Upgrades you can see: weapon turrets, engines, armor and shields now hang on the RAYCION as real parts.
The first of the 84 add-on parts now sit on six mount points. A single rule decides which part goes where, and both the shipyard and the game use it, so the preview always matches what you fly.
- Weapon on the spine: each of the six weapons has its own turret, which grows at levels 5, 10 and 15. From level 10, wing cannons join, for example slim ones on the Pulse Gun and later heavy ones.
- Engines (shipyard engine plus thrusters): slim, then cone, then heavy engines on the nacelles.
- Armor (shipyard armor plus armor plates): three tiers of wing armor on the outer wing. The RAYCION lettering stays visible.
- Shields: shield cells and generators in the flanks. A capacitor or reactive armor from a station takes priority.
- Targeting system from a station: gyro, dome or all-round eye behind the cockpit.
- Shipyard preview: select a module and you see the ship after the upgrade. New parts glow, parts that disappear fade, and the panel shows a line such as “Look: + cone engines”.
- In the game, the parts turn and roll with the ship and take on its hit flash and transparency.
Equipment quality: repeating missions pays off. Station modules are Standard. Missions from ★★ up (35 % chance, 70 % at ★★★), every Guardian and the Core drop modules of better quality: Reinforced, Rare, Epic or Legendary. Quality strengthens the module’s effect by 15, 30, 50 or 75 %, for example the Afterburner’s +18 % speed becomes +31.5 % at Legendary. This applies to Afterburner, Maneuvering Thrusters, Jump Coils, Capacitor, Reactive Armor, Tractor, Ore Scanner, Drill Cooling, Targeting Gyro, Targeting Computer and Scanner. You hold one of each module: if a better one drops, your existing one is upgraded. Stations show the tier in color, and a better module sells for more ore.
Bandit outposts: every system has three bandit outposts, two in the middle ring and one in the inner ring. They come in three layouts: cross, bar and triangle. Platforms are linked by wall bridges and carry rotating gun turrets. The turrets turn toward you at a limited rate and only fire once they are aligned: big ones fire three-shot fans, small ones fast double shots. Fly across their aim and you outrun them, and they glow brighter just before they fire. If you fly away, the turrets keep their damage. Destroy the last turret and the outpost is taken, worth 2 wreck parts, 2 components and a 45 % chance of a better module. Outposts show in orange on the minimap.
Ion Laser: the thinner, the stronger. The visible beam gets thinner and brighter with each level instead of wider. The hit width stays the same and only shows as a soft glow. In return the laser gains area damage without a thick beam: where it hits, a small hot spot remains (36 to 60 px, growing with level). It scorches the target’s neighbors with 45 % of the beam’s strength per second and fades over 0.55 s. Sweep the beam and you leave a short glowing trail. The spot does not hit the target itself, so nothing changes against a single boss.
The Core becomes the longest fight of the flight. With the new Guardians, the order no longer held. A Guardian now takes 15 to 20 seconds, the Core in Arcade just over 30. In Orbit the Core even had only single hull, which also set too low a cap for the Guardians.
- Hull: three times in Orbit, 3.5 times in Arcade instead of 2.5 (about 40 seconds). The Guardian cap is tied to the Core (80 %), so it now only applies late.
- Frost-resistant: like the Guardians, frost holds the Core only a third as long, and slowing drops it to 70 % instead of 45 %.
- Patterns on their own timers: aimed fans, meteor strikes, ember rings and the Meltdown’s side walls fired six to fourteen times in a row, depending on frame rate. Now fans come as a three-shot salvo and ember rings in pairs, independent of the frame rate.
- Balance version 11.
Graphics and performance: drawing is about three times as fast in a dense fight, and it looks better.
Measured in Orbit at minute 15 with 60 enemies, a Guardian and over 350 enemy projectiles (1920 × 1080): drawing time per frame dropped from 20.9 to 6.5–7 ms. Before, the game fell below 60 frames per second there, even on an RTX 4090.
- Circles without triangulation: Phaser split every filled circle into triangles again every frame, which was more than half of the drawing time. Circles and the light cone are now drawn directly as fans, with the same area.
- Hex shields as images: the shields of elites, late generations, frost and the Core are painted once and only rotated and tinted, instead of being redrawn hex by hex every frame.
- Hits on enemies: the hex field at the impact is an image with a soft glowing core. In a dense fight that used to be over 40,000 draw commands per frame. Your own ship keeps the full, lively version.
- Stars: instead of about 1,200 individual dots per frame, four painted star layers sit in the background with a soft glow and a few warm and cool stars, three depths in Orbit.
- Soft shadows: enemies cast a soft shadow instead of a hard dark disc.
- Fewer lines: enemy health bars now only appear after a hit and fade out after two seconds (setting “After hit”, the new default). If you want to see them all the time, choose “Standard”.
- Boss fight UI tidied up: while a Guardian or the Core fights, the timeline and mission panel move below the boss bar. Before, they overlapped.
- Minimap: Guardians and the Core show up as a pulsing magenta diamond.