"This one is a big one. Lots of QOL improvements, performance improvements and new gameplay features. Basically improvements on all ends. This is all the stuff we absolutely wanted in before the Early Access Release, so here you go!" # Gameplay "Turret rotation can be locked and we added faction wars in addition to several quality of life improvements such as easy camera adjusting when changing between ships. Factions will also start wars against each other and players can choose a side." * Turrets can be rotated before placing * New Block: Turret Rotation Lock ** Turrets built onto this block can't turn ** Turrets built onto this block won't check if they would hit the ship and will always fire (but shots won't have any effect if they hit the player's ship) * Aggressive Factions will now start wars with factions around them ** During the first combat a player encounters between two factions, he can decide which one to side with ** "This guy attacks our ships!": After attacking a ship of one faction, this faction will become an enemy immediately ** "This guy is helping us!": After attacking a ship of one faction, the other faction will become an ally immediately * Added an equipment dock to start sector which doesn't sell fighters * Prices of trading goods are now influenced by the relations to the buying/selling faction * Pirate attack is cancelled when there's only one player, the player is in his home sector and his play time in this galaxy is less than 30 minutes * Mined resources immediately lock on to the craft that mined them * Tweaked ship generator to allow more different builds and less idiotic ships * Added 10 more randomly selected colors to starting block colors * Added a button (Left Alt) to configure the position of the camera easily * Improved fighter returning AI * Turret AI and Ship AI now aim at the geometric center of blocks, not the middle # Auto-Turrets "These took quite a while to get right, since they previously were hilariously overpowered. They still are against fighters, and we're currently working on a solution to that, too." * Some turrets have "Independent Firing", meaning they deal less damage but aim on their own * You can control these turrets from the turret control panel on the bottom * Turrets have 4 fire modes: Player, full auto, semi auto and attack target ** Player: The default shooting mode, Player controls the turrets ** Full Auto: The turret aims completely on its own, prioritizing dangerous targets such as fighters ** Semi Auto: The turret detects whether it can shoot where the player is currently aiming. If yes, it's player controlled. If not, it aims on its own. ** Attack Target: Similar to fighters, tells the turrets to attack a specific target. * Turrets in Auto-Mode will choose their targets based on their weapons ** Mining lasers will look for asteroids with resources ** Salvaging lasers will look for wreckages ** Armed turrets will look for enemies ** Repair turrets will look for damaged allies * A new group "Auto-Turrets not in a group" has been added to the bottom turret groups # Graphics "We made a few changes to the renderer, which allow us to add more cool effects such as more volumetric fog and screen space reflections. Enjoy!" * Added experimental screen space reflections in the "High" shader configuration * Mirroring plane in building mode is now a grid * Improved clipping of space fog in "High" shader configuration * Improved visuals of space fog * Improved overall fog (exponential instead of linear) * Improved preview of blocks in inventory, better scaling, better light angle * Reduced brightness of engines * Reduced reflectivity of Trinium # Tutorial "Several QOL improvements to the tutorial, more error resistance and some explanations about less obvious, but important mechanics in Avorion." * Different stages of the tutorial can now be selected * Added a tutorial lesson for braking behaviour of ships * Added a tutorial lesson explaining exiting into the drone * Added a tutorial lesson that returns the player back to his home sector * Added a tutorial lesson for configuration of camera * Tutorial can only be played in the home sector * Added scaling and deletion explanations in Tutorial * Safe mode can't be deactivated during tutorial # UI "Mainly adding more clarity to why certain situations happen the way they do." * Research station now actually moves items around for better clarity of what's happening * Added rendering of exit regions on hangar blocks * Ship in current ship tab now shows turrets as well * Fake distress signal pirate leader creates a dialog when player enters the sector * Size of damage numbers can be configured * Added a time limit that has to be reached before a ship problem message can make a beep again * Added hints for why fighters might not start * Added warnings to scrapyard when your time is running out * "L Mouse", "R Mouse" etc. is now "Left Mouse" and "Right Mouse" * Added a sound effect when fulfilling a goal in the tutorial * Added a title to dialog window to see who/what you're talking to * Reworked all windows in main menu * TextBox text is greyed out when ineditable * ComboBox no longer gets highlighted when inactive * Default UI color is now brighter * Added side-scrolling in normal text boxes * Tooltip headlines are no longer bold * Added display for energy weapons: How much energy they currently require # Balancing "A few adjustments to make batteries and some other things more viable, and AI shields and damage up (depending on difficulty). Background: AI ships deal a lot less damage to players. This is mainly since the player is usually up against multiple, equally armed ships, and usually spent a lot of time creating and refining his ship, and we want to avoid frustration. But right now combat isn't really a challenge, so we upped the damage dealt to players. Please tell us your feedback of the new perceived difficulty, this is important to us. Thanks!" * Increased the basic battery storage from 2GJ to 20GJ * Increased storable energy of battery blocks from 2.5 to 10 times the energy yield of a generator of the same size * Increased damage of AI ships to player ** In percent of actual damage capable ** Beginner: Remains at 2.5% ** Easy: From 5% to 7.5% ** Normal: From 10% to 20% ** Veteran: From 20% to 40% ** Difficult: From 40% to 60% ** Hard: From 75% to 80% ** Insane: Remains at 100% damage * Increased damage of AI ships to other AI ships so battles are over quicker * Doubled the reward for the pirate killing mission * Players always get 10.000 credits in the beginning, regardless of difficulty * Reduced probability of petty system upgrades * Maximum shields of AI ships increased from up to 50% of HP to up to 100% of HP * Mining laser's damage scales less with rarity * Increased time that damage to an object is remembered from 1 minute to 5 minutes * At least 1 mechanic is always required now # Performance "As usual several performance updates, this time mainly to rendering and shot collision updates. We had some problems when big fire fights were happening away from the origin of a sector, but those are resolved now!" * Lots of performance improvements in rendering (client) and updating (client & server) * Added a near infinite grid collision structure for better performance, especially when moving far away from the center (0, 0, 0) of a sector # Server & Hosting "We added a separate Steam tool for hosting dedicated servers and made hosting more clear (it's an explicit button instead of a small confusing "public" check box)." * Added a separate dedicated server tool on Steam * Added a window in the main menu which incorporates the tool for hosting a dedicated server in the client * Improved handling of connection problems with server on TCP and Steam protocols (no more hanging!) * Improved handling of server startup and shutdown * Servers can always be shutdown from localhost, using the dedicated server window or tool * Added more config options for server, such as verbose output, startup script and startsector script * Server accepts all command line arguments multiple times and uses the last * Updated a few option descriptions in server cmd line interface # Scripting API * Font of UIListBox can be set * Labels can be set to active or inactive * Implemented deferred callbacks for scripts * Selection returns table with ivec2s as keys for getItems() * Added equality comparison with == for inventory items * Added an enum for ChatMessageType # Misc "German localization is in! We're currently looking into how to do localization for other languages we don't speak. The problem is that Avorion is still constantly evolving and texts are always rewritten and have to be constantly updated." * German localization is finished, as well as a template for further localizations * Implemented detection and setting of language from steam client * Adventurer spawns in less friendly areas as well * Xsotan traits are now all unknown * Adjusted sometimes deafening sound effects * Lasers start flickering once they have no more energy * Increased spawning area of Swoks and The AI * Removed a story dialog that doesn't actually tell the player anything * Added a description to hidden mass detection upgrade * Distress call missions can be abandoned now * Improved logging # Bugfixes "As usual, some bug fixes. But this time we've decided that we'd like to highlight player bug reports to thank those players for taking their time to report errors and help us improve Avorion. User bug reports will be marked with [UBR]." * Fixed a lua stack overflow issue leading to mysterious crashes all over the place * Fixed a bug where the client would hang in "Saving Galaxy" on shutdown * Fixed a crash on shutdown * Fixed an error in trading manager when initializing secondary trading scripts * Fixed a crash in blocker script * Fixed a few issues where enemies wouldn't be recognized correctly by AI ships * Fixed pitch black being selected as default color * Fixed wrong directional thrust braking which didn't take into account orientation of the ship * Fixed overheating lines being too wide sometimes * Fixed strategy mode order lines disappearing after sector change * Fixed z-buffer issues in building mode preview blocks * Fixed flying through gates in strategy mode * Fixed "Connection Lost" menu is no longer scaled wrongly with super sampling enabled * Fixed a few events happening in sectors where they shouldn't * Fixed a bug where factions would be duplicated in diplomacy tab * Fixed a bug where sender of chat messages would always be "Server" * [UBR] Destroying a ship no longer worsenes relations to factions that helped destroying that ship * [UBR] Fixed continued flying when changing sectors * [UBR] Fixed UI buttons on the top right not displaying properly when adding/removing upgrades/scripts * [UBR] Fixed wrong display of number of ships in sector * [UBR] Amount of assignable crewmen is now determined by workforce of officers, not number * [UBR] Probability of system upgrades in equipment dock is the same as the dropped ones * [UBR] Fixed several Achievements "Into the Unknown" "Historian" "Center of the Galaxy" not unlocking * [UBR] Fixed missing default interactions for founded stations * [UBR] Fixed issues with the delivery mission when delivering to the same sector * [UBR] Fixed several pathfinding issues * [UBR] Fixed a few crashes in shipyard * [UBR] Fixed several cases of ${variables} instead of text * [UBR] Fixed a crash in transfer of crew and goods * [UBR] Fixed several mystery crashes in the regions related to Operation Exodus * [UBR] Fixed UI buttons on the top right not displaying properly when adding/removing upgrades/scripts "Thanks to everybody who took the time to report these issues, you guys are great!"