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Full Steam announcements and update articles for this title.
The graphics are finally getting to where I want them. For the first time I didn't need to create custom artwork for a news post... the header image is just a screenshot taken in-game with the new dynamic lighting effects. More on that below!
Making enemies tougher is one thing, but what about simply having more of them? Thanks to a series of performance improvements, there's now a new difficulty slider that lets you double (or halve) the number of enemy squadrons you encounter.
The difficulty presets have also been reworked. Higher difficulties now focus more on increasing enemy numbers while slightly reducing the damage multiplier.
Ships now support Vanity Thruster slots. These are purely cosmetic directional thrusters that can be placed anywhere on your hull. They automatically fire based on how your ship is moving, so if you strafe left, the thrusters on the right side ignite. It's a small detail, but it makes ships feel far more like real machines.
Since thrusters are positioned beneath the hull, the Ship Builder now displays a silhouette while placing them so you can actually see what you're doing. You can also cover your ship in backward facing thrusters and enjoy a silly number of boost trails.
All preset ships (Destroyer class and above) have been updated with vanity thrusters.
Flames, beams, explosions and engine trails now cast dynamic light onto nearby objects. Fly past an obstruction with your engines burning and you'll see it illuminated as you pass. Trigger a huge explosion and the entire area lights up for a brief moment.
A new Dynamic Glow graphics setting lets you control how far the light spreads, or disable the effect entirely by setting it to 0. A large part of this update's performance work went into making this effect as inexpensive as possible, so it shouldn't cost you many FPS.
When I buff or nerf items, I don't usually apply those changes retroactively. Instead, the new stats are applied the next time you increase the item's level. This makes it much easier to show what's changed instead of players wondering why their damage suddenly went up or down.
The downside is that if an item is already level 100 you couldn't receive the updated stats.
Now you can. If an item has pending balance changes, you can now Recalculate its stats from the Increase Level panel for free, without increasing its level.
As we approach the launch of Online Multiplayer, on August 27th, the trailer has finally been updated and now shows a much better picture of gameplay as it currently stands!
There's plenty more below, including a long list of performance improvements for large battles. Enjoy!
• New Enemies difficulty slider scales enemy squadron numbers from 50% to 200%.
• New Vanity Thruster slots add cosmetic directional thrusters to ship designs.
• New Repair Ray secondary weapon repairs friendly ships.
• Difficulty presets trade damage for tougher ships, more enemies, more salvage.
• Eels now move 20% slower.
• Level-capped items can Recalculate Stats for free to apply balance updates.
• Ice Fabricator ice now looks like tinted glass instead of pale, flat ice.
• Flames, beams, explosions and engines now cast light onto nearby objects.
• New Dynamic Glow graphics slider adjusts light spill; set to 0 to disable.
• Thrusters show a silhouette while placing slots as they hide under the hull.
• Physics now catches up at most 3 steps per frame to stop heavy-battle stutter.
• Ship stat lookups no longer rescan all equipment, speeding up big loadouts.
• Burning, Radioactive and Impaled damage ticks in batches to cut CPU load.
• Auto-weapons reuse their line-of-fire check briefly instead of every tick.
• Ship health bars and status icons are reused instead of rebuilt each time.
• Leech seeds now cap at 30 in flight per ship; extra leech heals instantly.
• Gravity wells scan for targets less often while still pulling every tick.
• Overlapping gravity wells now merge into a single well with stacked damage.
• Glow capture skips ship hulls, asteroids and containers, halving draw calls.
• Ship outline rendering reuses graphics state instead of resetting per part.
• All auto-weapons on a ship share one target search instead of one each.
• Beam shield checks and ship list upkeep no longer allocate memory each tick.
• Glossary max modifier values now reflect the higher Rare and Legendary caps.
• Radar and Navigation star maps no longer disagree on which stars hold loot.
• Fixed an error after a mind-controlled squadron leader was destroyed.
• Fixed Tornado missiles zigzagging at launch due to slow steering damping.
• Point Defense Lasers no longer target harmless missiles from departed allies.
• Undo after loading a template or import now restores your previous ship.
• The Ship Builder parts list no longer opens scrolled partway along.
• Controller selection no longer picks list items scrolled out of view.
• Gravity wells and black holes no longer send snake enemy segments flying.
• Snake enemy segments no longer drift apart when many ships are in the fight.
• Ship Builder thruster slot rings now show above the hull instead of under it.
• SceneGlowFeature.RegisterLine adds custom line emitters to the glow capture.
• New AIController.IsFormationSlaved and GravityWell.TryMerge public helpers.
• SceneGlowFeature.ExcludeRenderer opts LDR sprites out of the glow capture.
This began as a hotfix, but then I started messing around with some new weapon ideas. So alongside the bug fixes, there are now a load of quality-of-life improvements and some new toys to play with.
The Ice Fabricator is a new utility weapon that sprays walls of ice into space.
You can box in enemies, block off an approach, or build yourself some cover to hide behind. It creates a completely different style of play that will hopefully appeal to some players.
I spent a lot of time making sure the ice behaves properly, so it cannot be stamped directly against a hull or used to shove ships around.
Inspired by the ice walls, I finally worked out how to make the flamethrower-style weapons feel more distinct and fun.
Instead of disappearing immediately, their projectiles now slow down and linger, painting space with fire, frost or plasma that continues damaging any enemies that enter it.
Their range is slightly shorter to account for the new lingering behaviour, but they now work properly as area-denial weapons.
If you enjoy Beacons, Holo Drives or reanimated ships, this update includes a lot of improvements for them.
Tapping an active Beacon or Holo Drive now sends its ships directly towards your cursor, allowing you to reposition your fleet with a single tap. They will continue firing while moving and prioritise your locked target, so they will focus fire instead of wandering off after whatever catches their attention.
Tethered and reanimated ships are now coloured according to your ship slot, meaning you can pick their colors. Beacons and Holo Drives now share the same visual effects, and dismissed Mirror Image ships shimmer gracefully out of existence instead of exploding.
On a final note, some players wanted me to remove the level 100 cap so they could keep playing. I'm not comfortable doing that in the base game as it would disrupt my end game plans. However, I've added a mod to the workshop that removes the cap and allows you to play New Game+ forever if you wish.
Full details of the update are listed below. Enjoy, and let me know what you think of the ice walls!
• Added 1 x new utility weapon Ice Fabricator that sprays walls of ice.
• Flamethrower, Cryo Gun and Plasmathrower can leave lasting elemental patches.
• Holo Drive is now unique, so only one can be equipped at a time.
• Spray weapon range is now slightly lower as projectiles slow and linger.
• Tapping an active Beacon or Holo Drive now sends its ships to your cursor.
• Beacon / Holo Drive ships now attack your locked target first.
• Tethered and reanimated ships are now colored by your ship slot.
• Beacons and Holo Drive ships now share the visual effect.
• Dismissed Mirror Image ships now shimmer away instead of exploding.
• Equipment resistances now show your true value in brackets when over the cap.
• Sector generation is over 4x faster by checking link overlaps nearest-first.
• Skirmish stars now complete when the last enemy ship is reanimated.
• Reanimated Gateway Disruptors now count as destroyed.
• Ships summoned by an Elite no longer explode with it if they were reanimated.
• Reanimated ships no longer show as Gateway Disruptors to other players.
• Holding fire no longer toggles the Pollen Spreader or Smog Exhaust back off.
• Grapple tethers now sever when the tethered ship jumps out of the star.
• Reanimated ships no longer jump away when their beacon goes on cooldown.
• Mind-controlled and reanimated ships now color their Assault blades too.
• Mind-controlled and reanimated ships attack without displaying red warnings.
• The Trade panel is now disabled while editing a ship so keys cannot sell gear.
• Fixed map loot icons not clearing until you left and re-entered an area.
• Shots still in flight when a ship despawns no longer hit friendly ships.
• Friendly ships no longer shed enemy debuffs onto your fleet when killed.
• GameShip.ApplyMindControl and Reanimate now take the conversion color.
• New Equippable.GetSlotDisplayColor decodes slot hue triplets to RGB.
• Added IceFormation voxel walls, IceBeam and the IceFabricator item class.
• New net messages IceUpdate (74) and IceDepositRequest (75); StarSnapshot ices.
• GameShip.netDespawnMaterialize flags a shimmer-out despawn on the wire.
• New AIShip.SetMoveOrder and SetPriorityTarget drive summon AI externally.
• New HUDMoveOrder ping and InputController.GetCursorWorldPoint helper.
• New Damageable.Resistance*Uncapped properties expose pre-cap resistances.
• New poolable BurningSpace area component; FuzzyProjectile spawns and slows.
• New Star.MarkContainersChanged bumps the map changed time for map UIs.
Ok, so we don’t have actual zombies. Not like the amazing Space Pirates and Zombies. If you haven’t played it, you absolutely should... just don’t ask about the sequel.
Anyway, I’m adding a few fun new weapons to keep you entertained while most of the work continues behind the scenes on Multiplayer Mode.
August 27th. Put it in your calendar.
We don’t have a Necromancer class, sadly, so no proper zombies. What we do have is a new rare modifier that gives an \ % chance to reanimate destroyed enemies.
Reanimated ships return at full strength and join your squadron for the rest of the encounter, fighting alongside you against their former allies.
I made them blue, so they hopefully stand out as friendly companions.
Don’t feel like waiting for an enemy to die before stealing it? The new Override Tether is a grapple weapon that temporarily flips an enemy to your side while the tether remains attached.
It also works on some rather large enemies, allowing you to collect some impressively oversized pets.
I have long had a custom setting that is supposed to control each enemy’s maximum speed. Turns out it wasn’t working properly.
That has now been fixed, which means a lot of enemies have slowed down while a few have sped up. This should make enemy squadrons feel more varied, but let me know if anything particularly wild starts happening.
There are also a ton of balance changes and bug fixes, all listed below. Enjoy!
• New Override Tether utility weapon controls enemies to fight by your side.
• New rare on kill modifier Reanimate revives enemy ships to fight by your side.
• Added a new Repair Halo (Unique Auto Special) that repairs nearby allies.
• Enemies reach higher top speeds in later sectors, up 25% to 75% by Sector 4.
• Faster Enemies no longer affects bosses, which outran player drones.
• Rescue ships now travel at 25% speed as intended for escort missions.
• Rare passive items can now hold 3 global modifiers, up from 2.
• Holo Drive copies now toughen with level so they survive high difficulties.
• Holo Drive copy damage now also scales with level, like Beacon ships.
• Conduits linked to assault, halo or torch weapons now gain Gladiator leech.
• Auto weapons are now tuned to 70% of their primary counterpart's damage.
• Grub Launcher damage increased by 650%.
• Skeran Orb Launcher damage increased by 500%.
• Lightning Orb Launcher damage increased by 317%.
• Arrow Launcher damage increased by 117%.
• Auto Machine Gun damage increased by 92%.
• Watcher Turret Bay damage increased by 50%.
• Tesla Coil damage increased by 42% to bring it in line with other beams.
• Auto Tesla Coil damage reduced by 30% as it outgunned the Tesla Coil.
• Auto Heat Ray damage increased by 27%.
• Auto Corrosion Beam damage increased by 26%.
• Barrage Launcher damage increased by 22%.
• Frozen Orb Launcher damage increased by 20%.
• Fire Bolas damage increased by 8%.
• Magma Orb Launcher damage increased by 8%.
• Avatar import browser now supports controller and keyboard use.
• Importing a custom avatar is now available on Steam Deck.
• Steam's keyboard now also opens in Big Picture, so any language can be typed.
• The Disable Steam Keyboard option now shows for all players, not just Deck.
• The in-game keyboard fallback now works for all languages.
• Holo Drive DPS is calculated from the weapons on your current ship.
• Fixed the player and edit menus overlapping after importing an avatar.
• Closing the Edit Player window now also closes the avatar picker.
• Fixed enemy top speed limits never applying; speeds now vary by ship type.
• Opening an item in the Assembler no longer applies new base stats to it.
• Laser orb DPS now counts every enemy beamed at once, not just one target.
• Laser orb debuffs and death surges now scale from their full multi-target DPS.
• Saved items with a modifier that no longer exists now load without it.
• Fixed an error when pressing Edit Avatar with a controller as the menu opens.
• Non-piercing pulses no longer stop at allies and now hit enemies behind them.
• MirrorImage: new serialized health field and public CalculateDPS(Modified).
• Damageable: new TryReanimate death intercept; GameShip.Reanimate is public.
Not many visible changes in this update, but there's a huge amount of work happening behind the scenes. As a result, don't be too surprised if a few strange bugs pop up in single-player...
And yes, I just called it single-player, because all of those behind-the-scenes changes are laying the groundwork for the new Multiplayer mode!
On August 27th 2026, the multiplayer update will go live. Right now I'm working through bugs and doing a lot of testing. Over the next 3 - 4 weeks I'll also start inviting people from Discord to help out. If you'd like to get involved, come and join us at: https://discord.gg/ePgg7qgs4b
I'm not looking to turn the game into some massively multiplayer experience, but you'll be able to host games and play 2–8 player co-op with friends, strangers, or even jump into PvP if that's more your thing.
The multiplayer browser will list any public games but be warned, multiplayer uses your existing single-player saves and as such there won't be any anti-cheat software running.
It's already working to a degree, it's just still pretty buggy. Once I've finished some more local testing, I'll open it up to Discord testers and see what else breaks.
Just to be clear, this is Online and LAN multiplayer, not split-screen or couch co-op. That's an entirely different barrel of problems.
The rest of this update is mostly balance changes based on recent player feedback. Enjoy!
• Projectile-based primary weapons deal 10% more damage.
• Missile hull tripled so volleys can survive PDLs and stray fire.
• Missile damage increased by 48-50% across all missile weapons.
• Enemy missiles keep their old damage and hull so they can still be shot down.
• Explosive shots now detonate closer to targets, so blasts catch enemy groups.
• Noisy Cricket now triggers thermal surges on kills instead of knockback.
• Conduits can now receive On Kill modifiers and activate them on killing blows.
• Conduits now scale with the class upgrades of the weapon they are linked to.
• Electric Halo damage reduced by 30% to bring it in line with other Halos.
• Auto Tesla Coil damage increased by 58% as it lagged behind the new Halos.
• Auto Tesla Coil now chains to 1 more target than before.
• Halo weapons now show DPS and Tick Rate in their stats like beam weapons.
• Missile launchers now auto-link when equipped or moved between slots.
• Harmless input errors from Windows no longer open the error overlay.
• AI ships now fly close enough for their shortest automatic weapon to engage.
• Fixed leftover loading fades stacking up and darkening the game over time.
• Fixed a faint copy of the menu appearing in the blurred panel backdrop.
• Fixed Hull Leech healing from the previous hit instead of the killing blow.
• Items with an invalid rarity in the save file are now repaired on load.
• Enemy modifiers on the map now refresh on expansion fixing a silent UI error.
The Summer Sale is in full swing, and with it has come a wave of feedback from players discovering the game for the first time.
This update is almost entirely driven by suggestions from the Steam Community.
Conduits can now drop from enemies. These are auto-special slot items that link to other equipment, adding extra damage types and debuffs.
For example, attach a Thermal Conduit to your Freeze Ray and it'll start setting enemies on fire as well as freezing them, triggering Steam Cloud reactions.
Foley's Rage by CountMOPS (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=67)
Conduits were added for players who prefer to focus on a smaller selection of weapons instead of filling every slot with something different. You can chain conduits into other conduits, link multiple conduits to a single weapon, and if you don't like the visual effects you can set them be Invisible in the Assembler.
By default, conduits automatically link to the nearest compatible weapon, but you can manually reassign them at any time from the Equipment panel.
This update adds two new Legendary Assault weapons, along with the new Tesla Axe. Electric damage was unfortunately missing from the original Assault weapon lineup, so now every damage type has its own dedicated melee weapon.
Of course, if you're already attached to your favourite Assault weapon, you can always slap an Electric Conduit on it and start zapping things anyway... see above.
You should now be able to play with a controller and keyboard at the same time without mouse aiming constantly stealing control of your ship.
The game now also reports whether you're in a menu or actively flying to Steam Input, allowing you to create separate bindings for each state if you want.
I'm still learning the finer details of Steam Input, so if there are other features that would be useful, let me know. If you can explain how they work, I'll do my best to add them.
The next update might be a big one... but no spoilers. Enjoy!
• Added 6 x new Conduit Auto Special weapons.
• Added 1 x new Electric Assault weapon.
• Added 2 x new legendary Assault variants.
• Added 1 x new female player avatar.
• Each sector now has its own unique ambient music.
• You can now use keyboard and controller without the mouse grabbing aim.
• Steam Input now switches controller layout between flying and menus.
• Cargo sorting now uses a Sort button and remembers your last choice.
• Glossary item and Legendary database headers now show entry counts.
• Halved the volume of several thrusters and drone bays that were too loud.
• Standardized Japanese ship and class names for consistency.
• Shortened over-long UI text so it fits in all 10 translated languages.
• Halo, Torch and Assault weapons now damage enemy missiles and mines.
• Holo drive clones now equip weapons with reduced level requirements.
• Fixed the Thermal Lance description that listed cold instead of thermal.
• Fixed an error when editing your avatar before the player list loaded.
• Fixed Japanese and Korean ship designer tutorial text overflowing.
• Fixed incorrect translations in Spanish, Polish, Korean and Japanese.
• New ConduitItemBase ScriptableObject lets mods add custom Conduits.
• Failed mods now report the real inner exception, not just Harmony's wrapper.
This... is a big update.
The main feature is Close Combat, a completely new playstyle built around giant space swords, energy torches and aura weapons that reward diving in to groups of enemies. To support it, there's a brand new Gladiator secondary class, 13 new close-combat weapons, new legendary variants, a new starting ship, major drone and beacon improvements, and a much better radar/navigation system.
Behind the scenes, this update also contains a huge number of performance optimisations, bug fixes and code improvements. The amount of work that went into this has been a little daunting, so if anything is broken expect hotfixes in the next few days.
I've tested it extensively though, including a full playthrough using my own Close Combat build while tweaking the balance to make sure it stays fun and viable throughout the game.
The purpose of this new Secondary Class is simple... stop you exploding the moment you charge into a pack of enemies.
Gladiator provides a range of defensive bonuses that scale based on nearby enemies, allowing you to survive in situations that would normally get you killed. The close-combat weapons themselves are then enhanced through Warden (Assault), Striker (Torch) and Interceptor (Halo).
Someone requested this feature a while ago, but sadly I can't find the suggestion to give proper credit.
Once an encounter is complete and you're out of combat, the radar now switches into a sector navigation display. You can see nearby encounters at a glance and click them to jump there.
Close Combat adds 13 new weapons across the Torch, Halo and Assault categories, along with several new special weapons, a new Drone Bay, and a couple of new legendary variants to discover.
Galactic Design by Medved (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=198)
I've also improved legendary hunting. The glossary now shows where undiscovered legendaries can be found, making it much easier to track down the ones you're still missing.
Drone Bays and Beacons had started to fall behind the damage curve somewhat, so they've received some significant buffs in this update.
Drone damage has been increased across the board, several drone types have received additional boosts, and summoned allies from Beacons now remain active much longer. If you already have Drone Bays equipped, you'll need to upgrade them in the Assembler to see the new stats.
The rest of the update is largely focused on performance improvements, quality-of-life features and bug fixes.
A huge amount of optimisation work has gone into reducing stutter, improving loading times, lowering memory usage and making large battles run more smoothly. Alongside that are dozens of bug fixes covering everything from combat mechanics and loot systems to UI, controllers, missions and mod support.
Next up is Sector 4 - Phase 2. Until then... Enjoy!
Oh, and if you like giant space swords, be sure to check out Nova Drift. We're bundled together, so if you already own Star Vortex you can pick it up at a nice discount.
• Added a new 'Glacius' starting ship.
• Added new 'Gladiator' secondary class.
• Added 4 new Torch weapons (Primary).
• Added 5 new Halo weapons (Auto Special).
• Added 4 new Assault weapons (Utility).
• Added a new Holo Drive special weapon.
• Added a new Leech Pulse special weapon.
• Added a new Wisp Drone Bay (Leech).
• Added 2 new Legendary weapon variants.
• Striker laser/bolt upgrades now also boost Torch weapons.
• Interceptor pulse upgrades now also boost Halo weapons.
• Guardian utility upgrades now also boost Assault weapons.
• Each starting ship now comes with one secondary class unlocked.
• Many enemies have been re-equipped with new weapons.
• Radar now shows navigation map once encounter is complete.
• All drone bay damage increased by 50% to keep pace with weapons.
• Hornet, Maggot and Roach drones get 25% more to match lasers.
• Beacons now keep summoned allies active for 20 seconds at base.
• Laser primary weapons now drop 20% more often as loot.
• Auto laser specials now drop 20% more often as loot.
• Drone burns and radiation now scale from the Drone Bay's full DPS.
• Global loot drops are now weighted per item to control how often gear appears.
• Grapple guns now drop 50% less often than other utility weapons.
• Ships 10+ levels above you now correctly resist 75% of debuff attempts.
• Escort ships now correctly respect their intended damage received cap.
• Smog Exhaust and Pollen Spreader now add their full base damage.
• Kinetic pulse Knockback now applies its intended force.
• Boost timer now resets on short taps, so taps cannot bank invulnerability.
• Invader attacks no longer wait until you reach a waypoint in Sector 1.
• Drone and turret bays can now use \ modifiers balanced across drones.
• AI ships now cycle weapons with a 1s minimum delay.
• Halved the amount of projectile-based weapons that drop from global loot.
• Thruster sounds now have their own volume slider.
• Target reticle now retains its thickness regardless of zoom level.
• Added new setting to control Target Reticle size in Accessibility.
• Legendary database pages now show which enemies drop each legendary.
• Hover an undiscovered legendary to see its weapon type and where it drops.
• UI and HUD elements now update only when their values change.
• Combat text and beam effects are reused to reduce stutter in busy fights.
• Ship designs and weapon previews are cached to speed menus and spawning.
• Targeting and pathfinding reuse scan data to reduce combat stutter.
• Redundant shader work was removed to improve loading and rendering.
• Image caching and scene cleanup now reduce memory use in long sessions.
• Smog Exhaust and Pollen Spreader damage now scales correctly with level.
• Loading screens now wait for scene cleanup before advancing.
• XP and credit pickup particles are pooled at scene load.
• Glowing weapons and effects no longer lose bloom in poor lighting.
• Fixed losing left-stick UI navigation after closing the ship editor.
• Fixed the controller navigation highlight rarely vanishing forever.
• Dodging in your travel direction no longer slows your ship.
• Drone debuffs now scale off the drone weapon's full DPS, not one drone.
• Leech Ray item stats now show its Hull Leech value like the Leech Gun.
• Unreadable profiles now retry and create a backup instead of being reset.
• Storage items from disabled mods now return when those mods are re-enabled.
• Missions now finish safely if your ship is destroyed at the same time.
• Destroy-all encounters now mark each remaining ship with a sensor arrow.
• Quickly pressing boost button no longer grants longer invulnerability.
• Rebound projectiles now recall without jamming or exploding when caught.
• Mines now spend one charge and explode once when replaced or expired.
• Scatter Missiles turn correctly and homing shots keep their launch delay.
• Point Defense targets now always correctly target the nearest missile.
• Seeking shots now detect targets correctly when fired away from the origin.
• Enemy auto lasers now reset their aim correctly when switching targets.
• Overlapping disables and regen blocks now last until every effect ends.
• Tooltips now open and close correctly and stay readable at screen edges.
• Loot showcases now close normally if a new item interrupts their animation.
• Storage items on the last page are now reachable at smaller UI scales.
• Assembler now charges credits only after the sacrifice item is destroyed.
• Equipped items that cannot be unequipped can no longer be picked to destroy.
• Fixed a drag swap that could move mission items into storage.
• Hiding or re-equipping a part no longer leaves a stuck leftover copy.
• Fixed lighting not resetting between areas, causing screen darkening.
• Fixed an error loading player avatars when mods were active.
• Fixed an error caused by impale projectiles stuck in despawned ships.
• Black hole kills now name the attacker in the death recap.
• AI ships fighting each other now stay near you instead of drifting off.
• Fixed double-clicking an already-selected encounter not jumping to it.
• Mod builds now save enum fields correctly.
• Mod builds now include only assets assigned to an AssetBundle.
• Added SettingsData.FireSettingsUpdated() to notify without saving.
• Projectile.TimedDestroy now unregisters before destruction.
• Projectile.suppressExplosion can skip one impact explosion.
• MineLauncher.RemoveProjectile only spends charges for tracked mines.
• LeechLauncherItemBase.legendaries is now LauncherLegendary\[].
• GetLegendaryItem and SelectLegendary now ignore null slots.
• PoolController.RemovePoolableObject now purges available objects.
• PhasePlaceholderItemBase.UpdateStats no longer compounds updates.
• GameShip.SetDisabled and ToggleRegen are ref-counted; pair every call.
• SoundEffectPlayer.Attach now moves its AudioSource to the new host.
• SetCurrentPlayerShip now rewires damage tracking and ship audio.
• Failed mods remain listed with errors and leave no content active.
• Removed Fast2DBlur and three redundant UniversalForwardOnly passes.
• Added NoiseHelpers.hlsl and OutlineComposite.cginc shader includes.
• Muzzle flash updates now use UpdateMuzzleFlash(list).
• ItemBase legendary methods are virtual and expose GetLegendaries().
• Added DebrisStatusEffect and ResistanceStatusEffect base classes.
• SpawnReactionNotice now accepts Reaction and translates its name.
• Removed Utils.RandomEnum and Utils.CamelcaseToSpaces.
• Removed IsEnabled, SetPixelSize, and SetColorReduction helpers.
• GameShip.SellItem now returns bool indicating sale success (was void).
• New Item.CanStackWith(Item) identity check; CanMerge now builds on it.
• GameShip.MergeItem validates CanStackWith and honors its quantity parameter.
• GameShip.MoveItemStorage now ignores immutable items.
• Equippable.ValidForModify rejects destroy targets that cannot be unequipped.
• ModContent.Load returns null on empty asset names instead of erroring.
Just wanted to give a quick update on progress.
The next major update is the Close Combat Update, introducing an entirely new playstyle built around getting up close and personal with enemies. The update adds a variety of new close-range weapon types, including massive space swords, short-range Torch weapons, and Halo weapons that continuously damage nearby enemies.
M-炮艇 by cccsennn (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=229)
Most of the content is already finished. Some of it accidentally made its way into the previous hotfix. So, if you happened to find a Halo weapon in the Black Market or at a Trader.. that wasn't supposed be there.
The update also introduces a new Secondary Class, Gladiator, focused entirely on close combat. It includes a variety of upgrades designed to make fighting at close range viable, with bonuses such as increased armor, hull leech and a localized gravity field.
At this point, the remaining work is mostly balancing. The content itself is done, but close combat is hard to get right. Weapons need to work against large groups of enemies but also be able to handle the various boss mechanics without forcing players to switch builds.
The update will be heading to the test branch shortly before its full release in a couple of weeks. If you'd like to take a look early feel free to join our Discord for information becoming a game tester.
Another pretty large update for the class system this time. I've posted this as a regular update though, as I don't want to become one of those games that thinks everything is a major update.
The Science Vessel has joined the fleet, and the grapple guns have finally received their long-awaited overhaul. More details on both are below. I also finally managed to fix the Steam Deck framerate issues.
The Science Vessel is now a permanent part of the fleet, and it's where you now go to buy secondary classes. All existing secondary classes now start locked and must be purchased using an Infected Seed from Species-XI. If you had already spent points in one from a previous save, you'll unlock it for free.
I've added five new secondary classes, each focused on a damage type: Arsonist (thermal), Cryonic (cold), Juggernaut (kinetic), Vitriolic (corrosive), and Contaminator (radioactive). I've also reworked Tempest (electric) so it follows the same pattern.
In addition, there's the Catalyst secondary class, which improves debuffs across the board and makes reactions and surges bigger and better. If you don't like a class, you can sell it and get your Infected Seed back, so there are no permanent choices here.
These two weapons used to pierce by default, but with the new Juggernaut (kinetic) class adding the ability to make all kinetic weapons pierce, I didn't want that moment to feel underwhelming when you finally unlock it.
Their base damage has been increased to compensate for the loss of piercing.
Pulses received a similar treatment. Only Radioactive and Electromagnetic Pulses now pierce through enemies and debris.
The rest stop on the first thing they hit, but to compensate, their damage has been increased by 25%. This works both ways, meaning you can now hide behind debris to avoid enemy pulses.
I'm not sure if I'll ever make grapples the best choice for utility slots, but this update aims to make them at least fun. They now use proper rope physics, and firing one a second time shoots out the other end of the grapple.
This allows you to link enemies together or tie them to debris. The grapple transfers damage between connected enemies and slowly winches them together. Each grapple can now have multiple active connections at once, allowing you to create a tangled mess of webbing.
Sabertooth by BoSonic (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=223)
I've finally managed to track down what was hurting performance on Steam Deck. It used to sit at around 30 FPS during gameplay, but it now runs happily at 60 FPS in all but the most intense fights.
For those curious, the CPU was spending most of its time sitting idle waiting for the GPU to render frames. The game is now allowed to pre-render one frame ahead, which prevents the CPU and GPU from constantly waiting on each other. On lower-end devices, this can nearly double the framerate.
Full patch notes below. Enjoy!
• Science Vessel is now part of the fleet selling secondary classes.
• Added Catalyst as a new secondary class, focusing on debuffs, reactions and surges.
• Added Arsonist as a new secondary class, focusing on thermal weapons.
• Added Contaminator as a new secondary class, focusing on radioactive weapons.
• Added Cryonic as new secondary class, focusing on cold weapons.
• Added Juggernaut as new secondary class, focusing on kinetic weapons.
• Added Vitriolic as a new secondary class, focusing on corrosive weapons.
• Reworked Tempest secondary class slightly to match new damage type classes.
• Guardian upgrades now boost grapple guns, not just PDLs.
• Grapple gun's second activation now fires its free end at a new target.
• You can now keep several grapples active at once.
• Dynamically spawning ships now ignore a star's difficulty modifiers.
• Species-XI elites and the Leviathan boss now each drop an Infected Seed.
• Increased damage transfer of attached grapples between enemies.
• Only Radioactive and Electromagnetic Pulses now pierce through enemies and debris.
• Non-piercing pulses damage increased by 25% as compensation.
• Howitzer and Railgun no longer pierce by default due to new upgrades.
• Beam weapons now show their tick rate in their stats.
• Improved translation accuracy across all 10 supported languages.
• Fixed mistranslated weapon, item, and ability names plus typos.
• Standardised key game terms to stay consistent within each language.
• Class panels now sort active classes first, then alphabetically.
• Ship sensor arrows now scale with distance, so closer threats look larger.
• Ships now batch when drawn, reducing CPU load during large battles.
• Maximum pre-rendered frames now defaults to 2, increasing frame rate.
• Status effect visuals spawn from a pool on demand, not on every ship.
• Stacked damage effects no longer create garbage per hit.
• Fixed a rare error when destroyed ships broke apart into debris.
• Fixed Bolt Chain Count upgrade not working in real time.
• Fixed ships not being hidden by nebula fog on some graphics cards.
• Fixed an error previewing an upgrade where leveling adds or drops a stat.
• IDamageable gains a single-entry Damage(type, damage, dps, ...) overload.
I don't usually post news for hotfixes but yesterday's update broke a few player builds. So, after some reflection and discussion, I've made a couple of changes listed below.
Black Holes can be fun, but they ended up being more frustrating than enjoyable as a reaction effect. Due to that, the Corroding (Corrosive) + Disabled (Electric) reaction has been replaced with a Gravity Well.
Gravity Wells persist for 3 seconds, pulling enemies toward their inner perimeter while dealing ticking Corrosive damage to everything caught inside. Like with all the reactions there is no friendly fire from these when triggered so you will not be pulled in yourself.
Debuffs are no longer removed when a reaction triggers. Ships will now retain both debuffs, and reapplying either one will trigger the reaction again once the 1 second cooldown has expired.
Hopefully this addresses some of the concerns with the last update. Enjoy!
• Reactions no longer consume a paired debuff so both keep ticking.
• Disabled + Corroding now spawns a Gravity Well, not a Black Hole.
• Glossary updated to reflect that reactions keep both paired debuffs.
• Meltdown clouds now fill their area correctly and stay visible for the duration.
• Reaction visuals now render in front of the playfield, not behind it.
• Ship Designer tutorial and class overlays resized to fit on Steam Deck.
• Ship Designer tutorial diagrams now render sharp instead of blurry.
• Enemies should now only boost and become invulnerable when chasing the player.
• Stuck enemies reroute to the nearest reachable point after 1.5s.
• Fixed Burning and Frozen tooltips wrongly saying they remove each other.
I've decided to split this next update into two parts, this being the first. Simply because Early Access games can lose trust quickly if they don't get regular updates, so I didn't want to delay this when the second part is likely to take a bit longer.
The purpose of this update as a whole is to give more depth to build decisions and add more synergy between certain weapon setups.
Burning and Frozen have long cancelled each other out. Now lots of debuffs cancel each other out, but when doing so they spawn reactions, usually resulting in some form of AOE damage to nearby enemies.
Burning + Frozen triggers a Steam Explosion.
Frozen + Corroding throws shards of ice outward as projectiles.
Corroding + Disabled spawns a Black Hole.
Disabled + Radioactive discharges electrical bolts at nearby enemies.
Radioactive + Burning emits radioactive clouds of green smoke.
Motherwing Design by Quantus (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=187)
If any of them feel particularly overpowered I'll adjust them later. There's a 1-second per-ship cooldown so things don't cascade into infinite chains. But the AOE effects do have a damage type and debuff chances themselves, so can absolutely chain through multiple enemies, this is intentional.
There's now a new Status Effects page that lists every buff and debuff in the game with descriptions along with an explanation of the new debuff reactions in full.
Finally, there is now a long requested Dialog History page that lets you scroll back through every dialog line you've seen on your current save.
Affectionately referred to as the Disco Ball, this weapon has long been quite over-powered, especially when stacked on bosses. So the power curve has been reworked. Levels now add more beams instead of cranking up per-beam damage, and overlapping beams on the same target only count once.... so parking on a boss will no longer delete it from existence.
Nexus Design by cowcow (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=181)
The ceiling is lower but the AOE is better, which is the role it was always supposed to fill. It was never supposed to instant kill elites and bosses.
Recent feedback indicated primary weapons felt weak when compared to their Auto Special counterparts and it was mostly true. So a lot of them got a damage bump with Leech Gun, Machine Gun, Gauss Gun, Railgun, Leech Ray, Spiral Laser, Plasma Gun, Skeran Laser, Heat Ray, Corrosion Beam, and Magma Gun all hitting harder now.
I've uploaded another example mod to the Steam Workshop. This one is called Pixel Parts and adds square parts to the Ship Designer that can be placed in perfect alignment on the grid.
This is more an example of how to add your own parts and factions to the game than something I expect people to seriously play with... although this one was quite fun.
Full patch notes below. Enjoy!
• Burning + Frozen on the same ship now triggers a Steam Explosion.
• Frozen + Corroding on the same ship now spawns Shatter projectiles.
• Corroding + Disabled on the same ship now spawns a Black Hole.
• Disabled + Radioactive on the same ship now triggers a Discharge.
• Radioactive + Burning on the same ship now spawns Meltdown clouds.
• Reactions now have a 1-second cooldown per ship to stop chain spam.
• Faction glossary pages now show character portraits.
• Added a Status Effects page to the Glossary listing all buffs/debuffs.
• Added a Dialog History page to the Glossary for current player save.
• Burning and Frozen now stack instead of cancelling each other out.
• Burning damage increased from 20% to 25% of weapon damage.
• Radioactive damage per stack increased from 5% to 6% of weapon damage.
• Leech Gun damage increased from 60 to 130.
• Machine Gun damage increased from 35 to 60.
• Gauss Gun damage increased from 60 to 100.
• Railgun damage increased from 142 to 190.
• Leech Ray damage increased from 325 to 400.
• Spiral Laser damage increased from 395 to 480.
• Plasma Gun damage increased from 50 to 60.
• Skeran Laser damage increased from 340 to 395.
• Heat Ray damage increased from 350 to 400.
• Corrosion Beam damage increased from 325 to 360.
• Magma Gun damage increased from 70 to 75.
• Surge AOE radius increased from 57m to 75m.
• Auto Corrosion Beam corrode chance lowered from 25% to 10% to match primary.
• Vortex Array level ups now add beams instead of boosting per-beam damage.
• Overlapping Vortex Array beams on a single target now deal damage just once.
• Glossary now shows an item's action-bar icon under its image.
• Glossary now shows each enemy's AI behaviour under its image.
• Fixed enemies stalling near an obstruction instead of routing around it.
• Fixed enemies sitting still when their target moved behind cover.
• Fixed grapple guns catapulting ships when stretched against obstructions.
• Beams fired from inside an enemy now hit instead of passing through.
• Enemy ships should no longer spawn stuck inside obstructions.
• Fixed Player Select panel error when switching modes quickly.
• Fixed UI buttons going blurry at smaller sizes due to mipmap sampling.
• Mod ship part prefabs now appear in the Ship Builder parts list.
• Generate Language File now picks up ShipPart prefabs in your bundle.
• Generate Language File ignores imported reference content not in a bundle.
• Mirroring a mod ship part no longer throws when re-resolving its prefab.
Finally got this thing working so thought I'd throw it out in a quick update. The game now has a built-in Glossary that lets you look up factions, ships, items, and legendary weapons.
In both the main menu and pause menu you'll now find a link to the Glossary. Inside, you can browse every item, legendary, ship, and faction you've discovered. It shouldn't spoil anything, and it will backfill data for your existing saves.
You can change the level when viewing ship and item stats, and see how legendary weapons scale with different base items at different levels. I plan to keep expanding this over time, adding more detail for theory crafting and build design.
Navigating through a sector and hitting a dead end sucks. I took the Diablo 2 approach of throwing a cache at the end to make it suck less... but the caches also sucked.
First fix, Sector 4 now has fewer dead ends. I've increased the number of links between encounters so navigation should feel less frustrating.
Second fix, caches now come in four varieties and contain guaranteed rarity rewards. Each sector rolls its own mix, and the rewards improving as you get toward Sector 4. Caches no longer drop common items at all, and the chance of pulling a legendary from a Sector 4 cache is now around 5x higher than before.
The first 15 levels were more of a grind than intended, so that should now be fixed. Kills below level 15 now grant up to +50% bonus XP, tapering off as you level up. The early game should move faster and get you to the fun parts sooner.
Plenty more changes below. Enjoy!
• Added a new Glossary of items / enemies you've encountered to the pause menu.
• Caches now come in four types: Credits, Different, Rare and Legendary.
• Sector 4 now has ~33% more radial links to reduce windy routes.
• Kills under level 15 now grant up to +50% XP to soften the early grind.
• Species-XI Transports now drop extra Infected Seeds at higher levels.
• Caches now drop significantly more rare and legendary items, never common.
• Menu and panel background fade now opens 4x faster with smoother easing.
• Startup Player.log now flag known buggy software that can cause issues.
• Analytics and Early Access popups wait for the scene transition to end.
• Menu ships now hold off spawning during transitions and open popups.
• Removed unused texture filtering on Beautiful/Fantastic quality presets.
• Steam achievement sync now runs at the main menu, fixing a startup error.
• Toggle Vents now defaults to V and Left Stick Button on existing saves.
• Some UI objects no longer appear duplicated in pause menu as it blurs.
• Enemy AI orbiting allies no longer get stuck boost-invulnerable.
Sector 4 is finally here. Well, the first phase of it.
I wanted to get as much content into the final part of the storyline as possible, so it has been split into three phases focused on charging the Singularity Key. This phase brings new ships, weapons, enemies, achievements (one hidden), and a couple of bosses waiting for you when you arrive.
Alongside the new sector, this update includes a stack of fixes and balance changes based on recent feedback. The damage cap is still in place but has been adjusted, slow ships are no longer unintentionally slow, debuffs now work properly on multi-part enemies, and almost every sprite in the game has been increased in resolution.
The end of Sector 3 now leads into the beginning of Sector 4. Expect new enemies, two new bosses, some new elites, and a range of supporting ships. There are also three new story achievements and one hidden achievement to track down.
Completing Phase 1 unlocks the ability to use Species-XI parts in your own ship designs. Phase 2 should not take nearly as long, and the storyline up to the finale is already written and planned out. If you decide not to wait, New Game+ remains available at the end of the current content.
If you pushed ahead into New Game+ instead of waiting at the end of Sector 3, you may notice some sector levels have shifted slightly. Once you reach the end of Sector 3 again, Sector 4 will be available on your second, third... or twentieth playthrough.
The per-tick damage cap exists to stop you being one-shot by overlapping hits, but it was causing two problems. First, it applied to telegraphed attacks you were meant to dodge. Second, it did not scale with damage difficulty, so high-difficulty runs were capped the same as low-difficulty ones.
Both issues are fixed. Attacks you are meant to dodge now bypass the cap entirely, so positioning matters unless you are a tank. The cap now scales with encounter and sector damage difficulty. Combat should feel sharper again.
If you have been in a busy fight and noticed enemies crawling at a fraction of their normal speed, that was a real bug. It has now been fixed, so expect some enemies to come in fast again.
However, there is now a deliberate slow effect. Frozen ships have their thruster power halved, making cold damage weapons more useful.
Lower resolution ship parts, items, and other assets have been removed. Everything now renders using higher resolution sprites that scale down with mipmaps as you zoom out. If you zoom all the way in, the game should no longer turn in to pixel art.
Forbidden Legacy Design by Entity (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=83)
To offset the increase in resolution without increasing build size, the duplicate low-resolution sprite sheets have been removed. Background, UI, and weapon textures have also been moved to BC7 compression. The result is better visuals, lower VRAM usage, and a smaller download.
The next update will focus on adding more Secondary Classes. The plan is mostly in place, with new classes designed around different damage types. This should open up more playstyles and give you ways to deal with resistances and debuff immunity when specialising in a single damage type.
There will also be some interactions between damage types. For example, Frozen enemies hit with Burning will emit an explosive cloud of steam that damages nearby enemies.
Plenty more in the patch notes below. Enjoy!
• Sector 4 - Phase 1 is now accessible at the end of Sector 3.
• Added 2 new bosses, 2 new elites and various other new ships.
• Added 3 new story achievements and 1 new hidden achievement.
• New Game+ encounter levels adjusted to make space for new sector.
• Player damage cap now scales with encounter and sector damage difficulty.
• Weapons you're supposed to dodge now bypassing the per-tick cap.
• Species-XI Internal Shield hull reduced by 33% on most NPCs.
• Removed Internal Shield from some smaller Species-XI ships.
• Damage debuffs now spread across all segments of multi-part bosses.
• Frozen now halves thruster power so ships feel slow.
• Ship parts and items now render at higher resolution in-game.
• Hull damage now spans adjacent ship parts so scars look continuous.
• Increased size of radial displays in HUD by +25%.
• Improved artwork of gateways and obstructions.
• Ancient Architect technology got a new color scheme.
• Dropped duplicate low-res sprite sheets to cut VRAM and build size.
• Background, UI, and weapon textures now use BC7 compression for less VRAM.
• Enemy ship repulsion now runs as a burst job to free main-thread time.
• Fixed enemies moving at a fraction of their normal speed in busy fights.
• Boss segments and armor layers no longer grant XP individually on death.
• First-phase bosses no longer grant XP; only the enraged form does.
• Fixed ship silhouette still showing through nebulas when invisible.
• Errors that repeat each frame no longer cause out-of-memory issues.
• Long modifier lists in the assembler no longer trigger memory errors.
• Fixed hyperdrive jump-in trail zig-zagging from origin to landing point.
• Camera now recovers from rare bad frames instead of breaking the HUD.
• Save data is now automatically recovered after an interrupted save.
• Failed saves no longer leave save files in an unreadable state.
• Older game versions can no longer overwrite newer-version save data.
• Save recovery now works correctly when Steam Cloud syncs files.
• Fixed enemies sometimes staying invulnerable after dodging.
• Core Navigation panel now shows a full enemy list instead of live state.
• Broodnests no longer block rescue ship escape or elite/warzone clears.
• Fixed total damage counter wrapping to a negative number past 2.1B.
• Fixed mod sprites leaking into the avatar selector and other lists.
• Removed EquippableItemBase.gameObjectSprites; use factionImages instead.
• Removed EquippableLegendary.gameObjectSprites; use factionImages instead.
• Removed ConsumableItemBase.smallImage; use factionImages instead.
• Removed ShipPart.highDefSprite and AlternateSprite.sprite fields.
• FactionImages now drive in-game sprites (except Shield/Thruster/Passive).
• Item and ship-part big sprite sheet PPU bumped from 330 to 660.
• UI layout uses a fixed reference PPU, so import PPU changes don't shift it.
• Counter.value, Counter.Increase and IncreaseCounter now use longs.
• ModContent.LoadAll now filters mod assets without resourcePath by path.
This update was supposed to be a hotfix, but I ended up adding so much to it that it’s basically become a set of balance overhauls based on some recent feedback. The abridged version is that you’re no longer allowed to die in less than 320ms, and when you reach the end of the content and start hitting New Game+, enemies are tankier but deal less damage.
Enemies get stronger at higher levels using an exponential scale because players get better weapons, more upgrades, and more build synergy... so enemies have to be adjusted to remain a challenge.
The issue is that I was primarily adjusting enemies by increasing their damage. The result was that you would get swarmed by lots of glass cannons, and it felt like an Unreal Tournament match set to insta-gib.
Endless Battleship Design by Endless (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=130)
Now, they still deal more damage... but about half as much, and they have significantly more shields and hull so they can tank more of your damage. This should lead to a more satisfying endgame experience.
Sometimes lots of enemies will synchronise their shots, resulting in death before you can react. This has long been known to be an "unsatisfying" experience. Early games used invulnerability frames, where your character would flash white for a few frames and be immune before being hit again.
I tried this approach, but the result was too powerful and doesn’t really work for a space shooter.
Instead, you can no longer take more than 5% of your maximum hull in damage within 16ms. The result is a minimum of 320ms to be destroyed if you’re at full hull. I figure humans have a 0.2 to 0.25 second reaction time, so that should give you time to dodge before you die.
The Hull Points upgrade in the Warden secondary class now grants +20% extra hull per point instead of +5%. I’ve also increased the strength of all shields (and the hull points from the Internal Shield) by a massive +50% across the board.
The Eye Design by Industrialus (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=154)
I’ve tested it on my Warden/Sentinel Dreadnought against higher-level enemies, and I finally feel like a tank. Pairing it with hull leech weapons is a bit overpowered, but that’s a problem for another day.
I won’t list them all, but different enemies have different attack patterns. The ones designed for hit-and-run tactics have had AI improvements and a significant speed boost.
So if enemies are whizzing past you drive-by shooting style, that’s them. I hope you played a lot of Duck Hunt as a kid and have good aim.
I’ve been profiling the game in various places to improve performance. Short version: lots of objects that were created on the fly are now “pre-warmed” into the pool during loading, and the damned mini bars that have plagued me for years with terrible performance now render onto a single UI canvas... with a single draw call... from a sprite atlas. If they’re still slow, I’m going to cry!
I’ve added a second example mod. This one shows how to patch code in the game using HarmonyX. More example mods will follow, as I’ve already been given a long list of requests I plan to work through.
In the next week, I plan to add Sector 4 - Phase 1 to the test branch, which includes more storyline, a new sector, and some new enemies.
Completing it will also unlock Species-XI parts for use in your ship designs. If you want to help test it, jump into the Discord and let me know. I’ll tell you how to access the test branch once it’s up.
Oh yeah, there’s a new avatar for you to pick when you’re creating players as well. Enjoy!
• Added a new player avatar of an old dude.
• Shield capacity increased by 50% across all shields.
• Hull Points upgrade now grants 20% per level, up from 5%.
• Damage taken is now capped at 5% of your maximum hull per 16ms (320ms from full).
• Asteroids no longer spawn in nebula encounters as they were frustrating.
• Beacon ships summoned by the player now fire through each other.
• Enemy damage scaling reduced; late-game damage roughly cut to a third.
• Enemy hull and shield scaling doubled; late-game enemies much tougher.
• Enemy base hull and shield increased by 50%.
• Early-game enemy damage ramp extended from level 10 to level 15.
• Fights should feel more sustained, with less instant kills.
• Hit-and-run enemies accelerate faster and reach higher speeds.
• Mixed squadrons break formation so hit-and-run ships can hunt solo.
• Beacons now show total DPS in their item stats.
• Doubled size of Arrow Launcher projectiles so they're easier to spot.
• Increased the light in the game scene by 25% so distant ships are more visible.
• Sensor arrow distance is now measured from the arrow to the target.
• Nebula vent smoke particles are now pooled for better performance.
• Weapon projectile pools now prewarm to cover 10s of fire to reduce stutter.
• Weapon projectile pools now includes shot counts for multishot weapons.
• Menu background ships now prewarm their weapons to reduce menu hitches.
• UI and HUD sprites are now packed into atlases to cut draw calls.
• FPS display no longer allocates memory each frame it updates.
• Mission tracker only rechecks uncollected missions when something changes.
• Ship parts are warmed up on the splash screen to prevent spawn hitches.
• Ship shield and hull bars now share one canvas to speed up UI drawing.
• Nebula vent smoke now fades out naturally when vents are closed.
• Roaming drones now advance through obstructions blocking their weapons.
• Background menu ships now reduce the brightness of lights in custom designs.
• Beacon ship stats no longer vary by star map location when used by the player.
• Beacon stat bonuses now apply to all summoned ship weapons, not just the first.
• Fixed beacon ships ignoring NPC base damage scaling.
• Fixed fast projectiles sometimes passing through enemies at low framerates.
• Destroyed ships no longer leave stray smoke from previous positions.
• Fixed some display issues with the trails that follow Arrow Launcher projectiles.
• Layered ships no longer emit light from their invulnerable lower layers.
• Fixed layered bosses wobbling when you aimed at them.
• Attached enemy ship velocity now adapts to AI tick rate, fixing Carrion spasms.
• Fixed an error on the loading screen during ship part animations.
• Fixed boss body segments and orbiting drones spawning out of formation.
• Fixed player becoming immune to damage during friendly-assisted boss fights.
• Enemies now retarget the next threat when their current target is immune.
• Sensor arrows no longer vanish before structures enter view.
• Dodge afterimage now shows overheat, burning, and other status tints.
• Nebula stamp buffer expanded so all ships correctly clear away nebula fog.
• Fixed stretched vent smoke on ships after hyperdrive jumping into nebulas.
• New public const GameShip.maxDamagePerTickPercent (0.05).
• Added obstruction selector to the sandbox.
• Ship.Build() has new optional param: skipDifficultyScale.
• Fixed damage smoke trails appearing from the wrong position.
• MiniBars.Init second parameter changed from HUDController to HUDMinibars.
• New HUDMinibars IHUDComponent now owns miniBarsPrefab and minibar lifecycle.
• HUDController.AttachMinibars and RemoveMinibar now forward to HUDMinibars.
Ok, as mentioned in the last post... I kind of lost track of my plans over the last few weeks.
It started when I was trying to figure out how I was ever going to follow through on adding mod support. Once I actually started though, I couldn’t stop... so here it is, much earlier than intended.
Along with a bunch of other stuff that probably would’ve been out a couple of weeks ago if not for this.
Star Vortex now has first-party mod support with full Steam Workshop integration. You can browse, subscribe, and play with mods directly in-game. They load automatically on startup and can add new weapons, ship parts, enemies... or override pretty much anything.
Dawnstar Design by CitizenKing (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=195)
I’ve put together a Banana Launcher mod as a first example, which is already up on the Workshop. I’ll be adding more examples over time, mainly focused on content-only mods to help people get started.
The game now includes HarmonyX, so if you’re into programming, there’s basically nothing you can’t change.
This next bit is for mod makers:
Under the hood, mods are just folders with a config file, an optional AssetBundle for Unity assets, and optional C# DLLs. HarmonyX is fully integrated, meaning you can patch any method in the game.
There’s a modding guide and example config in the Mods folder, plus a Workshop uploader so you can publish directly to Steam. If you need tools, scripts, or just a hand getting started, jump into the Discord and ask in the #modding channel... I’ll help.
Nebulas have been completely redesigned with volumetric clouds. They’re no longer just a layer of darkness. Enemies can hide inside them... but so can you.
Your ship now has exhaust vents you can toggle to blast nearby clouds away, giving you a clear view of the area. Nebulas also appear more frequently now, since they’re actually fun.
Enemy AI has had a pretty significant rework across the board.
Hit-and-run enemies now perform proper flyby attacks instead of awkwardly stopping to fight. Flanking enemies split up and come at you from behind. Squadrons spread out around their targets and drift into formation during combat, but if they drop below 25% hull they’ll break off and fight for survival. Fleeing ships now actually run away instead of picking a random direction.
It should all feel a lot more dynamic.
This update will probably be followed by a wave of hotfixes. Don’t panic... it’s a huge amount of backend changes, so a few bugs are inevitable.
After that, I’ll be back on Sector 4 content. Assuming I don’t get distracted... and accidentally add multiplayer first.
Enjoy!
• Nebula fog has been redesigned with volumetric clouds that can hide enemies.
• Ships now have exhaust vents that they can toggle to clear nebula clouds.
• Nebulas frequency has been increased as they should now be more enjoyable.
• Enemy black hole guns are now fired randomly, instead of in your face.
• Shield resistance is now capped at 80% per shield.
• Doubled grapple gun projectile speed for players only.
• Enemy squadron ships now drift toward formation during combat.
• Enemy ships below 25% hull now ignore formation to fight freely.
• Enemy squadrons now make an effort to spread out around targets.
• Hit-and-run enemies now perform flyby attacks instead of stopping to fight.
• Flanking enemies now split and approach from behind.
• Boost heat is now player-only, so enemies can maneuver freely.
• Fleet ships now spawn at the player's level instead of the star's.
• Seed Cannon now benefits from Rocketeer upgrades.
• Scatter Gun and Plasma Blaster damage increased by 15%.
• Black Hole Gun damage increased by 100%.
• Black Hole Gun can now receive Charge and Recharge modifiers.
• Slot selection now shows comparison tooltips for each slot.
• Equip button now fills empty slots before showing slot selection.
• Improved artwork of some giant obstructions
• Sensor arrows now sit on screen edges instead of a fixed circle.
• Ship debris now fades to gray and dims after destruction.
• Ship part lights now disable when parts break off.
• Top dust particles now use world-space positions for clearer movement.
• Movement grid now draws accurate 50m world-space lines.
• Increased default background darkness from 20% to 40%.
• Reduced brightness of Point Defense Lasers by 50%.
• FPS counter now responds faster to frame rate changes.
• Reduced per-arrow CPU load for sensor arrows on HUD.
• Background layers now auto-fit the camera to cut wasted rendering.
• Twitch system no longer runs every frame when disabled.
• HUD stat displays now reuse string buffers to reduce memory allocations.
• Cached shield shader data to avoid re-creating it every frame.
• Cached button input bindings to remove per-frame string work.
• Dialog typewriter now uses native TMP visibility instead of string building.
• Ship outlines now skip off-screen ships for faster rendering.
• Fixed Auto Tesla Coils dealing far more damage than intended.
• Damage summary no longer shows "Unknown" for enemies that died before you.
• Fixed Assembler showing wrong appearance for legendary weapons.
• Fixed beam weapon sounds stacking louder on rapid toggling.
• Fixed the interact prompt getting stuck when switching input devices.
• Fixed an error when ships are destroyed during scene cleanup.
• Fixed an error when a ship is destroyed mid-hyperjump.
• Fixed placeholder comparison values in Assembler level up panel.
• Fixed a death surge error caused by an uncached sprite renderer.
• Fixed an error caused by ship visual effects during destruction.
• Fixed hidden settings tabs briefly showing when opening settings.
• Player weapons no longer snap to invulnerable boss layers.
• Fixed boss layer weapons firing parallel instead of at the target.
• Fixed Warden upgrades locked when using a Dreadnought above 10 points.
• Fixed upgrading rarity allowing more modifiers than the limit.
• Fixed grapple not detaching from mines when they are destroyed.
• Damage number scale can now be set to 0% to disable.
• Fixed beams staying visible during black hole warps.
• Fixed heat bar showing a residual dot after heat fully dissipates.
• Fixed control binding not displaying for utility slots in ship bar.
• Fleeing ships now move away from threats instead of randomly.
• Enemies set to Abrupt AI will now correctly activate all weapons at once.
• Fixed smoke and wing trails not fading out nicely on death.
• Enemies no longer boost unless in direct pursuit.
• Fixed clouds not appearing when toggled on in developer settings mid-game.
• Fixed an error when opening storage during a UI transition.
• Fixed slot rotation unlocking when editing position in Ship Builder.
• Added first-party mod support with Steam Workshop integration.
• Added a Workshop uploader tool for modders to Mods folder.
• Mods can override game assets and use HarmonyX patches.
• Added a modding guide and example config to the Mods folder.
Ok, so I know I said the next update would be Sector 4...
One of the perks of being a solo dev is complete control over my priorities. One of the downsides is that I have complete control over my priorities...
Good news though, I hope!
Instead of more content, I ended up doing a full rework of the Nebula system. It’s no longer just "can’t see anything." It now has volumetric clouds you can actively clear to hunt enemies with your exhaust vents, or hide inside to ambush them if you like being sneaky.
Fox-02 Design by Yo (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=152)
Also... I may have accidentally added Mod Support with full asset replacement, HarmonyX and Steam Workshop support.
So... this next update is turning out to be pretty massive, which means it’s currently held together with thoughts and prayers. There is going to need to be a lot more testing.
Sorry for the delay. I didn’t want you guys thinking I'd vanished. If anything I've actually done too much work that I'm a little bit scared of what I've created.
Star Vortex is currently 15% off for the week-end!
If you missed the Spring Sale, there’s a short window to grab it again at a 15% discount. You’ve got 48 hours to pick it up before it’s gone.
A lot of testing for Star Vortex happens on Steam Deck, and I recently noticed the framerate taking a dive. This update improves performance there, along with gains on all lower-end systems.
This is ongoing work, so if you notice FPS drops during specific fights or when using certain weapons, please let me know.
• Shield Recharge upgrade increased from +5% to +10% per level.
• Menu and overlay blur transitions are now faster.
• Death screen pause delay slightly increased.
• Steam Deck now defaults to Fastest quality, medium particles, and ship shadows off.
• Disabled anti-aliasing on Steam Deck for improved frame rate.
• Shaders and ship templates pre-compiled during load to prevent first-combat freezes.
• Fixed weapon aim-assist scanning further than needed.
• Reduced HUD redraw overhead during combat.
• Improved pathfinding efficiency for AI ships.
• Ship explosions now use pooled effects to prevent stutters.
• Ship debris chunks are now pooled with simpler physics.
• Removed dark cloud overlay layer.
• Debris smoke trails capped per ship class to reduce lag spikes.
• Radial display now caches slider and text values to reduce unnecessary UI redraws.
• Clouds shader now uses a baked noise texture instead of per-pixel procedural noise.
• Ship shadows and outlines merged into a single half-res pass.
• HUD notices are now pooled instead of created on demand.
• Interaction prompts now cache resolved text per controller.
• Health bars skip positioning while hidden, reducing overhead with many ships.
• PDLs no longer appear in the linking panel as assignable.
Star Vortex is currently 15% off for the Spring Sale!
Development on Sector 4 - Phase 1 is nearly complete, bringing 5 new levels, fresh loot, expanded story content, and two new bosses. New Game+ is also now available, giving you something to push into while the final story arcs are being built.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This update marks the longest gap we've had between updates since Star Vortex launched into Early Access, so I’ll start by apologizing for that.
The reason is a bit strange. I’ve made a lot of changes recently, and many of them are good / requested improvements, but none of them felt like big features on their own. Last weekend I held off pushing the update hoping to bundle it with something more exciting, but in the end this patch is really a collection of smaller improvements, bug fixes, and things I’ve wanted to address for a long time but never had the time to get to.
That said, this will be the final update before Sector 4 - Phase 1 launches so the next update is going to be a huge! Hopefully you’ll still find something in this patch that you were hoping for.
The game might be on v0.6.21, but the comparison tooltip is probably on version 1,000 at this point. It turns out building a good comparison tooltip in an ARPG is a bit of a fine art.
The new version now shows the full stats of the item you're comparing against alongside the stat differences. This should give you all the information you need at a glance... I hope!
Space is made of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff… or so I’m told. That idea is now reflected in faster-than-light travel within the game. Ships jumping in and out of systems now bend space around them slightly, creating a distortion ripple effect as they arrive or depart.
Alongside this, there are new particles and several visual tweaks to make jumping around the galaxy feel a bit more dramatic and visually satisfying.
This is probably one of the most frequently mentioned issues that was never actually reported, but often came up in passing. Previously, when an enemy was destroyed, all of its active projectiles were destroyed with it, which always felt a bit odd.
There were a few technical reasons why this happened, and fixing it required some fairly big changes under the hood, but that work is now done.
It’s important to me that each weapon in the game it's own identity and purpose. While the Railgun had the unique ability to pierce through enemies, it always ended up feeling a bit like a slow machine gun.
To address that, the Railgun has been reworked. Its damage has been increased significantly, its rate of fire reduced, and its range improved. The hope is that it will now feel like a heavy-hitting, long-range sniper weapon rather than a slower automatic gun.
This probably sums up this update quite well. The loading screens, menus, and splash screens have all received a fair amount of visual polish. It’s the sort of thing that makes the game feel nicer to use, but is hard to get anyone too excited about. Apart from me... because I like hexagons!
Mk IV Ghost Heavy Cruiser Ship Design by Absent Coffee (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=146)
Loads of other changes below. Next update will be big, enjoy!
• Projectiles and pulses now finish their flight when the firing ship is destroyed.
• Ships now emit a spacetime distortion ripple on jump arrival and departure.
• Broodnest is now also equipped with Spore Drones.
• Railgun damage increased by 50% and fire rate reduced by 50%.
• Railgun projectile speed increased from 30 m/s to 45 m/s.
• Point Defense Laser range increased for both variants.
• Deflector Shield recharge delay increased from 1.5s to 2.0s.
• Aegis Shield now reaches minimum recharge delay at higher levels.
• Howitzer explosive radius increased from 80m to 90m.
• Aggressive enemies now chase 4x further before giving up.
• Equipment comparison now shows both items' stats side by side.
• Unique stats are interleaved naturally instead of grouped at the bottom.
• Increased size and variety of background nebulas.
• Added set backdrops for Novus Prime, Genesis and Eden.
• Added Ship Shadows graphics setting to toggle ship outlines.
• Loot filter now hides particles and glow on filtered items.
• Dodge blur now trails behind the ship instead of blurring both directions.
• Dodge blur direction updates in real-time when turning mid-dodge.
• Added Jump Distortion toggle in Graphics settings.
• Hex grid background from loading scene added to main menu.
• Mouse cursor now leaves a glowing trail on hex grids.
• Added glitch effect and sound to splash screen logo transitions.
• Added background blur effect to all menu popups and overlays.
• Added Menu Blur graphics setting to toggle the blur effect.
• Player saves now load one per frame instead of all at once.
• Reduced shader variants included in builds for a smaller install size.
• Improved physics collision accuracy for overlapping objects.
• Fixed FPS drops during heavy combat with status effects.
• Main menu now loads in the background during splash screen.
• Displacement effect no longer clones entire ship object.
• Improved damage trail cleanup efficiency.
• Improved projectile performance during large battles.
• Reduced ship spawning time for large squadron encounters.
• Selected right-click activatable no longer resets after jumping to a new star.
• Fixed weapon aim snapping not working when targeting enemies to the side or behind.
• Dodge blur and afterimages now match scene lighting.
• Fixed unlimited framerate setting still capping framerate sometimes.
• Fixed ship shadow outlines detaching from ships during movement.
• Fixed sprite transparency sorting to use the correct depth axis.
• Fixed comparison slot numbering not matching visual slot order.
• Fixed Phase Shift sometimes leaving ships permanently immune to damage.
• Fixed ship outlines trailing behind ships moving at high speed.
• Fixed warzones not completing after a Broodnest invasion if you died.
• Fixed combat music not reverting after clearing a Broodnest.
• Fixed elite boss music playing from the start on retry after death.
• Fixed ships potentially getting stuck with no collisions after warping in.
• Fixed skip tutorial option not appearing on new player screen.
• Fixed displacement dodge outline not aligning with ship position.
• Fixed hyperdrive jump animation sometimes not visible after loading.
• Camera zoom now works during hyperdrive jumps.
• Weapons now glow during hyperdrive jump instead of disappearing.
• Displacement dash now applies its effect to the whole ship.
This one hits a lot of systems. I’ve been moving across the project, revisiting older feature requests and fixing things that have quietly annoyed me for a while.
Main highlight from the roadmap this update is Broodnests. I love Species-XI invasions, but I wanted some of them to turn up mid-encounter to add to the chaos.
Broodnests will now jump into encounters while you’re already fighting, adding sudden pressure and forcing you to adapt. They will never appear during boss fights though!
Ever died and thought, “What just killed me?”. Now you’ll see a full breakdown of the damage sources after you are destroyed.
This should make deaths clearer and also help highlight any weapons or enemies are are a little stronger than intended.
All the visual effects that render on enemies has been redone. It should now very obvious when an enemy is inflicted by Corroding, Burning. Frozen, Disabled or Radioactive status effects.
Your ship also now gains a motion blur effect while invulnerable during dodges, so you can clearly see when you can and cannot take damage. This can be disabled in Graphics settings if you dislike it.
Hornet Ship Design by Qryptiq (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=145)
Nebulas now heavily impact enemy aggro and targeting range. Sensor arrows only show direction. They no longer display enemy count or range, so you’ll need to hunt in the dark.
Large obstructions will no longer spawn inside nebulas as they added more frustration than fun.
All the music that plays during Species-XI fights has now been replaced by a custom soundtrack created by Eva and Simon Patterson. This will show up more prominently in Sector 4 but if you're infecting waypoints and fighting invaders early expect to hear some new music.
Many weapons have had range increases to compete with the improved drones. Most notably, the Railgun now hits at truly long range. Full details are in the patch notes below.
There are plenty more smaller changes listed below. Species-XI Beacons and Maggot Drone Bays have been added to global loot tables, and ESA will now explain debris debuffs the first time you encounter them. More to follow. Enjoy!
• Species-XI now have their own soundtrack by Eva Patterson and Simon Patterson.
• Broodnests will now spawn at random intervals in all sectors.
• Traders now have their own music by Eva Patterson and Simon Patterson.
• Death summary now tells you where the damage that destroyed you came from.
• New Species-XI Beacon special weapon added.
• New Maggot Drone Bay auto special weapon added.
• Added first-encounter dialog for hazardous debris explaining debuffs.
• Nebula encounters no longer show distance or enemy counts on sensor arrows.
• Nebula fog now limits enemy detection range and weapon targeting.
• Nebula encounters no longer spawn with obstructions.
• Azure Ion Thruster dodge increased from 8 to 10.
• Positron Shield recharge rate increased from 135 to 175.
• Lightning Orb Launcher damage increased from 22.5 to 30.
• Frozen Orb Launcher velocity increased from 4 to 5s.
• Railgun range increased from 252m to 498m.
• Proton Torpedo velocity doubled from 80 m/s to 160 m/s.
• Drone formation/orbit weapon range reduced from 400m to 300m.
• Heat Ray, Skeran Laser, Freeze Ray range increased from 190m to 210m.
• Corrosion Beam, Leech Ray range increased from 200m to 220m.
• Spiral Laser range increased from 210m to 230m.
• Tesla Coil range increased from 175m to 195m.
• Cryo Lance, Thermal Lance range increased from 250m to 270m.
• Stalker explosion radius increased from 40m to 60m.
• Javelin explosion radius increased from 30m to 50m.
• Debuff effects on ships are now clearly visible and should be distinguishable in combat.
• Ships now display a directional motion blur effect while dodging.
• Added a Dodge Blur toggle in Graphics settings if you don't like the new effect.
• Background nebulas are now randomized with some new designs added.
• New full-screen blur effect when pausing or being destroyed.
• Scroll views can now be scrolled with the right stick on controllers.
• Sliders can now be adjusted with the right stick on controllers.
• Loading screen now displays an animated hexagon grid background with ripple effects.
• Loading screen now transitions using hexagon grid animation.
• Gateway loading screens now show an animated energy tunnel effect.
• Sliders now respond to how far the controller stick is pushed for faster movement.
• Debuff crack lines on ships now glow steadily instead of flashing.
• Drones are now omitted from the black outline shader applied to other ships.
• Improved combat performance with tesla weapons.
• Reduced memory usage during sustained tesla activation.
• Ships no longer perform unnecessary calculations to avoid overlapping.
• Massively reduced number of objects and components instantiated when spawning ships.
• Players can no longer rescue the Assembler before getting the mission.
• Schematics now correctly retain their chosen appearance after modification.
• Modifier keys like Shift no longer trigger controller navigation mode.
• Fixed items flickering in storage when dragged to cargo.
• Fixed a tutorial prompt that briefly flashed during the aiming step with twin stick controls.
• Fixed an error when pressing backspace in text input fields.
• Fixed an error when a black hole scores a critical hit after its parent ship is destroyed.
• Interacting with the assembler during a modifier transfer animation no longer errors.
• Fixed a rare error when a ship with all body parts broken is destroyed.
• Fixed an old error caused by UI layout rebuilds when clearing item containers.
• Fixed some controller navigation issues in ship design.
• Beam weapons no longer reset the shield hit effect every tick.
• Shield impacts from sustained fire now hold at a natural spread.
This update is here a little earlier than planned. Once the performance gains started stacking up and the visual upgrades came together, it felt wrong to delay it though.
They’ve been on the roadmap for a long time and you'll now occasionally encounter them while exploring. They’re not common, but when you do find one, visibility drops hard hopefully giving a very different feel to combat. It may be tweaked in future updates but I want to see what you guys think first.
I’ve upgraded the bloom system with proper tonemapping. Glows now keep their colour instead of blowing out into flat white. At the same time, Gateways have been reworked with proper portal shaders and new entry animations.
This ended up being a much bigger visual improvement than expected. In hindsight, I should have done it sooner but it's here now!
The overall game brightness has been increased slightly. If you dislike this there's now a Brightness slider in the settings. Background Darkness is still adjustable separately under Accessibility.
To keep ships readable against brighter environments, they now have a subtle black shadow.
Fox-2 Ship Design by Yo (https://star-vortex.com/ships.php?view=152)
This update includes a major performance pass across the entire game.
Large fights with heavy projectile and drone counts should feel noticeably smoother. Drone weapon pools are now preloaded before combat, so you won’t get that initial stutter when a swarm fires for the first time.
A lot of invisible per-frame allocations have been removed from targeting, clean-up, and patrol systems. That means fewer garbage collection spikes and fewer random hitches.
Steam Deck performance in particular should now feel much more stable.
Work on Sector 4 continues behind the scenes. You'll start seeing new Species-XI enemies appearing in the next update, and boss development for this phase is about to begin.
Full details are listed below. Enjoy!
• Some encounters are now shrouded in thick nebula fog, limiting visibility.
• Smaller factions in sectors now have a minimum number of spawns.
• Increased cooldown on Phantom Demon's invulnerability from 5s to 10s.
• New animated effects for gateway and sector portals.
• Added brightness slider to graphics category in settings.
• Improved bloom with smoother, more saturated highlights using Neutral tone mapping.
• Added Split Toning option under Graphics for a subtle cinematic color grade.
• Added Film Grain setting under Graphics for a subtle cinematic texture overlay.
• Increased the default brightness of background artwork by 15%.
• Ships now have a small shadow around them to improve visibility.
• Added button to ship design that re-opens the tutorial if you missed it.
• Removed normal maps for improved performance, as visual impact was minor.
• Improved drone targeting performance, especially with multiple drone bays.
• Reduced drone CPU overhead per frame.
• Eliminated FPS drop when drones first enter combat.
• Reduced per-shot overhead for all projectile weapons.
• Improved performance for multi-shot weapons (e.g. Scatter Gun).
• Faster projectile clean-up when projectiles expire or hit targets.
• Reduced memory allocations from frequently running clean-up checks.
• Improved generation speed for sectors.
• Multiple improvements to player list loading when there are multiple saves.
• Fixed excessive garbage collection in AI controller during battles.
• Updated pop-up tutorial about linking slots with correct UI artwork.
• Fixed bindings not correctly displaying in ship design for keyboards.
• Fixed bug where Gunner upgrades were not correctly applied to missile weapons.
• Fixed an error when a black hole dealt damage after its parent ship was destroyed.
• Fixed key bindings not displaying when the ship designer first opens.
• Fixed bug where some templates would display as level 999.
• Fixed an error when using older beacons to summon friendly ships.
• Fixed bug where enemy cooldowns were being incorrectly reduced.
Nothing massive this time, but this build includes some visual upgrades, meaningful performance improvements, and a handful of quality of life features.
A new spinal weapon has entered the loot tables: the Thermal Lance.
It functions similarly to the Cryo Lance, but deals Thermal damage instead. Like all spinal weapons, it can be equipped with a fixed firing direction.
The navigation panel now features a proper territory shader. Factions are clearly highlighted, and debris types are displayed separately around encounters that include them. This should make the map easier to read and help you understand what you’re flying into.
Faction territories are visible even before you reveal specific areas, so you can still plan your route.
Shield visuals have been completely reworked. The new shaders better reflect hit locations, animate in more dynamic ways, and gradually turn red as shield power drops, giving you an earlier visual warning in combat. Overall, shield feedback should now feel clearer and more responsive.
Arriving friendly ships now receive a temporary blue outline on arrival, making them much easier to identify during busy encounters.
Ships now physically show where they’ve been hit. Hull damage appears directly on the surface and glows based on the damage type that caused it, layering on top of parts already breaking away long before the ship is fully torn apart. Combat should now feel more destructive.
Several long requested features have been added to the ship designer. You can now repeatedly click the same area to cycle down through overlapping parts, press Ctrl + A to quickly select everything, and use the new copy and paste functions.
Alongside these changes are significant performance improvements and a large number of bug fixes. Full details are listed below. Enjoy!
• Added new spinal weapon, Thermal Lance.
• Ion thruster dodge factor increased from 140 to 180m/s.
• Encounter rewards from invasions are now higher rarity.
• Phase shift, Shield Ward and Disabled status effects now block hull regeneration.
• Species-XI ships no longer Phase Shift for longer than 5s with a 12s cooldown.
• Friendly ships now get a blue outline on arrival, which can be disabled in settings.
• Debris and faction territory are now rendered more nicely in navigation.
• New shield artwork and shaders for all external shields.
• Shield color now slowly shifts to red as it gets weaker.
• Ships now get 33% transparency when dodging and are immune to damage.
• Ship now shows damage temporarily as a visual effect when taking hull damage.
• Clouds now appear volumetric under lighting instead of flat.
• Clicking an already selected part in the ship designer now selects the part under it.
• Ctrl + A now selects all parts in the ship designer when using a keyboard.
• Added copy and paste buttons to the ship designer.
• Ctrl + C and V can now be used to copy and paste in the ship designer.
• Tweaked settings on bloom slightly for cleaner glows.
• Reduced the size of ship explosions slightly.
• Piercing projectiles now cut ships in half like lasers.
• Vastly improved the performance of dodging and temporal drive after images.
• Object pool returns are now instant instead of scanning the entire pool.
• Death surge effects use a shared lookup table instead of rebuilding one per kill.
• Projectile hits resolve with one component lookup instead of three.
• Seeking missiles reuse already-found targets instead of re-searching each candidate.
• Explosions reuse cached physics data instead of re-fetching per object in blast radius.
• Spawned ships notify the spawner on death instead of checking every frame.
• Fixed snake enemies moving far more rigidly than intended.
• Dragging UI sliders in ship design no longer deselects parts.
• Renamed Caustic Laser to Corrosion Beam.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when rapidly clicking in the ship select dialog.
• Fixed RenderTexture errors on Linux multi-monitor setups.
• Fixed tiny Inferno Cannon item image.
• Fixed two bugs that allowed Sector Keystones to be placed in storage.
This update took a bit of an unexpected turn. While working on the new spinal weapons for Sector 4, it became obvious that ship explosions just weren’t as satisfying as they should be. That’s now been fixed.
Previously, ship destruction simply ejected parts from a central point, added a few smoke trails, and played an explosion animation.
The new system pushes parts outward from the actual impact point, or along the beam path in the case of lasers. Parts intersecting a laser are now sliced in half. Explosions also feature fractal glowing cracks at the blast point, gradual burn effects, and glowing particles.
The result is significantly more satisfying enemy destruction, I hope.
Two new Twitch voting options have been added: CRT Mode and Pixel Art Mode.
These aren’t meant to be serious gameplay modes. They exist purely so viewers can torment their favourite (or least favourite) streamers.
Sector 4 will introduce the heavily requested spinal weapons. These are large, fixed-mount weapons that don’t rotate and hit extremely hard.
For now, I’ve added the Cryo Lance and Howitzer. Although Sector 4 isn’t accessible yet, these weapons are part of the global loot table, so you may come across them if you’re lucky.
Spinal weapons generate significant recoil when mounted on smaller ships, and their firing angle can be manually adjusted when equipped. Both pierce through enemies with the Howitzer also causing large explosions with each impact.
• Encounter rewards are now fully random rather than seed-based, preventing abuse.
• Drone aiming has been improved, so Roach and Hornet drones should miss less.
• Fixed several bugs affecting Beacon weapons.
Full details below. Enjoy.
• Destroyed ships now explode realistically with some parts clustering together.
• Added sparks, glow, fractures and charring to ship parts as they explode.
• Lasers now visually cut ships in half when they destroy ships.
• Added support for piercing lasers that hit through multiple targets.
• Howitzer spinal weapon can now drop from the global loot table.
• Cryo Lance spinal weapon can now drop from the global loot table.
• Added a new developer setting and Twitch vote for old school CRT mode.
• Added a new developer setting and Twitch vote for old school pixel art mode.
• Beacon ships now scale damage and toughness more with increased level.
• Beacons that are cancelled early now only take a partial cooldown.
• Increased range of drones from 300m to 400m.
• Inferno cannon projectiles no longer explode before impact.
• Encounter reward type/rarity remains seed-based, but items are now random.
• New game+ pop-up now mentions that the choice cannot be reversed.
• Fixed bug where the player's laser weapons would not hit enemy drones.
• Fixed bug where beacon ships would not jump away at the end of their duration.
• Fixed bug where low-level beacons had significantly lower duration than intended.
• Fixed bug where friendly drones would miss with weapons on purpose.
• Fixed issue with loading v0.6.07 saves when they contained old items.
• Fixed some bugs with credit animations setting the value incorrectly.
• Fixed bug where Novus Prime, Asgard and Eden were granting XP on arrival.
• Fixed null reference in CameraController.UpdateCameraPosition().
• Fixed null reference in AssemblerPanel.ShowIncreaseLevel().
• Dust layer no longer renders on top of ships.
• Fixed bug when using drones in Sandbox with enemies set to inactive.
Star Vortex is currently 15% off for the next two weeks.
New Game+ has also landed, so you can keep progressing and playing indefinitely once you reach the current end of content.
Development on Sector 4 is underway. I’m currently working on Spinal Weapons: extra-large fixed-mount weapons used by certain enemies and sold by the Admiral’s flagship in Sector 4. They don’t rotate, but you can manually set their firing angle, with significant recoil on smaller ships.
The Howitzer shown above combines piercing and explosive projectiles, making it especially effective against large groups once you line it up.
More news to come. Enjoy!
This is a quick hotfix for some recent bugs. The experience bars have been displaying incorrectly above level 80 since a couple of updates ago. They should now always show correct numbers as it was using an old equation.
It jumps two versions because the brief v0.6.15 update dropped some players levels incorrectly but that has now been resolved.
Also, there is a fix for players with lots and lots of weapons being unable to activate them.
• Reduced cooldown of Impact/Toxic/Blast Wave/Frost Nova pulses from 8 to 5 seconds.
• Leech Particles and Particle Quality are now two separate settings.
• Reduced the number of Leech Particles per enemy at higher particle settings.
• Fixed display of experience bars above level 80.
• Fixed bug where weapons above slot 8 could not be activated.
This has been requested before, and I was hesitant to add a New Game+ mode because it was never part of my original end-game plan.
It turns out my assumption that players would finish Sector 3 and simply wait for more content was… optimistic. Instead, many of you kept repeating Sector 3, grinding slowly until you got bored.
So, credit goes to LegoMaster on Discord for finally convincing me.
When you reach the end of Sector 3, you can now start New Game+. This resets the story back to the beginning while keeping your ship, items and upgrades. Enemy levels increase, and you can repeat New Game+ as many times as you like, all the way to level 100.
I’m not sure whether New Game+ will be part of the final end-game, but for now it should give those of you who want to keep playing something meaningful to do.
I’ve also taken another pass at improving the graphics, as detailed in the patch notes. Bloom has been adjusted, contrast and saturation have been increased, and subtle lens flares have been added to enhance the lighting. If lens flares aren’t your thing, they can be disabled in the settings. All sprites now also use normal maps, which should give the lighting a bit more depth and polish.
There’s no Sector 4 progress report, as New Game+ took the bulk of my time. I’m back on Sector 4 work now though, and writing new story dialog tonight.
• New Game+ is now available at the end of the current content.
• Adjusted XP from missions and encounters so they decrease at higher levels.
• Added normal maps to sprites so they react better to lighting.
• Added lens flares to brighter lights and a graphics setting to disable them.
• Adjusted bloom, saturation and contrast settings for a darker, more vibrant display.
• Added a darker cloud layer to improve contrast and movement.
• Sped up text animations on menus to double their old speed.
• Missile launcher DPS is now calculated from recharge instead of reload time.
• Auto untarget out of range is now auto untarget off-screen.
• Auto target closest will now target the nearest on-screen enemy to your old target.
• Auto target closest now takes priority over auto target aggressor.
• Auto target closest now only targets enemies on-screen.
• Auto target aggressor is now disabled by default.
• Auto un-target off-screen is now enabled by default.
• Further fix for null references in GameShip.CountItem().
• Fixed view frustum error when a ship hyperdrive jumps out during combat.
• Fixed color of corrosive bubbles in explosions to match debris.
• Fixed auto target closest being able to select invisible enemies.
• Bastion is now correctly marked as a Pantheon encounter.
Quick interruption to your regularly scheduled updates. This one’s mainly for streamers, but it’s been requested more than once and was easy to implement.
You can now enable Twitch Integration from the Advanced Settings. Turn it on and you’ll unlock a new Twitch tab where you can configure live viewer voting.
Drop in your Twitch channel name and your chat can influence your run in real time by voting with #1, #2, etc. Yes, both good and bad things can happen.
Every option is fully configurable, including disabling the more evil choices.
There are also a few smaller fixes and tweaks in this update. A new physics accuracy setting has been added too. Higher settings can smooth things out on high-end systems, while dropping to 30Hz may help performance on lower-end machines.
Good luck to those who choose to try out the new twitch votes. Enjoy!
• Added Twitch integration in settings, viewers can now decide your fate.
• Adjusted XP requirements from levels 75+ to follow a steeper progression curve.
• Updated German translations.
• Adjusted default physics update rate from 50hz to 60hz.
• Added new physics update rate setting with 30hz, 60hz and 120hz options.
• Fixed bug with some modifiers being listed as valid when they were not.
• Fixed null reference in GameShip.CountItem() from Consumables displays on the HUD.
• Fixed spelling mistake in slot linking.
• Corrected waypoint names so they correctly follow the Greek alphabet.
Another update. This one includes a load of more requested features and some pretty critical bug fixes. If there are any issues, let me know and I’ll hotfix them over the weekend.
If you like your automated weapons and drones, this one is for you. They now show up on the ship bar like activatable weapons. You can’t actually activate them yourself, but they show when they’re activating, when they’re on cooldown, and how many of your drones are currently deployed. I’ve drawn a load of new icons for them as well!
If you’re confused about what modifiers can go on an item, you can now click the little question mark next to its name when replacing modifiers in the Assembler. This will bring up a new window that lists every possible modifier that can be transferred.
In addition to this, Engineer Relios will now give you a bit more explanation about how things work the first time you open each of the sections in the Assembler. Hopefully this will help new players better understand how it all works.
You’ll now find slightly fewer traders in each sector. However, instead of selling a mix of item rarities, they now sell only rare items.
In Skirmish and Warzone encounters, if you somehow attract the aggro of lots of enemies at once, you can now run away and they will give up the chase after a while. This should make these encounters a bit more forgiving if you’re getting overwhelmed.
This does not apply to Species-XI invasions, Intercepts, Rescues, Elite encounters, or boss fights.
I’m aware that Sector Keystones had vanished from the final sector gateways. This was an error on my part caused by renaming the final sector to ‘Sector 4 - Phase 1’, as the keystones were mapped by name. This issue should now be resolved in all existing saves.
Eganos, one of our Discord users, has been hard at work updating the German translations. If that’s your language, you should now find the game easier to understand.
Work on Sector 4 and other features continues behind the scenes. Some screenshots are shown below!
Finally, I’ve updated the roadmap to include everything I’ve previously mentioned in passing, along with every concrete plan I’ve shared for the game before we leave Early Access.
You can view the roadmap in full either in-game or on our Discord. As it’s becoming clear that the content rollout is going to take some time, I’ve prioritized the addition of New Game+. This will appear as a popup at the end of the current content and will allow you to restart the story from Sector 1 with everything at a higher level. This should let players continue progressing without running out of challenging enemies.
I expect New Game+ to arrive in the next update, so hopefully that won’t be too far away. Enjoy!
• Added a new roadmap with more details on past updates and plans for Early Access.
• Auto Special weapons now display on the ship bar, showing charges and cooldowns.
• Players can now view a list of valid modifiers in the Assembler.
• Enemies in Skirmish and Warzone encounters now abandon the chase if you flee too far away.
• Slightly reduced frequency of trader encounters across all sectors.
• Traders now only stock rare items rather than a mix of rare and different.
• Spiral Laser damage increased by 10%.
• Added new tutorial popups for Infected Seeds and Waypoints.
• Added some dialog from Engineer Relios explaining the Assembler a bit more.
• Added text animations throughout the game as text loads in.
• Added a short delay to dismissing dialog popups to avoid missing them by mistake.
• German translations updated.
• Fixed Sector Keystones not appearing in the final sector gateway.
• Physics bodies now correctly interpolate for smoother movement at higher frame rates.
• Save code now attempts a manual delete and write operation if the replacement fails.
• UI canvases now disable during scene transitions to avoid GridLayout errors.
• Removed redundant placeholder text from some input elements in ship design.
• Fixed an issue where the hyperdrive jump button in navigation would stop working.
• Global modifier list now displays in a more logical order.
• Fixed inconsistencies with some salvage and damage type names from different sources.
• Drones no longer spawn from the initial ship during the tutorial cutscene.
• Drones now correctly attribute aggro to their parent ship.
• Fixed patch notes and credits panels opening at incorrect scroll positions.
• Newly purchased items can now be dragged directly into occupied equipment slots.
• Stackable items can now be purchased even if cargo space is full.
This is a quick hotfix for some reported issues with the last update. Mainly that some vipers and some Shadow faction ships were becoming immune to damage.
• Weapon types should now drop more evenly spread without a heavy favour for primary weapons.
• All weapon types can now drop at any level as old requirements have been removed.
• Fixed bug where some ships in attached squadrons would get stuck as immune to damage.
• Fixed bug where targets immune to damage would not be automatically untargeted.
• Fixed various floating-point errors around the game when comparing against zero.
• Fixed issue where tractor beams would have more power on lower framerates.
Quick update based on recent player feedback. Work on Sector 4 (Phase 1) is ongoing, with a progress update below.
Originally, boosting disabled weapons while you were immune to damage. That made sense as it stopped you from abusing the mechanic. Since then, heat generation was added to boosting which adds a limit to how long it can be used.
Because of that, weapon disabling and freezing of consumable cooldowns have been removed.
This should make combat feel nicer, especially for drones and automated weapons, which no longer de-activate when you boost around enemies.
Steam Community Post: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2098160/discussions/0/685241653181707684/
Yes, both.
Enemy AI using lasers will now often miss their initial shot, even if you are flying directly away from them or stationary. This makes laser fire easier to read and dodge, which is especially important on higher difficulties.
Conversely, friendly AI (drones, turrets, automatic weapons, and beacon ships) has become more accurate. They now account for target acceleration when leading projectile shots, resulting in more reliable hits.
This one is straight from the Steam Community: the Carrier class has been renamed to Commander, and all applicable upgrades now also apply to summoned Beacon ships.
Steam Community Post: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2098160/discussions/0/685240979008013682/
The loot table slightly favours weapons you already have equipped. For example, if you are using Skeran Lasers, you are more likely to find additional Skeran Lasers. This system works well for weapons, but it has been disabled for passives. Since passives are unique, repeatedly finding the same ones serves no purpose and was annoying me during some of my balance tests.
This update focuses heavily on balance. I've played through most of the early game and adjusted values to smooth it out. I'm still a little worried it may be too easy overall, but I want to let the changes settle before gathering feedback.
A major item change is a reduction to resistors across the board. Players were reaching maximum resistances too easily, so the values have been pulled back to better align with the effective hull provided by Armor Plating, Bio Network and Hull Reinforcement.
These reductions are not retroactively applied. Be warned, if you upgrade an existing resistor, you may notice its values decrease instead of increase.
Sector 4 will be released in three phases, matching how you will play through it. Each phase ends with charging the weapon Echo is building, and enemies will increase in strength with each phase.
Phase 1 will cover levels 45 to 50 and will release as soon as all content and story elements are complete.
Sector 4 also features a unique layout with a partial ring structures expanding outward from Earth itself.
I will continue sharing progress shots alongside future updates I'm hoping it'll be done in the coming months, but getting it right is more important than rushing it.
There are 4 days left on the 15% discount, so if you know anyone who's on the fence, now's the time. Hope you're all enjoying the holidays and having fun!
• Carrier class renamed to Commander and now also improves Beacons.
• Boost Invulnerability no longer disables weapons.
• Laser enemies now miss on their initial aim and are more thrown off by dodging.
• Passives no longer benefit from the equipped item drop chance bonus.
• Increased all enemy hull/shields by +15% across the game.
• Increased all enemy damage by +10% across the game.
• Reduced Behemoth Plasma Gun damage by -25%.
• Increased hull slider to match shields for all difficulties above normal.
• Increased the amount of item salvage you get from increasing difficulty.
• Maximum slider values in custom difficulty increased from 500% to 700%.
• Increased damage of Hunter (Skeran Elite) by +25%.
• Increased damage of Matriarch (Skeran Elite) by +25%.
• Reduced damage of Orchid (Skeran Elite) by -33%.
• Increased Behemoth (Skeran Boss) shields by +40%.
• Increased Behemoth (Skeran Boss) hull by +25%.
• Different passives are now guaranteed to have 1 global modifier.
• Rare passives are now guaranteed to have 2 global modifiers.
• Primary weapon lasers no longer increase DPS when rapidly moved between targets.
• Reduced resistance of all resistors to bring them in line with other passives.
• Reduced resistance of the Infinity Stones legendary resistor significantly.
• Damage reflection now reflects damage before armor and resistance calculations.
• Radar icons now scale with the size of the ships they represent.
• New developer setting added for immutable items when testing crafting.
• Equipped items are now excluded from selection when choosing items to destroy.
• Item selection in Assembler now only includes the current page of storage.
• Turn speed modifier now specifies that it applies to projectiles.
• Speed modifier now specifies that it applies to pulses.
• Velocity modifier now specifies that it applies to weapons.
• Duration modifier now specifies that it applies to temporary effects.
• Improved modifier tooltips for 'On Crit' to explain stack size does not increase.
• Drones and Auto Launchers now calculate enemy acceleration when aiming.
• Displacement will no longer remove temporary effects from specials.
• Player can no longer be destroyed after a boss encounter is complete.
• Fixed floating point rounding errors in modifier tooltips.
• Unequipped items from slot removal are now ejected if cargo is full.
• Sandbox difficulties now correctly reflect those in the actual game.
• Enemy lasers no longer flicker on and off when you're at the edge of range.
• Fixed spacing of some asteroid clusters overlapping due to bigger asteroids.
• Fixed issue where drones would not correctly retarget when target was destroyed.
• Fixed issue where some AI would stop firing at Vipers.
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Star Vortex, 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 Star Vortex 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.