April is over! Time to have a look at what was achieved last month and what the team will be working on for May. The biggest milestone in April was, of course, the live launch of Tau Station; we’re very happy to welcome many new citizens already! The process of expanding the game with weekly content updates will be continued, and a major feature is coming closer. Read on to learn more …
About status reports
The status reports contain major aspects of the work done on Tau Station each month. As we’ve started to provide changelogs for every game update, you can find way more details, including all smaller changes, in these dedicated posts. Links to all updates / changelogs that happened this month are listed up at the bottom of this article.
Live Launch of Tau Station
A lot of work was done to get the game ready for live launch. On Wednesday, the 18th of April, our PEGI-3 rated science fiction game finally opened it gates. Since that day, everyone has been invited to start their adventure by signing-up and starting to play! You can access your account via browser from PC, tablet, or smartphone. We follow WCAG 2.0 AA standards to provide an accessible game, and we appreciate getting your feedback on that topic (and all others) as it is a matter of great importance to us. The dedicated blog post about the launch also contains starting tips.
New Features
- New Items – A set of new premium items and according pictures have been added.
- New Skills – The first three categories of Spaceship Operations have been unlocked. “Space Navigation,” “Ship Technology,” and “Ship Handling” are available now at Universities offering this field of study.
- Preferences – A settings page has been added that will get more options over time. At the moment, it allows you to toggle on and off chat notifications and area descriptions.
- Storage – The new CORETECHS option “Storage” shows the contents of all of your storage lockers across all stations, helping you to keep an overview, no matter where you are.
- Tooltips – A new, accessible, warning icon has been added to provide more context in some areas. Simply click the symbol to see the details if needed.
Missions
Missions in the Sol system:
- “Ruins to Riches” (level 1) on Tau Station has been expanded to provide more information to new players.
Missions in the Alpha Centauri system:
- “Damsel in the Dark” (level 7) on Moissan station (updated & reactivated).
- “Dancers of the Night Water” (level 9) on Spirit of Botswana.
- “Dear Heart” (level 9) on Cirque Centauri.
- “Fair Game” (level 10) on Bordeaux station (updated & reactivated).
- “Shrine of Remains” (level 8) on Paris Spatiale.
Communication
- Chat – A new autocomplete function helps if you want to mention someone, using the “@” symbol.
- Desktop Notifications – If you like, you can get desktop notifications on chat mentions. You can turn them on or off in your game preferences. If you want to know which browser is supported, please check out this list.
Various Improvements & Changes
- The level cap has been increased to level 25.
- Account – New citizens are now able to use Facebook login.
- Careers – Area tutorial improved: you can switch careers any time while keeping each career’s progress. This means you can later continue where you left off.
- Services – The duration of optional services, like hiring a personal trainer at the Gym, is now better indicated before you activate those.
- Various improvements, text corrections, and fixes have been applied to several missions, side jobs, and further areas. Thanks to all the helpful reports right from the community – please keep it up!
Planned for May 2018
- Ships – Further work is being implemented in order to prepare ownership of private ships, including several new UIs, such as options when entering your ship.
- New Missions – As usual, the background story will be continued by adding new missions.
- “Enter the Sewers” – New PvE campaigns for the Ruins on stations.
- New items – Further gear and according pictures will be added.
- Mission rewards – Once you finished a mission, everything you earned in credits, XP, or item drops will be shown in a special UI element.
- Respawn – A solution will be implemented to facilitate retrieval of your gear later in case of death.
- Bound items – A new system to allow for specific items to be bound to your character to ensure no one can loot them after a defeat due to combat.
- Completed Missions – Pagination will be added as some citizens have a huge list of completed missions already.
- Careers – Hints will be added for lower level players to explain that tasks have different difficulty levels.
- Various improvements and fixes, e.g. chat not stealing the cursor anymore.
- Additionally, a major feature update is in development for all who like cooperating with others.
Changelogs
You can find a short, detailed summary of every single update in their according changelogs, which we have been publishing on an a regular basis since we started the Closed Alpha Test. Here are all of the changelogs for April 2018: