Cosmoteer release candidate 0.25.2 is now available for testing! (To play this release candidate, you must opt in to test it. Please see this post for info on how to test release candidates.)

This release candidate contains improvements to the new Build & Battle PvP mode, new built-in ship designs, and a handful of bug fixes.

Have fun, and thanks for testing!

RC1:

• Build & Battle: [list]
• Free-for-all is now supported with up to 8 players.
• Team games now supports up to 4 teams.
• Team starting positions in the battle phase are now randomized each round.
• Once all players have marked themselves as ready, there will now be a 5 second countdown before the battle phase begins.
• If the player has any default crew roles saved, those will now be loaded automatically at the beginning of the match.
• Chainguns will now start the battle phase fully stocked of ammo even if they were firing at the end of the build phase.

User Interface:

• In the ship editor, a "bullets" icon will now be displayed on Chainguns and Chaingun Magazines to indicate when they are properly connected.

Built-In Ships:

• Added 4 new Monolith combat ships: Almocaden, Almogavar, Project Mistilteinn, and Thyreos.
• Added 4 new Cabal combat ships: Cassiopeia, Eclipse, Gienah, and Nashira.
• Added 2 new Imperium combat ships: Augustus and Thunderbird.
• Added 4 new Fringe combat ships: Desecrator, Desolator, Hentzau, and Sicario.
• Renamed the 'Elanine' to 'Robin' and the 'Can Opener' to 'Desperado'.
• Miscellaneous updates to various other built-in ships.

Bug Fixes:

• The recent fixes to the thruster logic screwed up Direct Control Mode, which should now also be fixed.
• Occasional crash caused by recent thruster A.I. fixes.
• Crash when deleting a planet in creative mode while its options window is open and U.I. animations are turned off.
• The battle phase in Build & Battle could end prematurely if a ship makes an FTL jump, which could lead to various other issues.
• In some circumstances, a ship's A.I. was unable to back away from a very close asteroid or other object.
• Using the "grab" tool to move parts wasn't properly copying the existing part settings to the new part.
• Deconstructing damaged parts was sometimes not giving quite as much resources back as you would have received had you repaired the part first.
• Various text rendering issues when a ship contains an ampersand (&) in its name.

Modding:

• OpenCloseSprite should now properly move/rotate when the component it is chained to moves or rotates.
• Blueprints now support sprite animations.
• Buff provider components can now be set to 'BlueprintsOnly = true'. This will remove most performance costs for buffs that are only used for display purposes and have no affect on gameplay.

[/list]