# Existing Saves
"IMPORTANT: This concerns existing saves!
The galaxy generation algorithms have changed and sectors visited BEFORE the update still have the factories of the old algorithms.
This means that the supply/demand prediction will mismatch around those sectors.
You can fix this easily by simply visiting those sectors.
Their factories will be updated into the galactic trade network and supply/demand prediction around them will correct itself.
But, if you've been thinking about starting a new playthrough anyways, now would be a good time."


# Technical Background
"In order to make these changes happen, we had to do some major restructuring of the procedural generation algorithms.
We are now able to reliably predict most of the content of a sector, without having to generate it (thus saving a lot of performance).
This is probably mostly important for modders, but it's going to help us a lot with development in the future. Yay!"
* Implemented reliable prediction of what will be generated in a specific sector
* Implemented reliable prediction of which productions (and thus factories) there will be in a specific sector


# Economy
"We revamped the economy so that factories create a perceptible supply and demand. This supply and demand is regional and will directly influence the prices of goods. High demand -> low prices and vice versa.
Most importantly: You can influence this by founding or destroying factories!"
* Factories create a supply and demand area of 25 sectors around them for the goods they require and produce
* Consumers create a (less strong) demand area for the goods they buy
* Sellers create a (less strong) supply area for the goods they sell
* Supply and demand influences the prices of goods
** When supply is high, prices drop
** When demand is high, prices rise
** Impact of a factory on supply/demand doesn't influence their own prices
* Added querying of supply and demand to Trading System Upgrade (details: see below)
* Supply and demand rates influence the prices of all stations in a sector
* Founding (or destroying, hehe) a factory or mine will impact supply and demand (and thus prices) of nearby sectors
* Added tags to goods: Basic, Industrial, Technology, Military, Consumer
* Added specialized regions where mostly Industrial, Technology, Military, Consumer goods are produced
* Added specialized sectors that produce only a single good to mix up supply and demand
* Trading Posts no longer buy a random range of goods, but instead a sample of goods that are being traded in the nearby vicinity
** Goods that are traded a lot (high supply and demand) have a higher chance to appear in a Trading Post
** Trading Posts now both buy and sell the same goods
* Added a turret factory supplier station that sells turret parts


# Balancing
"With the prices of goods being influenced by supply and demand, we want to shift balance more towards that and away from the randomness that it was before. We also made some changes to some goods and how and where they're available to enable a healthy economy."
* Changed the range of goods that consumer stations buy to create a more reliable supply & demand
* Reduced factory lowest and highest personal, random price factors (+/-30% to +/-10%)
* Reduced influence of relations on trading good prices (15% to 5%)
* Trading good prices are now dependent on supply and demand in surrouding regions (+/-30%)
* Prices are now influenced as follows:
** Stock: -10% to +10%, full vs. empty
** Relations: 0% to +/-5%, neutral vs. allied (plus/minus in favor of player)
** Relations: +/-90% to 0%, hostile vs. neutral (plus/minus not in favor of player)
** Supply Demand: -30% to +30%, depending on high demand/supply (high supply: prices drop, high demand: prices rise)
** Factory Base Price: -10% to +10% (random for AI factions, configurable for player)
* Factory base price influences the general price range of your factory (buy AND sell prices)
* Factory base price influences the amount of buying/selling traders that will visit your station
** High base price: More traders that sell at your station, Low base price: More traders that buy at your station
** Note: The base price mechanic was not changed, it's just listed for the sake of clarity
* Increased size of Energy Cell to 1.0 (from 0.5)
* Decreased size of Water (1 to 0.35)
* Reduced amount of Energy Cells produced in a single batch (40 to 25)
* Reduced randomness of turrets and upgrades
* Force turrets now vary less in power and scale with tech (can now be up to 5x as strong as before)
* Reduced price of Shield Reinforcer and Transporter Software
* Increased loot dropped by big pirate ships
* Increased time between headhunter spawns


# Difficulty Changes
"We're changing the difficulty settings. We got a lot of feedback telling us that the game is too easy, and we saw that the current 'Insane' difficulty is actually more of an 'Expert' mode. At the same time we know that we have a few difficulties that seem arbitrary. We're fixing this now.
Please note that a lot of these changes are still experimental, and we will adjust them based on community feedback."
* Renamed "Difficult" to "Expert", "Hard" to "Hardcore"
* "Expert" is going to be the same as the current "Insane" difficulty
* Adjusted AI ship damage reduction (which is there to make one-to-many-ships combat more fair and fun):
** Beginner: Damage Reduction remains at 97.5%
** Easy: Reduction down (92.5% to 90%)
** Normal: Reduction down (80% to 70%)
** Veteran: Reduction down (60% to 40%)
** Expert, Hardcore, Insane: No more reduction
* Normal & Below:
** Protection against too bad initial relations with immediate neighbors
** Ship blocks are protected from breaking off as long as the ship's total HP are above a certain threshold
** No breaking until ship reaches HP: Veteran: 80%, Normal: 40%, Easy: 20%, Beginner: 0%
* Veteran & Up
** Meaner Enemies: Enemies will take more advantage of long range weapons (should they have any)
** Increasingly improved chance to get a better loot drop rarity
* Expert & Up
** Mean Enemies: Enemies will take full advantage of long range weapons (should they have any) and stay at a distance if they can
** Other factions will have increasingly worse initial relations to the player
** Your own ship's blocks can break immediately on hit, not just after its health going below a certain threshold
* Hardcore & Insane
** Perma-Destruction: No Reconstruction Tokens, no Insurance. Once your ship was destroyed, it's gone for good - including upgrades & turrets
** Once you switched down from Hardcore or Insane, going back up is no longer possible
* Added detailed explanations in menus about the exact impact of the various difficulty levels
* Game difficulty is adjusted on first load, to avoid unpleasant surprises


# Trading System Upgrade
"This thing just gained a lot more meaning. Use it to view a sector's supply and demand and find good locations to found your factories!"
* A Trading System of Exceptional or higher can query local supply, demand and prices of goods from the galactic trade network
** Exceptional: Query supply and demand in current sector
** Exotic: Query supply and demand of nearby 15 sectors (visible on Galaxy Map)
** Legendary: Query supply and demand of nearby 25 sectors (visible on Galaxy Map)
* When using an Exotic or Legendary Upgrade, you get new UI elements on the Galaxy Map
* Prices can be viewed as a coloring of nearby sectors from cold (-30%) to hot (+30%)
* Supply and demand can be viewed as a coloring of nearby sectors from cold (high demand) to hot (high supply)
* Improved tooltips of Trading System Upgrade
* Added a detailed supply/demand overview tab for current sector


# Factory Configuration UI
"This menu definitely needed some love. You can now see a detailed overview of what's going on, and how much money it already made (or burned)."
* Reworked layout of Configuration UI
* Renamed "Price Margin" slider to "Base Price" as that's what it actually does
* Added an exact outline about the factories' production, including all goods and parallel productions
* Added overview about influence on prices through nearby supply/demand
* Added overview about money gained/invested by the factory
* Added many tooltips for better clarity


# Sector Maps
"This is a feature we have long wanted and it basically came for free with the reliable prediction of sectors. Enjoy!"
* You can now buy maps of a faction's territory at their Equipment Docks
* There are maps for a single quadrant of a faction's territory or their entire territory (allies only)
* Traveler's Quadrant Map: Reveals gate connections in the faction quadrant
* Explorer's Quadrant Map: Reveals faction sectors in the faction quadrant
* Faction Quadrant Map: Reveals all sectors, including stations in the faction quadrant
* Faction Territory Map: Reveals all sectors, including stations in the entire faction territory


# UI
"Upgrades now stack, we removed the $ sign for the ¢ sign (because - ¢redits), and made some smaller adjustments & improvements to the UI."
* System upgrades can now be stacked in inventory
* Added the ability to highlight supply & demand and price devitations on Galaxy Map
* Replaced textual occurrences of "Credits" and "$" with the "¢" character
* Renamed "Organize Goods" mini-mission to more correct "Procure Goods"
* Loading Screen: Added new hints and reworked hints to fit new economy system
* Implemented scrolling by typing in ComboBoxes
* General improvements to trading UI formatting
* Trading goods are now sorted alphabetically in UI
* Increased icon size of useable items and vanilla items
* Sorting by rarity no longer separates upgrades and turrets from each other
* Reduced size of top-right buttons
* Buttons added via script are now highlighted until they're mouseovered
* Ships Tab is now sorted by Entity Type (Station vs. Ship)
* Added warning message when player sells his ship at scrapyard
* Player is now moved into drone before their ship is sold at scrapyard
* Added a server-global message when Wormhole Guardian respawns


# Scripting API
* [Server:]set/getGlobal() functions now support tables
* Moved several sector scripts to a new "sector/background/" folder
* Added more tags to civil ships to distinguish freighters, miners and traders
* Renamed global function "getSectorSeed" to "SectorSeed"
* Renamed global function "getGameSeed" to "GameSeed"
* GameSettings: Added permaDestructionEnabled property
* GalaxyMap: Added new properties to control visualization
* GalaxyMap: Added a new custom color layer for showing custom colors
* Rect: Added a "center" property
* Increased the amount of async lua worker threads to 4
* Renamed "onEntityCreate" sector callback to "onEntityCreated"
* SectorView: Extended API a lot
* GameInput: Added various functions for key pressing/releasing checks
* Rarity: Added a "type" property
* Galaxy: Added aiFactionExists() allianceExists() playerExists() functions
* Galaxy: Server-Global Scripts can now be added to Galaxy
** This moves data/scripts/server/server.lua to data/scripts/galaxy/server.lua
* Added some docs to init.lua scripts
* Added docs for callbacks still happening after callbacks were unregistered


# Server
* Adjusted warning message when scripts can no longer be found to not confuse players with minor errors


# Bugfixes
"As always, bug fixes marked with [UBR] stem from bug reports we got from users. Thank you so much for helping and keep it up! :)"
* Corrected "Aluminium" to "Aluminum"
* Corrected "Silicium" to "Silicon"
* Fixed an issue where Oil Rigs would not count as mines
* Fixed an issue where Mineral Extractors would be counted as mines
* Fixed an issue where "Petty" rarity fighters and turrets were displayed as "Common"
* Fixed an issue where cargo and crew shuttles were displayed with "Petty" rarity
* Fixed several issues with factories not buying/selling from your own ships when buy/sell from others is unchecked
* [UBR] Fixed several issues with AI ships docking
* [UBR] Fixed an issue where relations of a faction to itself were changeable
* [UBR] Fixed an issue where Docks were highlighted for docking when inside station
* [UBR] Fixed an issue with head hunter attacks happening in neutral zones
* [UBR] Improved behavior of scrapyard reputation loss when fighting in a scrapyard sector and hitting the just-destroyed ship
* [UBR] Fixed an issue where there were smuggling controls while in your own sector
* [UBR] Pirates no longer attack their own sectors
* [UBR] Fixed an issue where Fighter AI doesn't attack newly turned hostile entities (i.e. Xsotan) when on defend
* [UBR] Improved behavior of player-owned, AI-piloted ships firing torpedoes
* [UBR] Fixed an issue where inventory selections flickered when hovering recent items
* Fixed some issues with wording of several texts
* Fixed some hangs in server during script callbacks