Alpha 4.5: The Pit

Builder got a pit for staging fights. Modules were retuned so the five factions are more unique. NPC hulls were rebuilt with a per-faction silhouette language. Encounters stage and reinforce ships by measured power. Ability VFX have all been updated. Hull lighting has improved depth, and Codex pages are rebuilt.Arena Pit and the new ability visuals are both unfinished. Expect bugs. Both get major updates over the next two weeks.WARNING: Nothing stops you from adding fifty ships to the arena and melting your GPU.Arena Pit
- New Builder mode (Shift+F8, or the Arena Pit chip). Pick hulls, pick the other side, launch. Does not write campaign progress.
- Fly the ship or Watch.
- Presets: Mirror, Swarm, Titan, Skirmish, Last fight.
- Roster is your ships plus curated ones. Assign teams. Generated pool hulls are optional. Curated ships show their authored names.
- Spacing Near / Standard / Far, optional terrain, up to four teams.
- Watch cameras: Broadcast, Follow, Free (wheel zooms on the cursor). 0.5x to 4x, controls on the HUD.
- End card: winner, first module lost, damage by weapon. Rematch, swap sides, edit matchup, or Esc to Edit Hull.
- Your slot follows the current Builder hull. Edit, Launch Again, the new version is in the fight.
- Fly keeps the helm HUD. Team counts sit under the combat readout.Enemy Hulls
- The NPC pool was rebuilt. Each faction has its own hull language.
- Corners are rounded by default. Mirror twins fair the same.
- Necro Ossuary and Reaper layouts were recut. Ancient Reliquary ships keep deck coverage on the claw-strip hulls.Encounters
- Reinforcements are chosen by measured ship power, not hull class. Bigger is not always stronger anymore.
- Same-class hulls vary. A cruiser is not a copy of the last cruiser.
- Doctrine drives the AI: snipers snipe. Faction leaders carry their keystone.
- Loadouts stay inside the faction's kit. Shield cost is counted on the hull that ships. Armor budget comes from the ship's frame, not the player's Core tier.Factions
- Module pass so each faction's kit does a different thing. Industrial: range and mass. Bio: regen and swarms. Necro: output bought with hull. Steam: rate of fire and gadgets. Ancient: abilities and hardware stolen off other trees.
- Later unlocks in a lane beat earlier ones in that lane. A deep Tendril milestone should be an upgrade, not a heavier copy.
- Faction Command Cores are deleted. Those Tendril slots grant modules, not a second core.
- Necro Warp Drive is cheap on power and hard on hull HP. Grave Tide Drive is the late version of that.
- Acid and spore leave a DoT field.
- Ancient Plasma Cannon is the one oversized slow bolt on the starter. A second copy is locked until late Ancient.
- Mainspring launches a corvette wing. Still has an effect if the ship has no bays.
- Kill the keystone module and its passive dies with it.
- Shield Capacitor only adds bank if a generator is already fitted.Combat Visuals
- Hull recesses, bezels, and pads share one lighting pass, so thickness reads at the rim instead of as a flat fill.
- Engine lights hit the plating around the nozzle. Module plates follow the sprite bounds, not a stock rectangle.
- Modules darken as HP drops. A dying core burns a hole instead of sitting there cracked.
- Scorch stacks. A second hit on the same cell does not wipe the first mark.
- Muzzle flashes keep gun color. They used to clip to white.
- Beams differ by faction and by gun. Lances are slightly thicker than a beam; the extra width is halo, not a second shaft.
- Abilities have a start, a hold, and an end. Distinct looks for Haunting, Warp Jump, Overpressure, Hive Spawn, Brass Cavalry, and Mass Production.
- Hull plates and damage maps mip at zoom. Recoil housing and barrel stay equally sharp.
- Ability rings no longer show radial seams. Ability effects no longer ghost a frame behind the ship.
- Beams and lines share a zoom floor so they do not vanish when you pull back.Codex
- Empire Codex numbers come from the live game. Screenshots are of the current UI.
- First time into Tactical, Empire, or the galaxy map, Advisor opens the matching page. Builder has inventory and armor walkthroughs.Combat
- TAB cycles nearest. T is under the cursor. L is the previous target. All three rebind in Settings.
- Locking the camera again turns auto-frame back on.
- Warp Jump stopped snapping the camera.
- Mixed-force and siege popups label each option by the fight it starts.
- The match ends when the last hostile is dead. It used to freeze at Hostiles: 0.
- After-action columns line up. Steam bombers go for wounded modules.Galaxy Gameplay
- Map knowledge and live intel are separate. Revealed sectors stay revealed. Fleet and status info needs high standing, and it drops if standing drops.
- Factions you have not met do not gain reputation off-screen.
- A hostile trade hub is not a shop.
- Stacked fleets on a node show names, not an x3 chevron and a force total.
- Captain rows include status and a countdown. Recovery text names the order they go back to.
- Workshop: Subscribed filter, author on each row.
- Campaign phase is a small chip. The full objective is in Empire Command.
- B cycles Off, Economic, Scout, Military. Military keeps fleet and siege labels at far zoom.Galaxy Performance
-Improvements to shaders and border re-draws dramatically improve galaxy map performance during late game.
-On my dev PC I was able to keep 400FPS up to a 1,000 node galaxy (galaxy map in non-dev limited to 100 nodes at the moment).Builder
- Hole cuts openings in the hull. Clipboard Cut is still Cut.
- Module info sits next to the selected part instead of hanging off the screen.
- Transform numbers are in the right column. Rounding is None / Light / Full everywhere that label appears.
- Ellipses and curves hold their shape when stretched. A mirrored drag stays on the half you grabbed.
- Build-over-map frost fades out. Map HUD does not show through the glass. Clicks in Empire do not land on the galaxy underneath.
- Photo Booth: the damage brush flashes on contact, Clear Damage restores armor as well as hull, and a stroke that leaves the ship does not burn the far edge.
- Stamp symmetry chips are Flip / Copy / Readable.
- Mirrored fairing now fairs the same on both sides.
- Dashed hull outlines no longer drop ink at some zooms.Fixes - A mirrored module cannot be dragged into a new overlap with its twin. - Hail lines fill in module, node, and captain names. - Disarmed summons stay on the field. - Research synergy lines draw under the tree. - Tutorial mission reliability improvements (Thanks for the report, Ayaya!)