Avorion News

[h2]Autopilot[/h2]
It has happened to everyone at some point: you try to dock at the station and the nose of your ship nudges the airlock but it still isn’t properly docked. The procedure should actually be much easier. And this is where the autopilot comes into play! In the future, you will be able to select your target station in strategy mode and simply give your ship the command to head for it. Docking is completely automatic!
Additionally, the autopilot is capable of many other cool things:
Have you ever wished you could just sit back and watch your ship do its thing? With the autopilot, that's no longer a problem! As long as you are in the same sector as your ship, you can, for example, instruct it to fly across the sector, mine an asteroid, or even attack someone. While your ship carries out the order, you just relax and enjoy the show! However, you need to be in the same sector as your ship to use this feature. To give orders to ships in other sectors you will still need a captain. And, as we all know, accomplished captains are way too proud to let an autopilot do their work for them ;)

[h2]Sector Overview and Sector Renaming[/h2]
How many stations have you clicked through to find the right crew members? Probably quite a few... In the future, we would like to make both the search for the right crew members as well as the buying and selling of goods easier and more convenient for you. With update 2.0 we improved the sector overview to allow you to find out much faster which station in the sector has exactly what you are looking for! Simply switch to Strategy Mode and look through the available stations to get an overview of which goods are bought or sold, which missions are available, and which crew members you can find at which station. Afterwards you only have to select the station, fly there and save a lot of time!

While we're on the subject of sectors:
Be sure to stop by an Equipment Dock and pick up the new Sector Label Applicator! Once you have activated it in a sector of your choosing, a beacon will appear and you can give the sector a new name. You can rename the sector as often as you like using the same beacon, as long as nobody destroys it. However, the label applicator only works in sectors that are controlled by you or your alliance, after all, you don't want the name of a sector to incite a war with the locals.

After performing well on the beta branch, patch 1.3.8 is now live on default! It introduces Japanese and French as officially supported languages and brings several quality-of-life improvements and stability improvements.

[h2]Languages[/h2]"As our community is growing all over the world, we want to support more languages. In this patch we happily introduce the new supported languages of French and Japanese."

• Added French localization
• Added Japanese localization

[h2]General[/h2]

• Torpedo shafts can now fire when not assigned to a group
• Reduced default size of damage numbers
• Improved performance of durability weakness effects
• Improved performance of line break algorithm
• Implemented a setting for servers to enforce steam networking and not fall back to TCP protocols

[h2]Scripting API[/h2]

• Implemented a prototype functionality to enumerate all values in an Enum
  • Enums can now be converted to a table via enumerate() (ie. BlockType.enumerate())

[h2]Bugs[/h2]"As always, bugs marked with [UBR] are User Bug Reports, submitted through our in-game bug tracker. Thanks very much for helping and keep 'em coming!"

• [UBR] Fixed an issue where all players end up in the same sector once 3000+ players are registered
• Fixed an issue where safe mode was always on (even when turned off) when transforming a shipyard-requiring block into a non-shipyard requiring block without a shipyard in the sector
• Fixed an issue where colors weren't correctly translated in building mode
• Fixed an issue where hyperspace engine didn't go on cooldown properly when changing reach
• Fixed an issue where upgrades of ships could disappear through breaking blocks
• Fixed an issue where clicking coordinates in chat was possible while mouse was visible or obscured by windows
• Fixed an issue where the Hermit Dialog wasn't shown when another player already spawned Swoks in that sector
• Fixed an issue where Exodus Mission wasn't updating correctly
• Fixed a crash in /run command when called from RCON or console
• Fixed a crash when saving script data of players
• Fixed an issue where players could leave the ship into the drone while building in tutorial
• Fixed a GPU memory leak

[h2]Crew Improvements[/h2]

Searching for specific crew members can be annoying and time-consuming at times. Especially when you have already flown across several sectors to hire the correct crew members, only to realize that you’re now suddenly missing a general. That’s why we have improved the way that higher-ranking officers are handled, so that in the future you will no longer have to fly to countless stations to man your ship effectively.
First off, we removed the separate professions for higher ranking officers. As soon as the number of crew members of a certain profession increases so much that they now require a superior officer, your crew will automatically promote one of their colleagues from within this profession to a higher rank.
We have also made the crew more effective. Compared to before, you will only need half as many crew members to get your ship ready for action because each of them now has double the workforce. But good employees come at a price and the new crew knows what they are worth and demand a salary twice as high as before.
In turn, they are also willing to work under harsher conditions. Lower morale will no longer have an immediate effect on the workforce, even though morale will decrease somewhat faster than before if you don’t have enough crew quarters or if you don’t pay your crew. But if you do let morale go down all the way to 0% (you should feel ashamed for treating them so poorly!), all crew members on your ship will go on strike immediately. However, they will not leave the ship any more but simply refuse to work until the problem has been resolved.

[h2]Faction Areas[/h2]

We want to make the factions more interesting and give them more depth. Currently, the factions consist of a simple territory and that does not match our idea of growing and living civilizations. In the future, each faction will therefore have a central area and an outer area which will look and feel distinctly different from each other.
Each faction has a central area around the home sector that is very densely populated and has certain advantages for you. There are better trading options due to the many factories and other stations that are well connected by a close-meshed gate network. In addition, the central areas of the factions are very well protected, making pirate attacks in these areas less likely.
The outer faction area is rather sparsely populated, however sectors like asteroid fields or other (more or less welcome) surprises are much more likely in there.
In most cases, when moving into the territory of an unknown faction, you will first enter their outer area where you will encounter only a few of their ships and stations. There, you can assess them to decide whether you want to venture deeper into their territory to possibly find new allies, or if you’d rather stay away from them.
PS: The improved faction areas are compatible with existing saves!

[h2]Player Profile[/h2]



Some things you achieve in Avorion are just too good not to be appreciated. Have you maybe defeated a certain boss or founded a mine on an asteroid? Or maybe you’re a new player feeling a little lost in the vastness of space and don’t know where exactly to start? This is why we’re introducing the new player profile, which will show you some things you should definitely try, and will remember the milestones you have reached, to give both new players and veterans inspiration for new goals. This means that, should you ever feel like you don’t know what to do next, you can look here for ideas for new challenges. Or if you’re feeling like taking a look back on your journey, this is where you can.

[h2]Hyperspace-Travel Improvements[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We want Hyperspace Travel to feel better and be less boring for mid & late-game ships. We want it to feel more like a journey and less like a “teleport-here”. To do this, we’re 1. massively reducing hyperspace cooldown time, 2. reducing hyperspace jump range gains from hyperspace cores and upgrades (don’t worry, overall travel times will be a lot shorter, even with reduced jump range!).

To get things started, it will be easier to travel to sectors that are further away than your jump range. You will be able to select any (non-rift) sector and your ship will automatically calculate a straight route of sectors to the destination. When arriving in an intermediate sector, you will be able to simply continue the journey without having to reopen the map to select new jump coordinates.

We also want to avoid people getting stranded in a new sector with no energy. New players especially fall into this frustrating trap. That’s why we’re reducing the total amount of energy required for a jump, and instead of cooling the hyperspace drive after the jump, the energy will now be required to charge up the hyperspace drive to jump. To perform the jump, you’ll now have to boost towards the blue jump marker. Your ship will then charge up its hyperdrive and start to glow. We added some nice visuals and SFX so you can really get a feel of the immense forces required to move a solid, heavy ship through hyperspace!

So jumping will require less energy in total now, and instead need a big spike of energy over a very short period of time. That’s why we also greatly improved battery blocks (since you might need them ;) ), giving these underappreciated blocks some more value. Finally, to make travel feel more fluent with bigger ships, you will be able to speed up hyperspace cooldown even more by prematurely boosting towards the jump point. This is meant as a high-end luxury though and will consume lots of energy.

We're introducing official French and Japanese localizations, and while we're already at it, fixing a few bugs.

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 Branch - Newest Changes & Experimental Features'.

[h2]Languages[/h2]"As our community is growing all over the world, we want to support more languages. In this patch we happily introduce the new supported languages of French and Japanese."

• Added French localization
• Added Japanese localization

[h2]General[/h2]

• Torpedo shafts can now fire when not assigned to a group
• Reduced default size of damage numbers
• Improved performance of durability weakness effects
• Improved performance of line break algorithm
• Implemented a prototype functionality to enumerate all values in an Enum
  • Enums can now be converted to a table via enumerate() (ie. BlockType.enumerate())
• Implemented a setting for servers to enforce steam networking and not fall back to TCP protocols

[h2]Bugs[/h2]"As always, bugs marked with [UBR] are User Bug Reports, submitted through our in-game bug tracker. Thanks very much for helping and keep 'em coming!"

• [UBR] Fixed an issue where all players end up in the same sector once 3000+ players are registered
• Fixed an issue where safe mode was always on (even when turned off) when transforming a shipyard-requiring block into a non-shipyard requiring block without a shipyard in the sector
• Fixed an issue where colors weren't correctly translated in building mode
• Fixed an issue where hyperspace engine didn't go on cooldown properly when changing reach
• Fixed an issue where upgrades of ships could disappear through breaking blocks
• Fixed an issue where clicking coordinates in chat was possible while mouse was visible or obscured by windows
• Fixed an issue where the Hermit Dialog wasn't shown when another player already spawned Swoks in that sector
• Fixed an issue where Exodus Mission wasn't updating correctly
• Fixed a GPU memory leak