As we're roaring into the weekend, we are excited to drop the Silent Void update -- its a mixed bag of great things. What's maybe most important is that it is a really big bag. Personally, I am excited at how many times the word "added" or "new" appears in this update! While we are still digging out from under bugs, story fixes and UI improvements -- our engines are starting to burn with a new light -- expansion! To the frontiers, Captains! Let's go!
New Contacts and Recruits
Across the quadrants, you'll now meet Prospectors and Academy Doctors both -- who will make it easier to gain access to Doctor recruits and now make Explorers recruitable for the first time. In order to make Pirates easier to find and recruit, the Warlord contact has switched over to recruiting these space corsairs instead of spies.
Story "Log Jam"
Some of your games may be suffering from a bug we are calling the "log jam" where one or two errant story events could cause a lot of other story events to get hung up. After this update, you MIGHT see a bunch of story events fire back to back as the jam clears. It maybe feel a bit crazy, but it will pass quickly.
Emergency Hyperwarp Behind Enemy Lines
Too many Captains have come to the sad end of being stuck in a hostile quadrant with a damaged hyperwarp. Without any local starports willing to repair the damage, you have been forced to resort to Patrol and Explore in desperate hope to make amends or get lucky with repairs. Even rich and powerful Captains could suffer this fate!
Now, you can make an emergency jump to escape the Quadrant. Watch out -- this is not good. Things will go boom! But, you can get clear of enemy territory and gain a chance to repair, refuel and recoup at a friendly port.
On the other side of this coin, hostile starports once again correctly implement the -30 Rep limit to stop selling you Water-Fuel. A bug crept in that made them generous. Their generosity has been revoked!
New Talents
Many of our Captains have been lobbing out great ideas for new Talents. We love it! And here they come! The Spy can now steal intel records when boarding an enemy vessel with Unauthorized Access. Crew Dogs got a Blockading Talent to match their Patrol Talent with Hawkish Siege. And the Zealot has gained Summary Execution to put an end to a mutiny with a ruthless execution of a low Morale mutineer.
UI and Tooltip War
We've improved the Atlas significantly as well as adding services, tooltips and more. There is more awesome coming in regards to trading and such, but for now -- check out the new awesome.
Ship combat display has been updated to show the Engine health at all times to help avoid surprise defeats. We are working on balancing out ship combat more, so thanks to everyone's patience while we improve!
The war of the tooltips continues. We've added another 40+ tooltips across the game, annotating Faction flags everywhere and hitting up icons that are feeling lonely and jealous of other better icons that got tooltips first. We won't stop until ever widget, icon and shiny thing in the game is annotated.
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v2.0.27 - 11/8/2017
- Added 2 new Contact types: Prospector and Academy Doctor
- Prospector offers Explorer recruits, Academy Doctor offers Doctor recruits
- Warlord Contact now offers Pirate for recruits instead of Spy
- Added new Spy Talent at level 5 "Unauthorized Access" steals Intel Records after boarding enemy ship
- Added new Crew Dog Talent at level 5 "Hawkish Siege" rerolls a card in Blockade
- Added new Zealot Talent at level 8 "Summary Execution" kills lowest Morale crew in mutiny to reset Morale
- Added Engine health for both ships to Ship Combat HUD to avoid unexpected defeat
- May now make Emergency Hyperwarp Jump even if HW Drive is severely damaged
- Combat crew selection and placement remembered and automatically assigned at next combat
- Fixed story "log jam" which was preventing new stories not to start in games
- Fixed bugs with correct resolution to Valencia Faen's storyline, Calagan now responds to resolution
- Improved Talent icons for all card games (Explorer, Black Market, Spy, Patrol, Blockade) to be clearer
- Exploration correctly blocks repeat explore when the territory is temporarily scoured
- Starport correctly blocks refueling when Rep is below -30
- Fixed issues with Retrain cost being properly displayed and charged
- Fixed issue with Sharp Counter Swordsman Talent being used from any rank
- Prevented missions from showing $0 summary even when steps hidden
- Fixed issue with odd waypoint to Arbiter personal objective
- Added 40 new mouse hovers for rules, Faction flags and icons
- Improved "Star Atlas" rendering and information presentation (more awesome coming soon)