- Update 48: Fighter Radar, Flares, Physical UI, EMPs, interior damage and more! - 2 March 2022
This update adds a new 3d radar for smaller fighters that helps pilots find their targets easier, it can show the location of enemy ships, fighters, and the space station in all three dimensions! Pilots will also notice new countermeasures against homing missiles and a new fire suppression system for the Light Fighter, that regenerates some hull HP without having to land and repair the fighter. Different fighters now have different amounts of flares and homing missiles depending on their role in the space battle. The UI of the energy controls and all mid-round purchasing stations for upgrades, droids, and fighters have been reworked to be more immersive, players can now interact with them as part of the world, instead of getting an UI window popup. There is also a new EMP torpedo, if it manages to reach the enemy capital ship it will disable all engines, shields, and weapons for ten sec…
- Update 47: Captain's Chair, AI and turret improvements and bugfixes! - 23 December 2021
This update adds a brand-new Captain's Chair to the middle of the capital ship bridge. Only usable by that ship's captain, it offers a quick overview over the battle, allows direct firing of advanced weapons like torpedoes, can be used to relay information to the ships helm and turret stations, which are displayed to human operators and instantly followed by robots manning the stations, so make sure you assign a B1 robot to a station if you want your commands to be followed! The Captain's Chair also includes a new navigation system, showing an overview over the battle, and allowing the captain to assign a waypoint the human or robot at the ship's helm will try to fly to! To accommodate the new waypoint system, the AI flying behavior when controlling a capital ship got improved, and homing missiles received a buff to their damage to be more useful! Another common issue was the accuracy o…
- Take down the enemy capital ship in Deep Space Battle Sim out now - 17 November 2021
Deep Space Battle Simulator, a game where two opposing sides battle it out in space with their capital ships has now left Early Access on Steam. Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/11/take-down-the-enemy-capital-ship-in-deep-space-battle-sim-out-now
- Update #47: Fighter damage balancing, better engine overclocking and bugfixes! - 12 November 2021
This smaller update takes some of the firepower of the smaller fighters away, and increases the damage of the capital ship turrets, to shift more power to the capital ships while keeping fighters viable. The damage of the Heavy Fighters rockets got decreased as well, while the bomber only got a slight reduction of bomb damage, which is compensated by reducing the bombers speed and mobility, making teamplay more important since he needs escort fighters, or the team has to destroy enemy fighter defenses prior to making bombing runs. The engine overclock was also rarely used to resulting in random overheating very fast, to make this feature more viable there now is a 5 second period after overclocking before the engine has a chance to overheat, this is increased to 10 seconds if an Engineer overclocks it. There are also some bug fixes, mostly relating to tutorial issues where players could…
- Update #46: Self-destruction, AI improvements, and a lot more! - 9 November 2021
This update is the first one after the game's full release from Early Access, and features the most requested improvements, as well as a new optional win condition! Players can now choose to allow "self-destruction" as a new win condition in the server host menu, this will add a terminal to each bridge that requires all three keycards to initiate a 60-second countdown, if the countdown does not get cancelled by the crew, the whole capital ship will self-destruct. To help defenders with defending their bridge, a second bridge sentry was added. Keep in mind those sentries won't work if your generator gets destroyed! There are also improvements to hitmarkers, which now get activated when flying in a bomber and hitting something with a dropped bomb, and they also show the amount of damage dealt, this can be disabled in the settings. Bombers now also deal more damage with their bombs but hav…
- FULL RELEASE from Early Access NOW! State of development + future plans - 5 November 2021
With this update, the game gets fully released after 20 months of Early Access, with over 45 major updates, over 12,000 unique players, and an awesome community with nearly a thousand members on discord the game now is in a state where it can be made available to a wider audience. Over the last 3 years, Deep Space Battle Simulator got developed by me alone, aiming to provide a unique playing experience combining space combat with large and smaller ships, and fully explorable interiors, allowing teams of up to 8-16 players to fight against other players or the continuously developed enemy AI, or play alone, controlling the huge spacecraft with the help of the different AI robots, which is able to take over every part of managing and defending the own capital ship to assist players with commanding those giant vessels. While this is an important goal, the development of DSBS does not stop…
- Update #45: Full Release in 3 days, new homing missile turret and improvements! - 2 November 2021
With the game leaving Steam Early Access this Friday, this update aims to improve and polish the overall experience players, especially newer ones have in this game. There are new UI elements added to smaller fighters, tracking enemy fighters and AI interceptors that are currently off-screen to make tracking them easier, and new improvements to the tutorial missions will make some objectives less confusing for newer players. Another turret option was also added, the new "Homing Missile Launcher" turret will automatically fire a homing missile at nearby fighters or AI interceptors every 10 seconds, giving you another way to defend against those threats. Homing missiles in general received an update, now being a lot more reliable, having better and more consistent collision and damage calculations, flying a bit faster, and having a higher turn speed. Fighter pilots will now also get notif…
- Update #44: Visual upgrades, third mission, Halloween event and more! - 26 October 2021
This update improves the visual appearance of the game, adds a new yearly Halloween event and the third mission in preparation for its full release from Early Access on November 5th! The visual update consists of a new skybox with a more vibrant blue galaxy background, upgrades to the frigate, smaller fighter, and capital ship textures and particles, and making areas like bridge windows emit more light resulting in a brighter atmosphere. There are also big improvements to the frigate and capital ship UI, presenting important data like speed, distance to the enemy ship, or loaded torpedoes in a much cleaner way. The asteroid field also now is much bigger, with a slightly decreased density and new mineral asteroids that can be mined by shooting them with smaller fighters, resulting in bonus resource points for you and your whole team! The third mission is now also available, completing th…
- Update #43: Second mission now playable and leaving Early Access - 23 September 2021
This update adds the second mission, allowing players to play as a fighter pilot, fight in a huge battle and infiltrate an enemy ship and take control over a frigate. This adds some offline content for more experienced players and mainly aims to introduce newer players to the core mechanics of the game. The third mission will be released soon! The game now has been in Steam Early Access for around 18 months and has seen lots of updates bringing new features and improvements. The core mechanics are now completely functional and with the new missions completely added, the new player experience got improved greatly as well. The game is now in a state where it can be made available to a broader audience, which should increase the player base as well, allowing for more huge multiplayer battles while continuing to upgrade the game with new features and improvements. Due to this, the game will…
- Update #42: New tutorial, missions, and fixes! - 26 August 2021
This update introduces the first of three new missions to the game, that will serve as some single-player content as well as a learning experience for newer players. This first one is called "First Steps" and replaces the old (and outdated) tutorial and guides the player through some basic aspects of the game in small steps combined with some action sequences. Two additional missions will be released soon, complementing the single-player content with more difficult missions where the player has more freedom than in the tutorial while keeping them in a scripted story, offering some variety to the normal game modes. There are also a few other improvements and bug fixes you can take a look at in the full changelog below, most notably the smaller fighter cockpit models got reverted to an earlier version to due popular demand. If you have any feedback or issues, especially with the new tutor…
- Update #41: AI Crew, Security Station, homing missiles, specatating and more! - 25 June 2021
This update adds lots of new content, starting with a widely requested AI crew update, you will now be able to assign your B1 droids to the energy control station, the capital ships helm, and the turret stations where they will assess the current battle situation and take action accordingly, maneuvering your capital ship to safety or a more aggressive position, managing the energy distribution to protect heavily damaged parts or increase firepower to finish the opponents' ship and focus their weak points with the turrets. The enemy AI also received lots of improvements, utilizing the new AI crew system for themselves as well with all the new smarter decision-making that comes with it. You will also find a new security station on your capital ships bridge, allowing you to lock down individual doors to protect certain areas or try to slow down attackers without having to lock down all doo…
- Update #40: Space Station, respawn system rework and lots of improvements! - 23 April 2021
This update adds a completely reworked space station, it now spawns a lot closer to the capital ships and features 2 hangars that are always open as well as a brand new interior. Inside you can find fighter purchasing stations similar to the ones on the capital ships, and a capture point that allows your team to gain twice as many resource points while controlling it. To play on a map with the new space station, make sure to select the "Station" battle size! The exterior of the new space station will reflect who currently controls it, with the lights changing between red, white (undecided), and blue. You can also dock a frigate at the lower end of the space station now, allowing you to basically respawn in the space station and defend it or spawn smaller fighters from there. You can now also choose to send B2 Attack Droids to the space station instead of the enemy ship, they will try to…
- Update #39: Frigate improvements + first-person flying and more! - 11 March 2021
This update improves the frigates in multiple ways, there are new windows on the bridge and in the hangar area, which got some visual improvements along with the vent area. There is also now first-person flying for the frigates, which works similar to the flying systems of the smaller fighters, and a short-range turbolaser that the pilot can use, which deals quite a lot of damage but overheats very quickly. There are also some other improvements, most notably fixes for ultrawide resolutions like being able to set your FOV to a wider range of values, settings not being saved correctly when using Linux, and players getting stuck in the communication station of the frigates, The frigate undock lever now also has an outline that is visible through walls while the frigate is docked, to make it easier for newer players to find! Full changelog: -ADDED: improved, bigger, and more windows to the…
- Update #38: Dogfight improvements, better bridge windows, and more! - 30 January 2021
This update aims to improve fighter versus fighter combat. Before, fighters would be nearly impossible to hit due to slight differences between the location of the fighter on your screen, and the position of the same fighter on the server, especially at faster speeds. This issue should be greatly improved with this update, making dogfights a much less frustrating experience. Additionally, you will now get a little target helper on your screen after aiming at an enemy fighter that shows you where to shoot based on your laser's speed and the enemy fighter's current velocity. It also shows you the hull HP and shields HP of the enemy fighter, so you know if you are actually hitting them. You will also notice 2 additional side windows on the bridge, that allow you to have a better view over the battle. There are also some performance improvements to those windows to allow for 3 being display…
- Update #37: XP/Level system, character and ship skin rewards, weekly playevents! - 17 December 2020
This update introduces the first version of the new XP/level system, for every 500 XP you gain for playing the game, your level will increase. How much XP you gain after a round depends on the game mode, AI difficulty, and if you managed to win it. There are also new character skins you can unlock by leveling up, you can equip them in the class selection screen. The new ship skins can be unlocked similar to the character skins, you can equip them as a free upgrade in the ship customization phase. You can also see your current level progress, your unlocked rewards, and all upcoming rewards in the main menu! There is also a weekly play event on Saturdays to make it easier for you to find other players to play with, you will also receive double XP while playing on public (non-password protected) servers during Saturdays. There are also the usual improvements and bug fixes, most notably cha…
- Update #36: Capital ship shields impact effects, better droid patrolling + more! - 7 December 2020
This update adds new laser impact effects for capital ships, you will now see if you hit a shield, or if you dealt damage to the hull. The droid patrolling system also got reworked, the droids now move around more naturally and don't get stuck in some corners or in hangars anymore. There are also new keybinding options and improvements to the keybinding menu, as well as lots of minor improvements and bugfixes you can take a look at in the full changelog below. Full changelog: -ADDED: shield impact effect when shooting at a capital ship section that has its shields up -ADDED: explosion impact effect when shooting at a capital ship section that has its shields down -ADDED: keybinding options for smaller fighter left/right roll -REWORKED: droid patrolling system, to prevent them from sometimes just standing in hangars doing nothing and instead cover the whole ship all the time -IMPROVED: a…
- Update #35: New class abilties like sentries, teleporters, drones and more! - 23 November 2020
This update adds active abilities to all classes, they have 30 to 60 seconds cooldown and can be used by pressing the key you assigned to "Active Abilities" (default: "R"). The Crew class can place a small sentry turret, that will shoot enemy players that get close to it. The Engineer can place a teleporter, if he has two teleporters active, all players can travel between those two points. You can see teleporters on the map, and if they connect two points in the same ship, you can see where you are going to get teleported to if you look at the arrow on the teleporter. The Marine (previously Ranger) can fire a small missile from his backpack, dealing great damage to whatever it hits, and decent damage to the surrounding area. Can be used to quickly blow up doors that are in lockdown mode. The Pilot can spawn a drone that can be used for reconnaissance and comes with an energy beam that d…
- Update #34: Hangar rework, asteroid fields, and more! - 4 November 2020
This update brings a big rework to hangars and smaller fighters, you will now have to fly out of the hangar instead of just spawning outside. The hangar gates will open automatically when you jump in a fighter, allowing you to see the battle outside. The gates will also close behind you, but enemy fighters might try to fly in while it's closing, so look out for that! There is also a new upper floor from which you can access the new hangar control stations, which allow you to have an overview over the hangars, and toggle the hangar gates manually. The fighters now also have a reworked interior UI, replacing the texts for HP, shields, speed, and laser heat with progress bars. There are also new asteroid fields with destroyable asteroids of different sizes, you can shoot them or destroy them by flying through them with your capital ship, which will result in heavy damage on the hulls that…
- Update #33: Vsync, ultrawide screen improvements and bugfixes - 2 October 2020
This smaller update fixes a few bugs regarding turrets, especially the gauss cannon, adds a vsync option, and brings the first iteration of a work-in-progress ultrawide monitor support system, that focuses on the most important UI screens like the main menu for now and will be improved upon in future updates. Full changelog: -ADDED: V-Sync option -ADDED: first WIP version of ultrawide support (for the most important menus) -CHANGED: reduced gauss cannon explosion sound -FIXED: gauss cannon shooting 2 projectiles when manually shooting -FIXED: some smaller gauss cannon bugs -FIXED: log spam when opening the energy control screen -FIXED: frigate turrets not firing while friendly capital ships super laser was charging
- Update #32: Pings, votes, keybinding fixes and more! - 10 September 2020
This update adds the first version of the ping system, allowing players that are not using the voice chat to still communicate with their teammates quickly. You can do basic pings anywhere, and there are context-based pings for things like generators, keycards, and droids. The newly introduced frigates are now also harder to invade for enemy players, which are now forced to go through the new vent systems of the frigate, triggering an intruder alert and killing intruders that are not careful enough. There is also a new voting system, which you can use to change the AI difficulty, restart the round, or toggle between PVE/PVP without having to host a new server, which should make playing on dedicated servers a lot easier. There are also bug fixes, most notably for missing and not properly resetting keybinds, as well as the usual adjustments and improvements, all noted in the full changelo…
