Weekly Update: May 10, 2024
Author: justkevin,
published 4 months ago,
As promised last week, the first Kepler build was made available as an opt-in beta last Sunday. There have been two patches since then to fix potentially significant bugs, but at least [i]some[/i] players have made it to the game's end.
Here are the changes relative to Jupiter (the last opt-in beta):
Non-spoiler changes in Kepler:
[list]
[*] New side-quests
[*] 27 new anomalies
[*] Additional void regions
[*] Changes to existing missions
[*] Difficulty / skill roll modifiers now in 5% increments
[*] New alien
[*] Several changes to late game
[*] Player drones
[*] Ability to toggle mission goal tracking
[*] New music tracks
[*] Three new achievements
[*] New analytics tracking for various progress metrics, localization
[*] If anomaly image changes during anomaly, the last image will appear in the log
[*] New enemy weapon
[*] New ship modules
[*] New technologies
[*] New achievements
[*] Numerous balance changes
[*] Changes to fighter sounds, trails
[*] Changes to enemy AI
[*] NPCs now automatically aggro'd by attacks to their allies (unless also allied with aggressor)
[*] Refactor fighter drone logic
[*] Various performance optimizations
[*] Various UI fixes
[*] FPS limit option
[*] Priority mission identification
[*] Fixed transient objects, screen shake persisting after game load
[*] Added discovery sounds/tier labels
[*] Block players from interacting with [spoiler]cloaked ships[/spoiler]
[*] Fix several minor anomaly bugs reported by players
[*] Fix for potential soft-lock in late game
[*] Fix for null reference exception
[*] Added some missing gamepad UI indicators, controls
[/list]
Known Issues:
[list]
[*] Loading a game during a transition (such as a wormhole) can break the game camera
[*] Plasma range extender doesn't unlock
[*] Player drone behavior/balance needs some work
[/list]
Since Jupiter was never promoted to default, unless some critical bug appears, I hope to make Kepler the default build once enough players have finished it that I'm confident in the stability.
If you're about to start a playthrough, you may want to switch to Kepler, as it has the most content/improvements, although there may still be some undiscovered bugs. ([url=https://wx3.com/early-access-updates-and-save-games/]Opt-in instructions here[/url]).
Until next week!
- Kevin