Beta Branch Patch 1.3 - Preliminary Patchnotes

[koonschi]

Docking
"Docking's here! The feature is actually pretty straightforward. Slap a dock block on your ship and go have fun! :)"

• Ships can now use Dock blocks to dock other objects
• Docked objects are shown in building mode
• Docked objects can be taken with you through gates, wormholes and hyperspace jumps
• (Nearly) every object can be docked

Gameplay
"Aside from a few shady features that sneaked in from the Black Market DLC, we got Legendary Turrets, prettier asteroids, and a new, strange Xsotan Wormhole Device that seems to open wormholes to your Reconstruction Site."

• Added new containers that can be hacked or taken to a smuggler's outpost to be opened
• Added a new sector type with many containers and asteroids
• Added the possibility to bribe ships that inspect you
• Added the possibility to inspect & get bribed by AI traders that can now carry illegal goods
• Added special, legendary turrets
  • Some turrets will be available immediately, some only for DLC owners
  • Turrets are dropped by bosses and other strong enemies
  • More turrets to come over the next weeks
• Added a new Xsotan Wormhole Device that opens a wormhole to your reconstruction site
  • You get the item from the Adventurer after changing the Reconstruction Site or progressing with the story
  • 10 Minute cooldown, infinite usages
  • Has a few other limitations so it can't be used during immediate combat
• Improved visuals of asteroids with resources
  • Developer Note: Asteroid shapes have been fine-tuned to ensure they have the same amount of resources as before
• Some factions now always have bad starting relations (not as bad on low difficulties, very bad on high difficulties)
• On higher difficulties, bad initial relations can trigger immediate war with factions the player hasn't met yet
• When switching sectors, players are only placed in ships that are idle or passive from now on (unless otherwise specified) to not interrupt AI orders
• Objects in sectors towards the middle are spread out a little further
• Seeking projectiles can now lead very fast targets
• When a warzone is called out or a freighter is raided, nearby players are notified
• Reduced camera shake of sector jumps
• Added edge & corner crew quarters blocks
• Added a front-facing torpedo launcher block

AI
"We improved several aspects of the AI, like pathfinding, aim and salvage & mining AI."

• A ship now waits for its fighters to land before flying through a gate
• Improved aim of AI ships
  • AI ships can now aim with coaxial turrets
  • Strongly improved aim of AI ships for Expert+ difficulties
• Salvage & mining AI now picks new objects to harvest close to the last one
  • This way the behaviour is more consistent when objects break apart
• Salvage & mining AI now keeps fighters active while collecting loot
• Salvage & mining AI no longer keeps firing at tiny fragments that have negligible amounts of resources left
• Salvage & mining AI no longer bothers collecting extremely tiny amounts of loot
• Improved pathfinding when surrounded by many obstacles

Balancing Part I: General

• Adjusted fines for smuggling
• Slightly increased amount of petty upgrades being dropped in the outer regions
• Slightly reduced amount of legendary upgrades being dropped on low difficulties
• Railguns now always penetrate at least 3 blocks
• 5-slot turrets aren't automatically coaxial any longer
  • Instead of every turret, only 25% of 5-slot turrets will be coaxial turrets
• Explosive shots no longer deal potentially infinite amounts of damage through AOE, but are capped at 200%
• Pulse Cannons now have a much higher shield penetration rate compared to other weapons with ionized projectiles
• Increased projectile speed of 2+ slot turrets

Balancing Part II: Shields
"Let's face it: Shields are way too powerful for what they cost. They provide lots of HP that recharge extremely quickly for free and they protect all blocks at the same time. Shields are also more or less obligatory for combat, and this means that players avoid combat in the early game. We want to break free from these limitations and give players more means to fight early on. We're nerfing shield generators, but at the same time buffing integrity blocks & armor a lot. Keep in mind that these are experimental changes and we'll see how they fare. Please share your feedback with us on this!"

• Buffing Integrity Blocks & Armor
  • Reminder: Integrity fields reduce incoming damage!
  • Increased damage reduction of integrity fields from 50% to 75%
  • Increased HP of armor blocks to 25 per 1 volume, from 15
• Nerfing Shields
  • Increased cost of shield generator blocks by 50%
  • Reduced shield durability gained from shield blocks to 50 per 1 volume, from 70
• Developer Note: In total, existing ships with shield generators and integrity blocks protecting armor will get:
  • -27% shields
  • +233% hull HP for armor
  • +100% hull HP for other blocks

Balancing Part III: Exploits, Shipyards & Reconstruction Site
"We're seeing a lot of playstyles that abuse exploits that are ending up in guides and that are degenerating from how Avorion was originally designed. In addition to fixing exploits, we're adding some experimental changes through which we want to shift the gameplay a bit. We want to reintroduce the feeling of 'safe haven' sectors and the risk of venturing out. We do realize that this might take some comfort away but we think it's healthier for the game in the long run. This playstyle will also require a little more planning from you, which is why we're only enabling it on new galaxies. We'd love to hear your feedback and we'll monitor the situation closely!"

• Building and repairing are now only possible without enemies attacking and only if the ship wasn't damaged in the past 30 seconds
• New Saves: On Normal+ difficulty, Generators and Hyperspace Cores will need a neutral or friendly shipyard in the sector to be added to your ship
  • Applies to new saves only
  • Applies to ships, not stations
  • Does not apply to Creative 
  •  Can be turned on/off with a server.ini setting
  •  Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-Y and scaling will still work without a shipyard
  •  Repairing is still possible without a shipyard
• Sectors with smuggler hideouts now have a shipyard
• Sectors with resistance outposts now have a shipyard
• Added an item that lets you return to your Reconstruction Site from anywhere (details see above)
• Reduced cost for changing Reconstruction Site by 80%
• Reduced cost for reconstructing without tokens to 80% of the ship's value, from 120%
• Reduced cost for repairs at repair docks to 35% of ship's value (from 75%)
• Reduced cost for founding a shipyard by 17.500.000 credits
• Reduced cost for founding a repair dock by 7.500.000 credits
• When reconstruction tokens are disabled, reconstruction site can still be set
• Hyperspace engine now has to reboot and goes on cooldown after its range is changed

Strategy Mode
"We've massively tuned the Strategy Mode to make it a much more polished and easy-to-use feature. Enjoy!"

• Added vertical lines to objects for a better sense of depth
• Improved grid-plane for a better sense of depth
• Camera can now be rotated and moved up/down
• Pressing space centers the camera on the selected object(s)
• Double click now centers the view, Ctrl-click toggles the selection
• Player's current craft now has a player icon in the strategy mode overview list
• Selection groups are now shown in overview list
• Claimed asteroids are now shown in overview list
• Added colors to sector ship overview list in strategy mode
• "Fly through gate"-order is now visualized with a line to the gate
• Mine and salvage orders issued via right click now start harvesting the clicked object (not the closest to the ship)
• Improved button feedback

UI
"More UI and QoL improvements."

• Galaxy Map: Pressing space centers the camera on the selected object(s)
• Galaxy Map: Selection groups can now be used the same as in Strategy Mode
• Galaxy Map: Notifications can now be disabled on the galaxy map
• Mails: Mail buttons stops flashing for good when mails window is opened
• Mails: Mail list updates when a new mail is received
• Mails: Mail window's 'Delete' now takes all attachments first
• Building Mode: Added ISS shilhouette for comparison
• Building Mode: Transformation brush can now be rotated by holding R
• Building Mode: Added "Show Templates Folder" button to blocks window
• Building Mode: Turret designs can now be applied to all selected turret bases with one click
• Building Mode: Implemented new, detailed tooltips for blocks in building mode
• Improved UI for selling items
  • Added various filtering, sorting and favoriting options
  • Favorited (starred) items can't be sold accidentally any more
• Added assignable icons for ships
• Weapon base damage variation is now reflected in tooltips
• When founding a new ship, "Alliance Ship" is now greyed out when not in an alliance
• Pressing B while in drone now opens the ship founding dialog
• Player ships in the same sector now share their scanner data
• Added total crew salary to player and alliance fleet tabs

Client

• Added more loading screen tips
• Playmodes Normal & Creative Mode are now considered scenarios
• Added more infos about savegames in singleplayer window
• Added a checkbox to override a galaxy's mod settings
  • If not ticked, the save's previous mod config is used
• Added a news window to the main menu
• Added a warning window for loading a galaxy with a too high version
• Added a warning window for loading a non-beta galaxy while on the beta branch
• Added categories for assignable controls
• Default controls layout of immediate (mouse) steering changed:
  • Free Look is now on right mouse button (was Ctrl)
  • Torpedoes are now fired with G (was right mouse)

Graphics

• Improved visuals of swirly weapon beams

Server
"While tons of things were improved, the most important change is that the scheduling of the server update has been completely rewritten. A single slow sector no longer slows down the entire server. We also added quite a few new settings to tune your server to your perfect PvP settings."

• Restructured the entire internals of the server
  • A single slow sector no longer slows down the entire server
  • Shenanigans of players no longer slow down the entire server but only the sector they're in
  • Developer Note: This doesn't mean that the server now magically supports 100 players. Avorion is not an MMO, and will never be one because it was not designed as one.
• Simplified callback handling & improved stability of the server
• Increased time that sectors are initially loaded from 15s to 30s
• Renamed server option "authenticate" to "vac-secure"
• Renamed server option "isPublic" to "isMultiplayer"
• Added a server.ini setting to allow/forbid boarding
• Added a server.ini setting to enable saving of runtime stats (players, tick times, memory, sectors loaded, etc) into a .csv file
• Added a server.ini setting to configure the amount of networking threads
• Added a server.ini setting to configure minimum ship size
• Added a server.ini setting to configure maximum ship velocity
• Added a server.ini setting to configure maximum number of stations in a sector
• Added a server.ini setting to configure shipyard-bound building

Scripting API
"A lot changed here, so we won't be listing every little change, but only the most important ones - especially when they might break existing mods."

• Added class DockingClamps
• Added class HyperspaceEngine
• Added a new Sector callback "onPlayerArrivalConfirmed" which fires once the client has finished its loading screen
• Added more possibilities to work with Mails
• Added conversion from scancode to keycode and back (modders: See SDL2 docs for that)
  • Developer Note: Modders: This might be important for you if you were using the Keyboard. We changed our internal structure from SDL Keycodes to SDL Scancodes
• Entity:getDockingPositions() now returns a table
• DockingPositions:getDockingPositions() now returns a table
• DockingPositions:getDockingPosition(id) now returns a table
• Removed Entity:getRandomDockingPosition()
• Renamed Durability.setMaximum -> Durability.maximum
• Callback "onMailReceived" is now called "onMailAdded" on server, same as client
• Modder Request: Most properties of TextField are now readable as well
• Added functionality to drop VanillaInventoryItem and UsableInventoryItem loot
• Massive improvements to structuredmission.lua
• Fixed an issue where scripts registered for updates before being restored
• Fixed an issue where Galaxy:findFaction() didn't correctly return Player, Alliance, or Faction object depending on the internal type
• Fixed an issue where some components in Entities created by Sector:createEntity() were missing
• Fixed a crash when not passing a color to addShipProblem
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where it wasn't possible to directly set the Seed value
  • Use tostring() to get and assign the string to set
• Improved API documentation

Misc

• Added a notification when a player is assigned to be the new leader of a group
• Tons of small optimizations all over the place
• Improved performance of performance measuring (yes really)
• Improved several dialogs
• Improved translations
• Added several new bugs

Bugfixes
"As always, bug reports from the community are marked with [UBR] (User Bug Report). Thanks for reporting and keep it up! You'll be seeing quite a few more of these over the next weeks!"

• [UBR] Fixed an issue where torpedoes in Equipment Dock weren't as different as planned
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where trading posts and factories didn't have enough cargo space
• [UBR] Fixed several issues where introduction missions got stuck when playing them in Alliance ships
• [UBR] Fixed a few performance issues when opening the Equipment Dock menu while inventory is full
• [UBR] Fixed several issues where the server could crash when being sent garbage over network
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where the emblem of alliances weren't sent to players correctly
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where ships wouldn't keep their orientation upon sector change
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where some chat commands could crash the server
• [UBR] Fixed an issue in fighter tutorial mission where having more than 3 fighters didn't advance the mission
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where escort AI would falsely attack friends
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where armor blocks sometimes didn't stop penetrating projectiles
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where ships would chase each other out of the sector indefinitely
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where reconstruction token value of a ship would decrease when ship is built smaller
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where players without alliance vault permissions could trash/favorite alliance items
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where turrets were jittering while aiming with the mouse
• [UBR] Fixed an exploit where ships could be healed by adding large stone blocks
• Fixed an issue where chat messages sent by server didn't get their format strings filled in correctly
• Fixed an error message that was sent too often to alliance members with insufficient permissions
• Fixed an issue where turrets from the ship, when compared, would show up as blueprints
• Fixed highlights of list entries in singleplayer window not working
• Fixed several crashes
• Fixed 43 typos (I didn't actually count that)
• Removed unnecessary sector marker from station founding introduction mission

[AvorionAdmin]

Please note: These are preliminary patch notes and the patch is not live yet!

[Sir Charles]

These changes sound like they would benefit the game indeed. I am looking forward to try them once i get back in the game. 🙂

Please add the option to repair all destroyed blocks at once (and wouldnt a complete ship repair make more sense if it was only aviable at repair docks and ship yards?) !

Keep it going! 😉

[koonschi]

Updated the preliminary patchnotes based on feedback and new changes: 

• Shield reduction 50% -> 25%
• Shield cost increase 100% -> 50%
• Added explanation of how the shield & integrity changes will affect existing ships, hull and armor
• Added changes to default control layouts
• Added missing bullet point: 
  • Reduced cost for repairs at repair docks to 35% of ship's value (from 75%)

[koonschi]

The patch is now live!

[Vis]

Wait what! "Added several new bugs" 😲 ...Don't you mean added several bug fixes? Because why would you want to add bugs to the game? 🤣

[Darinth]

7 hours ago, Vis said:

Wait what! "Added several new bugs" 😲 ...Don't you mean added several bug fixes? Because why would you want to add bugs to the game? 🤣

That's called acknowledging reality. They didn't intend to add bugs, but they're aware that during this whole process new ones have shown up. 🙂

[Valck]

On 10/20/2020 at 1:08 AM, koonschi said:

Gameplay

 

"Aside from a few shady features that sneaked in from the Black Market DLC, we got Legendary Turrets, prettier asteroids, and a new, strange Xsotan Wormhole Device that seems to open wormholes to your Reconstruction Site."

• Added new containers that can be hacked or taken to a smuggler's outpost to be opened
• Added a new sector type with many containers and asteroids
• Added the possibility to bribe ships that control you
• Added the possibility to control & get bribed by AI traders that can now carry illegal goods

 

Please, for the love of sanity, hire a person who is a native English speaker and preferably located within talking distance. You don't "control" smugglers–unless you are indeed the crime overlord–you stop and search them, or inspect their ships and cargo. And if AI ships start controlling a player, we may be witnessing the beginnings of The Singularity...

 

Other than that, I'm looking forward to those changes and additions, quite a list you have there :)