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SpaceCorps 2027 0.4.2

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@rorychatt rorychatt released this 29 Sep 13:23
· 8 commits to main since this release
v0.4.2
83ed4a1

SpaceCorps 2027 0.4.2 rebalances weapons, ships, Repair Drones and aliens (some setups got weaker, and this page says which), draws critical hits differently, adds an ammo that steals shields and stops a destroyed ship from leaving a wreck. It also brings a smaller target panel, explanations for the generator slots, a better Shop and Assembly, and fixes for a batch of pilot reports.

The game plays on the public server https://spacecorps-game.sliplane.app. Your pilot, ships, items, credits, clan and world carry over.

Download page: https://spacecorps.github.io/play/
On Hangar: https://hangar.sliplane.app/p/spacecorps/spacecorps-2027

What's new

Highlights

  • Lasers, ships, Repair Drones and aliens are rebalanced (some setups got weaker, listed below), and a new Repair Drone IV mends 5% a second.
  • The new Siphon Battery ammo steals shields from your target and adds them to yours, for 0.25 Thulium a round.
  • Critical hits are easy to spot: ice cyan numbers ending in "!".
  • A destroyed player ship no longer leaves a wreck.
  • The Seeker and the Gorvane only fight back, aliens stop stacking on your ship, and the last laser that kills an alien is always drawn.
  • A smaller target panel, ships 10% bigger in flight, and the camera starts farther out (150%).
  • The Shop has a Max button and greys out what you already own, and Assembly shows item cards on hover.
  • Fixes for a batch of pilot reports: the Skylab tooltip, the Mission Control button, long German mission cards and more.

Balance: lasers

  • The lasers have new numbers. A critical hit still does 1.5 times the damage, and Damage Amps and Crit Amps still add crit chance.

    Laser Damage Crit chance Amp slots Price
    Quantum Laser 1 50 → 55 10% → none 1 10,000 → 8,000 credits
    Quantum Laser 2 60 → 65 20% → none 2 100,000 → 80,000 credits
    Quantum Laser 3 70 → 80 30% → 10% 3 15,000 Thulium
    Starfire-3 120 → 135 35% → 15% 3 craftable
    Helios Beam 180 → 185 40% → 25% 1 → 3 craftable

  • The Quantum Laser 1 and 2 have no crit chance of their own any more. A Damage Amp or a Crit Amp in their slots brings it.

  • What got weaker. Measured as the average damage of a volley with x1 ammo, most setups do more than before, but these do less:

    • the Quantum Laser 2 in every setup: 1.5% less with no amp, 0.9% less with one Crit Amp, 3.6% less with one Damage Amp, 2.9% less with one of each, 5.0% less with Damage Amps in both slots and 0.3% less with Crit Amps in both;
    • the Quantum Laser 3 with Damage Amps in all three slots: 1.4% less;
    • the Starfire-3 with three Damage Amps: 0.4% less;
    • the Helios Beam with no amp: 3.6% less, with one Damage Amp 3.9% less (211.5 → 203.2) and with one Crit Amp 3.3% less (206.6 → 199.8). With its new second and third amp slot filled, the Helios Beam does far more (237.6 with three Damage Amps).

Balance: ships and Repair Drones

  • Ostirion: 655,000 → 425,000 credits, and the hull grows from 32,000 to 48,000.
  • Kitefin: the hull grows from 16,000 to 24,000, but it now costs 600 Thulium and no credits. It used to cost 200,000 credits.
  • Paragon: eight laser slots instead of six.
  • Every Ostirion and Kitefin you own has its saved hull raised in the same proportion, once, when the server starts with 0.4.2, so a ship that was full stays full.
  • Repair Drones mend more: Repair Drone I 1.5% of the hull a second (was 0.5%), II 2.25% (was 0.75%), III 3.5% (was 1.25%). They now cost credits: 5,000, 15,000 and 35,000 (they were 10 Thulium each). A new Repair Drone IV mends 5% a second and costs 2,000 Thulium. With several fitted, the best one works, as before.

No more wrecks for player ships

  • A destroyed player ship no longer leaves a wreck. No cargo box appears, whoever or whatever destroyed the ship (a pilot, an alien, a company pilot). The "Your wreck" card and its message are gone. Aliens still drop their loot as boxes and company pilots' ships still leave salvage. Player wrecks are removed for now: their salvage was made from nothing and respawning is free, so dying on purpose next to a station would have paid. How they could come back with balanced rules is tracked at #40.

Critical hits

  • A critical hit is now easy to spot: its number is ice cyan, 45% bigger, ends in "!" (for example "1,320!") and stays a little longer. A critical hit you take is red, bigger and ends in "!" too. The old orange "heavy hit" guess is gone. The server now tells the game which volleys crit, so this works for your lasers, company pilots and the Siphon Battery alike. The cyan is also told apart from the gold and red numbers with the usual kinds of colour blindness.

A new ammo: the Siphon Battery

  • The Shop sells a new laser ammo, the Siphon Battery, for 0.25 Thulium a round. It steals shields instead of breaking hulls: each volley does x1 damage to the target's shield and adds the same amount to your own shield, up to your maximum. A critical volley drains 1.5 times as much.
  • It never touches the hull, so it can't destroy anything, and the target's absorbance doesn't matter. Against a target with no shield left it does nothing, and the volley still costs one battery per laser.
  • Pick it in the hotbar's ammo picker (label SB), next to x1 to x4. Its beam is teal, your shield pulses teal when it takes some in, and the number over the target shows the shield it took.
  • Taking shield doesn't delay your own shield regeneration. Draining an alien's shield counts as your first hit for its kill claim, and it wakes a Seeker or a Gorvane like any hit. The ammo a pilot fires before picking one, and the company pilots' ammo, is still x1.

Balance: aliens

  • Seeker: damage 200 → 180.
  • Phantasm: hull 1,600 → 2,000, damage 400 → 350, speed 140 → 160. It now flies faster than a starter Protos (150).
  • Bulwark: shield 16,000 → 10,000, damage 1,200 → 900, speed 170 → 175.
  • Gorvane: hull 64,000 → 32,000, damage 4,000 → 3,000, speed 200 → 180. It no longer attacks first (see below).
  • The Crystalys and every alien's rewards are unchanged.
  • The Seeker and the Gorvane only fight back. They never go after a ship that comes near. Shoot one and it turns on the pilot who hit it last, whoever else is around. It lets go 10 seconds after anybody last hit it, and after 30 seconds alone its hull mends by 2% of its maximum a second, so a Gorvane you shot from afar and left is not there half-dead for the next pilot. The Phantasm, the Bulwark and the Crystalys work as before: they go after the nearest ship in their range and don't mend. A hit that does no damage doesn't wake a Seeker or a Gorvane, and one alien never calls another.
  • The wiki's alien pages have a new "Rules of Engagement" card with this.

Balance: company pilots

  • A company pilot's Ostirion has the new 48,000 hull, its Quantum Laser 2 has no crit, and its Repair Drone mends 1.5% a second.
  • Company pilots now help only in fights they can win. An alien that attacks your company mate on its own is still fought off, as before. What your mate is shooting at, and a Seeker or a Gorvane that turned on your mate because your mate hit it, they join only if the squad can take it. A mate who tags a Gorvane from afar no longer pulls the squad into a fight it cannot win and takes the kill.

Fights

  • The laser that destroys a target is always drawn now. Before, the last volley could vanish when the target died in the same moment: no beam, no muzzle flash and no damage number. Every beam flies to the target, including each pilot's when several of you finish an alien together, and the explosion follows when the last one lands.
  • Aliens no longer fly through each other or park on top of your ship. Each alien keeps room around its hull, bigger aliens more than smaller ones, and gives way to a ship instead of sitting on it. Fights work as before: aliens still chase you, stop at their attack range and leave you alone inside a safe zone.

Target panel

  • The target panel is smaller and sits higher. The name has the distance and the fire state under it, beside the fire and clear buttons, and the hull and shield bars sit side by side. It sits at the top edge between the two toolbars when the window has room; in a narrow window it keeps to the row under them, and it slides aside for a window in its way.
  • In long languages, the target panel shows the pilot who claimed an alien in full; "No reward" moves to the line below when the name needs the room.

Flight view and controls

  • Pilots' ships are 10% bigger in flight: yours, other players' and your company's pilots'. Aliens, jump gates and the station keep their size.
  • The flight camera starts farther out: Camera Zoom (Settings > General) now starts at 150% instead of 100%. If you were still on the old 100%, it moves to 150% once; pick another zoom and it stays. The slider still goes from 50% to 225%.
  • A click beside another pilot's ship locks it only when you click close to it. Before, a click three ship-lengths away could still lock a small ship. Clicking an alien works as before.
  • A double click on an alien is no longer lost when the game hitches for a moment just before your first click.
  • Dragging a hotbar slot onto another slot now moves the item. If the other slot holds something, the two swap. Hold Alt (Option on a Mac) while you drop to copy instead. Dragging a slot off the bar still clears it.
  • The next sector's sky no longer loads just because you fly past a jump gate. It loads when you are close to the gate or flying toward it, so the game uses less graphics memory near gates.

Shop and Assembly

  • The Shop shows what you can't buy again. A ship you own says "Owned" on its card, and its Purchase button is greyed out and says why. The Slave Drone does the same once you hold 8.
  • A new Max button next to the quantity fills in the most you can afford, so buying all the ammo you can pay for takes one click. Equipment still stops at 100 per purchase. Ships and the Slave Drone are bought one at a time, so they no longer show a quantity.
  • In Assembly, hover a recipe's picture or name to see the same card as in your hangar: stats, bonuses and weight for equipment and boosters, and the specifications of a ship. Items in the Production Queue show it too.
  • Assemble is greyed out, with the reason, for a ship you already own or already have in the queue.
  • A booster you buy in the Shop or collect in Assembly at the moment you leave flight no longer loses its time.

Hangar and wiki

  • The Hangar explains the generator slots. Next to the captions Core, Support and Auxiliary there is now an (i): a Core slot counts an item at full strength (100%), a Support slot at 75% and an Auxiliary slot at 50%, and the card lists how many of each every ship has. Only some ships have auxiliary slots (the Paragon 2, the Wraith 4).
  • The wiki's ship pages have the same (i) on their slot tiles, the Inventory article explains the three kinds, and the ship pages call the extra slots "Extra slots".
  • The help cards and the wiki articles quote the new numbers.

Skylab

  • The tooltip over a module in the 3D station fits its text. After hovering something short, the Credit Farm's tooltip no longer breaks into pieces like "Cre-dit Far-m": words stay whole and long lines wrap at spaces. The tooltip is also a bit bigger, with larger text, and slightly see-through so the station shows behind it.
  • Thulium prices in Skylab are whole numbers. Solar's next level costs 269 Thulium, not 268.912, and that is exactly what the upgrade takes.
  • The white plating on the station (rings, tanks, deck tops) glares less when you turn the station towards the sun.

HUD and Mission Control

  • Panels you have set to a low HUD opacity (under about 35%) fill in while your pointer is over them, so the quest tracker, chat, minimap, windows and toolbars stay easy to read in front of a station. They go clear again when you move away.
  • The Mission Control button on a station holds still. It no longer flips back and forth when a window or notice sits near it; if a window pushes it aside it stays put and slides back once its own spot is free.
  • On a mission card, the Accept, Abandon and Claim buttons, the reward icons and the task progress stay inside the window in every language. Before, a long German task line pushed the card past the window edge and cut them off. The "Ready to claim" badge no longer runs over a mission's title in German and Russian.

Admin

  • Giving an item from the Admin menu makes separate items for everything that doesn't stack: ten lasers are ten lasers you can fit one by one. Ammo and resources still stack. A ship is given one at a time and goes to the hangar, a booster adds 10 hours of boost time per unit, and a pilot can hold at most 8 Slave Drones, as in the Shop, which the quantity stepper now stops at. Stacks an admin gave before 0.4.2 stay as one item.
  • The ranking configuration no longer lists the names of aliens the game never spawns. Nobody's points change.

Updating

  • From 0.2.1 or later: the game downloads 0.4.2 by itself. Click Restart to Update, or quit the game, and it installs. If you installed the game with Hangar, Hangar updates it.
  • From 0.2.0: download it once from the download page and replace the old app or folder.

Platforms

Package For
SpaceCorps2027-macos-universal.dmg macOS 12 Monterey or later, Apple silicon and Intel
SpaceCorps2027-windows-x86_64.zip Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit
SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.AppImage Linux x86_64, glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Fedora 36 and later), Vulkan
SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.tar.gz the same Linux build, as a folder to unpack

Graphics need Metal (macOS), DirectX 12 or Vulkan (Windows), or Vulkan (Linux, Mesa 22 or a vendor driver). The game needs 4 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended) and 400 MB of free disk space. On computers with 8 GB, Medium or Low uses noticeably less memory than High.

First launch

The builds are not signed by Apple or Microsoft yet, so on a first install your system asks once before it opens the game. Updates the game installs itself don't ask again.

  • macOS: open the dmg and drag SpaceCorps 2027 onto Applications.
    • macOS 15 and newer: open the app once and click Done. Then go to System Settings › Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway next to "SpaceCorps 2027 was blocked".
    • macOS 12 to 14: right-click (Control-click) the app, choose Open, then Open again.
  • Windows: right-click the zip, choose Extract All, and start spacecorps2027.exe from the SpaceCorps 2027 folder: the whole game is in that one file. If SmartScreen says it "protected your PC", click More info, then Run anyway.
  • Linux: run chmod +x SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.AppImage, then start it. Or unpack the tar.gz and start SpaceCorps2027/spacecorps2027.

Known issues

  • The builds are unsigned, so macOS Gatekeeper and Windows SmartScreen warn on a first install (see above).
  • In flight, far from a map's centre, the stars can still shift slightly while the camera moves. A fix is planned.
  • On older or integrated graphics, High and Ultra can lower the frame rate. Pick Auto or Medium if flying feels less smooth than before. The same goes for fights with many big aliens on screen.
  • On Low graphics and in small windows the Skylab page opens on the card list. Switch to Station at the top right to see the 3D station.
  • The new texts in the ten other languages (the slot cards, the critical-hit and Siphon Battery texts, the alien "Rules of Engagement" card, the Admin hints and more), and the Hungarian translation, were not yet checked by native speakers. Please report anything that reads wrong.
  • There is one public game server with limited capacity. It may restart for updates, and your ship is saved when it does.

Report problems at https://github.com/SpaceCorps/play/issues or on Discord.

Verify your download

SHA256SUMS lists every package's SHA-256 and is signed with the SpaceCorps release key
(SHA256SUMS.minisig, minisign). With both files next to
the package:

minisign -Vm SHA256SUMS -P RWRhY8TTCr07i1iOS7MT45OHD3LFJJnWXWCF19fy7hjV1RD8cwWlVKF1
shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing   # Linux: sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing

Checksums

Package SHA-256
SpaceCorps2027-macos-universal.dmg 710d5c6b405ed1750d3212f39c3e824e6b3f7db120fc3541b7bde4d522de76ee
SpaceCorps2027-windows-x86_64.zip a7e39f56c38fd9944e6ab1736bcf4c6d7aa8e473f24e055c1706be9ef7a133ef
SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.AppImage 5eb48fa423e874ef13a195a6794b08a6714788346cd55e746101671c2d7bc8b5
SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.tar.gz 4169174d8cf3b675b90fec684e07c90114696d594cbcbaed324a3b155fc40c4d
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