I’d like to thank everyone who reported bugs and made suggestions since the last content update. Your feedback is making a real difference.
Many fixes and adjustments have been made to Stellar Tactics in the past month since the release of the last major content patch. A cumulative list can be found below and pinned to the general forums Patch Notes
This update adds the Halamis faction merchant and the underlying code and systems for faction merchants in general. You can find the merchant near Zabin Morbain in the Halamis Facility Staging area. Faction merchants offer faction equipment and unique armor sets for tokens earned by completing missions throughout the universe. Faction armor is high quality armor and as such requires a good deal of effort to generate enough tokens to outfit your entire team. The Abandoned Research Facility is a great place to run missions and gain faction and tokens to outfit your crew. I’ll be adding more equipment and faction armor to the faction merchants across the universe during Alpha. As the story evolves, you may or may not want to be seen wearing the armor of certain factions around the known universe.
- Items are expensive and quite powerful. The merchant evaluates your current team makeup and presents you with armor tailored for your current level. Check in regularly as your team progresses for better armor with higher AC and stat modifiers.
- Stat bonuses on the armor are set to your team’s current level at the time of purchase. I’ll eventually add armor set bonuses that provide special effects if you are wearing an entire matching set of the current armor type. Every few levels you should go back and see if you can improve your equipment.
- Even when you outgrow your faction armor set, it has high value at regular merchants and can be sold for a nice profit. You may choose to purchase faction items to use your tokens and convert faction items to credits. When crafting goes in, faction armor can also be disassembled for high quality components.
The merchant sells:
- Halamis Quantum Trans-locator – Tired of trudging back through the facility or just weighed down by loot? Buy a Quantum Trans-locator from your friendly Halamis merchant! The Halamis Quantum Trans-locator is attuned to the staging area of the abandoned Halamis Research Facility and will relocate your entire team in the blink of an eye! You only need one…
- Halamis Faction Armor – Buy the entire set and get a shiny new look! The merchant knows what you need and the armor offered scales to your level, offering the finest protection available – at least from Halamis!
A note from Zabin Morbain regarding “quantum trans-locators” – “While the Halamis trans-locator is a prototype version and the first trans-locator ever developed in the known universe, future versions are likely to allow you trans-locate yourself back to your ship. I know for a fact that the Scientists at Halamis Lab’s are already hard at work developing a two-way trans-locator. This amazing device will let you return to the original location where the trans-locator was last initialized. Certainly early adopters will pay an exorbitant price for this new device, so save up your faction tokens. Your exploration of the Halamis Research Facility is facilitating incredible discoveries in the areas of energy harmonics, quantum field theory and of course helping to keep the universe a safer place.”
ADDED: Halamis faction merchant. You can find the merchant near Zabin Morbain in the Halamis Facility Staging area.
FIXED: A rare bug that was causing one enemy type to spawn incorrectly in the facility.
FIXED: Duplicate enemy groups in one of the facility locations
FIXED: Ammo is once again spawning as loot on the Dauntless.
ADDED: Add a ui component that displays your current faction token totals. Open any of the information UI’s and rollover the available credits area of the screen. Halamis is the only faction with missions that reward faction tokens at this time.
UPDATED: Enemies with rocket launchers will now swap weapons if a combatant is too close instead of blowing themselves and their target up.
FIXED: Enemies with missile launchers that swap weapons will now correctly calculate damage from their newly equipped weapon.
ADJUSTED: Increased the value of equipment, both on vendors and as loot. Items that have already been looted have a lower value than items you will loot going forward. The cost of buying equipment from vendors is slightly higher than it was before.
ADJUSTED: The cost of standard ammo has been reduced.
ADJUSTED: The cost of heavy weapon ammo has been reduced significantly
ADDED: 3 new locations for the mission generator. If you find a place where you get stuck, or an enemy gets stuck, please do post a bug report. I’ll also need your log file as described in the pinned topic in the bug forums to get it fixed.
ADDED: Added a label to indicate that team members can be selected by pressing F1-F4
UPDATED: A number of adjustments to enemy AI that make them more intelligent.
- Ranged enemies will attempt to keep their distance, backing away from melee attackers in most cases
- Blocking adjusted – enemies now have a number of activities including communicating with team members, healing, reloading and running for cover when they are blocked.
- AI are less likely to waste AP during movement and combat
- AI are less likely to bunch up leaving them open to AE grenade attacks
- AI environment evaluation algorithms optimized. The time it takes for an AI to act once it is their turn is significantly reduced.
UPDATED: Cleanup of enemy healing code
UPDATED: Various tweaks to animations and combat animation speed
UPDATED: If a grenade or medkit are activated, ending a team members turn automatically disables the active state.
UPDATED: Updated default space art for planetary bodies, suns and nebulae. This improves the default space visuals for the game. If you have a GPU with 2GB V-Ram you can, as always, check the HiRes Space option in the video options panel for ultra high resolution skyboxes and object materials.
UPDATED: Smoke and gas grenades clouds are much more visible in the environment.
UPDATED: A few small adjustments that may resolve ranged enemies occasionally firing through walls/corners.
UPDATED: Turn order indicator now removes enemies and KO’d team members immediately
UPDATED: When in single movement mode, you can now move multiple team members simultaneously while out of combat. Grouped movement functions the same as it always has.
UPDATED: When in single movement mode, the camera no longer centers on team members when you click them. While in combat and grouped movement, the camera functions as it always has.
UPDATED: When receiving faction tokens, a message is now displayed that tells you “You gain “faction name” Faction Tokens: +XX for a total of XX tokens. Will help keep track of how many tokens you have until the UI for this has been added.
UPDATE: Updated combat pain animations for smoother animation blending
UPDATED: Shield and armor wear disabled until crafting and repair go in
UPDATED: Vendors carry more ammo.
UPDATED: Balanced ammo drops between various ammo types – Dauntless ammo drops still restricted.
UPDATED: Increased loot drops in general.
UPDATED: Increased grenade drop rate.
UPDATED: Forcing the door to Phestus open for now until I can resolve a mission error where the open state is not being saved.
UPDATED: Rollover info delay removed in vendor ui
UPDATED: Med-Kits are no longer a persistent toggle. You will need to click the icon every time you want to use a med kit. If you click the icon and do not use the med-kit, you will need to click it again to disable the med-kit. Using a med kit automatically resets the state.
UPDATED: Combat movement path breadcrumb is now updated every frame, no delay.
UPDATED: Further adjustments to first aid and hacking experience gain.
UPDATED: The ABANDON mission button will now completely clear missions. If you ever find more than one mission from Zabin in the active mission list, just abandon all missions and speak with Zabin again. This will clear any progression issues. It’s unlikely with the fix above that you will be able to get more than one mission in the future.
UPDATED: Removed auto-recovery for team members that have fallen through the world. Recovery can be accomplished manually by holding the F1-F4 key (depending on the team member you want to recover) for six seconds and releasing it
UPDATED: Spawn points have all been checked and adjusted as needed in the “Facility” map set.
FIXED: If auto-save was enabled and you immediately went into combat when transitioning between locations, save games were no longer possible after combat ended. The only solution was to end the game task. Thanks for reporting this chookahead!
FIXED: The camera is now correctly reset when loading games that were saved while in single movement mode.
FIXED: In the Aznari Ruins, Dr. Rhamus will no longer speak with you until Dr. Jensen gives you a mission.
FIXED: Fixed a few problems on the bridge when fighting Dr. Rhamus. The Dr. is less likely to gain first attack and do nothing when a specific set of circumstances takes place.
FIXED: Fixed a long standing bug that was setting non-hostile NPC’s weapons invisible.
FIXED: If the last enemy combatant dies of a DOT (Bleeding or Poisoned), the default tool bars are restored correctly when combat ends
FIXED: A possible fix for phage pyros – reduced particles in fireball effect
FIXED: More adjustments to movement and enemy distance – melee are less likely to get right up in your face
FIXED: Camera once again centers on the currently selected team member in combat and out
FIXED: Blocked movement in one of the facility locations
FIXED: When entering combat, enemies no longer fade out and then fade back in. LOS for enemy visibility remains the same.
FIXED: Fixed a number of areas where it was possible to get stuck in the newly added facility locations.
FIXED: A possible fix to prevent rare lockups on some AMD CPU’s
FIXED: CTH cursor was incorrectly displaying bonuses to hit on various body parts – including the head.
FIXED: HP when creating team members and when in game are exactly the same now.
FIXED: HP should no longer vary when equipping/un-equipping armor and weapons unless those items have stat modifiers
FIXED: Energy weapon projectiles are less likely to stay visible after impact
FIXED: Scaver Carnor now correctly named
FIXED: When looting grenades and med-kits that are currently selected, the number of items is updated in the UI
FIXED: Depleted asteroids now re-spawn correctly after 1 hour of game time and no longer take only one mining beam pulse to be destroyed.
FIXED: Enemies can only have a maximum of 1 stun grenade each
FIXED: Fixed an error with ammo mods that was keeping some modded weapons from gaining addition ammo
FIXED: Phage psionics no longer do double damage and/or damage and crit with fireballs.
FIXED: Ranged enemies no longer inflict double damage
FIXED: A very rare edge case where landing could generate incorrect landing location data
FIXED: Zabin no longer appears on the trade station after he gives you a mission to meet him on Achmedius VIII – unless he has a twin brother, which he doesn’t – so I don’t know how he could be at two places at once. Unless he has advanced teleportation technology – which he doesn’t…yet…
FIXED: A very rare edge case that was causing the exits to the procedural mission areas to disapear. If you are in a mission that is bugged, you can now exit.
FIXED: An error in an updated beam rifle model that was causing enemies to mis-fire.
FIXED: More navigation mesh fixes.
FIXED: Ammo is once again rewarded for mission completions
FIXED: Enemies will no longer fire multiple rockets in one attack (annoying!)
FIXED: A rare edge case where when walking to an enemy with a melee weapon from distance for an attack, could cause attacking character to lock up the game. If blocked, the team member will stop out of range as close as possible to the enemy and return control to the player.
FIXED: If you are self stunned, your turn will be ended automatically now
FIXED: You can now scroll the stash list with the mouse wheel
FIXED: Fixed enemy miss message to use the enemies name correctly
FIXED: Mission completion when turning in missions to Zabin should now function without error. For now you will get no ammo when turning in missions until I have more time to look into this.
FIXED: Shots should register as either a hit or a miss now 100% of the time. No more phantom shots.
FIXED: Grenade targeting was not functioning correctly – now fixed
FIXED: The AP movement indicators is now working again.
FIXED: Random crash related to mission rewards and ammo.
FIXED: A few more navigation mesh errors fixed
FIXED: Fixed a problem with Zabin where you could take a mission, click again and then click a third time and the mission would reset, granting rewards.
FIXED: If you have your cargo bay selected, you can now get rollover info on the vendor side of the UI.
FIXED: A couple of navigation mesh errors in the facility level set.
FIXED: You can no longer waste AP reloading a weapon that is already at max ammo capacity.
FIXED: Icons for perks above tier 1 were not being displayed
FIXED: Double clicking a med-kit in your inventory to add it to your stash no longer destroys the med-kit
FIXED: Broken combat queue.
FIXED: Clear enemy missions now correctly update the map to indicate that the final area is cleared.
FIXED: A message is no longer sent to the screen every time a clear enemy mission npc is defeated.
FIXED: Rifle pain animation
FIXED: Requirements for first aid progression relaxed
FIXED: Requirements for hacking progression relaxed
FIXED: It was possible to have more than one mission from Zabin if your inventory was full and mission rewards were rejected. Zabin will no longer allow you to speak with him if your inventory is full and cannot accept rewards.
FIXED: If no missions were present in the active mission display, junk data would be displayed.
FIXED: While you were away, your Mercs came back to get their missing hair on the Achmedius Trade Station.
FIXED: Combat skills for some weapons were not contributing to the total number of skill points required to level up.
FIXED: Non combat skills (FirstAid and Hacking) when leveled up were not contributing to the total number of skills required for global leveling. A team member needs to have a full orange experience bar and a total of 5 skills leveled (displayed by the small purple bar at the bottom of the orange “Next level” bar) up before they have enough points to level up.
FIXED: Skipping the Dauntless then exiting to the main menu and starting a new game that does not skip the Dauntless no longer results in starting in the Ruins.
FIXED: All areas of the trade station are now exposed by default. Hidden areas were creating confusion when trying to find the mercs.
FIXED: An edge case where team member portraits were not be displayed correctly in the ship stations UI.
FIXED: If stash was open when closing the inventory window, the next time a vendor was acctivated, rollover info was incorrect.
FIXED: Fixed an issue where doors in Halamis Ore could be locked even if you have completed missions and opened the doors.
FIXED: Heavy weapons now gain experience
FIXED: In some instances, specifically when in hand 2 hand combat mode, that characters idle animation was not being restored. This also caused a problem where the combat cursor would no longer be displayed when you roll over an enemy target.
FIXED: Lots of navigation mesh fixes in numerous areas for the “Facility” map set.
FIXED: When Steam overlay was active, input was being registered. The game should no longer register input when the Steam overlay is activated
FIXED: Activating the Steam overlay while loading a game should no longer crash the game. This was only happening on some systems.
FIXED: Rollover info in vendor inventory was showing incorrect information.
FIXED: “V” key was not toggling crouch/stand in combat.
FIXED: When mining in space a large halo is no longer displayed over the ship
FIXED: Mining now works even if a team member is not positioned in the weapons ship station. Mining only gains bonuses and grants experience from/to the team member in the weapons slot.
FIXED: A trade exploit was fixed on the Trade Station. For anyone who has not been to the trade station a vendor has been reset.
FIXED: If initially in space, the new portraits were bugged if you entered the character info or inventory screens. New portraits are now initialized regardless of where you are when you start the game with the new patch.
FIXED: Weapon wear is once again disabled – at least until crafting and repair are in the game.
FIXED: The endurance description was incorrectly noting that Endurance contributes to AC. I moved AC bonuses to the perk lines some time ago. The description is corrected.
FIXED: Displayed number skill values in character information gui were being obscured by the progress bars.
FIXED: The mini-gun carried by one of the merc’s you can recruit was bugged. You may need to discard it. On the trade station, in the merchant area, there is a vendor standing in the corner. He sells level 1 weapons. You can usually get a new mini-gun if you load and save a few times checking his inventory. Anyone who recruits this merc in the future should no longer have this problem. Let me know if there are still problems after replacing the minigun.