Alpha build 80 is live. It is not a required update: Steam brings it in by itself (exit Steam completely and start it again if it has not appeared), and build 79 can still join while it does.
An opening cinematic
- When the game starts, 48 seconds of the Frontier play: the homeworld falling to the Tide, the arks, the war, and Fleet Admiral Voss.
- The first time, it plays to the end. From then on a SKIP button appears once the game has loaded, and any key or click skips it too.
- The start-up screen before it now carries the Massive Frontier logo.
Special modules on base buildings now work
Special modules fit a Screen Projector (one slot) or a Combat Array (two slots). Until now most of them did nothing there, and none grew stronger with its Mark. Now every one does real work, and grows with its Mark as it does on a ship:
- Repair modules add armour to the building.
- Resistance modules add resistance to their own damage type, stacked with the building's own.
- Speed modules (Thrusters, Warp Drives) push the building's field farther out: the screen of a Screen Projector, the reach of a Combat Array. At most twice as far.
- A Charger makes the shields of the buildings inside its building's field refill faster in a raid.
- Cargo modules let every mine, extractor and condenser on your base bank more hours of output before it stops. All of a base's cargo modules together can at most triple those hours.
- Timed modules (Cloak, Countermeasure, Booster, Dampener, Scrambler, Interdictor, Overdrive) work in a raid: the building switches them on by itself. On a building, an Overdrive makes the building's field stronger while it runs.
Every special module's page in the wiki now has a What it does box that says, in plain words, what it does on a ship or on a building, at Mark 1 and at Mark 5. Outpost modules can still be built, but nothing uses them yet.
Also changed
- When a mine's limit goes down (a cargo module removed, or its building destroyed in a raid), the mine keeps everything it already holds.
- The next-Mark preview of a mine, extractor or condenser counts your mastery and your cargo modules, as the current limit beside it does.
Fixed
- On the YOUR BASE WAS BREACHED panel, the YOUR VAULT PROTECTED line ran into the panel's frame. It now wraps inside the panel. Thanks to the tester who sent the picture.
The numbers of building modules are starting values and may change after the first raids. The changelog has the whole list, and the player's guide explains fitting modules to buildings.