Avorion News

"Thanks Tradinoko and all others for pointing out that we forgot to add the new damage types to torpedoes! We immediately set about correcting that oversight and here you go!"

• Added damage types and their application to torpedoes

• Torpedoes now have a damage type property

"As always, bug reports marked with [UBR] are User Bug Reports! Thanks to everyone who reported those!"

• [UBR] Fixed an issue with missing names in Sector Overview
• [UBR] Fixed several issues with pirate encounters that lead to script crashes
• [UBR] Fixed only one pirate becoming aggressive in some pirate encounters
• [UBR] Fixed issue with one pirate encounter where chatter was shown on player ship
• [UBR] Fixed radio chatter being shown on ships that are currently flown by the player
• [UBR] Fixed an issue in Transfer Vessel mission
• [UBR] Fixed typo in German localization

It's official! We're happy to break the news that Avorion will be leaving Early Access on March 9th, 2020!

[h2]The Road to 1.0[/h2]Until March 9th, there are a few more things to do:

[h3]Polishing, Balancing, Bugfixing[/h3]Feature Freeze at Boxelware! This week we have started focusing on polishing things up. All the most important features are now in (at least in our dev-build) and we're polishing things up. Fixing bugs, adding more QoL features and balancing. We will dedicate 90% of our time until release on that to bring you a product that has 1.0 quality and not just Early Access quality.

[h3]Generator Update[/h3]We're currently finalizing the most important update of all: The generator update. We want to set it live as soon as we can to get tons of feedback and to see if everything works fine. In case you don't know what the update is about, check this out: https://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/announcements/detail/3455884364089992667

We wanted to release it this week, but sadly we won't make it. The generator itself is working perfectly fine, but there's some stuff around it that still needs some work (factions saving their own styles, shipyards, etc). We're hoping to bring it to you next week on the beta branch!

[h3]Endgame Content[/h3]We have several Endgame related features in the making that will be released soon (maybe at the same time as the generator rework). These include faction economy and faction eradication, as well as more more bosses and one major, galaxy-wide end-game event. But we don't want to spoil too much just yet, so stay tuned!

[h2]What happens after 1.0?[/h2]Probably the most important thing for the majority: We're far from done with Avorion! After 1.0 we're planning on releasing both free updates and a few larger DLC updates. We plan on developing new content updates for the game for at least one year, and supporting the game for at least one more year after that. Much longer if things go well. We love working on Avorion and we love the engaged community that formed around the game! We don't want to just let all that go away.

As such, one of the first updates to come after 1.0 will be a free update where we're implementing tons of small "feature-creep" features that have been suggested by the community and that we really loved, but that just didn't make it into the 1.0 version.

[h2]Damage Types & Enemy Variations[/h2]
We added a few new ways how hulls and shields react to different damage types. Some of these "changes" are things that were already in the game, but not explicitly highlighted. Weapons now officially deal different types of damage: Basic Physical and Energy, and then Antimatter, Electric, Plasma and Fragment damage, which are specializations of Physical and Energy damage.

• Physical and Energy are the 'vanilla' damage types
  
• Antimatter deals increased damage to hull
  
• Plasma deals increased damage to shields
  
• Fragment deals increased damage to Torpedoes and Fighters
  
• Lightning deals zero damage to Stone
  

Some weapons have those fixed, ie. Bolters: Antimatter, Plasma Cannons: Plasma (duh). Other weapons, like Chain Guns, have a chance of getting a specialized damage type. These damage mechanics were already in the game, but now we are explicitly highlighting them for better clarity. It also makes the code less obnoxious to work with. Ahem.

What's new now, is that enemies can have special additional resistances and weaknesses against nearly all damage types. On top of that, we added some special, tougher enemies that have increased HP and damage. These new, tougher enemies will appear alongside normal enemies and can have 3 levels of toughness: Tough, Savage and Hardcore, each having more HP and dealing more damage than the previous.

[h2]Hyperspace Changes[/h2]
To improve the flow of the exploration part of the game, we made some changes to the hyperspace jumping system. Waiting for your hyperspace engine to recharge while in an empty sector isn't really a lot of fun and slows players down unnecessarily. So, to speed up travelling through empty sectors, hyperspace recharge time is now increased by 200% while travelling through clear space (a sector with alliance/group/your own ships and nothing else counts as clear space).

Next up, doing a hyperspace jump will only drain your hyperspace engine for the percentage distance you jumped, in relation to its reach, but always for at least 50%. This means that, with a 40 sector reach, jumping 30 sectors will drain 75% power (instead of 100%), but doing a jump for 10 sectors will still drain it for 50%. Your hyperspace engine still has to fully recharge in order to do your next jump.

On the flip side, we didn't want to make it too easy to escape a fight, so we supplied enemy ships with hyperspace distorters. While you're being attacked by enemies (not just enemies present, they have to want you dead), they will distort your hyperspace engine, reducing its recharge rate to 25% (as well as its energy consumption, btw). Keep in mind that while exploring, most enemies will not attack you immediately on sight any more (see below). This basically makes it so that once you've committed to a fight, you can't weasel out as easily.

[h2]New Enemy Spawn Behavior[/h2]
Don't you love it when you're exploring a yellow-blip sector and once the loading screen disappears there are 25 pirate ships fully loaded with torpedoes waiting for you? No? Then we have some good news for you!

In order to make those encounters fairer and less frustrating, most enemy encounters in yellow-blip sectors no longer attack on sight, but only after you get too close or provoke them. They also no longer spawn all at the same time, but in a handful of waves, with each wave stronger than the one before it. Defeat all waves to have a special strong enemy spawn at the end with some shiny loot!

[h2]Special Offers[/h2]
We spiced up Equipment Docks a little: They now have regularly changing special offers waiting for you. These special offers have an overall better rarity than the rest of the supply and are always -30% off.

Speaking of Equipment Docks, all Equipment Docks now always have a supply of basic upgrades to get new captains started a little quicker:

• A Turret Slot Upgrade
• A Radar Upgrade
• An Energy Upgrade
• A Hyperspace Upgrade
  

[h2]More Patchnotes - 0.31.1[/h2]
[h3]Gameplay[/h3]

• Improved pirate dialogues
• Reduced time between entering a yellow-blip sector and being talked to by waiting pirates
• A selection of basic upgrades is now always available at Equipment Docks
• Boss Fidget is now only stunned by Electric damage (from before all weapons with Energy damage)

[h3]Hyperspace Rework[/h3]

• Added coloring of Hyperspace Engine UI depending on which kind of buff or debuff is currently active
• Added icons telling players which (de)buffs are currently active

[h3]Hyperspace Rework Rework[/h3]"These changes are in relation to the Hyperspace Rework as it was active on the beta branch. Some of them won't be relevant for you if you didn't play on the beta branch. We listened to your feedback and adjusted some things."

• Hyperspace cooldown is no longer static
• Hyperspace cooldown over 3x as quickly when jumping into an empty sector
• While enemies are attacking, Hyperspace Engine is being distorted and can only recharge with 25% speed
• Hyperspace Engine must only recharge based on the jump distance relative to the max distance, but always for at least 50%
  • Doing a jump of 15 sectors with a 20 sector range will only drain your engine for 75% instead of 100%
  • Doing a jump of 2 sectors with a 20 sector range will still drain your engine for 50%

[h3]Balancing[/h3]"Several of these changes are in relation to the last beta patch and might not be relevant for you if you didn't play on the beta branch."

• Reduced amount of waves in enemy encounters for outer sectors
• Reduced ratios of high fire rate and high damage specialty bonuses
• Reduced bonus damage for plasma weapons against shields

[h3]Client[/h3]

• Added an option to enable adaptive VSync, can be set while the game is running
• Added blinking to energy bars for when energy is low or energy usage is high
• Added tooltips for Hyperspace and Energy UI bars
• Added info about resistances and weaknesses of enemies to bottom-right HUD display
• Improved tooltips of enemy variation damage types
• Improved Singleplayer Window and added more information about saved galaxies

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• Fixed a very prominent server hang
• Fixed an issue where hyperspace cooldown could become very large
• Fixed several issues with wave encounters
• Fixed several issues in missions
• Fixed an issue where "Immune" would be shown too often
• Fixed a crash in shop UI
• Fixed an issue where some bulletin missions weren't working
• Fixed a crash if player loses torpedo launcher during torpedo tutorial
• Fixed a bug where electric weapons could damage stone

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
A lot has happened since the release of Avorion into Early Access on January 23rd, 2017 - We've come a long way since then. This trailer highlights the most important changes since the Early Access release three years ago, while also showing off the classics of Avorion for all those people who don't know the game yet.

Note: Depending on when you're watching it, the trailer may contain unreleased content, such as the ship generator rework.

The list of improvements since the Early Access Release of 2017 is quite long by now:
A revised (turret) building mode, massively improved procedural ship & station generation, new sound effects, torpedoes & PDCs, specialized enemies, improved faction territories, new blocks, new weapons, new upgrades, boarding, completely revised economy based on supply and demand, improved faction behavior & diplomacy, commanding ships over the map, more missions & events, UI improvements and much, much more!


As promised in last week's announcement, there are still some updates in the pipeline that will be released before the transition from Early Access to 1.0.

[h2]Faction Economy & Faction Eradication[/h2]
AI Factions will soon have limited resources available (instead of unlimited resources), based on their territory size on the map and their economical strength. But don't be fooled: The amount of resources they have available will still be a lot.

This has a few implications:
1. They will have to rebuild their military ships over time and if you're quick enough you can make them run out
2. They will be able to rebuild stations
3. You will be able to completely eradicate factions from the map

[h2]Craft Generator Rework[/h2]
As you may have noticed by now, we're in the middle of a rework of the procedural ship & station generator of Avorion. Ships are generated based on so-called "Faction Styles". Our goal is that players can recognize a faction by their ships. That means that all ships of a faction have similar visual properties. That includes the color and structure of the ship, and also visual features like spikes. In addition, a faction can have multiple types of ships, which among themselves are very similar to each other, but not completely alike.

Compared to the old ship generator (not shown here), the new generator can create much prettier ships that are very distinguishable from each other. The new generator will also be moddable.

While the new generator is mostly finished and ready to use (as seen in above trailer), it's still a little rough around the edges and doesn't support as much variation as we'd like it to. But we're confident that, if everything goes well, a first implementation may be available for testing on the beta branch towards the end of January, start of February.

[h2]Endgame Content[/h2]
There are some more things coming before release: We want to add more End-Game content after you beat the final boss. That includes new really hard bosses and a few large-scale events. But we don't want to give away too much here, yet.

[h2]Final Polishing Phase[/h2]
Starting in February, we're going to go into a polishing phase where we will focus a lot less on new features and content, but instead on fixing as many issues and bugs as we can. We're also revisiting some older code to improve performance.

Alright, that's it for now, stay tuned for the next updates!

Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.

This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.

“We reworked how shields and hulls react to fire from enemies. They now have special strengths and weaknesses, which make the use of different weapons more important.”

• Added new damage types
  • Physical
  • Energy
  • AntiMatter
  • Electric
  • Plasma
  • Fragments
• Turrets now deal damage according to their damage type
• Added new upgrades
  • Shield Ionizer make your shield impenetrable for one damage type
  • Hull Polarizer make your ship more durable but you also get more damage from one damage type
• Weapon buffs are less random now and more related to the weapon type
• Reduced the amount of possible specializations for turrets
• Added new hull effect to show the type of Hull Polarizer
• Added new colors to shields to show the type of Shield Ionizer
• Damage numbers now use the color of the damage type they inflict

“Not only the players benefit from the new improved shields and hulls, but also the enemies get a fair share of improvements.”

• Added new badass variations for enemies
  • Badasses do more damage and have more HP
  • There are three types of badasses
• Enemies may also use Shield Ionizers or Hull Polarizers

“To improve the speed in which the galaxy may be discovered, we decreased the time spent in sectors while recharging the hyperspace engine.”

• Reduced the time needed to recharge hyperspace engine
• Recharge time of hyperspace engine now depends on the sector
  • In an empty sector, the recharge time is 10s
  • In an not empty sector, the recharge time is 30s
  • If attacked by enemies, the recharge time is at least 30s but not longer than 120s
• Reduced cooldown reduction for upgrades
• Hyperspace upgrade now has a maximum cooldown reduction of 35%
• XSTN-K V artifact (The Four) has no cooldown reduction anymore
• XSTN-K VIII artifact (Bottan) now has a cooldown reduction of 50%

“Hey you, wanna see my new special offers?”

• Every shop has special offers available now
• Special offers are 30% cheaper
• Special offers change over time and only have limited amount available

“We added a new spawning mechanic for enemies. They have different scenarios why they are in a sector and warn the player before attacking.”

• Added new mechanic to spawn enemies
• Added different scenarios for enemy encounters
• Enemies want you to leave before they attack
• Enemies call reinforcements to fight you

• Added new spawnutility.lua to add variations and specializations to enemies
• Added a max durability factor for shields
• Added a factor to scale up a ship's durability
• Added DurabilityComponent
• Changed turretgenerator.lua and weapongenerator.lua to use new damage types
• Changed handling of weapon specialties in turretgenerator.lua and weapongenerator.lua
  • Adjusted railgun mod example to new turretgenerator.lua
• Added get-set property shield resistance
• Old damage type is now split to damage type and damage source
• Added new waveutility.lua to make wave encounters