Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.
This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'Beta Branch - Newest Changes & Experimental Features'.
"You want the big patchnotes? Alright, you shall have the big patchnotes!"
Gameplay
"We made many improvements to ships deployed on operations: They can now show up in the area they're deployed in. But be warned, captains don't like being monitored at work. We also improved some clarity about size limits, processing power and other potential misconceptions about these mechanics."
- Ships with captains now show up from time to time in the area they were deployed in
- Renamed "Smart Blocks" to "Functional Blocks"
- Rephrased several messages to improve clarity about functional blocks and processing power
- Added a new section to the tutorial to explain processing power
- Adjusted naming of Building Knowledge
- Pirate shipyards now also drop building knowledge
- Building knowledge can now be bought by alliances, too
- Building knowledge now drops for all players in the sector, regardless of them hitting the enemy that drops the item
- Harvest and Repair AI now only use the best possible turrets and search for a new target or terminate if none are available. This means a ship equipped with Iron and Titanium Mining Lasers will use only the Titanium ones on Naonite asteroids.
- Harvest and Repair AI additionally no longer reorder a ship's weapon groups
- Tier 0 captains now gain a class determined by their last fulfilled operation once they reach level 5
- When ambushed, a ship tries to fight pirates if it has weapons (not just the escorts)
- When ambushed, a ship's hyperspace engine is exhausted
- Large, empty Iron & Naonite asteroids now have the shape of Titanium asteroids to make them distinguishable from claimables
- Added an alternate version of the hyperspace upgrade that is high reach, high cooldown
- This is basically the hyperspace system from pre 2.0 as an option, but boosting to reduce cooldown is still possible
- Tutorial now starts with the same player resources regardless of difficulty level
- Additional resources are then given to players after completing the tutorial
Fighters
"We said this before: 3 fighters should about equal one turret. The thing is that, contrary to turrets, you can lose fighters while deployed. Our goal with fighters is that we want carriers to be a viable playstyle, that can be powerful but requires specialization of the ship of more than just a few hangar blocks. We spent some more time on fighters and we think we're now at a point where we reached that goal."
- Increased durability of fighters
- Durability now scales with tech level and used material
- Increased boosting powers of fighters to +500% (from +200%)
- Rebalanced costs of fighters to match the "3 fighters = 1 turret" design philosophy
- Reduced fighter production costs to material costs equal to 10% of their credits costs
- A ¢100.000 Xanion fighter now costs 10.000 Xanion to produce on the ship
- Fighter production time is now 50% linked to their tech level and 50% to their durability
- Fighter production time is now always at most 1h
- Fighter production time now can be reduced by at max 90%
- Fighter production time reduction is now 1min per 1000 production capacity on the craft
- Fighters now always take at least 30s to produce, down from 60s
- Increased amount of fighters available at stations
General Balancing
"We want the general early game to be more fun and less grindy, and for that we're making it easier to gain resources through other ways than mining. Apart from that, we've made some general adjustments to improve overall gameplay quality."
- Increased amount of resources available at Resource Depots
- Reduced cost of resources at Resource Depots
- Increased profit when selling resources at Resource Depots
- Reduced amount of necessary reputation for buying Building Knowledge to 65.000
- Titanium Building Knowledge now gives 5 Slots
- Increased likelihood of finding captains from every 4th station to every 3rd
- Increased likelihood of finding tier 1 or 2 captains at stations
- Decreased base salary of captains by 5000
- Increased reach of higher-tier hyperspace upgrades
- Increased time to flee of pirates to 6.5 seconds from 5 seconds
- Reduced price for sector renaming beacon
- Increased amount of very rich hidden ore asteroids to every 4th, from every 8th
- Sped up trade frequency via shuttles between factories by 40%
- Decreased influence of pirates and Xsotan on hazard zone trigger when destroying freighters by 75%
- Reduced max velocity of NPC ships closer to the galaxy center
- Improved influence of positive perks of captains on operations
- Captains can't have more negative than positive perks anymore
- Most missions now additionally give resources as reward
- Bounty Hunt missions now improve relations to commissioning factions
Mining & Salvage Operation
"We added some clarity about the mining and salvaging operations, how they work and how to best fine-tune them for maximum yields. This, plus some QoL additions targeted at larger fleets."
- Delivery interval is now 15 minutes for durations of 30 minutes or 1h
- Added an option for immediate delivery
- Added a new "Area Efficiency" line to show how good/bad the area is
- Discovered asteroid/wreckage fields now boost area efficiency
- Implemented mining & salvaging support from escorts
- Escorts now mine/salvage, too, if they have the equipment for it
- Increased maximum duration that Miners and Scavengers can be sent on an operation from up to 6h to up to 8h
- They get a flat +0.5h bonus and each tier now gives +1h (up from 0.5h)
- Reduced time taken to refine
- Increased mining yields in outer faction area by 50%
- Resource asteroid/wreckage setting in Free Play mode now affects Mining & Salvage Operations
- Mining subsystems now boost mining yields
- They have the largest effect in areas with few asteroids
Other Operations
"Some balancing adjustments for the other operations. Also fixed some bugs, which you'll find more down below in the Bugfixes section."
- Increased area size of Scout operation from 15x15 to 21x21
- Scout Operation now reveals estimations about the amount of asteroids and wreckages
- Scout Operation is now 60% faster per sector
- Reduced general pirate attack chance in outer faction area
- Operations related to trading now improve relations to the local faction
- Increased gains from Expedition to make it more viable in early game
Galaxy Map
"We improved the general feel of sending your ships away - they shouldn't feel like they're completely gone."
- Added more buttons for showing/hiding different ships (distinguishes between "on screen" and "on operation")
- Ships are no longer automatically hidden from the list when sent on an operation
- Ships now get their area highlighted when going on an operation
- Added a checkbox to toggle those areas
- Adjusted some descriptions in map commands for improved clarity
- Sectors can now additionally be tagged with an icon when adding a note
- Map orders can now be given to ships piloted by a player
UI
"Much clarity stuff, and some more quality of life. Using pre-2.0 builds should now be a lot easier."
- Added arrows that show if a selection can be scrolled further up or down
- Wormholes selected in Strategy Mode now show their distance
- Changed colors of symbols indicating enemy strength to make them better distinguishable from one another
- Adjusted text in subsystems tab to hint towards functional blocks
- Added a different background for functional blocks
- Added more loading screen hints about captains, commands, processing power and more
- Renamed captain's level 0 to level 1
- Added the captain icon to captain mission
- Improved looks of blocks in block icons
- Added a slider to saved designs window in Build Mode to scale a design 2 slots up or down
- Adjusted names of orders in orderchain window for improved clarity
- Added explanation to max ship size slider in Free Play
- Updated "Build 5 slot ship" milestone in Player Profile to reflect Titanium Building Knowledge now allowing up to 5 slots
- Captain assessments in operation UI are now colored yellow or orange if they contain warnings
- Improved autopilot and craft orders interaction window
- Improved German, French, Russian, Japanese and Chinese localization
Bugfixes
"We got tons of feedback and bug reports, thanks for all the commitment! As usual, User Bug Reports reported through our in-game bug reporting tool are marked with [UBR] below."
- [UBR] Fixed a crash in “Eliminating Rivals” mission
- [UBR] Fixed a crash in “Propaganda Materials” mission
- [UBR] Fixed a crash in “Display of Strength” mission
- [UBR] Fixed a crash in “She’s Innocent!” mission
- [UBR] Fixed a crash in “A Lost Friend” mission
- [UBR] Fixed a crash in “The Guardian” mission
- [UBR] Fixed a crash in “Wanted Dead, Not Alive” mission
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where NPCs that were needed by missions ran away after they were damaged
- [UBR] Mined ores and scrap are no longer tagged as stolen when picked up by someone else after the reservation timer runs out
- [UBR] Fixed a crash in Refine AI Command
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where player-built shipyards sold building knowledge even though the player didn't have it yet
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where the trade command income scaled infinitely with the used ship's cargo bay
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where building knowledge didn't unlock on servers that first had it disabled, then enabled
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where the engine drained too much power after a hyperspace jump
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where the energy system didn't drain energy for a few seconds when going into drain
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where torpedoes and other icons weren't displayed properly
- [UBR] Fixed a bug in asteroid field generation
- [UBR] Fixed an issue in simplified simulation where ships would always boost and always hit no matter their energy, distance from target or reach of their weapons
- [UBR] Fixed pirate attack event not finishing properly sometimes when pirates flee
- Fixed an issue where recalled ships didn't return when a certain script crashed
- Fixed an issue where max amount of items gained from salvaging could be unlimited
- Fixed Mining Operation wrongly declaring enemy faction sectors as safe
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where cooldown of hyperspace engine could go to 0, leading to unexpected issues and crashes
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where it was possible to jump over rifts
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where some special characters weren't properly captitalized
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where normal hull wasn't available in turret design mode
- Fixed an issue where changes in material weren't reflected in costs of saved designs window
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where alliance ships couldn't escort other alliance ships
- [UBR] Fixed some issues in sell/procure commands where they took too long for simple tasks
- [UBR] Fixed an issue in procure command where attack chance was 60 times too high (whoops)
- Fixed alliance ships being marked with wrong colors
- Fixed an issue where the Procurement Contract UI wasn’t reset correctly
- Fixed Typos
- [UBR] Fixed a bug where the autopilot would continue its last order after player leaves the ship
- Fixed a bug where captain tooltips had some lines missing in restock and expedition operations' UI
- [UBR] Fixed an issue that led to thrusters always firing when 'always turn ship' option was active
- [UBR] Fixed Saved Designs Window being empty on reopen