Update Changelog 2019-Jun-25

Tau Station MMORPG narrative game update changelog header

Greetings citizens! The new update has been deployed and it contains changes and improvements for game features across the board. This is most extensive changelog we ever had so far. Besides the huge Side Job rework and the brand new Archive 2.0 we also have various Syndicate changes and improvements, (also for blueprints!), preparations for the upcoming buildings, further message clean-ups and several performance boosts, 18 new item images, new NPC avatars, and you can now use the new “/me” chat command 🙂 Read on for the full list of details, but be warned – it’s a doozy!

Side Job Rework

The blog “Side Job Revamp” previewed the many feature changes which are now in place.

  • Aborting (message) – When quitting a side job the “aborted job” message is no longer shown as it duplicates other information shown on the job page.
  • Avatars (NPCs) – We started adding dedicated avatars for the employers offering Side Jobs. On Tau Station, all these NPCs have a unique look now.
  • New Side Job – ‘Encyclopedia Editor’ has been added on Tau Station as a special Community Spotlight reward for the Wiki team.
  • Narrative Review & Occasional Choices – The narrative team has started to rewrite all Side Jobs, improving the texts, but also reviewing the difficulty. Sometimes you will experience narrative choices, similar to what you know from missions, but on a smaller and simpler scale. See below for which systems and stations this has been done so far.
  • New UI (Tasks) – Side Job Tasks have a new and more convenient layout. It is closer to what you know from missions. Environment art brings the area to greater life.
  • New UI (NPCs) – Sometimes you don’t act at in area, but talk to an NPC instead. The layout for this scenario has been improved as well.
  • New UI (Rewards) – The final reward gets displayed in more prominent way.
  • References (Texts) – All Side Job texts have been updated to refer to the new ‘current ventures’ section which replaces the ’employment’ box.

NEW! Archive 2.0

As a first big step of the review and polishing work, the Archive in your CORETECHS has been reworked as previewed in our blog.

  • Layout – Brand new layout of the Archive (full page design)
  • Structure – Updated, more comfortable structure
  • Content – Content improvements and additions (text and pictures)
  • Known Issue – The information link from ships (e.g. at the Shipyard) needs  a new target; this will happen with the next update.

Further New Features

  • Chat (/me) – The new command “/me” has been added to the chat. /me types furiously in chat will be replaced by Ovid types furiously (or whatever your username is, in italics, matching the color).
  • Market (Selling price) – You now see the final price and all price modifiers (like your social skills) when you want to sell items to Vendors, similar to what you already know when buying from NPCs.
  • Market (Vendor logos) – A first batch of NPC vendors display dedicated images on their market stalls.
  • New Icon (Well-Fed) – A new status icon has been added next to your avatar, extending the list of temporary benefits of owning a VISA, being VIP, or being protected by bodyguards. After consuming a ration, a well-fed icon now indicates the buff. In order add it, the arrangement of icons has been slightly altered: all option icons from mails, over help to logout are now displayed in one row below your avatar.
  • Ships (flight time) – The cockpit view of every ships you own now shows the total flight time. For existing ships, this is calculated from acceleration and the odometer. Due to navigation skills (reducing travel time via wormholes), and not knowing the number trips, this number is an estimate. It is a close enough approximation and, for now, it won’t effect gameplay.
  • Local Shuttles (tickets) – You can now purchase a ticket when you’ve already purchased a ticket. The previous ticket can be discarded in a feedback message with a dialogue that will show up.

Syndicates

  • Campaigns (blueprints, VIP) – The chance for blueprints and VIP pack drops have been increased. Furthermore the chance of obtaining these items now uses “smooth” randomness to ensure your team will be rewarded after doing some campaigns without according drops.
  • Campaigns (bonds) – In order to resolve some technical issues, campaigns will no longer drop bond certificates. All bonds items in inventories or markets have been converted and added to the appropriate banks (ensuring that nobody loses anything). As we never shy away from a challenge, we will revisit this point in the future. But for now we have added some new items for you.
  • Campaigns (epic items) – Epic items can now drop in all campaign difficulty levels (now also easy), though still only when campaign includes max tier of syndicate members.
  • Campaigns (extreme difficulty) – Rewards for finishing extreme campaigns should now be significantly better than those for hard campaigns.
  • Campaigns (word) – “Buckaneer” is renamed to “Buccaneer”.
  • Forums (back button) – A link has been fixed. When reading a post in your Syndicate’s forum, using the back button now brings you back to the forums as intended.
  • Responsiveness (faster) – Syndicate actions (especially during campaigns) should no longer be as slow as they were.

Combat

  • Defeat (attacker) – When the attacker is defeated (stat down to zero), the combat ends immediately instead of after the following round.
  • Focus (impact) – An attacker with focus below 1% is defeated in combat. Losing due to low focus leaves you unconscious on stations that do not have Sick Bay (you don’t die).
  • Messages (improvement) – The amount of messages has been dramatically reduced and improved.
  • Text – “short-range” and “long-range” are now hyphenated.

Logs

  • Bonds (new tier) – Reaching a new tier is awarded with bonds. This is better reflected by the reference of “tier-up”.
  • Credits (death) – Lost credits due to an untimely demise and subsequent respawning are now listed.
  • Credits (new level) – The log lets you know that credits where received due to level-up.

Communication

  • Blog (back button) – When reading the blog of another Citizen, the “Back to blog” link now works as expected, returning you to the article list of that particular author.
  • Forum (latest post) – The forum post page now shows GCT of recent activity (reply) instead of date when the topic was created.
  • Forum (replies) – Replies to forums posts using quotation marks in the subject now keep the title in your answer’s title.

Discreet Work

  • Active Work (NPC) – Having an active task is better reflected by the discreet work page now: there is no longer any speech bubble shown.
  • Local Task (location) – The location information is shown when it’s relevant for you. Thus, the station is only mentioned if the active work is at another station that you’re aware where to travel to.
  • Message (accepting) – A further message reduction has been applied to the initiation of discreet work. Starting it is a conscious act and the feedback that Anonymous work is active, is indicated by various UI changes.
  • Message (aborting) – The same reasons apply to the abortion message.
  • No Work (NPC) – The warning message for discreet work during the ‘aborted’ cooldown is now shown in the speech bubble of the NPC.
  • Text (various) – One typo and incorrect time references have been resolved.

Careers

  • Feedback – Messages have been streamlined. The task name has been removed from task success/failure messages and the success bonus payment is now shown at the end of the success message instead of using a new line.
  • Payment – As requested from the Community, illegal actions now pay into the wallet instead of your bank account.
  • Tasks – There are up to 7 tasks presented in each area with improved balancing regarding your chance to succeed. Several new tasks have been added as well.

Gym

  • Feedback (bonus) – We tweaked the feedback messages when you hired a personal trainer to better explain the bonuses you receive.
  • Feedback (shortened) – “Training completed” message has been removed as the game indicates it. Stat gain is now the last part of the message.
  • Feedback (tense) – Motivational messages, when referring to character actions, are now past-tense.
  • Focus (UI) – “Out of focus” UI now mentions rations to provide help.
  • Stats (requirements) – The texts about potential training injury risks have been improved to better address stats which are close to the minimum requirements of the station in question.

(Further) Messages & Feedback

On top what was mentioned already, there are a couple of changes that reduce the noise of messages, making feedback more comfortable for you.

  • Bank (depositing) – Banking messages are now considerably shortened (e.g. from four to one line of text for someone not in a syndicate and depositing money).
  • Character Creation – When creating your character, the “character created” message is no longer shown.
  • Inventory (items) – In situations like scavenging for items or picking up something at the market, it’s obvious that you have the item in your inventory, therefore the message “Item X added to inventory” is gone.
  • “Not allowed” – The feedback messages “operation not allowed” have been reworked and are now more narrative-friendly ones.
  • Popups (Brig error) – We fixed a rare exception when confined to the Brig.
  • Popups (completions) – Event completion popups now close event start popups. Repair completion does cause a page refresh but this was present anyway.
  • Popups (dismissal) – Popup dismissal is more comfortable now: it can be achieved by using the close button in the popup, the escape keyboard button, or by clicking the background.
  • Scavenging (loot) – Successfully scavenging will now just say “You found a $item.”. The feedback is shorter now as “added to inventory” is obvious.
  • University (credits) – The feedback has been enhanced for paying courses: if you need more credits or if money must come from the wallet, you’ll be informed accordingly.
  • University (enrolling) – Enrolling in courses will have friendlier messages for success or failure.
  • Wrecks (availability) – The messages for “unavailable” features are only displayed when there is a feature in this location which is available again after a cooldown.

More Game Improvements & Changes

  • Avatars (randomized) – The avatar selection is shown in a random order. The selection messages are now random and more immersive.
  • Bank (withdrawals) – Withdrawal fees are displayed at the bank and differ for non-Consortium affiliations. And the messages are shorter now.
  • Character Page (ordering) – The ordering of skills and ships in your character details page is better now.
  • Citizen Council Page – AndreaEntangle moved to Alternatives and the email buttons are working properly now on all Council members.
  • Mass (display) – The display of item and inventory mass should always be rounded correctly; sometimes far too many decimal digits were shown. Furthermore, the game has been harmonized, using “mass” everywhere.
  • Private Ships (deportation) – If your Visa expires while you’re on ship and have no fuel anymore, you now get deported as intended which resolves the risk of getting stuck.
  • Private Ships (max range) – The maximum range of a ship is now displayed as an integer with proper rounding instead of showing overly detailed values (e.g. using 8 decimal digits).
  • Public Travel (tickets) – After buying a Local Shuttle ticket, you need to wait for the departure. If you purchase an Express Shuttle ticket in the mean time, you will keep your Local Shuttle ticket. You can still get on the appropriate vessel if you make it back in time for lift-off.
  • Shipping (pick-up) – A rare issue has been resolved that occurred in some situations where you had more than one stack of an item with spare slots in inventory, adding more of the same item would fail with “Internal error”.
  • Sick Bay (replenished stats) – Your stats are refreshed when you leave the Sick Bay, no matter for what reason. The change applies to all Citizens being confined after the update.
  • Stats (rounding) – The stat percentage values in the sidebar are now always rounded down instead of to the nearest percent. This resolves some threshold irritations, ensuring that you have at least the stats value which is displayed.
  • Stim Packs (toxicity) – The toxicity value of stims now always displays in percentages as in your information panel. Stims in your inventory and markets now also follow % instead of decimal numbers.

18x New Item Artwork

(Further) Text Changes & Additions

  • Archive (update) – The station archive text (long description) of Asimov Freehold, YZ Ceti, now reflects the correct Catastrophe experience.
  • Area (Clone Vats) – The Clone Vats on Tau Station have been renamed to address a discussion in our Community. Thanks for your input!
  • Area (Security) – The description has been updated to mention bodyguards.
  • Area (Sick Bay) – The reference to mods has been updated to better reflect it’s an upcoming feature.
  • Area (Wilds) – The text in this area has been polished.
  • Area Tutorials (various) – Several texts have been slightly updated to reference our recent work on gameplay and UI – e.g. mentioning bodyguards or the ‘current ventures’ section. As there are a lot of details at the Gov’t Center, we broke things into paragraphs for improved readabily.
  • Item (Worn Down Broken) – The item description has been updated to better match the image/damage types.
  • Matrix (word) – We changed the plurals from “matrixes” to “matrices”.
  • Mission (time) – ‘Education’ now refers to a tenspan and not a week.
  • Mission (mass unit) – The mass unit lbs has been changed to kg in ‘Family Matters’ as the metric system how we measure in the future.
  • Mission (various) – Six textual changes have been applied to ‘Family Matters’, according to your forum (typo) reports.
  • Mission (name) – The NPC name ‘Rhiannon’ is written correctly now in the entire mission ‘Fun Gus Among Us’.
  • NPC (word) – ‘Jasper Crenshaw’ on Spirit of New York City got rid of(f) a tiny typo in his description text.
  • Station (various) – The team processed another forum summary and updated descriptions, resolving several minor typos on Asimov Freehold.
  • Time (various) – A few incorrect time references referencing weeks or years on NPC descriptions or gym training messages have been changed to our metric GCT system.
  • University (Combat Basics) – Course Nine, “Shotgun Specialist”, no longer misspells “wield” in the description.
  • University (Construction) – Courses three, seven, and eleven about “Mesh Networking” now refer properly to “buildings”.