Release Notes for The Last Starship

Alpha 9 - 14th March 2024

Be the first to play "Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" parts 1 and 2! There's a bandit ship attacking innocent vessels and Commander Harken needs you to track down this villainous scum and show them the error of their ways....

The Last Starship is in Early Access, which means it isn't finished yet, but that hasn't stopped many of our community logging over 50 hours of play. Our plan is to release 3 or 4 free updates to TLS this year. We're hoping to hit V1 launch in early 2025, but for now we need an intrepid bunch of players to be the first to explore strange new bugs, to seek out new missions and new modes of playing, to boldy go where no gamer has gone before...

Changes in this update:

= New mission interface

• We have substantially upgraded and improved the mission system and all associated screens.
• We can now create rich, detailed missions with multiple stages and multiple objectives.
• The Communicator has also been upgraded and better integrated with the mission screen.
• Characters can now call you with information and instructions, and a log of those calls will be added to your mission screen.

Quality of Life improvements for the Mission Summary (top left of the screen):

• You can now 'Turn In' any completed mission directly from the mission summary

• A new diamond-shaped location icon has been added to any objective that specifies a destination. Clicking the diamond will immediately bring up the sector map and highlight that location. This makes it very easy to navigate to the required locations for a mission.

• There is now a 'Prepare to jump' button in the Sector Map, for quick and easy alignment

• All mission types updated to take advantage of these new buttons.

= New Story Episodes

• We have begun work on a series of story-based episodes.

  The general idea is to tell short stories with a rich cast of characters, and each story episode will be broken down into 2 or 3 parts. This involved the creation of a new Episode Manager system, and a substantial upgrade of the Mission system. Story Episodes will automatically become available in the Mission Interface at the appropriate time.

  We have plans to add many more story episodes, now that this system is complete. Nb. Story episodes are available in Stargate mode, and in Free-roam mode. They are not available in survival mode. The Tiddlets mission remains available in Survival mode only.

  New Episodes:

  • A Wolf in sheep's clothing - part 1
  • A Wolf in sheep's clothing - part 2

= Docking Tutorial

• A new Docking tutorial has been created, and is used directly in the episode Wolf Part 2.
• The tutorial will also show whenever a player is attempting a rescue mission.

= SMALL CHANGES

• The time between waves of hostile forces attacking the Stargate has been tripled
• New graphics for crew in a space suit when they are outside the ship
• Reduced the radius at which a system blocks your FTL flight path (from 15 down to 4)
• The star background now shifts into an angry red when 'Battle Stations' is enabled
• Crew now walk 33% faster, and are slowed down less when carrying cargo
• New graphics for dead crew
• After loading a saved game, any ships where the crew are all dead due to suffocation will be recalled automatically under autopilot, and will leave the system

= NEW AUDIO WORK

• Battle stations!
• Gun Turrets extending, retracting
• Mission Interface
• Music for the new story episodes

= New community ships added to the base game - thank you!

DOCTORX - DRX Helican Omicron DRX Helican DRX Psychopath DRX Abyss DRX Scarab

JOHNNY STRUGGLES - The Altair Citadel

= BUG FIXES

• You can no longer pause the game during the introductory flyby
• Fixed: Weapons Consoles are now correctly powered as part of the Weapons power category, not the Science power category
• Fix for drones incorrectly returning home when another ship in the local fleet is planning to jump to hyperspace
• Fixed: Fleet logistics transfers of the same item in opposite directions now cancel each other.
• Fix crash caused by invalid Researching Node.
• Hot Fix: Alpha 9c: Add compact ship selector in Tactical Mode.