Demo v0.6.0 - Hold Turn, 18 New Perks, Hull-Shaped Hitboxes, and a New Look

Two weeks of work since v0.5.1, and plenty of it came straight from player reports on the demo. Ships can now hold their turn, perks and Commander upgrades got bigger and more specific, every hull collides and blocks shots with its real shape, drones and objectives were reworked, and most screens in the game have a new look.

New

• Hold Turn. A ship that has not acted yet can hold its turn with H or the HOLD TURN button, then act at the end of the round after every other ship still due. Each ship can hold once per round.
• 18 new ship perks. Five rules any hull can roll, like High Trajectory (its shots pass over rocks) and Overwatch (a free shot at the first enemy to move into range), plus 13 perks only one class can take, like Screen, Hunter-Killer and Repair Bay. Rules can now appear in the first perk slot, first-slot bonuses are much bigger, every card is tagged as a rule or class only, and replacing a perk shows exactly what you give up.
• Commander keystones. Most Commander trees now end in a keystone, a rule you unlock after the last rank, like Alpha Strike (every ship's first shot each battle cannot miss and always crits) or Riposte (dodging a shot sets up a guaranteed crit on the attacker). Fortification is now three trees for Hull, Armor and Shield, and ranks you already bought count toward all three. Increased Module Count and Orders Capacity became the Refit Bays and Second Voice keystones, so you keep them if you owned them, and the Repair and Movement upgrades were removed.
• A Battle Rewards screen. After a win, one screen shows everything the battle paid: resources by source, modules ready to fit with an Equip button that opens the full Equip screen, blueprints recovered, perks earned with a Choose Perk button, and any new portraits or crests. The victory screen before it now leads with ships lost, resources collected, level-ups and perks.
• Engine hits. Striking a Frigate or Capital from behind deals 20% more damage to its armor and hull, marked with an ENGINES callout and shown in the attack preview. A shield that holds stops the bonus, and the rule applies to your ships too. Wraith Backstab also pays out again, as its codex entry says.
• First contact. The first time you meet a faction, your XO names them before the first turn while the camera pans to their fleet and the fog lifts long enough to see who they are.
• A profile collection. Choose your profile portrait from pilots, ships, eight named admirals and faction crests. Ship blueprints unlock their pilot and ship portraits, and beating a faction in battle unlocks its crest.
• Settings and Help. A Borderless Fullscreen display mode, now the default on a fresh install, and a switch to turn off hover and focus sounds. The hover sound itself is new and quieter. Help gained a Threats section and a ship statistics glossary, and each Fleet Command tab shows a one-line hint beside a Help button that opens the Fleet chapter.

Changed

• Hitboxes match the ships. Collision, pushing and shot blocking now use each hull's drawn outline instead of a circle, so narrow ships fit through gaps they used to jam in, tight formations no longer lock up, and a ship turning in place stops before its nose hits a rock. Ship sizes on the board were retuned per faction and class to go with it.
• Cover changes the fight. Blast weapons and launched area abilities like Barrage, Broadside, Cinderfall and Corrosive Cloud now explode on the rock, prop, fuel tank or mine that stops them instead of vanishing, and the AI aims them around cover. Drone shots follow the same line of fire as ship guns: a rock stops them, and an enemy ship in the way takes the hit. Cover is laid out to suit each terrain and faction in formations with wider gaps, and coral reef, ocean, tar, hydrocarbon, liquid mirror, crystal and glass worlds now carry as much cover and as many minable asteroids as other planets.
• Drone bays reworked. A drone module launches at battle start and again every three of its ship's turns, and surviving drones stay in the fight. Each bay has its own cooldown and stance, drones fly out as individual craft, and their volleys play faster. An attacking drone with no clear shot moves to find one, and enemies shoot down a big swarm or go after the ship launching a smaller one.
• Objectives fight back. Enemy fleets now deploy on the outpost or structure they are defending, and interceptors form up on the convoy's route. A capture only progresses once the structure's guns are down and no enemy ship is in the ring, enemies will step into the ring to stall you, and progress you already banked is kept. Objective panels show convoy health, a bounty target's hull and escape rules, drone factory and fortress hull, and live contested zone scores, and the board and minimap mark objective areas, mine trigger and blast ranges, and capture progress.
• Smarter enemies. Enemy ships now pick combat stances, going into Assault when healthy and in contact and Defend when cornered, shown by an icon and a callout over the ship. The AI also uses cover and piercing weapons better, picks finishing shots more accurately, routes around rocks, hazards and friendly ships more smoothly, and pulls damaged ships back into cover near repairs instead of charging back in. Auto-Battle now captures intact outposts and stations instead of shooting them, and enemy turns play faster.
• Ability and balance changes. Vanguard Barrage is now a missile volley whose missiles each burst through shields, armor and hull. Barrage, Terminus, Judgment and Broadside start every battle on cooldown, and Broadside and Prism Lance recharge more slowly. The Pirate Minelayer walls off your approach instead of your retreat and will not mine its own ships, and the Pirate Carrier's Scrap Bay rebuilds one drone per turn from nearby wreckage instead of one per kill. Higher rarity modules add less range than before, the Hive no longer field or drop gravity weapons, and Miniguns and other multi-shot weapons now mine rocks at their full output.
• Art and effects. The Allies fleet was redesigned from scratch, Enlightened, Vanguard, Wraith, Hive, Pirate, Sehn, Ancients and Reaper ships got new higher resolution art, and enemy ships no longer wear a random tint. Battlefields got new rock, terrain and set-piece art that matches the local faction, and rocks and wrecks are no longer drawn too dark. Dozens of weapon, Order and ability effects were redrawn, along with ship explosions, shields, hull damage smoke, engine exhaust and warp portals. Hazard fields show their real edges, Smokescreen and frost no longer hide the ships inside them, cloaked ships read as faint warped outlines, and Maw has a new firing sound.
• A new look for the menus. Fleet Command, Equip, Fabricate, Upgrade, the victory and defeat screens, the galaxy map, Hostile Contact and Empire now share one navy and gold style, with resource art on costs and one readable tooltip style everywhere. Things you have not unlocked yet show as dark silhouettes. In Equip you can drag a module into a specific slot or drag fitted modules to move and swap them, a ship removed from the Active Fleet keeps its modules, and the Upgrade tab hides items whose next blueprint you have not found yet.
• Battle HUD. More of the board is visible: an expandable active ship card with a bigger portrait, a combat log that starts collapsed, separate bays for modules and Orders, and a turn queue sized to the fight. The ship inspector opens when your cursor rests on a ship, collapses with one click and turns red for enemies, and the combat log names the module behind each hit and the damage it did to shields, armor and hull. When a move, target or ability is refused, the game now tells you why. Retreat and Auto-Battle moved to the Escape menu, retreating only damages deployed ships, and battle speed is now 1x or 2x.
• Galaxy map, Empire and Trade Post. Lanes you cannot take yet are dashed while available jumps and your secured trail stay solid, objectives get amber rings, short guidance and a Show objective button, territory borders are bolder, the nebulae and starfield were reworked, and map notices wait until you have read them. Empire Buildings fades rows you cannot build and tells you why when you press one, and the Trade Post's Sell tab opens on loose stock with a toggle for fitted modules.
• Tutorial. Lessons show your current training goal, give live feedback on cover and damage, work fully on a controller, and hand you back to the map pointing at your first objective. Tutorial cards pulse when they move so you can find them, and ambushes and reinforcements can no longer interrupt a lesson.
• Controller and keyboard. Targeting prompts show the buttons for your Xbox, PlayStation or Switch pad, the support picker, reinforcements, pause menu and confirmations navigate properly, Esc or B cancels targeting without opening Pause, backing out of Pause, Settings or Help keeps the target you were picking, and confirming or cancelling a target no longer turns a held stick into a paid move.

Fixed

• An enemy turn could freeze for up to a minute when an effect kept retriggering, a Rift channel could stall a turn, the automatic end-turn timer could skip a ship, and switching Auto-Battle off mid-turn could let it keep acting on your next ship.
• A profile that could not be read was reset to a blank one even though a good backup existed. It is now restored from that backup.
• Exploits closed: scrapping a new ship refunded its free starter gun, quitting mid-battle and continuing paid out mined and salvaged resources twice, a reloading weapon fired at a rock or mine was ready again next turn, and replacing an active expedition kept your ship levels.
• Miniguns and other multi-shot weapons fired at a mine did a fraction of their damage and showed nothing while still using up the shot. The whole volley now lands, and a mine that survives a hit shows it.
• Drone factories rebuilt every drone the moment you shot it down, because buildings were borrowing a Carrier's abilities. Salvage Depot tugs also vanished before the killing shot landed, and your own salvage ship could be targeted.
• Tactical Missile could put a missile on a loose pair instead of the tightest cluster, Flak, Plasma Vent and Force Push previews could mark ships the shot never reached, a rock-blocked Implosive pulled ships toward the hidden target, a Gravity Bomb kill pushed survivors the wrong way, a destroyed Wingman kept its lead from taking a new one, and Veil targeting closed after clicking an invalid ally.
• Storm vortices could roll over a ship without damaging or throwing it, a black hole's distortion could drift off the black hole as the camera moved, terrain strikes could land on ships as they deployed, and a terrain effect that lowered maximum shields or armor could stay lowered after the battle.
• Hits now land when the shot does: damage numbers, health bars, shield flashes and destruction wait for each round to arrive, burst weapons no longer show hits after the kill, and beams, shots and impact flashes stay attached to ships that are moving.
• Shield bubbles could be left floating in empty space when a ship slipped back into fog, ships could snap back to an old spot as they moved into fog, a ship could finish a curved move drawn facing the wrong way, and a move that used all of a ship's movement could not be redirected while it was still flying.
• Allies Fleet Link still counted ships jammed by a magnetic field and ships sitting in reserve.
• AI fixes: ships with several weapons could skip their whole volley when one gun could not reach the target, planted Vanguard Bulwark capitals stopped fighting, badly damaged ships did not use Emergency Patch, Crystal dragons never used Ice Breath, AI fallback fire could destroy a structure that was meant to be captured, and an enemy Starbase could replace a destroyed fortress or guard post with a warship.
• Text: the Equip screen overflowed its boxes in German and other languages, Broadside's name showed in English in every language, and reinforcement cards showed your empire name instead of your faction and an untranslated rarity.
• Run-end screens: the defeat screen could offer the wrong way back, and the recovery popup promised a full repair and a refund of carried resources even when neither happened. Both now show what really happened, and the abandon warning spells out repair costs before you confirm.
• The main menu's Discord button pointed at an expired invite, B or Esc on the build menu's remove confirm closed the whole screen, the Trade Post could reopen on its Sell tab over the Buy list, sector select always said four ships, incoming attack warnings could cover node names, and ship inspection portraits had a hull ID label printed over the art.