Alpha 10: Out Now!

Hi Galactic Survivalists!

After more than 4 weeks in Experimental phase, we are very excited to release Alpha 10 to the public branch today!

Thanks to all Experimental testers, who helped with tracking down bugs and who sent in their feedback over the past weeks, we managed to greatly improve the initial feature releases.

Here is a short overview of the main features of Alpha 10:
- Polarized hull shields
- More than 100 new building block shapes
- Increased mining speed and improved drill handling
- New base attack & AI improvements (including a standalone Base Attack Scenario)
- Combined color and texture tool
- New movement controller mode for vessels
- New multiplayer chat
- Increased texture resolution of our 3d models

Check out the update video that highlights the main features of Alpha 10:
https://youtu.be/ixaOycpvbCs

When looking at the overview and the full changelog below (with a LOT more changes, improvements and bug fixes), you will notice that we introduced several “first time” features and some gameplay changes. We are aware of the fact that this might lead to some relearning of mechanics, which can be inconvenient for everyone that is used to a certain play-style. However, the goal of the Alpha phase is still to add, change and introduce large feature updates.

Thanks a lot in advance to keep this in mind when playing Alpha 10. Said that, especially the new Base Attack (including a significant AI update for NPC ground troops) and the Modding API are additions that will still evolve over time. That’s why we value your feedback on ANY of the game topics and try to incorporate ideas and suggestions wherever possible and we hope everyone will continue to do so with the public release.

Please check out Alpha 10 and make good use of the Feedback forum: https://empyriononline.com/forums/faq-feedback.25/

Of course, please also report any bug or issue with Alpha 10 in the bug forum: https://empyriononline.com/forums/bugs.24/

Have fun playing Alpha 10!

Yours,

Empyrion Dev Team

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CHANGELOG: Alpha 10.0.0 (Build 2504)

MAJOR FEATURES:

1. Shields
- Added polarized hull shield for vessels and bases

Hitting a shield-protected base

- Added shield generator (Pentaxid is required to charge the shield and energy is needed to power the shield)

- Added shield info to Control Panel and shortcut button “Shield” to the GENERAL window to switch on/off shield. In addition, shield can be switched on/off via hotkey “X” (default key can be remapped)
- While shield is active, you cannot place any new blocks on the structure or warp jump with your vessel
- Allow Warp Drive Tank also on HV (now renamed into Pentaxid Tank)
- Pentaxid Tanks now accept stacks of Pentaxid (instead of single items only)

2. More than 100 New Building Block Shapes
- Added more than 100 new building shapes

Some of the new shapes

- Added tabbed block shapes menu for easier selection

- Added BlockShapesWindow.ecf for your very own custom block shape menu sorting and configuration

3. Increased Mining Speed and Improved Drill Handling
- Significantly increased drill speed so that terrain is now removed much faster (less grinding)
- Faster resource gathering (less grinding)
- Improved drill mode (removes terrain as a semi-sphere) so that you can cut out tunnels more nicely

- Merged resource drill and stone drill mode into one mode for all drills + survival tool
- Improved fixed drill mode for HVs

The underground handling of HVs is now significantly easier: you can dig very nice straight tunnels with your HV (to activate drill mode, press SHIFT+O)

When your HV is in the fixed drill mode, you can now use W/A/S/D, the arrow keys and the mouse to precisely navigate. In addition, pressing LMB while in the fixed drill model will enable auto mode of your drills so you do not need to keep LMB pressed

> For more changes to drilling and mining, see the additional changelog below.

4. New Base Attack & AI Improvements
- Zirax ground troops can now invade player bases

Zirax attacking a base

- Zirax Ground troops have 2 types of special weapons: Demolition Tool (cuts through ANY material) and Remote Hacking Device (can hack/replace a core remotely)

The demolition tool in action

The remote hacking device in action

- Added several rules and parameters for base attack probability calculation: the probability that your base is attacked now depends on your reputation vs Zirax as well as the location, energy footprint and size of your base
- Base attack coefficients can be seen for each base in statistics page of Control Panel (as well as expected difficulty of next base attack + time of last base attack)
- Allow also NPC bases that were captured by the player to be attacked subsequently by Zirax
- Zirax soldiers consider which turret did a damage to the group and they will protect against such turret as a group
- If there is already an ongoing base attack, we then do not launch another attack (avoids multiple simultaneous base attacks on a server)

5. Color-Texture Tool
- Added new tool that combines texturing and coloring

Instead of applying first the new texture, then changing to the color tool and choosing the new color....

....you can now just choose a texture and color at the same time and the apply both with one click:

> When clicking on a texture or color with LMB, close window immediately (it is like the old behavior)
> When clicking on a texture or color with RMB, just select/highlight texture/color (do not close window)
> Separate color and texture preview in right-bottom corner (i.e. 2 preview slots, only color and only texture)

- Only texture and color mode:
(i) "Only texture" mode (keep current color) - when selecting left upper slot and choosing a texture
(ii) "Only color" mode (keep current texture) - when selecting left upper slot and choosing a color
> Restore default texture and color - when selecting left upper slot for both texture and color
> Added icon to left upper slots and also display in right-bottom corner (if either selected for color or texture)
> Replace function affects textures and colors based on selected items

6. New Movement Controller Mode for Vessels:
- Added a new "mouse pointer" directional behavior for controlling your vessels (aka "Pilot Mode")
- Pilot mode can be enabled
- Added hotkey to toggle pilot mode

How it works:
- If your mouse pointer (i.e., the circle) is in the center crosshair, your vessel just goes straight forward

- If your mouse pointer moves out of the center crosshair, the vessel will keep turning "at the direction" your mouse is pointing, and keeps turning in that direction until the mouse is "again", in the center

- The further your mouse pointer is away from the center crosshair, the faster your vessel turns
- You can switch this mode on/off via the Control Panel or via hotkey "Shift + I"

7. New Multiplayer Chat

- Added new chat system with tabs and many convenience features
- Chat now has an auto-complete popup list for names / factions (use Up, Down, PgUp, PgDown and Enter to control)
- Shows Alliance channel messages
- Chat input field scrolls with long texts
- Added 'new messages' indicator per channel
- Added cycling through Tabs with CTRL + Left/Right
- Added "/clr" chat command to clear a chat channel
- Added separator to show what messages are new

8. Increased Texture Resolution:
- Thanks to Unity 2018.3, we are now able to use ‘Texture Streaming’

We increased the resolution of all textures for our 3d models:

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ADDITIONAL FEATURES:

Building & Templates:
- Added volumetric lights to player suit light, growlight, flashlight, motorbike and all spotlights (eg vessel spotlights or base lights when used in spotlight mode)

- Updated color masks on most devices to have better coloring (no un-colorable gray parts anymore)
- Added new cockpit

- Added new heavy window shapes

- Added large drill module for HVs

- Added thin ventilator block (more variants planned)

- Added new Asteroid Ring to space playfields (scenario creators might need to update the position for voxel asteroids if they are handplaced). You can still use old Asteroid Ring via "AsteroidFieldRingOld" in playfield.yaml

- Added more variants for Boarding Ramps, Hangar Doors, Shutter Doors and Shutter Ramps
- Allow to place Boarding Ramps now also on Bases
- Added 4 new CV Containers

- Added more variants to Armored Doors

- Added new deco Antenna Blocks
- Deco devices (antenna, pipes, etc) from group DecoVesselBlocks are now also placeable on bases > renamed into "General Devices (Deco)"
- Replaced all Zirax weapon models with higher quality versions (same for Polaris Assault Cyborg)
- Updated models of Constructors, De-Constructor, Power Generators (BA,CV), Fuel/O2 Tanks (BA,CV), Oxygen Station (BA,CV), Medic and Cloner Station (BA,CV), Portal and Water Generator

- Cockpit 2 (open) for SV/HV is now 2 blocks high for sleeker SV/HV designs
- Added new "Repository" deco block (under Deco group)
- Added human trader "TraderHuman"
- Moved ScifiChair to front (better combination possibility with table)
- Renamed many block shapes for consistency (no impact on save games)

Gameplay Improvements:
- Updated drone colliders to have more "weak" spots > emissive areas on drones (head multipliers will apply)
- Allow upgrading device when needed material is in connected inventory/container
- Shotguns can now destroy enemy spawner pads
- Added weight of fuel into the total mass of the ship
- Added more deco containers to weight calculation
- Implemented: In 'Salvage' mode MultiTool and SurvivalTool now return a random set of top-level items (instead of deconstructing fractions of a top-level item to lower level items)
- Removed Recoil from Salvage Mode of Survival Tool
- Added possibility to upgrade growing pots: Wood > Cement > Steel
- Auto level player when near water line to avoid being in an in-between state above/below water
- Slightly increased gun elevation for Turret Cannon and Flak as well as increased gun depression for Sentry Guns

NPC Factions:
- When opening a container of a NPC faction, now a warning popup appears to indicate that opening the container will result in a drop of reputation
- When now destroying an NPC block/device, reputation behaves as with attacking an NPC or opening container > reputation falls to neutral and with repeated action then to unfriendly
- Don't show reputation warning message when trying to open container or pickup plants from Alien (Aln) or Admin (Adm) factions

Global Handling & Game Feedback:
- Jetpack state is now persistent
- Added new plant growing messages (no oxygen, temperature not adequate, radiation too high, no light) to better indicate why a plant is not growing
- Allow godmode in creative mode with G (no console cmd needed anymore)
- Drone types are now differentiated by color (Minigun = blue, Rocket = red)
- Do not display dead enemy drone units (red blips) in maps anymore
- Better highlight of active toolbar slot
- Allowing to create a blueprint from any structure in survival if godmode invisible is enabled
- Added info to status effect (displayed after certain time) into which other status effect it will evolve if not treated otherwise
- Drilling: added message when trying to drill bedrock or any terrain layer that is too hard for the driller
- Drilling: added message when hitting not destructible terrain with the drill
- Cockpit: allowing to turn head for 150° in FPV mode for some cockpits (old was 75°) to better look back

AI & NPCs:
- Added ability that an open door/hangar door will be used by AI and considered as "open space" to path through it
- Improved AI behavior of Talon, Alien Civilians and Assault Cyborg
- AI behavior refactoring and optimizations for faster loading and less stuttering

Base Attack Scenario:
- We added a first iteration of a pure base attack scenario
- You will start in a base on a planet that is under attack. The Zirax launch waves of base attacks
- Your goal is to survive as long as possible
- The base attack scenario is intended for SP and COOP

Improved O2 Calculation:
- More accurate O2 calculation in BA / CV (O2 is now calculated on 1 meter Voxels in BA and CV instead of 2 meter Voxels)

In this situation, the O2 flow would have been blocked. Now, O2 can circulate freely

Drilling / Mining Update (continued):
- Displaying angle of inclination with respect to horizontal position > so you can drill tunnels very accurately now
- Possible to use WSAD, arrow keys and mouse when in HV fixed mode
- Added Drill mode to Survival Tool, so you can now also dig holes and drill with this tool
- Removed Mechanical Drill T1; Survival Tool will take its place (with 5m range for the drill mode) - adapted PDA, playfield.yaml, templates etc (renamed “Drill T2” into “Drill”)
- Rebalanced: Survival Tool, Drill T2, Epic Drill, Debug Drill
- Added fine drill mode for Drill and Epic Drill
- Flattening mode now uses new drill mode and thus is now very fast in flattening areas
- Stronger filler mode for faster filling of terrain
- Added new drill mode to all vessel-based drill (but without projector HUD element)
- Switched ordering of drill modes on handheld Drill and Epic Drill
- Handheld Drill and Epic Drill: Each mode now has a visually slightly different particle effect
- Added better muzzle flash to Survival Tool, Drill and Epic Drill
- Improved filler mode on drill: Updated filler texture and improved blending/usage
- Removes terrain as a whole semi-sphere instead of small voxels (= significantly fewer terrain-updates per m³ changed = CPU saving and network traffic)
- Added first iteration of resource material progression
* Tier I: Iron, Silicon, Copper, Promethium
* Tier II: Cobalt, Magnesium, Gold, Neodymium, Sathium
* Tier III: Erestrum, Zascosium, Pentaxid

Improved Game Start for Random Default Scenario:
- Several convenience improvements
- More rock resources in starter biome
- Added "Base Starter" to Personal Container of Wreckage
- Overall more resource deposits (+ added 1 gold resource deposit for special discovery)
- Wreckage spawns now closer to start area
- Improved deco distribution, added more biomes
- Better biome spawning of creatures

Robinson Protocol Improvements:
- Better player guidance
- Updated information given for some PDA Info descriptions (f.ex. Vessel-Build descriptions)
- Crushed Stone now also completes rock mining
- Added reference of Empyriopedia (Doctors Journal, Biologist Guide) in appropriate places
- Updated formatting
- Removed info-reference about arid playfield in temperate playfield robinson protocol mission

Updated Epic Weapons:
- Assault Rifle (Epic): Increased DMG, Increased Reload Time
- EM Pulse Rifle (Epic): Renamed from Pulse Rifle (Epic), Increased DMG, Increased Reload Time, Small DMG to shields
- Laser Minigun (Epic): Small DMG to shields
- Heavy Sniper Rifle (Epic): Renamed from Epic Sniper Rifle; Significantly increased DMG; Increased Reload Time; Now uses Railgun Bullet; Small damage to HS and CS blocks
- Sniper, Sniper T2: Increased DMG
- Plasma Rifle (Epic); Renamed from Epic Laser Rifle; Increased DMG, Increased DMG vs. Shields; Increased Reload Time
- All Epic weapons: adjusted Rate of Fire

Global Balancing & Progression:
- Increased range of Repair Bay and improved Repair-2-Template activation process
- RCS Device (CV) can now be constructed in Large Constructor
- Reduced reload time of player sentry turrets
- Adjusted mass, energyIn and hitpoints of Cockpits
- Full rebalancing of mass and hitpoints of Doors, Boarding Ramps, Shutter Doors and Hangar Doors (Weight and HP now grow with size; Increased HP significantly for lager variants)
- Globally adjusted mass and hitpoints for Shutters and Ramp groups
- Adjusted volume for Shutter and Armored Door groups
- Balancing damage on survival tool (lower dmg), multitool and tool turrets (higher dmg) for Deconstruct and Disassemble modes
- Rebalanced Zirax Minigun: stronger against turrets and other devices
- Techtree tweaks: SV can now be built at level 5, CV can now be built at level 7 (before there were some inconsistencies)
- Significantly reduced damage of rocket drones on player
- Increased health gain from Bandages
- Increased hitpoints of SV and CV Thrusters and Jet-Thrusters
- Increased SU of some deco blocks (Furniture and tech block that should visually have a bigger inventory)
- Added VolumeCapacity to ContainerPersonal
- Increased HP of Troop Transport
- Reduced attack damage of Alien Bugs 02, 03 and 04

Rebalanced Handheld Weapons:
- All values are now calculated in a consistent manner: T2 = x% better than T1, Epic = x% Better than T2
Global Value Changes in %: (T1 vs. T2; T2 vs. Epic)
> Degradation: -25%; -35%
> RoF: +15%; +15%
> Range: +10%; +20%
> Bullet Spread: -25%; -50%
> Recoil: -20%; -40%
> Magazine Size: +40%; +60%
> Reload Time: -5%; -15%
> Damage: +15%; +30%
Exceptions: Epic Rocket Launcher and Epic Plasma Cannon do have non-calculated values for reload time (higher), magazine size (fixed to 3) and RoF (fast).

PDA Improvements:
- Added possibility to script a PDA in C# (added in-line documentation - part 1)
- Added some documentation comments to IPda. Added documentation config file for PdaScript
- Added possibility to hide Action Titles in the HUD
- Reduced time before autostarting PDA when spawning in a structure from 5 to 1.5.
- Resized dialog box to height instead of width for very long messages
- NearUnit check now more flexible for designers. Wait up to 3 seconds for structures to load to find Unit blocks when unloading proxy entities.

Playfields & Creation:
- Added new lava planet: LavaNascent

- Implemented faction dropdown for Traders: you can now set the trader to a different faction than the POI the trader spawned in, eg you can now spawn a Admin POI and set the trader to the Zirax faction
- Added possibility to generate random custom scenarios
- Display far away terrain changes
- Supporting property "Discovery: False" in Properties of yaml now. Added new yaml param to several starter bases (eg TemperateStarter2) so they are not "discovered" (XP gain) on game start
- Added possibility to color clouds in the night similar to day cloud color (CloudsNightZenithColor, CloudsNightHorizonColor)
- Playfield tweaks on Alien, Barren, Ocean (clouds, weather, terrain textures)
- Temporarily disabled Ocean Planet in random scenarios (until playfield is better optimized)
- Slightly updated setting for Temperate2 starter planet (start equipment, distribution of POIs etc)
- Added 'BaseAttackCount' to playfield_static.yaml with a default value of 1 (see Example planet playfield for usage) > Determines whether there are base attacks on this playfield. 0 = no base attacks, 1 = base attacks enabled (later the INT will determine the number of simultaneous base attacks on a playfield)
- Several playfields tweaks (terrain textures, night clouds color, music etc)
- Some renaming for consistency (pls adapt your custom config.ecf, trader config and PDA):
* CrystalWarp > PentaxidCrystal
* WarpDriveTank > PentaxidTank
* WarpDriveTankSV > PentaxidTankSV
- Added possibility to use 4 additional underground textures (for layers or resources) - see "te" editor:
* In total 20 texture slots (slots 0-19)
* Surface textures: slots 0-11
* Underground / resource textures: slots 9-19 (note: slots 0-11 can also be used for underground/resource textures)
> Now all Voxel resources on planets have correct textures (no generic texture anymore)
- Removed 2 broken space POIs (BAO_Migotzu-Orbital-Hub, BAO_AntarisSpacefarm)
- Major update of POI set for XENU: a big thanks to Frigidman
- Updated Ghyst and Rados POIs: thanks to Frigidman
- Updated several POIs with better offset, terrain removal or flatten settings

Sound:
- Updated current biome sounds and added new tracks (thanks to Alex). These new tracks can be used in playfield.yaml: AlteredPhase, Anomalous, Apogee, Artefact, Blight, ColdDivide, Dusk, Fragments, Ghost, Magnitude, Obelisk, Praxis
- Hurt sound of male/female is now less dominant and annoying

Graphics, Models, Visuals & GUI:
- Improved player light (added flare, MP support, light now only available when wearing armor)

- Improved tooltip behavior: Tooltip text is displayed below mouse cursor (not next to it) and tooltip will be removed when the player clicks on the respective UI item
- Added “Spawn Name” as a new column (behind Group Name) to F2 BP Window
- Tweaked night light intensity on moons (most were too dark, MoonIce was too bright)
- Updated MP Choose Planet window
- Block preview: wire frame tiles now on each block
- Slightly updated Boarding Ramps
- Updated deco plants for bases (plant pots)
- Updated 3d models of rocket projectiles
- Desaturated flashy NPC faction colors
- Improved map and planet outside view

Updated Control Panel Display:
- Pentaxid Tank now always displayed even if not placed on structure (was not consistent with eg oxygen tank behavior)
- Re-arranged windows in lower part. From left to right > Power | Shield | Ammo | Oxygen | Fuel | Pentaxid
- Do not display Thruster and Auto Break buttons for BASES (only for CV, SV, HV)
- Added “Damage Level” in % above Battery (WIP)
- Lerping shield + power values in control panel for better visuals
- Added additional toggles for Signals and Customs to Control Panel

Other Changes:
- Structural integrity of terrain: terrain supports first version of SI by removing not connected small terrain pieces
- Renamed "Body Temperature" into "Suit Temperature"
- Renamed "Hover Thruster" to "Ground Repulsor Engine" (to indicate that it is less capable than the more advanced Hover Engine) and changed block description accordingly
- Implemented new fullscreen handling (incl. 'Exclusive Fullscreen'), fixed wrong description of borderless window, fixed init bug in multiple choice button
- Changed server start scripts to close their window after a timeout (otherwise they may stay forever)
- Allow to spawn Base Attack drones via "debug menu"
- Build settings dialog: activating selection button switches symmetry plane now off
- Better player guidance for solar panels: added efficiency to block info
- Debug O2: combining the debug O2 diamonds within air blocks + added culling of O2 diamonds for better performance
- Added culling for debug airtight blocks for better performance
- Updated Unity to 2018.4.1

Console Commands:
- Added shield state to console command 'shield'
- Added Epic Armor to console cmd "equip armor"
- Enhanced console command "di damage" to enable per entity debug output on console (only SP)
- When using 'di', now also showing shield information (shield points/percentage/shield state) in the debug panel
- No Blueprint spawn restrictions applied in GodMode-Invisible anymore (now you can spawn any POI in survival for testing)
- Added possibility to dynamically reload new shape window while game is running via "shapeswdw reload"
- Added console command to monitor the solar panels
- Added permissions to more console cmds and added missing permission info to several console cmds (cmds were already were restricted)
- Added console cmd "shield"
- Added hitpoints of a block to console command 'di' debug overview
- Added console command 'gameid [id]' for dedicated servers that shows/changes the unique game id. Changing the game id will result in regenerating the cache on client side on next connect

Custom Config.ecf:
- Increased version number of custom Config.ecf > your current version is not active until you increase version number (pls update ecf properly)
- Added ShieldCapacity, ShieldRecharge, ShieldCooldown, ShieldPerCrystal to ECF
- Supporting shield damage multiplier (DamageMultiplier and BlastDamageMultiplier) > you can now create weapons that only reduce shields and do no damage to hull

Modding Update:
A10 includes a draft of a new Mod API that uses C# interfaces for the different game domains instead of a request-response structure. In addition, it allows mods to be loaded in all host processes (not only in dedi as before).
For those who are interested: there is a first documentation included, please check Content/Extras/Modding Doc.
PLEASE NOTE: This is still work-in-progress and for the upcoming weeks there will be breaking changes. But you are invited to already check this out and maybe do some first tests as well as giving us feedback.
We'll announce it once the API is stable enough for production code. Stay tuned!

Updated Empyrion Admin Helper (EAH) Tool:
- For the different updates to the EAH, please refer to:
https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-emp-admin-helper-eah-free-v1-47-x.5771/page-57#post-312760

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For the list with the more than 175 bug fixes, please refer to the full changelog: https://empyriononline.com/threads/alpha-10-out-now.49963