Hello Spacers! "Void Fairies" have been one of the longest standing in-jokes in the Nebulous community basically since we entered Early Access. The meme below was posted in our discord all the way back in May 2022, illustrating the most frustrating thing about using beam destroyers. Despite the humor surrounding it, the beam aiming controller has gotten many a player's fleet wiped, myself included, and it's certainly not fun to experience. In this first update of 2024 Weapons Officer Gerald is finally getting some prescription-strength medication so he'll stop hallucinating, and everyone else is also getting some 800mg ibuprofen with all of the bug fixes and quality of life improvements. [h2]Beam PID Tuning[/h2] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38834260/ff45b1854126a37147ed64512cefbe2513c28eed.png[/img] The PID controller which is used to aim fixed weapons like the spinal beam has been completely re-tuned. No longer shall your Beam DDs crawl onto target at half their max turn speed only to then completely overshoot and whiff the first shot off into space. They'll also now be able to reliably maintain their beam on target when both the target and the destroyer are moving in opposite directions. This will greatly reduce the micro necessary to manage Beam DDs and make them much less frustrating to play. Do note that the tuning was done for a stock engine configuration, and lots of modifiers may decrease its reliability (though only slightly). [h2]Nameplate Optimizations[/h2] As we push the boundaries of ship counts in the development of the Conquest update it became clear that it was finally time to optimize the nameplate baking system. Instead of generating individual textures for each ship, the new system will combine all of the nameplates for all ships in a battle onto a single large texture and sample it as necessary. This vastly decreases loading times and memory consumption. In my test with 80 frigates this new system took the loading time from 1:30 down to only 18 seconds and cut texture memory consumption by 4.5 GB. The legacy nameplate system will remain in the game for use with mods that do not intend to port to the new system, so you may still have to sit at "Finishing Nameplates" for a while if you play with lots of mods. We'll be making a guide and resources available to our modding community to make the porting process as easy as possible. [h2]Hotkey Reassignment[/h2] As another side-effect of Conquest development, you can now reassign the hotkeys for your ships in the heat of battle using Left Ctrl + Number Key (rebindable in settings). For some reason people thought I was philosophically against this but no, it just never percolated to the top of the development queue. But if there was any time to do it, it was in a QoL-focused minor update. [h2]ARAD Seeker Changes[/h2] The Anti-Radiation seeker has been updated to perform more realistically. Previously these seekers would always prioritize jamming if it was detected, regardless of the relative power of all other signals present. The updated behavior measures jamming power against the power of other radar signals and will select targets based on that power level. This means jamming will no longer be guaranteed to pull missiles with ARAD seekers away from their target. The seekers were also reworked so they can check jamming sources against any validating seekers the missile has. [h2]Other QoL Changes & Bugfixes[/h2] And finally, this patch has dozens of other bugfixes and improvements including fixes to formation speeds, stopping distance calculations with damaged thrusters, ships wandering off their target on EVADE, dedicated server stalls, ships rolling oddly when translating directly up, new lock-target lines in the tactical view, and many more. See the full patch notes below. Happy new year, and we hope you enjoy! See you in the battlespace, - The NEBULOUS Team Changes/Features: - Optimized ship nameplate baking to group all names, numbers, and badges onto a single large texture cutting baking time down to a single frame. - Added blue dashed lines in tactical view showing active Lock Target orders from all friendly ships. - Dedicated servers with a different version from the client will no longer appear in the multiplayer game list. - Dedicated servers will now automatically return to the lobby after 2 minutes if the game is over and all players have been disconnected. - EA99 Active Decoys will no longer explode when making contact with their launching ship. - Decoy containers will no longer explode when making contact with their launching ship. - All mine variants will no longer explode if they touch an obstacle during their pushoff phase. - Passive decoys (chaff, flares) will now fly out to their target range and burst in 1 second instead of 4. - All point defense weapons now have "Critical" power demand priority (was "High"), placing them above all other weapons. - Position-firing weapons will now check beyond the target point for friendly ships. - The range plane will now move to track the selected ship for spectators. - Missile configuration can now been seen by hovering over the marker for the owning player, friendly players, and spectators. - Removed mention of AP shells from HE shell descriptions and vice-versa. - Missile body selection, legacy missile selection, and missile editor stats display now show wall thickness. - Missiles with certain seeker/validator combinations set to REJECT will no longer stage prematurely, unless all validators are also jammed. - CMD validators will now check if a target is within the track's area of uncertainty (based on TQ) to decide if a target is valid, and will no longer be 100% reliable. - CMD validators will no longer validate targets only tracked via an ELINT LOB. - Turreted missile launchers will correctly show "Out of Range" instead of "Launch Imminent" if unable to fire because the target is out of range. - Added ability to reassign ship hotkeys with Left Ctrl + Number Key. - Re-tuned fixed weapon aiming PID to improve beam accuracy. - Cut down on unnecessary logging. - Map voting command on dedicated servers now accepts partial map names if there is no ambiguity. - Defender and Pavise 20mm round particle effects will (mostly) no longer clip through terrain and ships. - Added ricochet effects for stopped 20mm rounds. - Increased Shuttle structure hitbox coverage. - Adjusted some Bulker and Container LN targeting volumes to better encompass the hull. - Increased muzzle accuracy of Mk61 and Mk62 cannons to 0.05 (was 0.15). - Reworked passive missile seeker acquisition cycle so jamming targets can be checked against validators and have their power compared to other radar targets. - Added +50% flank damage probability to the CHI-9100 Long Haul drive. - Added a half-second minimum time between being able to change ready states in the lobby. - Removed holiday map theming. Bug Fixes: - Fixed railgun slugs having their overpen damage penalty applied twice. - Fixed ships in formation swapping sides while ordering the Guide to move backwards when using a locked heading in REL formation. - Fixed ships calculating stopping distances incorrectly after receiving thruster damage, causing them to start decelerating much too late to stop on their target. - Fixed ships with thruster damage traveling away from their target after arrival when set to EVADE. - Fixed ships in a formation with different ammo selections not changing ammo type if the desired type was the Guide's current type. - Fixed errors while generating a battle report for a player who disconnected during loading causing dedicated servers to stall. - Fixed changing ammo types on mine launchers in the middle of a burst launch preventing the launcher from working. - Fixed rocket container active seekers being able to see targets through obstacles. - Fixed rocket turret bulk target add count being driven by available programming channels even though they require no programming. - Fixed name generator first name list missing male names. - Fixed Cargo Feeder hull antenna disabled particles being in the wrong position. - Fixed all OSP drives being categorized as "Other" instead of "Engineering" in the cost breakdown. - Fixed escorts leaving their Guide behind if it has extremely damaged thrusters. - Fixed sensor debuffs not being applied to internal radar modules because of a class name change. - Fixed SAH(RADAR) validators always seeing targets even without illumination. - Fixed ships rolling when translating directly up or down even if they have a hold ROL order. - Fixed 250mm AP and HE shells description being reversed regarding effectiveness against heavy warships. - Fixed CM-4R12 having a shorter seeker range than the 6 variant. - Fixed ships which do not have locking sensors from receiving a lock order that will never cancel automatically when issued via a formation order or the X key. - Fixed escorts freezing in position when trying to form up with a stopped ship with a locked heading. - Fixed some continuous weapons (e.g. beams) from beginning their cooldown if battleshort was enabled when a target was lost or WCON was changed to HOLD. - Fixed tube launchers (e.g. MLS and ML-9) being able to eject missiles inside obstacles. - Fixed nonphysical ballistic raycast weapons (e.g. Defender, Pavise) physics update order resulting in almost always missing targets traveling transverse to the mount. - Fixed LN random target selection volumes not being adjusted properly in some cases, leaving dead zones which would never be selected as an aim point. - Fixed escorts getting left behind if their top speed with thruster damage was less than 50% of the guide's top speed. Formations with engine damage will now accelerate together.