Greetings Commanders,
Please find the Patch Notes for the January Update which launches on the 14 January. The Elite Dangerous servers will be offline for all platforms on 14 January at 09:30AM (UTC) for approximately 3 hours as we apply the January Update. This time may run over, so we would appreciate your patience as we are implementing these changes.
We wanted to thank you all once again for your help, and feedback during the January Update Beta, as well as your ongoing support for Elite Dangerous. We will continue to use this process for the the future updates throughout this year, and if you would like a recap from our previous post about this year's plans, you can read it here.
As always, we'll keep you updated across all of our social channels.
Please find the Patch Notes below:
- ARX
- Balance improvements for the generation of ARX, particularly for exploration-related gameplay. Audio
- Fixed audio issues with the Generation Ship, 'The Golconda'.
- Audio logs obtained from the Golconda can now be played in the Codex.
- Fixed missing audio and text for female crew members.
- Fixed a bug where none of the Guardian articles in the Knowledge Base would play their associated audio.
- Fixed a bug which meant that an audio effect on firing Pulse Lasers would loop indefinitely.
- Fixed a looping audio issue with the Shutdown Field Neutraliser. Crashes/Stability
- Fixed a crash that could occur when attempting to enter the 'Network Options' screen.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when mining in Ice Rings.
- Updated the way we check a player's entitlements to fix an issue where the Horizons update is not being recognised as installed.
- Fixed a crash which could occur when an Imperial Fighter is destroyed.
- Fixed a softlock when entering Supercruise with "The Lucent Embrace" Megaship targeted, after launching from Forester's Choice. Background Simulation
- Fixed the issue that meant some deliveries made to repair Thargoid-attacked stations were not being counted.
- Added new Faction States:
- Factions having trouble with water supplies can now sometimes suffer a Drought, causing an economic downturn. This can be countered by importing water and other emergency supplies.
- Infrastructure Failure disrupts a faction's operations and reduces both security and economic standards. The increased demands on infrastructure elsewhere in the star system may lead to similar failures for other factions. Food and machinery deliveries can speed up repairs.
- Terrorism. Terrorists can target prosperous factions, resulting in a significant security and influence cost. This can be countered by legally selling weapons to the authorities and assisting with bounty hunting efforts, or by the faction entering a Lockdown state.
- Natural Disasters have a significant economic and security cost for a faction. A natural disaster puts extra strain on the star system's infrastructure, increasing the chance of drought or infrastructure failure for other factions in that system.
- Public Holidays increase a Faction's influence and standard of living for their duration, however that comes at small economic and security cost.
- Fixed the icon for the Blight state.
- Added newer Faction States to the Galaxy Map's list of State filters: Blight, Natural Disaster, Infrastructure Failure, Drought, Terrorist Attack, and Public Holiday.
- Fixed an issue where the factions selected for 'Installation Scenarios' were the installation's owner instead of the system controller.
- Added names for a selection of systems in the Witch Head Sector.
Conflict Zones
- Implemented a number of improvements to Conflict Zones which should improve stability.
- Fixed a bug when entering a Conflict Zone, it appeared as empty.
- Fixed issues caused when Capital Ships arrived.
- Fixed an issue that caused allied Capital Ships to open fire at friendly ships.
Exploration
- Implemented an alternative solution to help mitigate the long delay when scanning planets with geological sites.:
- As it currently stands, in order for the geological/biological sites to be placed on the surface, the entire stellar body must be fully generated (we then know the topography and can place sites where they will be accessible), which can take tens of seconds.
- As part of the January Update, we aim to address this with an alternative process. We have run tests on thousands of in-game planetary bodies and by using this data, we're able to extrapolate the likelihood of geological/biologic sites being present on similar stellar bodies. We then use this data, and indicate if the planet is ‘Unlikely’, ‘Likely’, or ‘Very Likely’ to have a geological/biological sites.
- It is not 100% guaranteed that there will be a geological/biological site on the planetary body, but does give commanders a much faster indication of probability. This will enable commanders to quickly ascertain if the planet's worth a visit.
- If the commander wants to have a definitive answer without travelling to the body they can still wait for the scan to complete in FSS. This data is also now shown in the body details on the system map.
- Thargoid, Guardian or Human sites will show up instantaneously. These results have moved to the stellar body details shown on the right in the zoomed in FSS view.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the search function on the Galaxy Map from working correctly.
- Fixed an issue with the Navigation Panel that incorrectly displayed if a planet had been mapped or not.
- Instead of showing a notification for each individual asteroid belt cluster discovered, we now condense as many as we can into one message.
- Fixed an issue where is was not sometimes possible to select asteroid ring hot-spots from the cockpit.
General
- Added a 'Help' section to the main menu and pause menu with links to Issue Tracker and Customer Service sites (both will go through an external web browser).
- Moved 'EULA' to the new Help section.
- Expanded the faction alignment page in Squadron menu to display influence to 1 decimal point, to match how it is displayed in other areas of the game.
- Fixed an issue that meant players couldn't search for commander names that included an underscore character.
- Fixed an issue that meant the 'Data Point' reset timer didn't appear on the player's screen that initiated the scan, but did appear on others' who were in the same wing.
- Updated the livery icon for 'The Scourge' decal to correctly match the decal that's actually applied to the ship.
- Fixed an issue occasionally causing some wing invites to not be sent to players in other instances.
- Fixed an issue where some Navigation Panel entries could be blank.
- Dropping out of Supercruise on a wingmate using nav-lock will no longer drop the player a significant distance away.
Localisation/Text
- Fixed incorrect system description for 'Alioth'.
- Fixed a small typo in the description of "HR 7221 Wheat".
- Fixed various typos in the Pilot's Handbook.
- Fixed various typos in some of the Challenge Scenarios.
- Fixed a pluralisation issue when discovering clusters.
- Updated text descriptions for high-end minerals to show correct economies with a demand
Material Trader
- Introduced a speculative fix for a softlock that could occur when completing trades at a Material Trader.
Mining
- Fixed the issue that could lead to the detonation graph not appearing if deep core mining with a wing.
- Fixed a disconnection ("Magenta Krait") that could occur whilst mining.
- Fixed a deep core mining issue in multicrew where different crew members would see different detonation levels in the HUD.
- Fixed Subsurface Displacement Missiles in multicrew.
- Fix for a bug which made Seismic Charges instantly detonate in multicrew/wings.
Missions
- Updated misleading retreat mission text - it was suggesting that the mission was helping the withdrawal of the faction, when in fact it should aid the faction in staying within the system.
- Fixed a softlock that could occur when browsing lists of missions.
- Fixed an issue which caused cargo canisters to continually respawn in Planetary Salvage Missions.
- Fixed an issue which meant that the mission target could be missing from Eliminate Enemy Captain missions.
- Fixed a bug which meant that a 'Disable the Megaship turrets' mission would not show a time limit in the mission board.
New Player Experience
- Fixed an issue that meant the player could get 'stuck' waiting for zero throttle (when the throttle input is just above zero) in the New Player Experience Tutorial.
Networking
- Fixed issues with ship rubber banding.
- Integrated Oodle network compression library to reduce network bandwidth.
Player Journal
- Fixed missing/blank entries in journal when selling exploration data.
Powerplay
- Fixed an issue where the mouse input didn't work on the Power Contact screen.
- Control systems' ethos calculations now limit their search for controlling minor factions to star systems within 15 LY, that are exploited by the same power as the control system. Previously, the calculations considered all nearby star systems.
- Fixed reallocating Exploit systems, and recalculating the income for a Control system when a revolt system within 15 LY loses control.
- Recalculated many Exploit systems value that did not match their current population.
- Recalculated many Control systems income that was not the sum of their Exploit systems, plus their own value.
- Removed obsolete Confirm button from Power Contact screen (it was superseded by the consolidation mechanic a long time ago).
- Fixed an issue which meant that some systems were not being locked when a system moved from 'Preparing to Taking Control'.
Rendering
- Fixed an issue that was causing visual artifacts when capturing high-res screenshots.
- Fixed a visual issue rendering neutron star jet cones.
Ships
- Increased the Dolphin's heat dissipation rate and maximum heat capacity before it begins to take damage. Also increased the rate that it takes damage, to account for the ship now being harder to heat up.
- Implemented a speculative fix for Collector Limpets damaging ships when retrieving mining fragments.
- Added the ability to rescue any crew, that were on board the player's ship when it was destroyed, from the insurance screen.
- Rebuy cost in the right hand cockpit panel now includes cost to rescue crew.
- Crew rebuy costs rebalanced based on Beta feedback.
- Fixed directional decals being reversed.
- Fixed the Holo-Me view being obstructed.
SRV
- Fixed control input being lost after interacting with an inbox message.
Thargoid
- Implemented speculative fixes that should reduce instance splitting when fighting Thargoid Interceptors.
- Updated the Thargoid combat state to ensure it's correctly replicated over the network to reduce the occurrence of the heart cycles resetting.
- Fixed an issue that caused Thargoid Combat bonds to not be correctly given out to all applicable players in a wing.
- Fixed an issue with Thargoid Hearts becoming immune to damage when in a wing.
Trading
- Fixed the issue that meant players couldn't sell anything to a market if the buy list was empty.
- Added supply and demand volumes for certain, high-end minerals. Now, trading goods such as Void Opals is more realistic; markets can still offer a high buy price, but they will offer less as the demand is met. As part of this change, these high-end minerals will now be demanded more by specific economy types. This change will affect the following commodities:
- Alexandrite
- Benitoite
- Grandidierite
- Low Temperature Diamond
- Monazite
- Musgravite
- Painite
- Rhodplumsite
- Serendibite
- Void Opal