Game update

Hello everyone!

The game development is slowly catching up on the plans put down in the development roadmap for 2023 and as a result of that, a big v0.2.7 game update is coming next week! As usual, the update starts at 10pm UK time and shouldn't take longer than 1 hour.

This update is mostly based on the feedback from the players and brings a lot of game-changer features, such as the limited NPC shops with all equipment in standard quality only to allow players to get new pieces of equipment even without building the stations - although it is still cheaper to build your own stations - so be sure to save up a lot of Courons! Now is the best time to get back into the game to save as much Courons as possible to get the equipment/ship you want!

Simplified Station Spawner and better Starmap are also included in this update, which will help a lot in building the space station anywhere you want (*limitations apply, see the change log below) and the Starmap will show you where exactly are the stations, what's the type of the station, who's the station owner and what's the relation between your factions.

There is still some work on the bug fixes, but the change log is pretty much done already, see it below this text here. Please read the Important section of the change log below, thank you.

Regards,
Lukas Tokar

v0.2.7 patch notes:

- NEW FEATURES:

• + 2 new HUD icons -> construct builder (new station spawner window) and communication (invitations window)
• + new HUD popup window for tracking calcululation time left when using hyper jump
• + new NPC shops in starting system 1-1 to provide players with equipment and ships in standard quality in exchange for Courons
  1. -> please keep in mind that these shops will be intentionally fairly expensive and with limited stock so that it is still cheaper to use player made space stations instead.
  2. -> When purchasing equipment items, be sure to check what size they are as you can only equip the same equipment size as is your current ship size.
• + big sized ships and equipment complete implementation

- UPGRADES:

• + HUD StarMap window rework:
  1. + new zoom in and zoom out effects when selecting sector / system
  2. + Starmap automatically zooms in on the current system upon opening the Starmap HUD window, no matter which system was previously viewed
  3. + you can now zoom in to the target system to see what the system offers (including info on player-made & NPC stations, your own location in the current system, planets exact location in the current system, asteroid borders [if the system has any] and danger zones [if the system has any])
  4. + new translations to reflect reworked hyper-jump mechanism
  5. + added info about time needed to calculate hyper jump route to the selected system
• + hyper-jump rework:
  1. + player selects a system for hyper jump through StarMap HUD window. If the selected system is within hyper jump range and ship tank has enough fuel, the hyper jump button will become available to click -> upon pressing the jump button, the hyper jump route calculation will begin, for which a new popup window will appear with information about time left for the calculation
  2. + once the route calculation is done, the player can then perform the hyper jump itself at any time he wants (in contrast to v0.2.6, hyper jump is no longer unstoppable once initiated, change was done to allow players to interrupt the hyper jump calculation time)
  3. + fuel is only burnt out when the actual hyper jump is activated -> the hyper jump route calculation phase doesn't use fuel
  4. + hyper jump route calculation will be completely cancelled at any time if the player gets destroyed / if the player lands somewhere with his ship / if a player manually moves to another system (this affects the already calculated hyper jump routes as well)
  5. + reduced the time needed to calculate the hyper jump route -> ship size modifiers to hyper jump wait time used to be 3/6/9 * target system distance for small/medium/big sized ships, now reduced to 2/4/6 * target system distance
  6. + hyper jump now takes the players at the beginning of the target system, it can no longer take the players to the middle of the system
  7. + new hyper jump info small HUD window -> displays the time left for the hyper jump calculation and switches to a button to activate the actual jump once the time is up. It is still possible to close this small HUD window and use the shortkey "J" (by default) to activate the jump instead.
• + station spawning complete rework:
  1. + static station spawner buttons on the game map were removed
  2. + players are now able to build a space station anywhere they want in the system
  3. + added a new HUD window 'Station Spawner' with details of each station (including available factories, shop items and station HP). All available space stations to build are now ordered in a list. This was done to allow us to add more options in the far future:
     1. * smaller specialised platforms with defense turrets
     2. * hospitals with the sole purpose of being a respawn option
     3. * warp gate stations which would allow instant jump between allied warp gate stations anywhere in the galaxy as long as the player has enough fuel in his ship to cover the jump cost
     4. * outpost stations which would generate control points for the faction in that specific system
        1. ** there is currently a plan for galaxy domination system which would make it possible to lock the system for a specific period of time, making the space stations invincible for the faction with the highest amount of control points and make any other faction unable to build a space station in that specific system.
  4. + there are a few limitations for spawning a new station:
  5. - max 5 space stations per system
  6. * each station has to be at least 1000 pixels (40 radar units) away from the nearest station (the stations are each around 500x500 pixels, so you can think of a 1 space station size empty space between space stations)
  7. * the space station has to be at least 1100 pixels (44 radar units) away from the system borders
  8. * players CAN NOT build a space station in a NON-PVP system (basically any system with RFPE owned station)
• + HUD Radar adjustments
  1. + new visual representation of special zones (danger zones and asteroid system borders)
  2. + new visual representation of stars (a big white circle)
  3. + radar performance improvement -> changes done to reduce the number of radar processes for known entities near the player, making it work faster
• + HUD missions window:
  1. + mission tab buttons got their UI background fixed, now their transparency depends on the general opacity settings
  2. + added sound effect for hovering over the mission tab button and sound effect for clicking the mission tab button
• + squadron member in HUD squadron window, mission tab button in HUD missions window, chat channel buttons in HUD chat window -> UI background fixed, now their transparency depends on the general opacity settings
• + HUD communication window (formerly known as invitations window)
  1. + UI background fixed, now its transparency depends on the general opacity settings
  2. + added 4 new switches, players can now choose to ignore (auto-reject) any requests / invitations they want
• + HUD Chat window -> when not focusing on the chat text field and pressing the Enter key, focus the chat text field
• + added respawn wait time info to the HUD Respawn popup window
• + added info label for being in a non-pvp system
• + improved station factory screen
• + improved station shop prices screen

- BALANCING:

• + increased the player ship reverse thrust speed to be max_speed/5 instead of max_speed/10
• + lowered the auto-slowing down speed when not pressing forward / reverse thrust buttons to be acceleration/3 instead of acceleration/1
• + adjusted system 1-1 in sector A1 -> raised the number of pirate ships NPC to 10
• + NPCs can now travel closer to the system borders
• + Refinery station factories balancing:
  1. + now you need only 3 ores/ice to create 1 refined resource (used to be 10:1)
  2. + now you need only 5 scrap metals to create 1 iron (used to be 20:1)
  3. + production times reduced from 30 seconds to 10 seconds for each factory line

- FIXES:

• + HUD Starmap window fixes:
  1. + fixed client-side fuel cost calculation for hyper jump to selected system
  2. + changing equipped engine wasn't reflected in the Starmap client-side calculations for display info and just kept showing info for the engine equipped at the beginning of the playing session -> now fixed
• + it is now possible to quit the game any way you want -> though I highly recommend using the logout button while logged in to quickly save your player data (if you quit the game window in any other way, you can still stay on the game map for another 30 seconds) and using the exit button in the game's main menu to properly clear your memory of the game files.
• + localisation fix - updated error message for trying to unequip your current ship
• + when repairing your ship and viewing the ship hangar overview in the HUD equipment window, the tab view is changing from Hangar to Player / Ship - fixed now
• + fix for player-made Science Station shop -> Money chip item wasn't included in the list of items the station could trade with, thus making it impossible to acquire such item for the production in station factories
• + fixed the reward equipment items in the Station interior HUD window in missions section to show full HP instead of 0 HP
• + fixed equipped booster item expiry communication to the game client:
  1. + added system message to inform player about such event
  2. + fixed the removal of the equipped booster item from the HUD equipment window
• + tweaked network updates for asteroids, which hopefully resolves the issue of asteroids being out of sync in the game client
• + leaving another ship's hangar when within the landing reach makes the player unable to land on that station until the player leaves the vicinity of the station and comes back -> now fixed to allow player to land on the station upon leaving another player ship hangar
• - more fixes to come

- IMPORTANT:

+ Updated Terms and Conditions -> Project owner address change.
+ Please note that I am going for my long summer holidays soon, so the next development will take place in the middle of this August after this update is released. So the next game update can be expected in September.
+ This summer will be dedicated to adjusting the NPC population of the game map systems in the sector A1, updating the out-dated in-game helper called WoTUpedia, adding game map background to systems 4-x and 5-x, and lastly writing new missions.