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SpaceCorps 2027 0.4.9

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@rorychatt rorychatt released this 04 Oct 09:52
· 1 commit to main since this release
v0.4.9
6326d92

SpaceCorps 2027 0.4.9 adds the Research Centre to the Skylab: from Core level 10 you feed it resources and research technologies, and every craft in Assembly now needs its technology (you keep the technology of everything you already own). It brings seven new CPUs (Extra Slots I, II and III, the Jump CPU, Base CPU I and II and the Auto-Repair CPU), two new ships (the Nomad cruiser, sold in the Shop, and the Storm, a glass-cannon starfighter made in Assembly), a chat with rules (a System tab, a speed limit, Latin letters and no links), a black hole drawn by ray tracing that bends the sky behind it, 25 percent more credits from every alien, a Company page where you change company for 5,000 Thulium, new sounds, item trees and a Research page in the wiki, and a faster Assembly page. A few things get stricter or cost more, so the "If you already play" list below is worth reading.

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

  • The Research Centre is a new Skylab module, built from Core level 10 (25 Ship Fragments, 25,000 credits, 500 Thulium). You feed it ten kinds of resource (the rarer, the more science), it turns them into science points, and it spends them researching technologies, one at a time, also while you are away. A new Research view next to Station, List and Table shows the tree, the tank and the Centre's controls.
  • Every craft in Assembly needs its technology. There are 37 technologies, one for each thing Assembly makes. You keep the technology of everything you own, have queued or have booster time left of (see below); what you do not have yet you research: from 30 minutes (Impulse Thruster II) to 2 days (the Wraith). The whole tree takes 15.9 days one after another.
  • A Thulium boost (5,000 Thulium) doubles the speed of a running research for 24 hours and burns the fuel twice as fast, so the same fuel in half the time. Boosts stack up to 72 hours. The 15 highest technologies also need 10 Dark Matter plugged into the Centre (150 in all).
  • Seven new CPUs, researched and then crafted in Assembly (they are not sold): Extra Slots CPU I, II and III give every ship +3, +5 or +7 extra slots (6, 8 or 10 in all), the Jump CPU jumps you to any company sector for 500 Thulium, Base CPU I and II teleport you to your company's base (10 and 25 uses), and the Auto-Repair CPU launches your Repair Drone by itself.
  • Two new ships. The Nomad (Class II Cruiser, Shop, 1,275,000 credits and 500 Thulium): 96,000 hull, 6 lasers, twice an Ostirion's hull and guns. The Storm (Class III Starfighter, made in Assembly for 15,000 Thulium): the fastest ship (base speed 240) with 10 lasers and a light hull of 160,000. Both are new models; their previews need the new client.
  • Chat with rules. A System tab holds the server's own lines, Enter keeps you typing, and a speed limit, a 200-character cut, Latin letters only and no links keep the channels readable. Chat takes the Latin alphabet with accents, so Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and emoji are no longer allowed.
  • Sounds for your actions: 16 new interface sounds (collecting in the Skylab, building and upgrading, switching views, every step of the Forge, sending a chat line, feeding the Research Centre, starting and finishing a research) and 3 new in-world sounds (a warp CPU charging and being called off, the Auto-Repair CPU launching the drone).
  • The black hole bends light. From Medium graphics up it is drawn by ray tracing: a black shadow with a thin photon ring, the far side of the glowing disk arched over the top and under the hole as in Interstellar, the sky behind it pulled around it, and ships that pass in front of it drawn in front. Low keeps the old picture.
  • Every alien pays 25 percent more credits (Seeker 1,000, Phantasm 3,000, Bulwark 5,000, Goombah 15,000, Crystalys 75,000), and so do the swarm members (the Dormant Pulse a little more: 95,000 for 75,000). Thulium, experience and honor are as before.
  • Company page (Economy > Company): change company for 5,000 Thulium (it used to be 5,000 credits, with no screen to do it) and half of your honor. Not while your ship is in flight.
  • Assembly and the Shop are smooth again for pilots with a big inventory: a frame of the Assembly page took about 60 milliseconds with 600 items and takes about 1 now.
  • The wiki draws item trees on the Lasers, Rockets, Shields, Propulsion, Extras, Drones and Boosters pages and on a new Item Trees page, has a new Research page and articles for the Nomad and the Storm, and explains the chat rules, the Company page and the CPUs, in 12 languages.
  • Fixes: swarm followers no longer fly off the edge of the map, a boss's damage record no longer stops counting new pilots after 256, and the recipes' material lines no longer change their order after every server restart.

If you already play: what changes for you

  • Crafting needs research, but you keep what you own. At the first start of 0.4.9 every pilot is given the technology of everything it holds: items equipped, fitted into another item, loose or in the Transport Cache, rocket stacks you still have, your ships, the boosters you have time left of (Damage Amp II, Hull Plating II, Shield Wall II), and the crafts waiting in your Production Queue. You also get the technologies those needed (holding an Impulse Thruster III gives you the II). Items that reach you later (a gift, a bonus code, a quest reward) do not unlock their technology, and a veteran who made a Wraith last season and holds none now has no claim to it: you research it.
  • What you lose is the next step, not what you have. To craft the next tier of anything you do not have a technology for, you research it first. A pilot below Core 10 cannot research, so it crafts nothing new until it has Core 10, the Research Centre and a research: the Core climb from level 1 to 10 takes about 3 hours of timers and 112,326 credits, then the Centre's 25,000 credits, 500 Thulium and 25 Ship Fragments; the Centre starts with one free hour of research in its tank.
  • Research, the tank, the plugged Dark Matter and the boost are kept across the season wipe.
  • Extra Slots CPUs are crafted in order: CPU II only when CPU I is installed, CPU III only when CPU II is installed (12,000 + 30,000 + 75,000 = 117,000 Thulium for the 10 slots). They install in your Skylab when you collect them; there is no item to fit and they take none of the slots they add. A level replaces the one before (CPU II is +5 in all, not +3 and +5).
  • Aliens pay 25 percent more credits, and rocket prices did not change, so rockets are about 20 percent cheaper against the pay. Quest rewards are as before.
  • Changing company costs Thulium now (5,000, not credits) and halves your honor (rounded down; honor at 0 or below stays as it is). Your first enlistment in Setup is still free and keeps all your honor.
  • The chat takes fewer characters and no links. Messages in Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese or Korean are refused, so are emoji and symbols outside the Latin alphabet, and you can no longer post a link, an invite included (admins can).
  • Solar makes 95 to 100 more power from level 10 to level 20 so it still covers a full station with the Research Centre. Levels 1 to 9 are unchanged.
  • The ship pictures in Assembly (the Paragon, Wraith and Ironclad recipes and any ship in your queue) stand still until you point at their card.
  • A 0.4.8 client keeps working against the 0.4.9 server, but it does not have the Jump and Base CPUs, the Company page, the Research view or the new chat (see Updating).

Research: the Research Centre

  • Build: Skylab, Core level 10 or higher, once: 25 Ship Fragments from your inventory (the ship parked), 25,000 credits and 500 Thulium. It has 10 levels (each upgrade costs 1.5 times more). A level makes the tank bigger by a quarter, from 12 hours of research at level 1 (43,200 science) to 89 hours at level 10 (321,865 science), and the Centre draws more power (25 at level 1, 88 at level 10); no level makes a research faster. The page says what building needs before you press Build.

  • Fuel: ten resources turn into science points at once, and the rarer the resource, the more it gives:

    Resource Science points Goes in from
    Ship Fragment 5 your inventory (ship parked)
    Cataclysite 5 your inventory (ship parked)
    Daraxium 7 your inventory (ship parked)
    Nyxite 7 your inventory (ship parked)
    Quorvium 8 your inventory (ship parked)
    Reinforced Hull Plate 33 your inventory (ship parked)
    Velkonite 40 the Resource storage
    Orvium 80 the Resource storage
    Power Core 100 your inventory (ship parked)
    Ancient Control Unit 650 your inventory (ship parked)

    Ship Fragments and the other inventory resources go in while your ship is parked; Velkonite and Orvium come out of the Resource storage. The Velkonite and Orvium Reinforced Plates cannot be burnt (they are made of the ore, which can). The Max button puts in as much as fits, and a feed that does not all fit takes what fits.

  • Burn: a research burns 1 science point for every second of its base time: a day-long research burns 86,400 points. With no fuel in the tank a research pauses, and fuel put in resumes it.

  • One research at a time, also while you are away: it keeps going until it ends or the tank runs dry. It also keeps going through a blackout or an upgrade of the Centre; only starting a new one is refused when the station is short of power. Cancelling loses the progress and the fuel already burnt; the Dark Matter goes back to the Centre's socket.

  • The Research view: the technology tree drawn by family (Propulsion, Shields, Lasers, Boosters, Drones, Ships, Rockets, CPUs, Resources) with the research time of every technology, what each one needs and a Dark Matter badge on the 15 top ones; and the Centre's panel with the tank, the running research and when it ends, the feed rows (+1, +10, Max), the boost and the Dark Matter socket. Cancel asks twice. A toast tells you when a research is finished (with an Open Assembly button in the station) or when the tank has run dry.

  • Boost: 5,000 Thulium buys 24 hours of double speed for the research that is running, per Centre. It never brings fuel (the same fuel is burnt in half the time). You can buy another while 48 hours or less of boost are left, so they stack up to 72 hours.

  • Dark Matter: 15 technologies, the Epic or better ones that take 10 hours or more, need 10 Dark Matter each, plugged into the Centre before the research starts. They are used up when it starts and given back if you cancel. Impulse IV, Momentum IV, Absorption IV, Capacity IV, Starfire-3, Helios Beam, Nova Amp, Apex Amp, the Ironclad, the Storm, the Wraith, the Dark Matter Plate, the N.U.K.E., Extra Slots CPU III and the Jump CPU need it; the N.I.K.E. (which is how Dark Matter is made) does not.

  • Where to see it: the Research Centre is the ninth card in the Skylab's list and table, and the Station view has no 3D model of it yet.

Research: the technologies

  • 37 technologies for the 37 things Assembly makes: the thrusters, the shield cells and the shield core, the engine, the lasers and amps, the three boosters, the Master Drone, the Paragon, Ironclad, Storm and Wraith, the Dark Matter Plate, the N.I.K.E. and N.U.K.E. rockets and the seven CPUs. The Shop is not gated, nor are the Forge, plates made in the Skylab's Forgery, or the rewards of quests and codes.

  • Research times (base rate):

    Research time Technologies
    30 min (5) Impulse Thruster II, Momentum Thruster II, Absorption Shield Cell II, Capacity Shield Cell II, Extra Slots CPU I
    3 h (12) Impulse Thruster III, Momentum Thruster III, Engine III, Absorption Shield Cell III, Capacity Shield Cell III, Heavy Shield Core, Quantum Laser 3, Damage Amp II, Shield Wall II, Hull Plating II, N.I.K.E., Base CPU I
    6 h (2) Paragon, Auto-Repair CPU
    10 h (9) Impulse Thruster IV *, Momentum Thruster IV *, Absorption Shield Cell IV *, Capacity Shield Cell IV *, Nova Amp *, Apex Amp *, Master Drone, Extra Slots CPU II, Base CPU II
    1 day (8) Starfire-3 *, Helios Beam *, Ironclad *, Storm *, Dark Matter Plate *, N.U.K.E. *, Extra Slots CPU III *, Jump CPU *
    2 days (1) Wraith *
    * needs 10 Dark Matter plugged into the Centre

  • Chains: each family's tiers follow each other (Impulse II, III, IV; Momentum II, III, IV; Absorption II, III, IV; Capacity II, III, IV; Quantum Laser 3, Starfire-3, Helios Beam; Extra Slots CPU I, II, III; Base CPU I, II, then the Jump CPU). Everything else can be researched on its own. All 37 together take 15.9 days (7.9 days with the boost always on) and 1,369,800 science points; the 28 technologies that are not rockets or CPUs take 11.5 days.

  • The wiki has the same tree, the fuel table and the numbers on a new Research page, and every ship's article says what its technology needs.

CPUs: seven new ones, crafted in Assembly

  • They are researched first, then crafted for Thulium and materials, and only crafted (no Shop, no free gift from the research). The cost of all seven is 200,000 Thulium:

    CPU Research Needs first Thulium Materials Crafting time
    Extra Slots CPU I 30 min nothing 12,000 60 Ship Fragments, 3 Power Cores, 6 Velkonite Reinforced Plates 5 min
    Extra Slots CPU II 10 h Extra Slots CPU I 30,000 120 Ship Fragments, 10 Reinforced Hull Plates, 6 Power Cores, 12 Velkonite Reinforced Plates, 2 Orvium Reinforced Plates 10 min
    Extra Slots CPU III 1 day + 10 Dark Matter Extra Slots CPU II 75,000 240 Ship Fragments, 25 Reinforced Hull Plates, 12 Power Cores, 2 Ancient Control Units, 20 Velkonite Reinforced Plates, 6 Orvium Reinforced Plates 15 min
    Jump CPU 1 day + 10 Dark Matter Base CPU II 40,000 200 Ship Fragments, 20 Reinforced Hull Plates, 10 Power Cores, 3 Ancient Control Units, 15 Velkonite Reinforced Plates, 10 Orvium Reinforced Plates 15 min
    Base CPU I 3 h nothing 8,000 40 Ship Fragments, 2 Power Cores, 4 Velkonite Reinforced Plates 5 min
    Base CPU II 10 h Base CPU I 20,000 100 Ship Fragments, 5 Power Cores, 8 Velkonite Reinforced Plates, 2 Orvium Reinforced Plates 10 min
    Auto-Repair CPU 6 h nothing 15,000 80 Ship Fragments, 8 Reinforced Hull Plates, 4 Power Cores, 6 Velkonite Reinforced Plates 10 min

  • Extra Slots CPU I, II and III: +3, +5 and +7 extra slots on every ship in both configurations, 6, 8 and 10 in all. The Hangar and the Pilot page count them. A CPU that would add nothing (that level or a better one is installed or in your Production Queue) is refused, and so is one out of order ("Install Extra Slots CPU I first.").

  • Jump CPU: opens the Star System chart; click a company sector of your world (M, T, G, 1 to 4: all twelve, the other companies' home sectors too) and confirm. 500 Thulium a jump, no limit of uses, a 5 second charge, 30 seconds before the next jump. The Danger Sectors can't be reached, a neutral sector can't be jumped from or to, and you can leave a Danger Sector. The 500 Thulium are taken when the charge ends and given back if the move fails.

  • Base CPU I and II: teleport you to your company's base (inside the station's ring on your home map) after a 10 second charge, for free. Base CPU I has 10 uses and recharges in 10 minutes; Base CPU II 25 uses and 5 minutes. A used-up Base CPU is gone and you craft another (about 800 Thulium of crafting a use for both). When two are fitted, the better one is used first.

  • A warp CPU is out of combat: it can't start within 10 seconds of a shot you fired or a hit you took, and a shot or a hit while it charges cancels it, as does pressing the slot again or cloaking. A warp that charges shows a bar over the hotbar and a glow on your ship that other pilots see.

  • Auto-Repair CPU: launches the Repair Drone fitted in the same configuration by itself whenever you could launch it by hand (the hull is damaged, the drone is not out and its 10 seconds after a hit have passed). It does nothing without a Repair Drone and takes one extra slot. If you stop the drone by hand it waits until your hull is full or you start the drone yourself; the slot shows AUTO, or Paused.

  • On the hotbar: the Jump CPU is JMP, Base CPUs BSE, the Auto-Repair CPU ARP. The slots show the charge, the recharge and the uses left, and keep counting through a death, a jump and a log-out. A restart of the server clears the recharges.

  • Help cards for the Jump, Base and Auto-Repair CPUs are new, and the Extras card lists what the Extra Slots CPUs add, in all 12 languages.

Ships: the Nomad and the Storm

  • The numbers:

    Ostirion Nomad Paragon Storm Ironclad Wraith
    Hull 48,000 96,000 128,000 160,000 600,000 324,000
    Base speed 200 200 210 240 92 225
    Lasers 3 6 8 10 6 12
    Generator slots (core, support, auxiliary) 6 (3, 3, 0) 7 (3, 3, 1) 8 (3, 3, 2) 10 (3, 4, 3) 14 (7, 4, 3) 12 (4, 4, 4)
    Ability slots 2 2 3 3 3 3
    Extra slots (before the Extra Slots CPUs) 3 3 3 3 3 3
    How to get it Shop: 425,000 credits Shop: 1,275,000 credits and 500 Thulium Assembly: 1,500 Thulium Assembly: 15,000 Thulium Assembly: 10,500 Thulium Assembly: 20,000 Thulium
    PvP points for a kill 20 30 40 80 160 640

  • The Nomad is a Class II Cruiser: twice the hull and guns of an Ostirion, between it and the Paragon. It is open to everybody in the Shop. It is a sand-coloured hammerhead cruiser with dusk-indigo plates, violet running lights, six guns along its front edge and two big engine pods. A kill of a Nomad is worth 30 PvP points.

  • The Storm is a Class III Starfighter and the glass cannon of the fleet: the highest base speed of any ship, ten lasers and 160,000 hull, the lightest of the Storm, Ironclad and Wraith. It is made in Assembly after you have researched it (1 day and 10 Dark Matter): 1 Ancient Control Unit, 200 Ship Fragments, 35 Reinforced Hull Plates, 10 Power Cores and 15,000 Thulium, in 15 minutes. Its look follows a concept drawing: a needle-nosed fighter between two open crescent-ring wings with a glowing engine in each ring, two long forward cannons and eight smaller gun emitters, in bone, teal and orange. A kill of a Storm is worth 80 PvP points.

  • What the balance model says (the model, not play): the Storm is the fastest ship in the stock build (it flies 255.5 where a stock Wraith flies 238.0), and the Wraith keeps the fastest best build. One to one, a Storm beats a Paragon, and an Ironclad and a Wraith beat a Storm. A Nomad beats an Ostirion, and a Paragon beats a Nomad.

  • The wiki rates a ship by its lasers: more than 10 a Class IV Dreadnought, 9 or 10 a Class III Starfighter, 5 to 8 a Class II Cruiser, up to 4 a Class I Scout. The Black Hole page lists both ships, and its help card now puts the point of no return at about 1,000 units for the fastest ship (it said 1,200). The help cards for hull, speed, lasers, slots and PvP points list both.

  • With a 0.4.8 client the Nomad and the Storm are drawn as a Protos in flight and show a "Model not found" tile in the Shop and the Hangar; their stats, prices and recipe are right.

Chat: a System tab, typing, and rules

  • A System tab, last in the row, holds what the server says on its own and what your ship reports: the abilities' answers, repairs, the black hole's warnings, rocket hits, the swarms', the restart's and the wipe's announcements. Global, Local and Group show pilots only (the kill feed stays in Global, with its switch). The tab counts the announcements you have not read (the black hole's warnings are System lines too, but are not counted). Restart and update warnings (each minute mark) and the wipe alert, start, end and failure also pop up as a message on screen.
  • Typing goes on after Enter: press Enter, type, press Enter, and your line is sent and you keep typing. Esc, Enter on an empty box, a left click on the map (which still steers your ship), 15 seconds with an empty box and no key pressed, your ship being destroyed, or closing the window ends it.
  • A counter shows from 120 characters (200 is the most; amber at 180, red at 200), and a line is cut at 200 on the server too. Letters the chat does not take are dropped as you type, with a hint.
  • Speed limit: you can send 5 lines in a row, then one more every 2 seconds, in Local, Global and Group together. Run out and send again and the chat pauses for 10 seconds, then 30 seconds, 2 minutes and 5 minutes if you keep running into it (the pause is forgotten after 10 minutes without a new one). The input says "Chat paused: N s" and counts down, and your text stays in the box.
  • A message is refused, with the reason under the input and the line back in the box, when it has characters chat does not allow (letters of the Latin alphabet with accents, digits and punctuation are allowed, so French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Hungarian and the other Latin-script languages work), a link (in any spelling: "example [dot] com", spaced-out letters, Discord invites; you can still talk about Discord), one character over and over (more than 8 in a row), no letter or digit at all (a lone "?" or ":)"), or when it repeats your last message within 10 seconds. A refused message is sent to nobody and uses up 2 of your 5 lines. Admins are exempt from these rules (not from the 200 cut).
  • Chat no longer takes the minimap's dots for links ("a red dot to the north" goes through), nor a point in Portuguese, Italian, German or Hungarian.
  • If the server pauses you, your text and your keyboard stay in the box (Esc or a click on the map lets go). Text pasted with no-break spaces or an ellipsis keeps its words.
  • Sending a line plays a short soft blip (see Sounds).

Sounds

  • Skylab answers your actions with sound: collecting from a farm, collector or the Forgery plays a soft pour and three plucks, Collect All one rising cascade however many modules it takes from, confirming a Build or an Upgrade a short power-up that ends on a muted bell. A refused request plays the error sound.
  • Switching views has a soft swipe: Skylab's Station, List and Table, picking or letting go of a module in the station, and Assembly's Crafting and Forge tabs.
  • Every action in Assembly > Forge has a sound of its own: taking an item into a tier-up or merge slot is a small bright tap, letting it go is the same tap lower; a tier-up starts with a strike on the anvil and rising heat, a tier-up that held rings the anvil with three climbing bells, a failed roll is a dull dud (three coin tinks follow if materials or Thulium came back); a merge starts with two sweeps that converge and ends with two bells gliding into one tone.
  • The Research Centre has its own: a soft pour when you feed the tank or plug Dark Matter in, a lab humming up when a research starts, and a two-note chime when one finishes. The CPUs: a rising hum while a Jump or Base CPU charges (it fades out if you call it off or a hit breaks it), a short soft drop when a charge is called off, and two soft pips when the Auto-Repair CPU sends out the drone (about every 10 seconds at most).
  • All of these are quiet (at least 2 dB under the purchase chime), limited so they never stack. The 16 interface sounds follow the Interface volume; the 3 in-world ones (the CPU charge and cancel and the Auto-Repair pips) follow Sound Effects. The view, pick and chat sounds also follow Settings > Audio > Button Sounds; the answers to actions play whatever that says.

The black hole

  • From Medium graphics up the black hole is traced ray by ray: the shadow (the kill radius, 300 units) is black and sharp with a thin bright photon ring around it; from a low camera the far side of the disk arches over the top of the hole and under it, as in Interstellar; from above a thin ring surrounds the shadow and the disk swirls around it.
  • The sky behind it bends: the stars, the nebula, planets and asteroids near it are pulled and stretched around it, and the lines on the map bow round it (moderately). Ships and drones that pass between you and the hole are drawn in front of it instead of vanishing into black. The HUD, name tags and the minimap are not bent.
  • Low graphics keeps the old picture, and so does a card whose graphics system cannot build the new shader. On the machine we measured (an M4 Max) the lens costs about 0.1 to 0.4 millisecond a frame while the hole covers up to a quarter of the screen, and under 1 millisecond when it fills the screen.
  • From a low camera inside the disk's radius the near side of the disk is a heavy orange veil over the lower half of the screen, and moons and asteroids behind the hole's plane look washed out. It follows from the physically correct picture; see Known limits.

Aliens pay 25 percent more credits

  • Credits only: Thulium, experience, honor and quest rewards are unchanged; boosters and the Beta (x2) and Gamma (x3) world multipliers stack as before. A 0.4.8 client sees the new pay at once.

    Alien Credits before Credits now
    Seeker 800 1,000
    Phantasm 2,400 3,000
    Bulwark 4,000 5,000
    Goombah 12,000 15,000
    Crystalys 60,000 75,000
    Seeker Slave (swarm) 100 125
    Boss Seeker (swarm) 8,000 10,000
    Pirate Scout (swarm) 800 1,000
    Pirate Boss (swarm) 116,000 145,000
    Dormant Pulse (swarm) 75,000 95,000 (a round figure, 26.7 percent more)
    Dormant Force (swarm) 160,000 200,000

  • Rocket prices did not change, so against the pay a rocket costs about 20 percent less than before. At the best roll the cheapest rocket-only kill (a Rivet II on a Phantasm) costs 14.8 percent of the kill's pay (credits and Thulium counted at 200 credits each; it was 16.7), killing a Crystalys with Rivet III alone 48.7 percent (it was 56.0), and a Scatter III clearing five Phantasms in a pile 4.8 percent (it was 5.4). The rockets model's three floors that guarded these moved from 15 percent, half and 5 percent to 14 percent, 48 percent and 4.5 percent; no rocket price changed.

Company page

  • Economy > Company (right after Season & Profile) shows your company and lets you change it. A change costs 5,000 Thulium and halves your honor (12,400 honor becomes 6,200; honor at 0 or below stays as it is), repairs your ship in full and moves you to the new company's home sector. You keep your clan, group, ships, items and Skylab.
  • A confirmation shows the price and your Thulium and honor before and after; if you are short of Thulium the buttons are off and say how much is missing. A refusal from the server is shown in your language. The Honor help card says that changing company halves honor.
  • Not while your ship is in flight, also when you are flying on another device: dock first. Nothing is charged or changed when it is refused. (If you launch at the very moment a change is being written, you are told to try again in a moment.)
  • The page only offers the change on a server running 0.4.9 or newer; on an older server it is read-only.

Skylab: Solar and the Station hint

  • Solar makes 95 to 100 more power from level 10 to 20 (1,680 at level 10, 16,110 at level 20; levels 1 to 9 are unchanged) so a full station with the Research Centre still has a tenth to spare. A station that was short of power under the old table and is not under the new one has its producers resumed at the first start.
  • The Power help card says the Research Centre uses power too, and the Station's hint names the number keys of the modules your server lists (1-9 with the Research Centre).
  • Toasts with a button last 6 seconds and keep clear of the Skylab's view switch.

Assembly and Shop speed

  • The Assembly page takes about 1 millisecond a frame whatever you carry (it took about 60 with 600 items, 30 with 300, 11 with 100); the whole frame went from 63 to 3 milliseconds with 600 items. The Shop page went from 9.4 to 0.2 milliseconds with 600 items. Measured on a Mac.
  • The ship pictures in Assembly stand still until you point at their card, then they turn (the Paragon, Wraith and Ironclad recipes and any ship in your production queue). Each of them was drawn with its own camera and a 4x anti-aliased pass every frame.
  • Assembly refreshes your inventory every 30 seconds instead of every 5. It still refreshes at once when you open the page and after anything you do (assemble, collect, forge, buy).
  • A price in the millions on a Shop card keeps its thousands: the Nomad's 1,275,000 reads 1.275M, not 1.3M.

The wiki

  • Item trees: the Lasers, Rockets, Shields, Propulsion, Extras, Drones and Boosters pages open with a tree of their items, and the new Item Trees page shows all of them with the ships and the materials. A box shows the item's picture and name; a solid arrow means the item is made from the one before it (Assembly uses it up), a dashed arrow the next tier, got on its own; a wrench marks what Assembly makes, a storefront what the Shop sells. Hover to see the Shop price or what Assembly takes (Thulium, credits, time, how many it makes, materials); click to open the page. The trees come from the game's own item and recipe data and scroll sideways in a narrow window.
  • Research page: the Research Centre, how research runs, what each resource gives as fuel, the boost, the Dark Matter rule, the technology trees with the research time of every technology (and in the item trees, a technology's time and Dark Matter), a table of all 37 technologies and the seven CPUs. The numbers are read from the game's data.
  • New articles: the Nomad and the Storm. Every ship's article has a Research card (the technology, its time and Dark Matter, and what the Extra Slots CPUs add).
  • Pages that changed: Groups (the System tab, typing, the chat rules), Getting Started (where to change company, honor, what Thulium is for), Extras (the Jump, Base and Auto-Repair CPUs in full), Skylab (nine modules, four views, what the wipe keeps), Combat, Spacemap Travel, Quests, Inventory, Abilities, Boosters (Damage Amp II, Shield Wall II and Hull Plating II are made in Assembly after research), Rockets ("about a seventh to three quarters" of what a kill pays), Black Hole, Wipe Timeline, Forge, Drones, the Items overview, the swarm pages (the announcements are System lines) and Resources.
  • All of it in the game's 12 languages.

Fixes

  • Swarm followers (Pirate Scouts, Seeker Slaves, Dormant Pulses) no longer fly off the edge of the map when their leader roams near it; they keep to their place beside the leader, on the map.
  • A boss's damage record no longer stops counting new pilots once 256 different pilots have hit it: the pilots who deal the most are always counted for the pay split and the box.
  • The recipe cards' material lines no longer reshuffle after every server restart; they stay in the order of the item names.
  • The chat's lines under the input wrap and show in full in every language; the Honor card fits.

For administrators and the server

  • New config files: Resources/Research.json (the technologies, fuels, boost and tank; the server does not start without it), Resources/CpuConfig.json (the Jump, Base and Auto-Repair CPUs' numbers) and Resources/Chat.json (the alphabet, the 200 cut, the rate gate, the pauses). Resources/Groups.json lost globalBurst and globalIntervalMs (the gate is Chat.json's burst and refillMs, for all three channels). SkylabConfig.json has the ResearchCentre module and Solar's new table. Changed: Rockets.json (hit radius of the Nomad 48 and the Storm 54), Swarms.json (+25 percent credits), ranking-config.json (PvP weights of the Nomad 30 and the Storm 80), the alien, item and recipe seeds.
  • CHAT_RULES_ENABLED=false turns the chat rules and the rate gate off (the chat of 0.4.8: the 200 cut and Global's old limit); unset means on.
  • Research tools for admins: the Admin page grants or revokes a pilot's technology (with or without its prerequisites) and sets the Dark Matter plugged into its Centre (GET /api/admin/players/:id/research, POST .../research/grant, POST .../research/revoke, PUT .../research/dark-matter); they are recorded as research-grant, research-revoke and research-dark-matter (a 0.4.8 admin page lists them as "other"). Player routes: GET /api/research/tree (public), GET /api/research, and POST /api/skylab/research/start/:tech, cancel, feed, plug, unplug and boost.
  • The server at its first start adds three tables (PlayerTechnologies, ResearchStates, PlayerInstalls, all kept by the season wipe), runs two data steps (research-v1, the technologies of what pilots own; skylab-solar-v3, which resumes the producers the old Solar table left dark, if any), appends 9 item definitions and 8 recipes, and changes the 11 aliens' credits. Take a volume backup first (docs/DEPLOY.md, "The deploy of 0.4.9: the checklist").

Updating

  • From 0.2.1 or later: the game downloads 0.4.9 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.
  • Update the game. The server updates first, and a 0.4.8 client keeps working, but it shows some things the old way, and the Jump and Base CPUs and the Company page need the 0.4.9 client:
    • CPUs: a press on a Jump or Base CPU is answered with "Update the game to use the Jump CPU." The CPUs are drawn as items with a generic glyph (the Base CPU II as "BSE-II"). The Extra Slots CPUs work (the Hangar shows 6, 8 or 10 slots) and so does the Auto-Repair CPU, which is the server's.
    • Research: it has no Research view; the Skylab lists the eight modules it knows (its header counts the Research Centre as built). The Assembly lists every recipe, a recipe you have not researched looks craftable, and pressing Assemble shows the server's English refusal ("Research Impulse Thruster II in the Skylab first.").
    • Ships: the Nomad and the Storm are drawn as a Protos in flight and as "Model not found" tiles with a "?" in the Shop and the Hangar; the Nomad's price card reads 1.3M.
    • Chat: no System tab, so the server's lines show in the channel; a refused message shows as a gold English System line in Local and its text is not kept; no pause countdown, no counter, typing ends after Enter.
    • Company: it has no screen to change company (only Setup).
    • The black hole, sounds and the wiki: the old picture, no new sounds, and a wiki without the Research, Item Trees, Nomad and Storm pages or the new chat and CPU texts; the Assembly page is as slow as before.
    • Alien pay, Solar's new table, the chat rules and the craft gate are the server's and apply to a 0.4.8 client at once.
  • A 0.4.9 client on a 0.4.8 server (a private server, or while the update is on its way) still plays: the Company page is read-only, a press on a Jump or Base CPU says "This server doesn't have the Jump CPU yet", the Research view is hidden, and the chat has the counter and the System tab but no pause or alphabet rules. Update the server first.

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 at the least and 8 GB is recommended: measured on a Mac for 0.4.6, the game's footprint in flight peaked near 3 GB at Low and near 4 GB at High. It needs 400 MB of free disk space; the wiki translations add 1 to 2 MB to the download. On computers with 8 GB, Medium or Low uses noticeably less memory than High. The Nomad and the Storm add about 112 MB of graphics memory at High and Ultra (55.9 MB each).

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 limits

  • The new texts in the other languages have not been read by native speakers. Every new or changed sentence of this release in German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Swedish and Simplified Chinese (the Research Centre and its refusals, the CPUs, the chat, the Company page, the new ships, the sounds' settings text, the Item Trees and Research wiki pages and the other wiki changes) was written by AI and has had no native-speaker review. Please tell us what reads wrong.
  • Chat takes the Latin alphabet only. Players of the Russian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese versions can't write in their own scripts in chat for now. The server can allow them again with one setting (alphabet in Chat.json), which needs no new client. The link filter is not perfect either: a new way to hide a link may pass, and a full stop with no space after it ("ok.so what now") is read as a link. Accents typed as a letter and a combining mark are refused (only the single-character accents are allowed), and so are a few signs such as ¥, © and ™.
  • Craft gating is strict. A pilot below Core 10 can't craft anything new until it has the Core, the Centre and a research, and a veteran who holds nothing of an item can't craft it without researching it. In practice no craft is within reach of a pilot before level 4, and the Station mission "Core Ten" asks for the climb from Core 6 (about 93,000 credits and 3 hours of timers).
  • A research is also ruled by fuel: a tank holds all the fuel of a day-long research only from Centre level 5, and of the Wraith's two days from level 8; before that you top it up while it runs.
  • The Research Centre has no 3D model in the Station view (it is a card in the list, a row in the table and the Research view), and its card picture is a stand-in.
  • A Jump CPU's payment and its move are not one transaction: a crash of the server in the instant between the two would lose the 500 Thulium. The Jump and Base CPUs' recharges are kept in memory, so a server restart clears them.
  • The black hole's picture is measured on a Mac only. The first time it is drawn on Windows (DirectX 12 or Vulkan) and Linux it is untried here. There is no frame-time guard: Auto gives the lens to Medium and up, including integrated GPUs, and a slow GPU keeps it until you pick Low. The orange veil at a low camera inside the disk is heavy. A click on an alien next to the hole can miss it by up to about 65 pixels at 1080p (about 17 in 0.4.8), because the mouse uses the undistorted view. The Nomad and the Storm add graphics memory (see Platforms): the Windows memory test has not been run again.
  • The ship pictures in Assembly are stills until you point at them.
  • Rockets are about 20 percent cheaper against the pay than in 0.4.8, on purpose (the pay rose, the prices did not); the prices may be raised.
  • The Storm is a glass cannon by design and is the dearest ship for its strength in Thulium (15,000); the balance comes from a model, not from play.
  • The Windows memory fix of 0.4.8 is still measured on a Mac only, and the Windows clipboard of the wiki's Copy page has only been tried with a stand-in.
  • The builds are unsigned, so macOS Gatekeeper and Windows SmartScreen warn on a first install (see above). There is one public game server with limited capacity; it may restart for updates, and your ship is saved when it does.

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 7d4bc113e2fc3d504de1960fd782b92d9d5cfc8b5192d890bdacb3e465a386f5
SpaceCorps2027-windows-x86_64.zip f4372acce983e94f9c7aab186f16ab66088564f4c151c0439d8b88e57b4f281e
SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.AppImage bc47ebcbaa10690e89ce353ba5bed1d2730685f7f421d64331930e911b925862
SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.tar.gz 4be11f2d98fd22522036006a13b28be70bb79fd629ec3544370915621761be30
Assets 8
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