Stellar Forge · published
Battles now feel bigger and slower. Four new abilities fire on their own. Supernovae, gravitational lensing and solar arcs all got a major visual upgrade, and the game runs smoother.
New: Four self-firing abilities
Stars that carry these abilities gain a new weapon that fires on its own, with nothing to press:
Spicule Barrage: every 2.2 s, a fan of three fast plasma jets at the nearest foe. Found on plasma-surface stars: yellow and red dwarfs, red and blue giants.
Filament Eruption: every 3.4 s, two blobs of a breaking solar filament arc onto the foe, splash, and leave a burning pool.
Particle Storm: every 4 s, three homing proton swarms hunt the foe and slow it. Found on magnetised stars and remnants: blue giants, Wolf-Rayet stars, neutron stars, pulsars and magnetars.
Magnetosonic Pulse: every 3.8 s, a ring of magnetic pressure pushes foes back, chips them, and knocks their shots off course.
Each one has its own painted icon and effects. Their damage adds to your star's normal attacks; owning one never weakens your other weapons.
Battles feel colossal
Shots now travel 30% slower: projectiles, hurled mass, beams and bursts all cross the arena with real weight, so fights read like stars clashing across space.
Abilities fire by themselves by default. Switch any one to manual in the ability slots if you prefer to trigger it yourself.
Visual upgrades
Supernovae:
Before the blast, light now streams inward as the star gathers its power.
The explosion throws out many varied nebula clouds, and they linger as a glowing remnant.
Gravitational lensing: the waves now visibly bend the sky behind them, with curved arcs, a colour fringe and a bright lens front. They are wider and move more slowly, so you can watch the bending happen.
Solar arcs now rise across the whole face of a star, not only its edges.
Storage changes
What you gain actively goes to that nursery's storage: flybys, catches and battle rewards.
Other rewards go to the Universal storage.
When storage is full, the extra is lost unless you own the Roche Conduit, which saves it.
Storage names are clearer.
Quality of life
Every (i) info button now sits right beside the thing it explains.
Ability slots are now one tidy line, and ability type words match the info card.
An ability's info card now says Auto when it fires by itself.
Fixes
If an element is already feeding from storage at full rate, the forge no longer tells you to "raise its feed rate". It now says the element builds up over time, and that a higher storage level pours faster.
An empty catalyst pouch now shows a short message instead of vanishing, explaining that ignitions spend what was on the disk and where to find more neutronium, strangelets, dark matter and antimatter.
After a supernova, the menu now returns only when the whole cinematic has finished.
Adventure notifications keep arriving after you return from time away.
Fixed an error when previewing production on some variant rows.
Long Use/Buy labels now wrap inside their row instead of stretching the card (Russian).
Performance
Heavy ability effects now build much faster. The densest ones went from several hundred pieces per cast to a few dozen, with the same look.
The game no longer lowers effect quality on its own after start-up or after you return from time away.
Removed a hitch the first time ground marks appeared in a fight.
Thank you for playing and for all the feedback. Keep it coming!