...
Browse GamesSteam news
Full Steam announcements and update articles for this title.
Hello, just wanted to drop a quick update on where the game is at. Aside from the factions update, I wanted to improve a lot of the groundwork for the game and fix some bugs. I know it can be frustrating for development to stretch out longer than expected, but I want to make sure the game is solid when it reaches you. Thank you so much for sticking around, and for being patient with the development.
(Scroll all the way to the bottom to see some of the new stuff!)
The following features will be available once the upcoming v0.3.0 update releases:
=== TL;DR / Main updates ===
STRATEGIC
- Better factions
- Bounties now affect relations with other factions
- Factions have different demographics and ideologies, which factor into their government representatives, which vote for decisions during events
- Events: Random (like station workers striking), Cause (voted for by government, like tariffs or declaring war), Effect (can occur from a cause event, like discovering an enemy spy)
- Naturally, outcomes of events affect a faction's relations, credits, stress, and reputation
- Faction government types (dictatorship, oligarchy, democracy)
- Player can be a representative in their faction and vote on actions. You can also bribe other representatives to force a decision.
- When a representative, the player can also propose a vote (send diplomat, declare war, etc)
- Election cycles
(IN PROGRESS)
~ Faction councils for: fund allocation, fleet movements, relations/diplomacy
~ Faction warfleets. Moving with trade fleets or defending stations
~ War between factions
~ War events
~ Station combat
- Certain ships now available only in stations owned by their faction. Good relations required. Neutral ships still sold in all stations
- Better faction flags
- Players can now buy stations and profit from trade and tax
- You can now set what resource your fleet trades
- Resource tooltip shows where it is typically sourced and bought from
- Major fixes and changes for the trade system, which is now working as intended
TACTICAL
- Three new coilguns + three new railguns
- Five new neutral ships
- Missile movement overhaul. They now follow targets properly. Step one for future movement overhaul.
- Kinetic projectiles damage rework. Projectiles now have mass and penetration area, which are taken into account when calculating damage
- Overhauled turret aiming. Now using position error instead of angle error, scales linearly with range to target
SKIRMISH
- New Abyssinia map
- Randomized positions for bodies
SETTINGS
- Bloom, gamma, colorblind settings
OTHER
- Fixed issue where scrolling mouse wheel over UI affects camera zoom in strategic scene
- Fixed Luna lagging behind lagrange points over time
============
NEW WEAPONS AND SHIPS
Coilguns:
- S1 Raijin
- S2 Pili "Thunderbolt"
- S3 Luchnik "Archer"
Railguns:
- S1 Zhanshi
- S2 Tunguska
- S2 Legkiy
Ships (All neutral):
- Zheng He: S1 Beam Lancer Corvette
> Nimble and agile, the Zheng He uses its nose-mounted BM10 laser to harass the enemy as it moves closer to use its four Raijin coilguns. A favorite of G-junkies and ex-racers.
- Battuta: S1 Kinetic Artillery Frigate
> Popular among Belters, miners, and mercenaries, the Battuta class is the standard for long-range protection at a budget. It sacrifices armor to keep its twin Zhanshi railguns and high maneuverability. Keep this one at a distance.
- Sacagawea: S1 Missile Frigate
> The Sacagawea class keeps enemies at bay using its missiles. Anything that happens to survive is then swiftly cut down by its four Raijin coilguns. This ship is the standard for new captains who prefer using missiles on the battlefield.
- Shackleton: S2 Cataphract Destroyer
> Five centimeters of armor and almost five meters per second of acceleration, the Shackleton class has a fearsome reputation. Capable of punching through heavy fire, it uses its many close-range PDCs and coilguns to devastating effect.
- Hillary: S2 Beam Artillery Cruiser
> Designed to support cargo fleets from afar, the Hillary class packs a considerable punch with its capable DM100 nose laser and four Legkiy coilguns. This ship chose delta-v instead of heavy armor, so don't expect it to hold up in a knifefight.
NEW
- Main Menu: Added main button hover SFX
- Settings: Bloom and gamma sliders
- Settings: Custom colorblind setting
- Settings: Added mouse x and y inversion settings
- Settings: Added -5, -1, +1, and +5 buttons for UI scale
- Menu: Steam, youtube, discord, review buttons tooltip
- Skirmish: Randomized body positions on every new skirmish match
- Skirmish: Added "New Abyssinia" space elevator skirmish map (NO COLLISIONS)
- Strategic: Brand new, better looking flags for: Prometheus, Blue Dragon Orbital, Hermes, East African States, Tianmen, Hakugei, and Bandit factions
- Strategic: Players can now buy stations. Stations gain profit from trade and taxes
- Strategic + Skirmish Setup: Shipyard panel showing a ship's modules and mounts now shows kinetic and laser weapon data
- Strategic: Added custom resource trading (Set what resource your fleet will trade)
- Strategic: Bounty Hunting panel rework. Bounties now affect relations with other factions
- Strategic: Amundsen class can now be used to trade DT Fuel.
- Strategic: Bandits flag
- Strategic: Added "state" variable in trader panel
- Strategic: Trade panel resources now show description on hover (resource market data)
- Strategic: Added DT Fuel trade fleets
- Strategic: new games start at 0.01x time scale (+14.4 min)
- Strategic: Added ship name suggestions from community discord server (Now 1444 total)
- Strategic: Added x10 timescale option (use with caution), added pause and 10x timescale text colors
- Strategic: Using a camera to look at a fleet now shows simple exhaust plumes
- Strategic: Ship info cards now refresh data every second
- Strategic: Market panel resources now show a red bar if the resource is not available as the station needs to keep a stockpile
- Strategic: Markets now stop production if they already have desired amount of a resource, which now also has an indicator
- Strategic > Global market panel: Added profit ratio, global quantity, and default global quantity for each resource
- Strategic + Tactical: New track indicator icons for "selected" and "targeted" objects
- Strategic > Track Panel: Added "value" text for stations and fleets
- Strategic: Added Station Panel under Target > Basic. Shows station type, tax, stabililty, and daily organics consumption
- Strategic: Added ship classification guide in shipyard Panel
- Strategic: New bounty fleet compositions
- Strategic: AI ship and fleet names randomized on start
- Strategic: Overhauled station factory recipes to ensure stations make a profit when producing goods
- Strategic: When player owns station, show sale and purchase notif from trade, tax income
- Astrocaster: Added fish descriptions and improved UI
- Tactical: Missile movement overhaul. Missiles now adjust their burn towards their target instead of just calculating a direction upon spawning. This is step one for the future navigation and movement rework. More improvements to come.
- Tactical: Ships now show their faction's flag during combat
- Tactical: Projectiles now have mass and penetration area, which are now taken into account when calculating damage and penetration aside from relative velocity
- Tactical: Updated railguns vfx colors according to projectile speed (follows thermal radiation color spectrum with red being slow and violet being fast)
- Tactical: When the total crew module health of a ship reaches 10%, it is instantly disabled
- Tactical: Added billboard particles for missile exhaust, to make them visible even when far. Similar to laser and projectile glow
CHANGES
- Loading Screen: Reduced horizontal size
- Settings > Controls: Adjusted vertical separator lines color to be more muted
- Settings: Added new "Show hostile ships paths" for tactical scene. This is on by default in order to make it easier to see where enemy ships want to go.
- Strategic: The gray navigation lines now turn off when player fleets start their flight. This was to make the game look cleaner when you have multiple fleets
- Strategic: Markets now dont have a hard cap for resource stock. Traders can still buy half of current stock when it is below the market's target quantity
- Strategic: Opening panels doesn't pause the game anymore
- Strategic: Added notification mask to prevent overflow
- Strategic: Increased farm recipe organics output
- Strategic: Changed global market data for each resource from "average buy and sell" to "lowest buy and highest sell"
- Strategic: Changed trade profit check calculation from using average prices to lowest and highest prices
- Strategic: Changed basic refuel recipe to 15 dt fuel and 5 dh fuel
- Strategic: Changed luna output (L1 - Tianmen Station) and depot output (L3-L5) recipes volatiles production from 10t to 25t
- Strategic > Track Panel (Top-right): Moved select, nav target, and hail buttons outside of "Basic" panel
- Strategic: Stations still produce 10% of output resources even without input resources
- Shipyard: Changed available ship listing "cr" text to icon
- Shipyard: Ship info UI now cleaner
- Tactical: Increased decals draw distance for all quality presets
- Tactical: Cargo modules updated to hold cargo containers (Magellan, Von Neumann)
- Tactical: To reduce clutter, the module repair button only appears when the module or its mounts are damaged
- Tactical: Adjusted Kalashnakava mounts (Molot, Shchit) color highlight to fit palette
- Tactical: When focusing \ towards track, stop distance is now 2x farther away
- Tactical: AI ships are now soft-killed when total crew health drops below 10%
- Tactical: Kinetic projectiles rework. Collider now stretches behind instead of in front of the projectile and spawns ahead to not hit the turret
- Tactical: Since armor is now more effective, lasers damage has been upped from 75% back to 100%
- Tactical: Changed heat system UI wording from "OVERFLOW" to "OVERHEAT" for clarity
- Tactical: Reworked turret rotation speeds
- Tactical: Increased S1 and S2 crew module repair materials to 400 and 1000 respectively
FIXES
- Main Menu: Fixed clicking "New Game" panel header freezing the game
- Main Menu > Skirmish: Fixed null reference error stopping player from starting skirmish
- Settings: Improved colorblind modes
- Skirmish: Fixed bug where you could have more than 10 ships in player or hostile fleet during setup
- Strategic: Traders now stop buying a resource when its prices increases higher than the lowest global sell price
- Strategic: Fixed null tracks in trackdisplayer script after combat
- Strategic + Tactical: Finally fixed the issue where scrolling mouse wheel while your cursor is hovered over UI affects the camera zoom
- Strategic: Fixed factions not resetting after load
- Strategic: Fixed bandits faction not having icon when loading game
- Strategic: Money up/down sound now has 5 second max duration
- Strategic: Fixed fleet navigation not working (Shows NaN for Dv) after targeting a moving fleet. When fleet starts flight to a station, the fleet just stays in orbit
- Strategic: Trade panel > resource disappearing after right clicking on screen
- Strategic: Autotrade retries calculation if current flight takes longer than 5 days. Fixes trade fleets going on long flights
- Strategic > Astrocaster: Win/catch UI particle fx bug
- Strategic: Fixed bandit faction losing icon when loading save
- Strategic: Notifications > Improved readability of add/subtract player credits notif
- Strategic: Fixed Luna lagging behind lagrange points over time due to small difference in orbital period calculation
- Strategic: Optimized market price calculation code
- Strategic: Improved zoom sfx timing
- Strategic: Fixed player trade fleets teleporting to different market upon arrival to original target market
- Strategic: Ship info card name can't be edited if not owned by player
- Strategic > Track Panel: Fixed panel closing when hovering over a track type different from previous track
- Strategic > Station Harbor Panel: Make scroll bars faster
- Strategic: Improved text formatting for target trader panel, global market panel, and production panel
- Strategic: Fixed recipe production and organics consumption not occurring on new games
- Save/load panel: Saving now clears the input text field
- Tactical: Shanwei fuel module no collider
- Tactical: Fixed advanced damageable textures (drive greebling, crew module, heatsink, etc)
- Tactical: Fixed laser base color not adjusting based on wavelength
- Tactical: Overhauled turret aiming. Now using position error instead of angle error. Scales linearly with range to target
- Tactical: Fixed bug where AI ships dont switch to a new target after killing player ship
- Tactical: Fixed neutral and shenzhen S2 crew modules only having 1 dc team and 10 materials
- Tactical > Navigation Panel: Fixed issue where combat acceleration is shown as cruise acceleration x 100 when in practice, it is cruise acceleration x 10.
- Other: Fixed Shenzhen Zhen and Shizu ships using Aegis mounts in blueprint instead of Molot PDCs
SHIPYARD IMPROVEMENTS
- Ships now only available in stations owned by their faction
- Neutral ships will still be available on every station as long as you have positive relations with the faction
- To buy ships from a faction, you need to reach a certain relationship level based on the ship's size class
- Your relationship with a faction now affects how much they sell it to you (100% relations = 50% discount, 0 rel = -50% discount, 50 rel = 0% discount, -100 rel = -150% discount)
- Faction flag icon and UI fixes. Added "Base value" and "Size class" variables in UI
- Buying a ship from a faction increases your relations with them
A little combat tip:
- There's not yet a "dodge and weave" mechanic during combat, but I've found switching between "Face target" and "brake" makes your ship a lot harder for the AI to hit. Doesn't work that well against lasers, of course
Wanted something more original for the bandit flag, but the skull and crossed swords looked too good. Old habits and all that.
I want to thank you all again for your support, which allowed me to finally activate windows. Happy hunting!
SCREENSHOTS
New faction flags
New events panel (bottom-left) and reworked market UI (top-left)
New factions panel, with faction relations, credits, stress, reputation, representatives, government info, and demographics
New Magellan S1 cargo module rework
New Von Neumann S2 cargo module rework
Zheng He (S1 Beam Lancer Corvette)
Battuta (S1 Kinetic Artillery Frigate)
Sacagawea (S1 Missile Frigate)
Shackleton (S2 Cataphract Destroyer)
Hillary (S2 Beam Artillery Cruiser)
Hello. Thanks for being patient with me. I wanted to make sure I get a lot of things done and concrete before I talk about the progress I've been making on v0.3.0. There have already been a lot of fixes on things like UI scroll affecting the camera and decal visibility range being too short. I also managed to add in nameplates and flags for ships in the Tactical Scene, to make the ships feel like they actually belong to a faction.
Just a bit of info about what the factions update will look like:
- Factions have a system of government with representatives and demographics
- The three government types are: dictatorship, oligarchy, and republic
- A faction's representatives will vote on spending, policies, diplomacy, and how the faction would react in certain events
- The player will be a representative at the start and can pay for an election campaign at the end of their term to become a representative again
- Aside from voting, the player can make their own proposals and bribe other representatives to force a certain vote.
- Diplomatic events are a bit dynamic. For example, one of the representatives in the Xin Republic may propose sending a spy against the faction they have the lowest negative relationship with, which means they will never send a spy to a friendly faction. I found that this gave factions a lot more character and makes the world a little bit more "lived-in" instead of randomized.
- I'm currently working on factions voting against other faction decisions. If Xin sends a spy to Shenzhen, there is a small chance that Shenzhen discovers it. If they do, they can vote on whether they should feed the spy false information or accuse Xin publicly.
- Demographics also play a big role with how a faction acts. For example, if a faction has more "Interventionist" representatives than "Isolationist" ones, they are more likely to declare war. Each government type has a rep/election cycle that replaces all representatives after a few months.
- To keep things simple, there are only three options in a vote: yea, nay, and abstain. If there are more yea votes than nays at the end of the voting period, the yea decision wins, and vice versa.
- This is a system I'd love to expand upon in Sol, but for now, I'm going to keep it simple. Even then, the Factions Update is going to take longer than I originally expected due to all the features I want to add in. I dont have a date pinned for the next update but rest assured I'm working on it every day.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I appreciate your patience and understanding. Happy hunting!
Alrighty! Thank you everyone for an awesome launch! Your momentum helped HEAT DEATH reach 12,411 wishlists, and your bug reports have been crucial.
Don't forget to check out the deep dive down below regarding the improvements and changes made to the TRADE SYSTEM.
NEW
- Prometheus: Button to show Atlas Fleet ships
- Strategic: sfx when interacting with ship info card
- Strategic: "Save and Exit to main menu", "Exit to desktop" buttons
- Strategic, Skirmish: Icons for Armstrong, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Parker, Amundsen, Shanwei
- Strategic: Ellington class description
- Random Name Generator (511 names). Used for new ships (such as in bounty fleets), buying ships in the shipyard, and skirmish setup
- Tactical: Weapon Card Overhaul. Lasers: Recommended range and current damage. Kinetics and PD: Muzzle velocity. Show weapon target and weapon type icon
- Tactical: After action report shows "victory" or "defeat"
- Tactical: Weapon systems cards show target or "" if turrets are targeting multiple tracks
- Tactical: SFX when combat ends
- Tactical: Move line: Add white circle to show plane on move point, to help new players find the right destination
- Skirmish Setup: Ship info shows up when clicking "?" button in fleet list
CHANGES
- Tactical: Weapon system card > change ammo bars color from green to yellow to indicate ammo
- Tactical: Damage transfer from destroyed module to other modules in ship changed from 10% of original damage to 25%
- Tactical: When ship is dead (all modules destroyed), it stays dead. No more DC repairs
FIXES
- Tutorial 2: under NAVIGATION tips, "class" has one extra "s"
- Prometheus End: When end screen is shown after boss battle, still able to adjust time scale and if done, atlas fleet arrives again.
- Strategic: Make "No refuel" notif not spam
- Tactical: Captain command panel tooltips expand downwards instead of upwards
- Tactical: Pressing H doesn't update radiator toggle
- Tactical: After action report: Show accurate ship healths especially when destroyed or disintegrated
- Tactical: On ship selection, weapons stop shooting and reset target selection
- Tactical: Improved weapon ui card text wrapping
THE PROBLEM
- Autotrade selects profitable resources (higher average sell value than buy value). However, resources like Rare Organics were bought because they seemingly have a higher sell value, except the stations that buy them for profit are all full (Lagrange stations). This was the biggest negative factor affecting trade since traders can't sell to stations that are full.
- DT and DH Fuel are produced in small amounts in every station (Basic Refuel recipe), but this was still not enough. To ensure trade fleets get more fuel, they will now check for a station that has a lot of DT Fuel (for now, since all trade ships use DT drives) and buy resources from there
THE FIXES
- Reduced Luna Input, Luna Output, Depot (Lagrange station) Input, Depot Output recipes production from 100% to 10%, to help prevent these stations from getting full too quickly
Autotraders used to buy any random resource and get the best market for it as long as the resource's average buy price in that market was less than the average sell price. Now, traders have the following logic:
\ If fuel ratio is at 25%, find the station most abundant with fuel resource (currently just DT Fuel since all trade ships are DT) that isn't hostile and buy any resource from it in order to sell for profit. If it is not selling any resource, do \
\ If the fleet is currently in a station, buy its best resource for profit instead of going to another station. This has the bonus effect of fleets not using up so much fuel. If its best resource is not available, do \
\ Get the best seller of any random resource that is profitable
Market Equilibrium - During testing, after around four months, the economy reached some weird form of equilibrium where most resources became unprofitable to buy and sell since they're very abundant. Ships just stayed in stations waiting for profitable deals. To remedy this, I made sure that if no profitable deals (based on average prices) can be found, traders will revert to buying and selling any random resource based on market buy price vs average sell price, which will still give profitable trades.
Of course, there will be more improvements to the trade system going forward. But for now, I'm confident that the current implementation is pretty stable. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, you can comment here or send them via bug report. Thanks!
That's all from me for now. Happy hunting!
Take a seat because this is a big one! First off, I want to thank you all for getting Spacefleet: HEAT DEATH to 11.7k wishlists as of writing. This past week (and month) has been very nerve-wracking but also exciting for me. I'm glad I can finally share with all of you the full version of HEAT DEATH, which I've poured my entire week into. I hope you like it!
FEATURE
FREE DEMO
EARLY ACCESS
Prometheus Scenario
Yes
Yes
Core Combat
Yes
Yes
New Ships
Yes
Yes
Custom Faction and Campaign
No
YES!
Skirmish Mode
No
YES!
If you would leave an honest review of the game and its demo, that would be awesome as it helps me out a ton! There's still a lot of work to do and HEAT DEATH will be very different a year from now. Speaking of, I wanted to cram in Strategic Scene AI Factions but decided to move it to after the release so I can give it the time it deserves and for it to not come out as a buggy mess as well. So yes, AI Factions will be the next major update I'll be working on.
Going forward, I plan to send out a new update every week, for bug fixes and minor updates, and a major update every month. Though depending on the complexity of the feature, it might take more or less time, of course.
So, before you buy, check the changelog below to see if it's worth your time and money. If you'd rather wait until the game has more features, totally understandable! Thank you for sticking around, and for all your support.
BRAND NEW FEATURES
- NOTIFICATION SYSTEM for Strategic Scene
- CUSTOM PLAYER FACTION AND CAMPAIGN
- SAVED GAMES LIST + continue button in main menu
- COLORBLIND MODES + UI post-processing returns
- FLEET PANEL REDESIGN: now shows full list of ships and squadrons and which of them the player currently has selected.
- SELECTED PANEL REDESIGN: Shows selected ship or squadron's control panel at the bottom
- SKIRMISH MODE: Set your own custom 10 vs 10 battles from the main menu. Maps such as the Asteroid Belt, Jupiter System, and much more coming soon!
- THREE NEW CASCADIAN SHIPS: Parker FHE - Heavy Escort Frigate, Armstrong FH - Heavy Frigate, Ellington CAK - Kinetic Artillery Cruiser
NEW
- Splash Screen: Epilepsy warning
- Bug report: Now notifies player if report was sent successfully or not. Also creates a notification in the strategic scene
- Main Menu: Custom faction. If custom name is Prometheus, return and type "Prometheus is not allowed"
- Settings: Controls > Keybinds tab
- Settings: Colorblind strength slider
- Strategic: Improved player faction credits panel visuals
- Strategic: Added ship names: Theseus, Radiant Day, Tyndrassa, In Her Image
- Strategic: Trade fleets now try to refuel again if they dont have enough Dv for their current planned flight
- Strategic: Stations now spawn with more of the resources they produce, up to 75%
- Strategic: Stations inventory tab capacity bar
- Strategic: SFX when there is an encounter
- Strategic: Shipyard - Error sfx when buying ship with no name
- Strategic: Refuel lowest dv ships first
- Tactical: Squadron > set target also sets target of ships in squadron
- Tactical: Added arrow keys for camera movement
CHANGES
- Wishlist button: Changed to review button
- Bug report: Updated icon to show bug instead of worm. Made button smaller
- Strategic: Made attachments tab list show longer names
- Strategic: Saveload panel only shows relevant saves. When player faction is named "Prometheus", only Prometheus saves are shown and can be loaded. Otherwise, all other saves are listed apart from ones in "Prometheus" mode.
- Strategic: Doubled number of AI trader fleets
- Astrocaster: Changed SFX volume from 50% to 25%
- Tactical: Kinetic debris color from red to orange
- Tactical: Damaging dead mounts damages module, changed from 5% to 1% of mount damage
- Tactical: Lasers nerfed. Decreased damage from 100% to 25%
- Tactical: Nav shows acceleration even if very low (less than 0)
FIXES
- Skirmish Setup: After pressing "Clear Fleets" button, add ship button stops working
- Prometheus: If player has no ships when Atlas fleet arrives, automatically lose
- Strategic: Fixed money sfx not playing during trade transactions
- Tactical: Improved track indicators, which now disappear when the ship is off-screen
- Tactical: salvo count not updating when clicked when ship doesn't have a target. "No target" panel now shows up in the missile card if the ship has no target
- Tactical: Ship and squadron command panel at the bottom of the screen deletes itself, making ships unselectable
NEW
- Strategic: Show faction icon of ship in draggable ship data card
CHANGES
- Tutorial 2: Improved wording for step 16 (After transferring Merrymaker to Main Fleet). Changed from "Good. Now select the main fleet" to "Good. Now click on the gray MAIN FLEET button in the station's "HARBOR" panel.". Also improved the yellow pointer's position to more accurately point towards the button to be clicked.
- Tutorials: Changed Sara text font size from 14 to 18, with autosize
- Strategic: In shipyard panel, show ship count in fleet button text (XXXX - Fleet Name (9/10)) to show a fleet is full and cannot have any more ships added to it.
- Tactical: Changed timescale text from showing "1.00x" and "2.00x" to "1x" and "2x"
FIXES
- Strategic: BUG: Shipyard panel shows unclickable/unexitable "Move ship to fleet" prompt after buying a new ship when the fleet is full (10 ships max). FIX: When buying a new ship, a new fleet is made if the current one is already full.
- Strategic: Zhen and Gu classes lose all fuel after combat. Fix: Changed misconfigured fuel module blueprint in ship's tactical prefab
Hey, everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates the past few days. I had some personal stuff to take care of, but it's okay now. My current priority is stabilizing the game and getting the full release version ready for release next week. I'm reading your feedback but I can't reply to everyone yet as I'm focusing on the bug reports. Thank you for being patient with me!
PENDING
- Tutorial 3: Rare bug where UI breaks during combat while player is selecting/deselecting ships and squadrons
- Strategic: Hail station > Harbor > "Move ship to fleet" dialog box shows up with only one option (only one fleet in port). Does not go away when clicking the fleet button. May happen after creating a fleet and buying ships (If you're still experiencing this bug, please send a bug report with what you did before the bug occurred, especially scene transitions, game save/loads, and exits)
NEW
- Main Menu: Add "more from szi (js1, js2)" in shakeless canvas
- Settings: Add (FOV: To adjust FOV in TACTICAL SCENE, use mouse scroll wheel)
- Tactical: FOV text below timescale text
CHANGES
- Tutorial 2: Moved yellow tips boxes behind station panel so they don't cover the station panel on some resolution and ui scales
- Strategic: Improved station resource gain on startup (stations start with resources they produce)
FIXES
- Strategic: Creating a new fleet after combat breaks target and selected FLEET TABS, showing "XXXX - Name" ships in the lists
- Tutorial 2: when typing or scrolling in station menu like while naming ship, camera moves
- Strategic: Lagrange Stations added back in map. Can't believe I didn't notice their disappearance for a while. Trade should be better now
- Tactical Scenes (Including tutorials 1 and 3): make UI animations (open/fade) not depend on timescale
- Tactical: Move line starts on opposite direction when ship is not visible on screen
- Tactical: Timescale text now stays as one line
NEEDS MORE DATA
- Strategic: Fleet not refueling in Persepolis (maybe any station) despite having stock and money
- Strategic: Clicked repair button but no repair materials. fleet moved without toggling repair off and now fleet is "stuck in repair mode even while they're flying through space"
Hey, guys. I'm very sorry for the lack of communication on my part. This is not my intention. The biggest thing right now is that I had some personal stuff to take care of during the past 4-5 days, with very bad timing considering that it's Next Fest week. The game was my very highest priority but it was overtaken by other things. It's okay now and I can focus on Heat Death again.
Aside from that, since I'm just working on this game alone, I have to essentially min-max my time. Please know that I do read feedback when I can, I just don't have the time to reply to everyone yet.
Right now, my priority with the game is ensuring that it is stable, so the most important feedback for me right now is the bug reports. And next week, I will be busy adding features for the full version before it releases. After the dust settles and the game is in a decent enough state, I want to finally talk to you guys and regularly spend time discussing.
If you want to confirm a bug has been fixed or have critical info, the in-game bug report panel is the best way to make sure I see it while I'm working.
Thank you for being patient with me.
So it begins. Steam's February NEXT FEST is upon us! I managed to crank out one last update aiming to fix some of the more grating bugs in the game, while adding some improvements to the UI. On top of the previous SFX update, I hope you have a good time with this build! Don't forget to leave a review! It helps the game out a ton. And thanks so much for playing!
NEW
- Tactical: Added double click to focus on selected/target ship
- Tactical: When the current camera target is also the selected ship's target, the target screen's borders turn red
CHANGES
- Tactical: Updated WEAPONS, NAVIGATION, and HEAT MANAGEMENT panels.
- Strategic: change Persian Federation words to "Himmat-e-mardaan madad-e-khuda"
- Tactical: Target order: Temporary camera target (whatever the mouse cursor is hovering over) > Current selected ship/squadron target > Current camera target
- Tactical: Changed target cam minimum FOV from 1 to 0.5
FIXES
- Strategic: winning a normal battle then losing in the boss battle gives victory screen
- Tactical: Switching to tactical view takes the same amount of time no matter the current timescale
- Tactical: Tac: Crash when moving camera while low timescale, improved camera movement when timescale is not 1 (default)
- Tactical: Brake causes ship to spin around at the end
- Tactical: GAME FREEZES when \ or \ buttons are pressed at the start of combat. This happens because of the dot product calculation ships use to determine which angle to approach a target from. When a player ship is looking straight at a hostile ship (which is what happens when \ and \ are pressed), the dot product calculation will essentially do something like a "divide by zero" and freeze the game as the enemy ship will repeatedly try to look for the right angle to engage your ships, but since it keeps getting zero, the loop doesn't end. This has been fixed and will ensure pressing the \ or \ buttons at the start of combat will not freeze the game.
P.S.
I accidentally replaced the changelog for v0.1.2.1d with v0.1.3d! Apologies about that if anyone wanted to see it. I tried looking for the old changelog on my PC but I already deleted all the copies on my end. If anyone has a screenshot or something, do let me know!
Hi! In preparation for the upcoming NEXT FEST, I decided to do a quick little update to add some much needed sound effects and ambience to PROMETHEUS. Please let me know if there are any big bugs. Have fun! And thanks for leaving a review!
NEW
- More sound effects and ambience:
- SFX: Main Menu
- SFX: Menu
- SFX: Strategic Scene + Additional ambience
- SFX: Tactical Scene + Additional ship ambience based on health
CHANGES
- Tutorial 1: Improved wording regarding MOVE MODE so players know to press M before left-clicking to their target destination
- Tactical: Changed kinetic debris colors from white to red
- Tactical: Reduced laser hit/sparks sfx volume from 0.5 to 0.1
CHANGES
- Strategic: Removed "AUTOSAVE" file from list (it is not meant to be loaded, only used for testing. This was actually done last build but I forgot to add it in the changelog)
- Tactical: Fitzgerald class EM10 laser default mode changed from DEFENSE to NEAREST
FIXES
- Tutorial 2: Not enough money to buy a new ship (since autotrade may force fleet to buy resources again). To fix: automatically give player 1,000,000 before prompting to buy a new ship
- Strategic: Trade system gives auto traders the best market for a certain resource, even if the market doesn't actually have any to sell. Fixed to ensure this doesn't happen. Current minimum available resource that's enough for a fleet to buy: 1. May change based on resource rarity/base price
- Strategic + Tactical: Ika, Shizu and Fitzgerald classes not loading back into fleet after combat
- Tactical: Laser beam visibility setting not being set at the start of combat
NEW
- Community Discord button
- Added Playtesters: Mallory "Pet American" M., Joshua G-K
CHANGES
- Main menu: Reduced screenshake intensity and moved welcome panel entirely to a canvas that doesn't shake
- Main menu: decreased bloom intensity
- Tutorial 1: Reduce cracks intensity
- Tutorial 1: Made Predawn Blue and Martyr Viper immortal and undamagable
- Tutorial 2: Removed Global Market button to reduce risk of ui overlap
- Bug report: Don't submit if: description is empty or already sending
- To help with stations getting full with fuel over time, "Basic Refuel" production recipe in stations reduced productivity by half
FIXES
- Tutorial 1: When Blue is too close, it starts firing at hostiles before its supposed to
- Tutorial 1: fixed Predawn Blue firing on Hephaestus when targeted by deactivating pdc module until Blue reaches beacon 3
- Tutorial 2: Trade fleets couldn't sell to any station because they were all full with resources. To fix this, I reduced the number of resources that stations start with.
- Tutorial 2: Skip to next step if flight started on step 11 (Before player is prompted to click "START FLIGHT")
- Tutorial 3: Fleet Panel breaks when trying to select squadron that doesn't exist yet
- Strategic: Reduced Martyr Viper railgun ammo count from 400 to 100
- Strategic: Deactivate station ui placeholder ship data
- Strategic: New ships (bought from stations) cant get fuel or cargo
- Boss battle: starting positions of player and enemy fleets too high up or down
PENDING (Seemingly fixed on my end but still needs confirmation from playtesters)
~ Stations lacking supply and resupply (especially fuel) in Prometheus Scene
TACTICAL
- Modified timescale while moving camera is messy and affects ui update speed
- Using the move command while facing away from the selected ship will create a line that starts in the opposite direction
- Ship burn audio loop has gap of silence
PROMETHEUS/STRATEGIC
- Better trade targeting: Trade fleets buy best resource of whichever station theyre in and and target best station that also has their type of fuel
- Fleet merge/attachment overhaul. Make tankers refuel other ships in fleet
- Target tabs not opening when hovering over new target (if new target doesn't have it)
- Station service: update ship bars when refueled, resupplied, or repaired
MAIN MENU
- SF HEAT DEATH socials/steam page occasionally opens randomly when interacting with bug report and escape button menu
BALANCE
- Laser weapons/ships overpowered
OTHER
Scrolling in menus zooms camera
Tip menu navigation buttons misaligned in Tutorial 3 (commander mission)
Keybinds in settings
It's demo release time, baby! This build's stable enough thanks to the help of all the playtesters during the past week. I hope you have fun! And don't forget to report any bugs you find :)
("Prometheus Scene" and "Strategic Scene" are interchangeable in the context of this demo)
NEW
- Tutorial 2: Removed ISSM
- Tutorial 2: Settings are applied on start
- Tutorial 2: Added more metals and basic munitions to rubicon
- Tactical: Surrender button in menu. Kills all player ships
- Strategic: Use arrow keys to pan camera around the map
- Strategic: Camera boundary
CHANGES
- Tactical: Removed "Exit without saving" button in pause menu
- Tactical: Turned off L toggling lasers
- Strategic: All stations start with DT and DH Fuel
- Strategic: All stations produce a small amount DT and DH Fuel
FIXES
- Strategic: timescale now pauses when opening the menu and unpauses when closing it
- Tutorial 2: Fixed fleet not trading
PENDING (Seemingly fixed on my end but still needs confirmation from playtesters)
~ Stations lacking supply and resupply (especially fuel) in Prometheus Scene
~ Newly made fleet loses all delta-v after battle
TACTICAL
- Modified timescale while moving camera is messy and affects ui update speed
- Using the move command while facing away from the selected ship will create a line that starts in the opposite direction
- Ship burn audio loop has gap of silence
PROMETHEUS/STRATEGIC
- Better trade targeting: Trade fleets buy best resource of whichever station theyre in and and target best station that also has their type of fuel
- Fleet merge/attachment overhaul. Make tankers refuel other ships in fleet
- Target tabs not opening when hovering over new target (if new target doesn't have it)
- Station service: update ship bars when refueled, resupplied, or repaired
MAIN MENU
- SF HEAT DEATH socials/steam page occasionally opens randomly when interacting with bug report and escape button menu
BALANCE
- Laser weapons/ships overpowered
OTHER
- Scrolling in menus zooms camera
- Tip menu navigation buttons misaligned in Tutorial 3 (commander mission)
NEW
- add new testers to credits (CasaClan, redacted_traveler)
- setting: tactical mouse scroll speed, chromatic aberration, UI scale slider
- settings are now saved
- Auto Traders: Flight is not valid if Dv ratio is less than 10% of max Dv (If not much fuel left)
- Bounty ships now take names from playtester suggestions (they're all awesome!).
- Tactical: Sun follows camera
CHANGES
- Removed lagrange point tracks/locations and replaced them with the stations themselves, which seems to have improved navigation towards lagrange points. Updated save system to adapt to this.
- Bug Report Panel: Button to Steam Hub for changelog and discussions
- Setting: linear instead of exponential volume
- Strategic: Removed "Low Dv" navigation requirement
- Reduced number of AI fleets in orbit to lessen fuel supply problem
- Strategic > Navigation panel: Adjusted acceleration plus and minus buttons to be more intuitive. Minimum acceleration is 0.01 G
FIXES
- welcome: concessions typo (I had to compromise the latter for the former)
- Fixed: Tutorial 3 white line on start and tooltip showing up
- Strategic: pressing esc while in the pause menu unpauses the game
- Removed ISSM (International Space Station Museum) since it was causing too many bugs
- Strategic: Disallowed setting acc/dec to low value (5% or less) to avoid lines moving a lot
! Fixed: Fleets lose Dv after combat. This took an entire night and morning of untangling spaghetti code. Glad that's over lol
PENDING: Bugs that seem to be fixed on my end but still require more testing and confirmation
- Player not receiving bounty reward after combat
MINOR BUGS
- Tactical: Low timescale while moving camera is messy and jittery and affects ui update speed
- Fuel scarcity: DT and DH fuel is hard to find and causes fleets to get stuck in stations. This issue is caused by the fact that trading fuel is not very profitable for trade fleets, so they choose to trade other resources, which means fuel is not spread out across the system. Increasing fuel production for fuel stations also causes an issue where it fills up the entire inventory of the station. Will be improving this soon
- Tactical: ship burn audio loop has gap of silence
BALANCE
- Laser weapons/ships are currently very strong, I'll be tweaking their values over the next few patches to find a good middle ground. Let me know if you have any suggestions!
OTHERS (To be added/improved/intentional)
- Keybinds in settings
- Scrolling through menus also adjusts camera zoom
- Fleet repeatedly tries to fly to a target station, resulting in multiple notifications about failed flight
> This is intentional. Fleets try to set a flight to their target every in-game hour and adjust accordingly if it is not possible. This is noted, however, and will be streamlined in the future
- No collisions in tactical scene. To avoid jittery ships and projectiles, hard collision had to be turned off. I know this can be quite immersion-breaking, so I'll try to make sure ships avoid each other in the future movement overhaul
- Encounter Panel: Options to autoresolve and surrender are still not in the game
Hello! I just wanna preface this by thanking all the playtesters for sending out some awesome bug reports so far! You guys found a lot of bugs that would have taken me a long time to find on my own. Just know that I can see all of your submissions and I appreciate every single one of them :)
I also want to say that after you send reports, it may seem like it takes me a while to update the game. This is due to me living in a different timezone (GMT +8), so I could still be asleep hours after you submit reports. So please bear with me!
I'll do my best to send out a new patch every day so you guys have more to things test.
(Also, I just want to make sure, did a certain video play when you opened the Prometheus scene for the first time?)
NEW
- Bug report and suggestions subforums in the Steam community hub
- Bug report panel: Buttons to bug report and suggestions steam subforums
- Bug report panel: Bug severity option (So I can quickly sort through major bugs first)
- Credits (WIP)
- Settings: screen shake option
- Factions panel: Faction words and descriptions (No more "Player peepee poopoo" if you were unlucky enough to see that lol)
- Welcome panel: Added that friendly fire is on for weapons
CHANGES
- Previously, pressing the "Exit without saving" button in the tactical scene didn't work. I tweaked it so that it does go back to the strategic/Prometheus scene, but it's still a bit finicky. Your fleet does not spawn unless you load the autosave. Will be improving this in the future
- BOUNTY REWARD BALANCING: changed bounty reward from (total ships cost * total ships count) to just (total ships cost). Let me know if this is more fair. I'm also planning to try something like total ships cost * total ships amount * 0.5.
- Combat scene: Tried to add a 2x timescale option (F8), but upon testing, it caused projectiles to phase through ships. I'm keeping this here for now to speed up combat testing (just remember that only lasers are viable weapons when at 2x timescale)
FIXES
- Tutorial 1: Made Hephaestus ship not take module damage until player takes out the missiles to avoid players prematurely killing it
- Fixed: Timescale persisting between scenes after combat
- Fixed: Player credits on strategic scene exit persist when opening a new Prometheus game
PENDING: Bugs that seem to be fixed on my end but still require more testing and confirmation
- Player not receiving bounty reward after combat
MINOR BUGS
- Tactical: Low timescale while moving camera is messy and jittery and affects ui update speed
- Fuel scarcity: DT and DH fuel is hard to find and causes fleets to get stuck in stations. This issue is caused by the fact that trading fuel is not very profitable for trade fleets, so they choose to trade other resources, which means fuel is not spread out across the system. Increasing fuel production for fuel stations also causes an issue where it fills up the entire inventory of the station. Will be improving this soon
- Tactical: ship burn audio loop has gap of silence
BALANCE
- Laser weapons/ships are currently very strong, I'll be tweaking their values over the next few patches to find a good middle ground. Let me know if you have any suggestions!
OTHERS (To be added/improved)
- Settings not saved
- Settings: Chromatic aberration option
- Keybinds in settings
- Scrolling through menus also adjusts camera zoom
- Fleet repeatedly tries to fly to a target station, resulting in multiple notifications about failed flight
> This is intentional. Fleets try to set a flight to their target every in-game hour and adjust accordingly if it is not possible. This is noted, however, and will be streamlined in the future
- No collisions in tactical scene. To avoid jittery ships and projectiles, hard collision had to be turned off. I know this can be quite immersion-breaking, so I'll try to make sure ships avoid each other in the future movement overhaul
- Encounter Panel: Options to autoresolve and surrender are still not in the game
- Strategic Scene: Nav lines jittering when accel/decel values are very low
CHANGES
Overhauled UI positions to fit with different resolutions
Ship refuel x10 more efficient
Ship repairs x2 more efficient
FIXES
Fixed non-1080p resolutions having a messy UI and making the game unplayable. Had to remove the UI bloom and effects to fix this. Hopefully I'll find a way to add it back in the future without breaking anything!
Strategic scene: fixed credits text clipping with ui for 2560x1600 resolution
Fixed resolutions duping in settings
NEW
Demo-specific library capsules
Bug reports: include scene name, screen resolution
CHANGES
Changed hide hud button from F12 to TAB, changed tip in tutorial 3 to reflect this
Main menu: make missiles spawn in front of the screen to reduce chance of bullets hitting screen
FIXES
Typing when reporting bug, renaming ship/fleet, etc moves camera
Astrocaster cash in > instantly cash out = you get extra money bug (buying astrocoins didn't take the exchange rate into account)
Bugs occurring when player exits the Strategic/Prometheus scene and goes back, such as encounters not working anymore (Fleets overshooting or encounter panel not showing up)
There's a lot more work to be done on my end, so I just wanna leave off here for now and thank you guys for playtesting the game and submitting bug reports. I couldn't do this without you!
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Spacefleet: Heat Death, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Spacefleet: Heat Death statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.