Hi everyone! Long time no update! Sadly, gaming studios like us didn’t get spared from the corona crisis either and we had to realize that work gets done a lot slower at home office than at our official offices. But nevertheless, we’ve been steadily working on the game and we’ve got a new update ready for you!
In this update, we're mainly improving the tutorial and story. Additionally, we also have some performance updates for you, so let’s dive right into it!
[h2]Updated Tutorial[/h2]
The tutorial originally dates back to the year 2017, when we first released Avorion into Early Access on Steam. The game has been updated a lot since then and the tutorial was in dire need of an update to reflect the current state of the game better. So we completely revamped it to offer an updated introduction into the game. It explains more things like adding upgrades to your ship, building turrets, and that getting your ship blown up is also a part of the game. We also shortened some other parts, like looking around and steering the ship, which doesn’t usually need lengthy explanations.
[h2]Story Improvements[/h2]
The loose story of Avorion tends to have people lost at some point and searching for clues in forums and the Wiki. While we do think that a mainly-intended-as-a-sandbox game’s story should not hold hands too much, we don’t think that requiring players to regularly look for clues outside of the game is the way to go. We’ve added tons of inter-missions (get it, haha..? okay, sorry.) to aid you gathering the parts required to cross the barrier.
[h2]Galaxy Map[/h2]
The galaxy map has received a major update as well! Ships are now listed on the right side and can be commanded more easily, without the hassle of sometimes clicking on sectors and sometimes on other ship portraits. It’ll also help you see where ships/stations are stationed (last one, promise).
[h2]Localizations [/h2]
We added Chinese (Simplified), Spanish and Russian as officially supported languages!
[h2]Performance Optimizations and Logging[/h2]
We also improved performance on the client and servers (mainly for large servers) and we added some tools that will help us identify performance bottlenecks in the future. Particles are now less performance-hungry and we’ve fixed some crashes related to particle systems.
So things are looking up if you’ve been experiencing poor performance! Just keep in mind that Avorion was never designed as an MMO (and never will be) and hosting servers for dozens of people at the same time is still a challenge (which we intend to overcome though!).
[h2]Other changes[/h2]
There are tons of other changes in many areas, like bug fixes, UI improvements, better station founding (use a station design of the faction you bought the founder ship from), visual updates to loot and wreckages, and many more! To get a complete overview, check out the complete patch notes here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/announcements/detail/2220784826242281370
https://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/announcements/detail/2372781945503609155
[h2]Hotfixes 2020-06-27[/h2]
- Increased starting money for 'Normal', 'Easy' and 'Beginner' difficulty
- Equipment Docks now always have at least one trading upgrade in stock
- Fixed an issue where wave encounters would drop too advanced turrets
- Fixed an issue where turrets would be displayed as "Blueprint" instead of "Turret" in comparisons
- Fixed an issue where directing ships over the galaxy map wasn't working correctly for bought maps
- [UBR] Fixed several issues with sorting of inventory
- New items are only sorted up in main inventory window and alliance inventory window, no longer other windows as well
- Fixed an issue where engines of other small ships and drones could be black
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where some languages couldn't be set correctly through Steam
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where object detector upgrades would cost 0 credits
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where designs window didn't reset its scrolling when going to parent path
[h2]Hotfixes 2020-06-25[/h2]
- Drastically reduced influence of player and alliance ships' destruction on triggering a hazard zone
- Hazard zones would get triggered easily by player and alliance ships being destroyed, resulting in a second punishment of losing commerce in addition to losing your station
- Increased time between persecutor attacks on player's weak stations and ships from 10 minutes to 35 minutes
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where destroying drones would turn a sector into a hazard zone
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where ships of factions would falsely respawn (special thanks to Speedy)
- [UBR] Fixed icons on the map being stuck in their 2D position
- [UBR] Fixed routes on the map being slightly displaced while moving the camera
- Scripting API: Added a new MapIcon UI element to draw icons on the galaxy map
- Fixed several crashes in settings menu while not in a ship
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where the tutorial could get locked in the crew assignment phase when keeping a mining turret on the ship
[h2]Hotfixes 2020-06-24[/h2]
- No more simultaneous persecution: Added a pause of at least 10 minutes between persecutor attacks on ships in other sectors than the player
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where "Sort by Damage" in inventory could get messed up by recently acquired turrets
[h2]Hotfixes 2020-06-23[/h2]
- [UBR] Fixed some issues where tooltips weren't visible on the map
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where pressing the loop button wouldn't work properly
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where stations weren't hidden correctly on galaxy map
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where after a fly-through-wormhole command looping wouldn't work correctly
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where a fly through wormhole command couldn't be undone while the command chain was already executing
- [UBR] Notifications are hidden while mouse is over the ships list
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where left-click wouldn't deselect ships properly