Gaia Beyond News

Ahoy, mateys, space dogs and buccaneers!

While we're putting some heave ho into our incoming main update, we've got a lil' (maybe not so little) surprise patch in store for ya. So avast ye, give no quarter to those new pirate fleets and fortresses, now matched to their respective pirate captain in color and strength. So old salts and landlubbers alike, batten down the hatches and test ya might, feed those scoundrels to the fishes and gain some booty! If you don't wanna walk the plank yourself, better prepare yourself – some of them Jolly Rogers are stronger than ever before!






The various pirate leaders who have joined the game over time (and are finally complete with this update) now have their own sub factions - bringing variety to the game world and filling the lawless void with merciless battles!

• Some pirate factions are much stronger than others – exploring the far corners of the system has never been this dangerous before
  
• New pirate weapons and shields for more action!
  
• Pirate ships can now drop certain weapons if you destroy them
  
• Some pirate fortresses have a new position
  

• Physical (Ramming) damage gives XP, Loot, and also triggers aggro (player only)
  
• Full asteroid drop yield only with mining equipment (otherwise only 50%)
  
• The mining laser turret got its visual upgrade levels – expect more of these soon!
  

• Captain Mary Read ...making the pirate bosses complete!

• Atlantic Alliance Captain The more law-abiding variant of a captain.

Crystal asteroids now drop actual crystals instead of cargo boxes.

• Teal's Bloodtest sidequest is no longer forced on the player during the mainquest
  
• Pluto Colony now has a quarantine dialog when you click on it while it's still locked
  
• Added and corrected some sort_keys for NPCs
  
• Improved some dialog and fixed some spelling errors
  
• Caduceus Station has reduced HP and shield HP for now
  

Note: We are still working on our big story update which will rework the main mission structure of the last Caduceus Arc missions. We reduced the Caduceus Station's HP for now, because that mission was too frustrating for players in its current state!

• Travel group:
  • Try harder to find a nearby free spot, start randomizing late, be more consistent, add effort estimation
    
  • Only shortcut the path testing if we are really nearby the target
    
  • Update free lane path finding
    
• Ship evasion:
  • General improvements
    
  • Improve asteroid field ship evasive behavior
    
  • Do not evade with a higher velocity
    
• Improve turret target lead (include parent ship velocity)
  
• Improve finding a free location for big ships when undocking
  

• Halve the turret "ready to fire" angle distance
  

• Asteroid drops balancing:
  • New category of 'tiny' asteroids
    
  • Added drop amount limit for each category (to prevent the possibility of small ones dropping more items than big ones)
    
• Space trade: decline when most friendlies are fighting nearby
  
• Only de-spawn items if they are outside the player radar range
  
• Container: Reduce the chance to drop content on destruction (by level)
  

• A 4K game with a 2K interface? That doesn't sound right! Therefore we have:
  • Doubled the interface resolution
    
  • Reworked some UI elements (like the menu cursor, tab buttons, check boxes, sliders and more)
    
• Ship Trade HUD: Hide ship data when the blueprint is missing
  

• Seraphim Applicator polishing, variations

Although masks are quite a thing lately, we haven't found any proper use for the last guy yet...

• Shock Cannon visual improvements
  
• Small improvements on cargo drop animations
  

• Screenshot files are now tagged with the game version number
  
• Render improvements
  

• Item Upgrade HUD: Correctly unlink on window exit
  
• Hackable destroyables should use hull damage (not disintegration)
  
• Marcel Wallas quest counter for all three items can switch too early
  
• Ship Trade HUD: Large font size fixes
  
• Player can trade with the caduceus station while fighting it
  
• Extra hull given by "Additional Armor III" device is reset on each savegame load
  
• Travel groups: wait time should be based on distance
  
• Pai Pai job accept doesn't advance
  
• Shield restore animation is buggy
  
• Trade HUD: do not move the left box to the front on init
  
• Get_Random_Ship_Data() can fail
  
• Horizontal scrollbar is visible in Inventory/Trade HUD
  
• Trade Tooltip: Increase the name height for large fonts
  
• Don't play the quest noti sound when loading
  
• Savegames: "Bring Jurgen's body to Xiao and tell her the bad news." is added to the quest log several hundred times
  

Let's have a chat on Discord:



Learn more & stay tuned!

• Website
• Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Reddit, Imgur

[h3]Dear habitants,[/h3]
There are times when a robot's blown fuse throws a whole solar system into turmoil – and other times when you can't take a step outside your cozy space shuttle. To make your stay as pleasant as possible, here are some suggestions from the Warp Turtle quarantine lab:

• EXPLORE new and polished parts of the storyline and discover more sidequests
  
• HACK ships or even stations with new skills from the Kalypso tree
  
• HELP others - rescue lost miners or get our new celebrity NPC Trash Panda some of his beloved trash, your cargo bay is full of it anyway!

We also polished the homebase, put out the trash and created new living quarters on moons.

If you run into anomalies or got any feedback - find us here or on discord as usual!







[h2]New Missions[/h2]

• FTA databanks are attacked by pirate hackers! Can you help?
  
• Agent Horace on Nexsen needs someone to secure the area!
  
• Tezla got a new first Mission: Rescue those CoC Miners! (Devs note: The old first mission "A Hard Day of Work", which was a little bit to difficult for the beginning, is now Tezla's 2nd mission)
  

[h2]Hack ships and stations![/h2]
Staying in the ship allows you to sabotage others silently – the new ship hacking feature comes with a whole skill tree. There are still improvements on the list and we're working on FX, but here is the basic thing!

"Enough talking, Auxi – let's hack your shield!!"

Choose from a variety of things to hack (devices excluded for now)...

...and master the hacking skill tree to become a legendary hacker!


[h2]64 bit support[/h2]

• Blast Processing!
  

[h2]Locations[/h2]
Like most J-12 sites, the Pugnator recruitment center is nobody's first choice for a vacation.


Moon colonies – all over the place!



[h2]A mysterious visitor[/h2]
There seems to be someone visiting the Caduceus Station. Can you catch a glimpse before he's leaving? Dude is not playable yet – but WILL BE with a hotfix in the next few days!





[h2]Interesting folks[/h2]

• Trash Panda, Zeldi Rubinstein, Igor VII
• as well as some tragic heroes, like a dead mechanic and a shot ISA doctor.

[h2]Pirate drones[/h2]

• Not really intelligent, but fun to wreck!
  

[h2]Audio[/h2]

• Atmospheric background music for wreck stations
  
• Highly motivating cheer sounds for saving lost astronauts!
  

[h2]Reworked Sphere ship graphics[/h2]
(Click for very :D high resolution!)


[h2]Locations[/h2]

• Pluto Colony, as seen in the update's title pic. The previous version was 8 (!) years old and still in half resolution, so we felt like finally giving it a major rework!
  
• Planet garage skyline polishing
  

[h2]Portraits[/h2]

• more Portrait versions (female ISA doctors)
  
• Sphere portraits polished (Richter, soldiers)
  
• O-Dog portrait color optimization
  

[h2]General[/h2]

• polished some weapon and shield stats (thx @Sergalicious)
  
• Corrected some spelling mistakes (thx @Jeremy)
  
• Removed a lo-res-looking star layer from Pluto's background nebula
  
• Added Alloy traders to CoC Stations (to make crafting ships a little bit more accessible), many other small improvements, script polishing and stuff, thx @Thunderofwar, @Sergalicious, @Azmoden, @zackerlandor and many others for bugreports and a lotta feedback
  
• Improve the json loading performance
  
• A log_level config option
  

[h2]UI[/h2]

• Add a Hacking Range and Hacking Speed skill
  
• Character HUD: Show the destroyed ships favorite
  
• Character HUD: Skill overview for Mechanic, Persuasion and Hacking
  
• Cache the map icon layout
  

• Do not draw the whole world when fading in after a save load
  
• Fix broken Add_Question() calls (Orish, Tezla, Romolus Dunk)
  
• Increase the binary stack size to prevent possible crashes when spawning a massive amount of sprites in physics space
  
• Location icons are sometimes not immediately unlocked
  
• Player cargo container can hide some items
  
• Options Menu: Show the long language name
  
• Don't show the hacking window if the parent is not in detail mode
  
• Ship death can be counted more than once
  
• Sprite damping is not cloned
  

Let's have a chat on Discord:



Learn more & stay tuned!

• Website
• Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Reddit, Imgur

Hey fellas,

Gaia Beyond got 2 (plusminus 7) years old, time to celebrate! Here is a list of things we recommend you to do besides washing your hands:

[h3]1) Party hard[/h3]- Not too hard, but hard enough.

[h3]2) Enter the giveaway action and win a FREE copy[/h3]- Available on steamgifts until Apr 6 - tell a friend!



You can also print this banner and make a funky flip book out of it! Or post it wherever you want.

This is a bugfix update.

Keep the suggestions and error reports coming! :)

• The "Genocide Arrest" success path is broken
  
• Update, shoot and collide with all ship weapons even if it is out of detail mode
  
• Noob does not attack when in a defend moving state
  
• Waechter can be lost in outer space
  
• Report broken script Add_Question() calls
  
• Additive blending doesn't work in CEGUI
  
• Localization: support Permanent Notis
  
• Inventory HUD: advertisement emitter should not rotate
  
• Add_Drawable rotation can fail in HUD windows
  
• Add a person Has_Cargo() function
  

Let's have a chat on Discord:



Learn more & stay tuned!

• Website
• Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Reddit, Imgur

This is mainly a bugfix update.

Feedback is welcome from anyone. Thanks in advance to those who contribute suggestions and error reports!

• Add a linear camera zoom for the intro zoom event
  
• Lock 2nd skill tree, unlock with level 10 (and per script in storyline)
  
• Update the high quality textures
  

• Atlantic politician polishing
  
• J-12 male polishing & variations
  
• Atlantic female 2 variations
  
• New Atlantic soldier
  

• Landable HUD: dialog keyboard focus is not set correctly
  
• Loading with a zoom out hides the loading menu planet
  
• Live character portrait switch can crash
  
• Rufus_Billie_Jean_Attack() script can crash
  
• Dr. Orish alternative route script can crash
  
• Assassin Hsieh dialog is broken
  
• The Mr Impatiens save upgrade breaks if there is no cad station
  
• Ship Trade HUD can crash if a craft requirement item does not exist
  
• Collecting cargo can crash
  
• Gylfa/Stansa Blueprint does not exist
  
• Simon_Boswell_Player_Left_Landable should not auto re-link on save load
  
• Make Administrator Helix Jupiter leading person for J-12
  
• Selling the Old Genom Core gives no visual mission progress
  
• Localization: Add_Question with a person (like "Player") picks up the wrong string
  

Let's have a chat on Discord:



Learn more & stay tuned!

• Website
• Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Reddit, Imgur