The wait is finally over! Today we released a brand new – and rather huge – game update, bringing new features, detail changes and many fixes.
As requested by the first Citizen Council, the item and storage management has been improved, and now features in your CORETECHS. The narrative team edited many existing missions, and created a new tutorial mission for new players. The forum structure has been simplified and the UI has been improved. The Resource Hub is a new interface for dev & Citizen blogs, FAQ, Technical Insights, Announcements, Area Tutorials and Tau Station Tips. Read on for the full details of the new game update!
New Storage Management in CORETECHS
Following discussions with your Citizen Council, we’ve added various new features to your CORETECHS. Among other things, you’re able to view and manage all your storage from here, no matter where you are in the universe. You can:
- See Storage – Using the CORETECHS design, you’re now able to check what you have in stock. Various filter options help you search easily. Items and stacks are displayed and you can see item details.
- Search Storage – A new search function is at your service, making it easier for collectors and mega traders to find items they need.
- Expand Storage – You don’t have to travel to a station in order to start a depot or expand storage space. Just do it via your CORETECHS from anywhere.
- Sending Items – The feature update also enables you to send item(s) from one storage to another.
Various Narrative Improvements
Our narrative team embarked on the large task of reviewing, editing and polishing existing missions, starting with many in the Sol system. The goal here is to improve quality generally, fix issues you reported, align mission content to fit with the new (upcoming) core missions, and also use the opportunity to polish NPC and station area texts too. Here’s a brief summary of what has been revised so far:
- Tau Station – All station areas, NPCs and 5 missions: ‘Coretechs Calibrations’, ‘Ready player everyone’, ‘Fashion victim’ which is now called ‘A Rude Awakening’, ‘My only hope’ under the new title ‘Secrets and Servos’, ‘Ruins to riches’ now named ‘Prologue: Fighting off the Pod Fog’.
- Kobenhavn – All station areas.
- Daedalus – All station areas and 3 missions: ‘From the Ashes’, ‘Holy Work’, and ‘Waste not, want not’.
- Taungoo – All station areas and 2 missions: ‘A system shock’, and ‘Symposium of souls’.
- Nouveau Limoges – All station areas and 4 missions: ‘In the name of honor’, ‘Beam me up’, ‘Possessed’, and ‘Possession’.
New Resource Hub
- The Resource Hub is a new page in your CORETECHS with card navigation.
- Dev Blog – One card now leads you to our team blog right from the game.
- Announcements -The former announcement forums have become a card here (while we also cleaned up outdated topics).
- Technical Insight – The a11y articles of the former read-only forum.
- Area Tutorial – All (updated) area tutorials at one place.
- FAQ – The FAQ section contains former posts of the forums, containing some starting help, useful links, fan page support and more.
- Tau Station Tips – The former Tip of the Day series has been updated and extended.
Forum Changes
The old forum structure had become sub-optimal as Tau Station grew over time, serving different needs during Closed Alpha phases and Open Alpha. To make it easier for everyone, we moved several forums sections, like the (read-only) “announcements” into the new resource hub (see below). Here’s a brief summary of changes:
- CORETECHS – The forum has been moved and now uses a full-screen layout.
- One Forum – Instead of having separate forums for questions, issue reports or feedback, we will now use one forum for everything. The only request is to pick useful subjects when you create a new post.
- Citizen Council – The dedicated Council forum remains untouched; it’s still the place for sharing and discussing feature suggestions or improvements.
- Undelete – A new option allows every post owner to restore posts that were deleted (accidentally).
Blogs
- CORETECHS – The Citizen Blogs have been integrated into the UI of the CORETECHS.
- Quick link – In case you created a Citizen blog, a new pen icon next to your avatar will serve as a quick link to your text(s).
- Undelete – New ability for blog post/comment author to restore an accidentally deleted blog post/comment.
Genotypes
- Archive – The information about strengths and weaknesses of all genotypes have been added to/updated in the archive.
- Re-Balancing (Belter) – The secondary attribute is now Intelligence instead of Stamina.
- Re-Balancing (Harsene) – The secondary attribute is now Social and their weakness is Agility, instead of Stamina and Strength.
- Re-Balancing (Patrician) – The weakness is now Stamina, not Strength.
- Stats – Story missions and discreet work which give stat bonuses now take into account your genotype’s stat bonus/disadvantage.
- Training (feedback) – New custom genotype training messages have been implemented.
Further New Features
- Archive – We’ve added new CORETECHS sections to cover economy and media section, plus a new technology page on Quantum Telepheresis (see below).
- Instant Quantum Telepheresis – Express shuttle journeys within a star system have been replaced with the new travel option that will “teleport” you instantly to your destination. The bond price remains. For travelling from one system to another however, Express Shuttles remain the only premium travel option.
- Chat (emojis) – Many common emoji are now available in chat via the :$name: syntax (for example “:joy:”); they’re wrapped in a11y friendly tags.
Cash Flow & Economy Re-Balancing
We analyzed the financial situation in Tau Station. As a result we’ve re-balanced the income curves to remove some overly-difficult bottle-necks for beginners.
- Activity (station) – The activity on every single station has an (improved) impact on item price fluctuations (more activity = higher price) and Career task payments (more activity = higher payout).
- Incomes – From now on, new Citizens see income rise faster as they level up while experienced survivors with higher levels see incomes rise a bit slower.
- Item prices (basic) – The basic prices of some items, especially stims, have been re-balanced to better match the new economic system.
- Item prices (local) – Buying and selling to vendors rises and falls with the economic activity with the station they’re bought and sold on.
- Shuttles (prices) – What you have to pay for tickets is now connected to the economic activity of the destination station.
- Termination Pellet (price) – The price of the “suicide pill” has been reduced.
- Discreet work (payouts) – Payouts have been reset.
- Discreet Work (limits) – There is a limit for how many discreet work tasks you can perform in a certain time.
- Career (daily salary) – This credit source has been adjusted to fit new income curve.
- Career (task payouts) – They scale with the station’s current economic activity.
- Price Ranges (display) – Items that can be acquired with credits now show the price range of all game-wide vendors offers.
Ships / Fuel Price Adjustments
- Cheaper – Fuel prices got dramatically reduced.
- Distances – The total distance traveled in your ship now has commas.
- Reputation – Your reputation no longer affects fuel prices.
- Fluctuation – Fuel prices can fluctuate, but are still way lower than before.
VISA (and VIP) expiry improvements
- Reminders for VISA renewal now only get sent when renewal is possible.
- The action to renew VISA is only shown when it’s possible to perform it.
- GCT time is now shown in the Gaule Embasy for when renewal can be done.
- The complete GCT time for VISA and VIP expiry date is shown on your character page.
- An event notification is sent when you get deported.
- The messaging order has been improved when failing to renew VISA.
- The speech bubble text at the Gaule Embassy for purchasing/ extending/ renewing your VISA has been changed.
- The price in credits for Gaule VISA purchases/extensions are now formatted to always have 2 decimal points.
Combat Changes & Syndicate Campaigns
- Balancing – As announced in the last Citizen Council meeting, the preparations for combat re-balancing are in place for improving the impacts of stats and gear, for instance. You’ll already experience significant changes, and we’ll ask for your participation in balancing iterations soon.
- Hits without Damage – If an attack hits but deals no damage, the message will include ‘, doing no damage’.
- List of Actives – The attack count is now incremented as soon as an opponent is attacked. As a result, a rare display issue got resolved: team members who end up in sickbay during the first attack are now shown in the “My Team” list as intended.
- Refresh – Repeating attack in combat via page refresh no longer works.
- Speed – Combat is faster, especially when having many items in your inventory.
- Stuck – Two special situations have been resolved that could cause syndicate campaigns to become stuck.
New Item Artwork (22)
New images have been added for the following items:
- Short Range Weapons (tier): Bone Shiv (1), Broken Slate (1), Copper Wire Knuckles (1), Dull-Tip Spark Phurba (2), Dullet Bolt Cutters (1), Half-Broken Multi-Tool (1), Homemade Taser (1), Jack-Said-No (2), Maulstick (2), Metal Shank (1), Molybdenum Hanbō (2), Nickle Head Mace (2), Platinum Quarterstaff (2), Regocrete Pin (1), Shank (1), Sharpened Shiv (2), Shock Nuckles (1), Skull Mallet (2), Spark-Style Igniter (1), Spatula (2), Titanium Maul (2)
- Long Range Weapon: Juliette a Menti (tier 2)
Improvements & Changes
- A11y (chat) – While in combat, the “skip to chat” function for screenreader now works.
- Archive (stations) – The Orwellian & law level have been added to every station’s page.
- Avatar Selection (start) – A new character creation process with avatars and updated genotype selection has been implemented, also resolving issues of avatars not loading after the first screen.
- Blogs (url) – Fixed some occasional exception in blogs.
- Bribing (always) – It is now possible to bribe guardians or doctors while you’re performing an action like repairing items.
- Brig (Lawyer) – Improved the UI to ensure you always can see the bond price for the lawyer.
- Career (tasks) – We changed the message for performing a career task which is no longer available; this resolves occasional former irritation.
- Citizen Council (structure) – The Citizen Council section is now split into 3 pages: Overview, Members, Forum.
- Citizen Council (mass mail) – As requested, a new feature makes communication easier and more comfortable: Council members can now send mass mails to all Council members, similar to what you know from syndicates.
- Courses (message) – A rare occasion of showing a wrong feedback message after enrolling to a University course has been fixed.
- Discord (link) – The link to the fan Discord channel has been updated on our help page as the former URL expired. It’s now a persistent invitation link.
- Forms (saving data) – A page refresh caused by popups will not cause losing text you’ve been entering into a text form anymore. (e.g. when writing a new blog or bug report). All forms have data saved in session now; thus you can continue where you left off after closing the popup.
- Item (Thowan-89) – The mass of this epic tier 3 handgun has been reduced to better reflect this strong, but lightweight weapon.
- Items (manufacturer) – Five items are now manufactured by Moemedi: Worn Overalls, Ribbed Trench, Musty Leather Robes, Carbon Mace, and Reinforced Vest.
- Items (rarity) – Some rarity levels of items have been updated.
- Markets (offers) – All vendors have had their items updated to match the “theme” of the station and the vendor.
- Markets (vendors) – Vendors in the market now have interesting shop names such as “Big Lou’s Finest Salvage” or “Al-Farooqi Gift Shop”.
- Missions (feedback) – In addition to mission actions, missions can now also react on game progress, e.g. enrolling to a course.
- Multi-Clicks (career) – Multi-clicking on career tasks no longer works. One task has to be completed before attempting the next task. This avoids unwanted actions/stats consumption.
- Profiles (areas) – You can now see character details, including NPCs, even if they’re not in the same room.
- Shipping (double click error) – Double-clicking on links in the Shipping Bay, for example to pick up an item, no longer causes an internal error.
- Stats (feedback) – If some stats required for a mission or side job action are too low, the info-message is now shorter; further we removed a duplication that could happen when focus was affected.
- Syndicate Campaigns (rewards) – As requested, you can now see same info in syndicate campaign reward screen and in syndicate storage history.
- University (acceleration) – The bond price for reducing course time gets properly displayed.
Text Changes & Additions
- Archive (various) – A total of 13 small typos have been fixed, most of them in the travel section. Thanks for all your reports!
- Area (typo) – The detailed area description of the Hotel Rooms on Asimov Freehold refers now to “prospective Syndicate members”.
- Campaign (failure) – The extra trailing period from failure notification has been removed.
- Career Tasks (various) – Some detail glitches in Special Service tasks have been fixed like adding a missing “not”, getting “paid”, and removing some inconsistent periods.
- Discreet Work (few) – Capitalization changed on two discreet work items, added a missing period to a discreet work message.
- Sewers Campaigns (reward) – Messages for bonds received in ‘Enter the sewers’ campaign have been simplified, not showing it multiple times anymore.
- Gym (typo) – A typo in a motivation message has been fixed when training strength.
- Messages (typo) – Due to some Citizen’s eagle eyes, several game messages should now properly display the word “successfully”.
- Mission “Fun Gus Among Us” (NPC) – A wrong name reference has been sorted.
- Mission “Possessed” (grammar) – A word has been corrected.
- Side Jobs (typos) – A forum summary about a few text glitches in Side Jobs on Spirit of New York City has been processed.