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This update brings contracts to the archipelago. Captains can select and purchase a contract with gold before launching onto the archipelago. Contracts are designed to give more purpose to bigger ships by being difficult or impossible to complete without one and offering higher rewards for completion than standard mining. More contracts types will be added over the weekend and in the future.
Captains can currently choose only "Cargo Delivery" contracts where you are given a batch of resources to drop off at designated points across the archipelago marked on your HUD and by a blue flare. Cargo is automatically unloaded when nearby the delivery point and HUD popups appear when progress is being made. Completing contracts adds the reward directly to your crew's stockpile (no need to extract) and refunds half the contract cost. Higher difficulty contracts have a scaling reward where some more expensive and difficult contracts can offer up to 12000 wood for completion.
Nitranite was added to round out the core resource set. Anything that explodes requires nitranite. You can find nitranite on coastlines. Nitranite is highly volatile and overworking of the ore can cause it to explore so keep an ally with a repair hammer nearby.
The balance changes accompanying contracts aim to bring all heavy weapons into the same playing field. Players should feel like they can choose any one of the heavy weapons and be competitive against any of the others. Giving some of them extreme range advantages or disadvantages ensures players not opting into the longer range weapon have little to no chance of damaging their enemy when one ship has a speed advantage.
Gatling guns and harpoons additionally received minor buffs to help make them feel worth it when you spend the time to close the longer sight lines in Expedition.
1.9.2
Major Features
- Added contracts. Captains can select and purchase a contract before launching onto the archipelago.
- Added Nitranite. Nitranite is a volatile resource found on beaches. Mine at your own risk.
Minor Features
- Visually improved the edges of terrain cliffs and shorelines.
- Extracting returns half the resource cost of destroyed parts instead of zero.
- Added more jetstreams and reversed the direction of a few.
- Slightly increased the strength of pursuit bonus speed.
Balance Changes
- Increased the range of heavy torpedos to 400 meters.
- Decreased the range of rail guns to 400 meters.
- Increased focuser hp to 600.
- Decreased the firepower cost of rail gun components so a fully focused rail gun costs 6k firepower.
- Decreased harpoon turrets and cannons firepower.
- Improved accuracy of harpoons.
- Increased gatling gun damage by 5 and decreased armor penetration by 5.
- Increased torpedo speed by 10%.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed players being unable to captain up if there were too many heavy ships loaded in.
- Fixed turret guns being able to fire when the turret is disabled.
- Fixed pursuit bonus sometimes applying when travelling in reverse away from an enemy.