable in almost every area but especially combat.
Here is a list of a few highlights and notable changes:
- Bots can now go down the military path instead of just science
- Easy bots are less agressive and will not declare war on their own while normal and especially hard bots are a lot more agressive
- Bots will now build attack fleets
- Bots can also build an exo spaceship and win the game
- Bots will now react to exo spaceships being launched
Modding
We expanded the modding capabilities in many areas:
- Support for custom skyboxes
- Support for custom scenarios
- Customizable sun color and size
- Building materials can be overwritten (which ones are shown left of the minimap)
- Expanded building menu override capabilities
There are a ton of additional functions (especially in regards to scenarios) which we won't cover here. We will update our modding documentation an additional guide for scenario modding in the coming weeks.
Scenarios
As mentioned in the modding section, the game now supports custom scenarios which are singleplayer "missions" with custom quests, tasks and logic. The game currently doesn't ship with any scenarios but we hope to release some free scenarios in the future. You will also be able to create and install user scenarios through the Steam Workshop.
UI
+ The sun now has a menu and is selectable. It displays information about the Dyson swarm.
+ Completly new main menu
~ Adjusted the ingame UI in several areas: Resources and garrision stats are now at the top center, research progress in the top right.
~ The building menu no longer uses number pages (I, II, III ...) and is now scrollable instead
+ The statistics menu is now accessible through a button in the top colony menu
+ Added a "Jump to spaceport" button to the colony menu which will bring you directly to the spaceport of the planet that you are currently on
~ Improved the usability of the trade route and diplomacy menu in some areas
~ The icon selector in the flag editor is now a list instead of a cycle button
Other features & Quality of life
+ A world will now select a random skybox based on its seed
+ Added a debt limit world option
+ Increased the item storage limit to 32 bit which means you can now have more than 4 billion items
+ You can now hold SHIFT while placing a farm building to automatically place farm fields at the same time
~ Bots will now automatically reenable when loading a savegame so you don't have to reenable them manually
Bug fixes
* Fixed a few translation issues
* Fixed a bug that caused trade routes to not be displayed correctly when using DX12
* Fixed atmosphere and cloud rendering on devices running Linux Mesa
* Fixed battle music playing in some weird situations
* Fixed a bug that caused solar power plants to produce power even when the collectors were ruined
* Fixed gas planets playing ocean ambient sounds
* Fixed an issue that could cause the UI to disappear
* Fixed a roman numbering issue
* Fixed "Protein powder" and "Vitamin extract" having the wrong item category
Performance
~ Improved performance in many areas
* Fixed an issue that caused random frame hitching / stuttering especially in large savegames
These are the most notable changes and fixes!
As always we would love to hear your feedback, especially in regards to the new features and of course the story campaign.
Enjoy!
Glimmerlight Games