Update (04/18/25): hotfix for shield AI issue, a number of other bugs, and a few balance adjustments. Full list of changes here; please re-download the game using the links below.
Update (04/02/25): hotfix for a number of assorted issues, and a few balance adjustments.
Starsector version 0.98a is now out! This release has the following major features:
Several new endgame-level enemies to fight in the Abyss
New ships, weapons, and hullmods
Codex UI revamp
Autosave, revamped save/load UI
Intel map markers and little notes
Revamped combat simulator with many options and opponents
Planet search UI revamp
New story (not “main” story) missions
New music
New portraits and illustrations
In addition, the game has been updated to use Java 17, which should substantially improve performance. As always, there are also many smaller changes and additions, including balance adjustments, polish, ship AI improvements, bugfixes, and modability improvements!
The full patch notes, and the comment thread, are here.
You can download the new version here:
(Alternate download links, please try the above first: WindowsMacLinux)
Today I’d like to talk about a new ship we’re adding to the game, the Anubis-class Experimental Cruiser. What makes this ship special enough to merit its own blog post? After all, as has been proven by science, at least 10 new ships are being added in the next update. However, this is one of a few ships that will be possible to have in the player’s fleet (as opposed to being [REDACTED]), so, finally, it’s something I can talk about without any real spoilers. Plus – as hopefully you’ll agree – it’s going to be a fun ship!
I try to be careful when adding new ships and want to make sure each one brings something different to the game. This is, for example, why a lot of new ships have built-in hullmods – now that the majority of “normal” ship roles have ships filling them, it takes a little more to make a ship stand out in some way.
This is where built-in hullmods come in, breaking or bending the rules a little for a particular ship. I don’t usually *start out* wanting to add built-ins, though – the process is almost always that I have an idea for how the ship should work, try to make it do that, and then add a built-in hullmod or two if that seems to be the only way to achieve the desired result. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been working on stuff that I can’t talk too much about since that would spoil it, but there are some QoL improvements I’d made a couple of months ago that I wanted to talk about, but hadn’t had a chance to just yet. Talking about it so much after the fact is a bit tricky – I don’t remember all that was going through my mind as I was working on it. I did take a bunch of notes at the time, though, so hopefully that’ll refresh my memory!
The old planet list (that is, the one in the currently-released version of the game) is one of the older pieces of UI in the game, and it’s definitely showing its age. Part of the problem is that I’d designed it around the same time as the initial implementation of colonies – possibly even before colonies – so while I had some ideas about what might important to show or filter on, it was more speculative and not based on “hey, this is what actual players playing the game need out of this screen”. But at this point, there’s a lot more information to base a redesign on! Read the rest of this entry »
The next update comes with new music for one of the key early locations in the game, the university space station – Galatia Academy. Most locations and encounters rely on background music shared by the faction the player is dealing with, but Galatia Academy will be the first location to get a unique piece of music not used anywhere else in the game.
As a composer this is very exciting for me because for the first time I get to move from a broad, zoomed out perspective of planets, star systems and large factional groups to the up-close intimacy of airlocks, hallways, private rooms, and most importantly: individual people! Read the rest of this entry »
First off: what the heck is the Codex? It’s basically an in-game encyclopedia where you can look up ships, weapons, and so on. The current implementation is very, very old and and this point really showing its age – frankly, it’s clunky and not very useful, but on the bright side, it’s also not strictly speaking a required feature, so it was fine to leave it be for a while. I’ve been on a roll with QoL work lately, though, and the game is certainly far enough along now for a proper Codex rework, so I decided to jump into it – I’d have to do it at some point!
I started working on the Codex update with a sort of standard question to get my bearings, design-wise – “why is this in the game?” That’s a question with sharp edges, because if there isn’t a good answer, then maybe it should be cut instead, and the time and effort put into other things. Obviously, that didn’t happen, or we’d have a much shorter blog post! Read the rest of this entry »
