What's New

The big new feature this week is finishing the UI rework done with Parecek. It should be fully functional, but I appreciate any feedback or bug reports.

In addition to the UI, a bunch of small changes were added. Colliding with other subs, stations, and the seafloor now causes damage (depends on your sub's mass and the collision speed). AI subs now appropriately scan you for contraband, or to make pirating demands. World generation is significantly faster as well.

There's a new torpedo type, the Spyglass. This torpedo does a small amount of damage, but it's real purpose is as a sensor. While attached to the control wire the Spyglass acts as an additional sonar receiver, and can be used as a disposable scout to gather information on distant contacts from a safe range.

And one last feature that I think will be really handy for those who like minisubs (such as myself). When you lose a minisub in combat, you have the option to retrieve it. Parking close over the wreck will give you a "Retrieve" option. This will pull the minisub back into the hangar and repair it. This should make minisub combat a little more viable, I hope, and no longer require re-buying minisubs after every patrol mission.

Important Note: due to changing the format in which some information is saved, old saves will not be able to be loaded in 0.2.26

Patch Notes

• Initial release of the new UI, expect bugs and needed tweaks
• Added hotkeys for lower right panel modes.
• Fix tooltip colors.
• Tweak sonar display.
• Add missing AI behaviors around scanning
• Collision damage.
• Fix positioning of contacts list and notifications list
• Improved datum linking speed during world generation.
• Added new Spyglass sensor torpedo, available from Jameson Depot, Newhome, Bastion, and Northburg.
• Prevent auto-save immediately on world load.
• Fixes for weapon safety button styling.
• Fixes for autopilot button functionality and styling.
• Fixes for gun turrets showing over 100% reload progress
• Fix for datum id's not being unique during serialization.
• Minisub retrieval. 

What's Next

It's funny that I planned on fleshing out Hudson, and yet I've been mostly spending time on mechanics instead of the world. I'm not about to change that it seems. Next up I'm planning on reworking submarine design. Currently submarine stats are hard-coded by type, with the only customization being turrets, torpedoes, dive teams, and minisubs. I'm going to rework this to a module based system.

Each submarine will have several modules that define its behavior: engines, torpedo bays, turrets, dive chambers, etc. The amount and type of modules a submarine can have is limited by volume, with some modules limited by hull features (you can't put three turrets on a sub with only two turret positions, for example. Many of these modules will come in different variants as well, some engines will be quieter than others, for example.

I expect this to take a couple weeks, but time will tell.