Beta Branch Patch 0.21 Patchnotes

[koonschi]

Patch 0.21

 

Date: February 26th, 2019

 

Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.

 

This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):

Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.

 

Mining Rework

 

"We reworked mining to make it feel more like actual mining, and less like just shooting rocks until you're rich. So the most efficient mining lasers no longer refine ores and you'll have to ship them to a refinery yourself. In order to avoid massive complexity in the beginning, we left refining mining lasers in there, like for example for the drone."

• Resource Asteroids carry 33% more resources
  
• Added new weapon types: Raw mining lasers, Raw salvaging lasers
  
• Previous mining + salvaging lasers are now refining mining/salvaging lasers
  
• Raw mining lasers deal 200% damage compared to refining mining lasers
  
• Efficiency Changes (lowest to highest rarity & possible rate):
  
• Raw mining lasers have very high efficiencies of 57% - 99%
  
• Reduced efficiencies of refining mining lasers to 11% - 18% from 5% - 75%
  
• Raw salvaging lasers have efficiencies of 5% - 40%
  
• Reduced efficiencies of refining salvaging lasers to 7% - 14% from 8% - 36%
  
• Mining lasers of the drone remain unchanged
  
• Raw lasers drop Raw Ores or Scrap Metals
  
• Raw Ores and Scrap Metals ...
  
  • - are trading goods that require a cargo bay
    
  • - cannot be used as a currency yet
    
  • - cannot be stored in the global bank
    
  • - must be refined into resources before they can be used
    
  • - can be sold to merchants
    

  [*]Added a refinery option to all Resource Depots

  • Refinery refines ores and scrap metals to resources 1:1
    
  • Refinery takes a small tax of 1 to 5%, based on relations
    

  [*]Added new asteroids with very high-value, hidden resource depots in their center block

  • Can be detected with mining upgrade (Auto-mining-ships need this to find them, too)
    

  [*]Added AI-ship commands for refining ores and metals on board

  [*]Amount of resources in asteroids is now only visible with a mining system installed

Audio

 

"Per Kiilstofte remade the entire combat music for Avorions. He's the mind behind Avorion's previous combat music, but we worked together and he wrote a completely new soundtrack specifically for Avorion! On top of that, Hannes Kretzer made six new background tracks for Avorion, too! With this update, you can enjoy all those new tracks in-game!"

• Added 6 new background ambience tracks (Thanks Hannes!)
  
• Replaced old combat music with new combat music (Thanks Per Kiilstofte!)
  
• Ambient music is now mood-oriented based on which sector the player is in, and no longer completely random
  
• Increased length of silence between tracks to at least 90 seconds
  

Gameplay Changes

 

"There have been some other gameplay updates, which are not directly related to mining."

• Delivery missions no longer give players dangerous or illegal goods
  
• Dangerous goods are no longer a concern if player's relations are "Admired" (>80.000)
  
• Ships that are ordered to fly through gates now wait if the path is blocked
  
• Harvest AI now only uses armed turrets if no salvaging turrets are available
  

Balancing

 

"There have been some other balancing updates, which are not directly related to mining."

• Destroyed blocks and crafts now drop scrap metal & ores in addition to refined resources
  
• Smoothened out probabilities of resource types in asteroids
  
  • Less low-tier materials are less likely to be spawned in high-tier material regions
    

  [*]Only the latest 3 tiers of available materials are used for ships, turrets, etc. to avoid obsolete technology appearing where it doesn't belong (ie. Iron AI ships in Xanion territory)

  [*]Increased production time by 300s for ships at shipyards when a crew is requested

  [*]Increased costs of crews at shipyards by +50%

  [*]Fast moving AI ships no longer damage player-owned ships if they're more than twice as fast

  [*]Changed relation status ranges:

  • Friendly: 15.000 - 30.000 (from 5.000 - 15.000)
    
  • Good: 30.000 - 60.000 (from 30.000 - 40.000)
    
  • Excellent: 60.000 - 80.000 (from 40.000 - 70.000)
    
  • Admired: 80.000 - 100.000 (from 70.000 - 100.000)
    

  [*]Captains now cost 15.000 Credits, up from 7.500

  [*]Hiring Pilots, Boarders or Commanders now requires relations of at least 'Friendly'

  [*]Hiring Generals or Captains now requires relations of at least 'Good'

Ship Founding

 

"Founding Ships now costs an initial fee, that starts out very low and increases with every new ship. We want to move large (!) fleets more into mid- or late game, while giving new players more incentive to push for higher-tier materials. As long as we don't have good sinks for large amounts of resources, we're still very careful with exponential fleet growth and the snowballing that comes with it. That's just a nightmare to balance. We've seen how much money players tend to have in late game stages and we think these costs are fair. They're also subject to change based on your feedback, so get playing!"

• Note: Ship fees are based on how many ships you HAVE right now, not how many ships you founded so far.
  
  • When one of your ships gets destroyed, the founding fee also goes down again
    

  [*]Ships 1 - 3 now cost 500 Iron and 0, 0, 1.000 Credits respectively

  [*]Ships 4 - 6 now cost 500 Titanium and 5.000, 10.000, 20.000 Credits respectively

  [*]Ships 7, 8 now cost 500 Naonite and 50.000 and 100.000 Credits respectively

  [*]Ships 9, 10 now cost 500 Trinium and 200.000 and 500.000 Credits respectively

  [*]Ships 11 - 15 now cost 500 Xanion and 750.000, 1m, 1.5m, 2m, 2.5m Credits respectively

  [*]Ships 16 - 20 now cost 500 Ogonite and 3m, 3.5m, 4m, 4.5m, 5m Credits respectively

  [*]Ships 21 and more now cost 500 Avorion and 1m more per ship, with costs increasing by 1m for every 10 new ships

UI

• Replaced all icons in-game that were only used as placeholders
  
• Added icons & tooltips for uncollectable loot that show why loot is uncollectable
  
• Added an alert when pirates attack a sector without players but with player ships
  
• Added an alert when xsotan attack a sector with an unmanned player ship
  
• Cargo amount in cargo tab is now displayed with dots for better readability
  
• Improved clarity of discard blocks button text and tooltip
  
• Added a warning window when a player is about to delete his ship in the build mode
  
• Implemented warning symbols at the top left of the screen when ping or server performance is bad
  
• Galaxy map is now updated correctly when a player ship jumps to an unknown sector
  

Misc

• Implemented a window that shows the latest important changes of the mining update
  
• Added a window that shows patchnotes when there has been an update
  
• Improved refreshing of positions of objects around the player ship and its targets
  
  • This fixes several sync-issues, like loot following the player ship or objects not taking damage
    

  [*]Renamed factories with ambiguous names, i.e. factories that use a production result in their name and have more than one result

  [*]Client

  [*]Networking is now done asynchronically on client

  [*]Pings are more frequent (10 per second) and server answers them immediately, not during update loop (avoids inaccurate pings)

  [*]Improved performance and accuracy of pings (now shows network time only, no longer influenced by update frequency)

Server

• Fixed an issue where sometimes server started to hang for everybody when a single player caused large amounts of traffic
  
• Fixed an issue where server started to hang for everybody when a single player applied a very large craft plan
  

Scripting API

 

"With the mining rework, we also moved our turret, weapon and fighter generation code to scripts for more transparency and easier modification through modders."

• Moved turret, weapon and fighter generators to scripts
  
• Added a ProgressBar UI element
  
• Added getters for amount of different entities in Sector
  
• Bosses can now be associated with music tracks
  
• Added access to Music API
  
• Added function invokeFunction() to client-side Player
  
• Added a getter for the player's craft's faction on the client
  
• Added a getter for controlling faction in Galaxy
  
• Added getters for local & nearest faction in client-side Galaxy
  
• Added estimates to sector templates about number of generated stations and ships
  
• Fixed several issues where text would be wrongly aligned when set to Center
  
• Added a fitIntoRect() function to Picture
  
• sendChatMessage() function of Faction, Player and Alliance now allows entities and NamedFormat as sender
  

Bugfixes

 

"As always, bug reports marked with [uBR] are user bug reports. Thanks everybody for reporting and helping us, and keep it up!"

• Fixed a crash when multiple entities were being pushed away by stations
  
• Fixed a wrong callback being called when player changes group
  
• [uBR] Fixed shot size not scaling with weapon size
  
• [uBR] Fixed an issue where torpedoes could be entered by players, leading to a crash
  
• [uBR] Fixed an issue where loot would follow the player ship indefinitely without actually being picked up
  
• [uBR] Fixed an issue where objects (mostly asteroids, wrecks) would be in the wrong position
  
• [uBR] Fixed an issue where objects (mostly asteroids, wrecks) wouldn't take damage
  
• [uBR] Fixed an issue where loot drops for alliance ships were reserved for the players piloting it
  
• [uBR] Fixed custom turret design shot colors not being applied to missiles
  
• Fixed an issue where shield sounds were played in menus or loading screen
  
• [uBR] Fixed an issue where scrolling down in the building quick selection caused items to become hidden
  
• [uBR] Fixed an issue where turrets in the quick selection in building mode were reset when opening the building inventory
  
• Fixed flickering of faction areas on map when an update of the area comes in
  
• Fixed an issue where cargo loot would still "lock on" to ships and follow them even if their cargo bay is full
  
• Fixed an issue where station titles in chat messages weren't translated correctly
  
• Fixed an issue where crew costs were wrong at shipyards
  
• Fixed an issue where client would wait for a 30 second timeout when connecting to a local server in Steam Offline Mode
  
• [uBR] Fixed an issue where players with a space in their name could not be invited to trade
  
• Fixed an issue where the ship's order icon wasn't reset when entering a craft
  
• Fixed an issue where ai factions would get coaxial turrets
  

[Sir Charles]

This is looking really good. I am curious how this will affect the mining-salvaging-balance!

The additional changes sound great, thank you for considering my suggestion for a fleet-balance (at least i think i was helpfull cause it sounds similar to my suggestion). I love how this game is getting more and more shape with every update in giant steps.

Great work!

 

PS: I am very curious about the new soundtrack, I loved the old one, but fresh wind is always good (i guess?). What I heard so far sounds nice at least and the music change related to the sector you are in makes a good addition!

[Ravien]

This is looking really nice! Will definitely have to check this out!

 

Could mining lasers have their ranges increased a bit? Especially now that mining ships might have to be bigger to hold the cargo, it would be nice if they scaled up their ranges a bit more into mid and late game.

[current1y]

Is a world restart needed when switching over to the beta branch from live branch to experience the changes in this patch?

[Sir Charles]

Is a world restart needed when switching over to the beta branch from live branch to experience the changes in this patch?

 

No. But guess you wont find the new asteroids in previously generated sectors. At least I found none, untill i explored some more...

[Sir Charles]

I tried to listen to the new audio tracks outgame, is there a specific reason why I can not open them up? Are they protected or something like that? With the previous version, this was possible.

 

Sorry for the double post.

[TESL4]

Cant wait to try this update out later today and listen to the new music!.  Mining can effectively be much more efficient now, and makes the design of mining ships more than a stick covered with miners and thrusters! 

 

I think the changes to cost for the number of ships is good, and will help balance mega alliances from having a doom armada. 

 

On the note of balance, Will there be any change coming to help balance out the bigger is better meta?  Currently 15 slot ships can be built to handle just as well as a 3 slot ship with a higher top speed and many more slots.

 

Keep up the great work!!

 

Edit: removed a dumb question

[Ravien]

Cant wait to try this update out later today and listen to the new music!.  Mining can effectively be much more efficient now, and makes the design of mining ships more than a stick covered with miners and thrusters! 

 

Will it be possible to build your own material station or block for refining ores?  I'm guessing not, but was just curious. 

 

I think the changes to cost for the number of ships is good, and will help balance mega alliances from having a doom armada. 

 

On the note of balance, Will there be any change coming to help balance out the bigger is better meta?  Currently 15 slot ships can be built to handle just as well as a 3 slot ship with a higher top speed and many more slots.

 

Keep up the great work!!

 

Well you can build resource depots so I assume you can use them to refine.

[unbekannt1984]

Hi koonschi,

 

the changes to salvaging sound like a huge nerf to me:

• Raw salvaging lasers have efficiencies of 5% - 40%
  
• Reduced efficiencies of refining salvaging lasers to 7% - 14% from 8% - 36%
  

...

• Added a refinery option to all Resource Depots
  
  • Refinery refines ores and scrap metals to resources 1:1
    
  • Refinery takes a small tax of 1 to 5%, based on relations
    

so, we were able to get up to 36% of the materials in wreckage. The old refining lasers were nerfed down to almost one third of their old efficency, instead we should use the new shiny raw-salvage lasers to get up to 40% of the materials as scrap metals - minus a little tax of 1 to 5%... That means we loose about 0.4% to 2% of those up to 40%.

 

Let's take a look at the cargo-bay (.steam/SteamApps/common/Avorion/data/scripts/lib/goodsindex.lua):

goods["Scrap Avorion"] = {name="Scrap Avorion", plural="Scrap Avorion", description="Scrap Avorion that can be refined into Avorion.", icon="data/textures/icons/rock.png", price=24, size=0.04, level=nil, importance=0, illegal=false, dangerous=false, }
...

At least all those scrap-metals have got the same volume: 0.04.

 

Have you done some math about the required storage? Well, let's say you salvage a small wormhole-guardian, round about 2.5 million Avorion just from the guardian itself, that means you will have to move about 1 million scrap-metal, with the volume of 0.04 that's a cargobay of 40.000 capacity - that's twice the capacity of my biggest freighter (so far) and that ship would need to do the salvaging - not a good idea and massive crew-costs...

 

• Added AI-ship commands for refining ores and metals on board

So, a ship with captain could do the refinement, too... But why would you take those resources to a Resource Depot, if you can do everything on your ship? I'd expect quite a few losses here.

 

But first of all, I need those new salvaging-turrets, I need to build a few squadrons of salvaging fighters (again) that cost about 40k Avorion each and I have to wait for hours until I've got those fighters.

 

Thanks.

[Ravien]

Hi koonschi,

 

the changes to salvaging sound like a huge nerf to me:

• Raw salvaging lasers have efficiencies of 5% - 40%
  
• Reduced efficiencies of refining salvaging lasers to 7% - 14% from 8% - 36%
  

...

• Added a refinery option to all Resource Depots
  
  • Refinery refines ores and scrap metals to resources 1:1
    
  • Refinery takes a small tax of 1 to 5%, based on relations
    

so, we were able to get up to 36% of the materials in wreckage. The old refining lasers were nerfed down to almost one third of their old efficency, instead we should use the new shiny raw-salvage lasers to get up to 40% of the materials as scrap metals - minus a little tax of 1 to 5%... That means we loose about 0.4% to 2% of those up to 40%.

 

Let's take a look at the cargo-bay (.steam/SteamApps/common/Avorion/data/scripts/lib/goodsindex.lua):

goods["Scrap Avorion"] = {name="Scrap Avorion", plural="Scrap Avorion", description="Scrap Avorion that can be refined into Avorion.", icon="data/textures/icons/rock.png", price=24, size=0.04, level=nil, importance=0, illegal=false, dangerous=false, }
...

At least all those scrap-metals have got the same volume: 0.04.

 

Have you done some math about the required storage? Well, let's say you salvage a small wormhole-guardian, round about 2.5 million Avorion just from the guardian itself, that means you will have to move about 1 million scrap-metal, with the volume of 0.04 that's a cargobay of 40.000 capacity - that's twice the capacity of my biggest freighter (so far) and that ship would need to do the salvaging - not a good idea and massive crew-costs...

 

• Added AI-ship commands for refining ores and metals on board

So, a ship with captain could do the refinement, too... But why would you take those resources to a Resource Depot, if you can do everything on your ship? I'd expect quite a few losses here.

 

But first of all, I need those new salvaging-turrets, I need to build a few squadrons of salvaging fighters (again) that cost about 40k Avorion each and I have to wait for hours until I've got those fighters.

 

Thanks.

 

I think the captain will refine resources at a depot.

[zila123]

Mining fighters are currently not picking up any raw ore.. "" not even dropping the raw ore. ""

[Travis9x]

1.  I agree with the other suggestions, such as adding a new refinery block that we can build into our ships (such as to create a refinery ship to support mining fleets), ensuring the harvesting AI supports automatic drop off and refining of raw materials, fixing mining fighters not picking up the new raw ore / scraps, and etc.  I also support reversing the removal of collision damage if the AI ship is moving beyond a certain speed, and that the efficiencies of the salvaging lasers combined with the new raw material cargo need together add up to a massive salvaging nerf overall…which I consider a bad thing, in case that wasn't clear.

 

2.  Refining mining lasers have a MAXIMUM efficiency of only 18%, while the MINIMUM efficiency of raw mining lasers is a whopping 57%.  That gap is downright extreme.  Tone that down, please.

 

3.  Compared to the above mining lasers, salvaging lasers are the reverse.  Raw and refining salvaging lasers have an overlap that seems a bit…backward.  The minimum efficiency of raw salvagers is 5%, whereas the minimum for refining salvagers is 7%.  I would expect that should be reversed.

 

4.  I would suggest another way to boost the effectiveness of raw salvaging lasers, would be to give them a bonus to the chance of dropping intact modules/turrets from wreckage.  The rarity of the salvager can affect that bonus.

 

5.  I'd like to add a new suggestion, to improve the targeting AI.  Right now, it's pretty dumb.  Any human pointing a gun at an enemy can tell if there's something/someone in the way of their target, so why can't the targeting AI see this?  I've had SO many frustrating moments of my guns/ships firing at an enemy ship, hitting friendlies instead, and just continuing to shoot until I manually tell them to stop.  Obviously, those former friendlies are none too pleased with this, sometimes to the point of declaring war on me.  PLEASE give the targeting AI a tiny bit of intelligence, to first check if a friendly is obstructing the firing path to the target, before firing.  This should be a no-brainer, ffs.

 

6.  Which brings up another issue.  It is so hard to recover standing, once the stupid targeting AI has wrecked that relationship.  The NPC empire goes straight from singing your praises (Admired) to hiding Legos in your bedsheets (Abhorrent).  That seems VERY extreme for a targeting AI accident, and there is currently no realistic way to fix this once it happens.  I can understand any military ships in the current sector turning hostile if you keep firing on their assets for a while, but the whole empire should not immediately hate you with the fires of hell.  I think the empire in general should just turn neutral, unless you CONTINUE to fire on their assets (in which case the attacks should harm standing as normal, per shot).  This would allow you to flee the sector, and try to restore the relationship in another part of their territory.  If you again start firing on their assets in a different sector, the same thing can repeat (but not resetting the relationship to neutral again, unless you've already improved the relationship by a significant margin).  If you improve the relationship somewhat, and return to a sector that had previously turned hostile, they should be considered friendlies again (no longer hostile).