Hello Jumpers!
Switch over to experimental under Game Versions & Betas in Steam and start playing.
(Experimental has a separate save file and does not impact your main save file in any way, you cannot transfer over progress)
This is a long list of big changes that we want you to test and try to break:
Hotjoining Missions / Instant Rejoining after a disconnect
New Hammerhead player ship (already unlocked on Experimental)
New Ship Health System (Core Lives, Crew Lives)
Core Repair Kits removed, Core Life Kits can be found as loot
Restore ship health with the Hull Repair Kit, repair hull damage outside the ship.
Hull Repair Kit is craftable in the Assembler
Shield ship component, restores your Shield gauge along with the old armor kits
Shield component gives the Pilot an active ability to project a Front Shield
New Special Weapons (Vulcan Minigun and Thunderhead cannon)
New Ship Component management wall in the Hangar
New Player Weapons: Minigun & SMG variant (missing final textures)
Reworked Player Weapon Loot, now with rarities and random modules
Scanning found weapons to add to your Blueprints
Blueprint upgrading through the Assembler
Loot Log through the Assembler
Added different Ingot types as rewards to upgrade weapons & component Blueprints
Increased range on all ship weapons
Showing full stats on Player & Ship weapons
Enemy ships now perform evasive maneuvers and dodges
Targeting guide on all enemy ships to aim for to score critical hits
Enemy gunship drop radioactive bombs, avoid these or suffer radioactivity onboard
All enemy ships have been rebalanced
All enemies now display a Health bar and status effect icons
Elite Raptor enemies are now recolored silver
This is the biggest update and changes to core systems we’ve ever done, so of course things will feel overwhelming and new with no tutorial or onboarding.
We ask that you engage with these systems the best you can, in hopes that you can use them in Experimental through intuitive design that makes sense alone.
We really want the Hotjoining feature to work, so please stress test late joining and disconnects with your friends as much as you can.
How is the new Ship Health mechanic and Core Lives balancing on each Challenge Rating/Difficulty? Please let us know if keeping your ship alive is too easy/hard on different difficulties.
How does the different Ingot and Materia economy feel? Are you getting enough Ingot rewards to make meaningful upgrade progress on weapon and component Blueprints? Do you have enough Materia for the Hull Repair Kit and other uses with the new system?
The best way to give feedback and report Experimental bugs is our Jump Space Discord and the dedicated channels, but if you leave comments under this Steam news post then we will make sure to read them thoroughly for bug reports.
You will have plenty of time to test Experimental with your friends, and if everything stays on track we hope to release the update to everyone before the end of June.
The full release will have a detailed breakdown of all new mechanics, as we might do some last-minute tweaks based on your feedback here. So there will be information on how all these systems work when we roll it out to everyone.
Thank you for your help!
- The Keepsake Crew