Hello everybody!

The next patch is out, this time on the beta branch! We're still doing some more testing, and we want to make sure not to break any existing builds.
We're also still focusing on stability over features now, but that will change soon once there will be less problems. You can get the current patch at your own risk in the "beta" branch of the game. Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch "beta".

If all goes well in the beta branch, we'll roll out the patch very soon for everybody else.

In this patch we fixed a lot more issues related to server crashes. While we haven't yet found all the crashes, we at least made sure that your progress is always saved immediately upon changing sectors. So, even if the game might still crash, but you won't lose your progress that easily any more.
In singleplayer there should not be any real performance impairments, but for multiplayer this feature may cause performance issues since lots of data is written to disk regularly. Server administrators can disable this feature by using the command line argument "--immediate-writeout 0". A more performant version of this feature is in the making, but it was important to us to release the current version ASAP so you won't lose any more progress that easily. We thought long about how we're going to make this happen, and have come to the conclusion that this is the best choice.

No patch version increase yet (revision only), since this update is fully compatible with the current server and client.

Also, the public testing server will be back online soon. We've changed the hoster and for now it's EU only, but we'll add more servers for other regions over time.
Remember: These servers are testing servers! Crashes and lags are to be expected since we're constantly profiling them, but if things go wrong we'll know what caused it and will be able to fix it very quickly.

Gameplay

"Less total war between factions, this should help with several performance issues as well."

• Wreckages from fights remain for up to 30 minutes instead of up to 2 hours
• Player and his new sector are immediately written to disk after a hyperspace jump
• Faction wars now require an aggressiveness of 0.9 or higher up from 0.75 or higher
• Now only 20% of all factions are at war with someone else, instead of 50%
• Faction battles appear less frequently
• Reduced frequency of distress calls and pirate attacks by an average of 20 minutes

Server

• A console output is written when a player is killed by another player
• Added an option to disable immediate write of player data to save performance
• Server can recover lost ships in some cases
• Added a countdown and message to /stop command

Misc

• Removed some old debug output that looks like an error but isn't one
• Server stalls are now detected and written to log for easier debugging
• Added an explanation for singleplayer servers and what happens when you start singleplayer

Bugfixes

"As usual, user bug reports are marked with [UBR]. Thanks for reporting everybody! Keep 'em coming!"

• [UBR] Fixed a server crash when reading corrupted data
• [UBR] Fixed a crash when fighters want to return to a ship without hangars; This fixes most of the server crashes you've been getting during faction battles
• [UBR] Fixed a bug that continued spawning faction battles as long as a player hadn't chosen a side yet
• [UBR] Fixed building of blocks with negative sizes
• Faction battles no longer spawn when there are no players in the sector

Have fun everybody!