06/21/10

Keynote Updates...

• • Warpoints
  • Colony Limits
  • Unit Recycling
  • New system for player respawning
  • The Chat Client has been temporarily disabled
  
  
• Warpoints
  • Warpoints are gained by killing other player's units.
  • The amount of warpoints gained is based on the strength of the unit destroyed.
  • There are many safe guards to stop players from exploiting this system to gain large quantities of warpoints through the use of alts, aliases, guildmates, etc... Further, warpoints received from a single player reduce due to attrition meaning killing the same player repeatedly will eventually result in little to no warpoint gain.
  
  
• Warpoint Upkeep
  • Units now cost warpoints for upkeep. The amount of warpoints that a unit costs is displayed in the selection window, the prototype window, the command management window, and many other places.
  • Every 24 hours of played time or 7 days of real-time (whichever comes first), your Warpoints will be reduced by your empire-wide warpoint upkeep cost.
    
  • Guild Share
    • When sharing a unit with your guild you must pay the full upkeep fee in addition to a payment every 24 hours of real time.
    • If you have insufficient warpoints the unit share will be rejected.
    • disabling share will stop further upkeep payments, but re-enabling will require another upfront payment.
  • Trade Notes
    • When a unit is purchased off the open market, the buyer pays the warpoint upkeep charge as part of the purchase price.
  • Upkeep Shortage
    • If you do not have sufficient warpoints, then your units will be ordered by level and most recent to oldest. The amount of warpoints that you are short by will be applied to your units by reducing their experience level by 1. The deficit will be reduced by the warpoint cost of that unit. If the unit is green and cannot have its experience level reduced, it will be destroyed.
  
  
• Warpoint Rewards
  • Once the system is fully released and well playtested by our user base we are excited to add something to spend these warpoints on. This patch contains the gaining, and upkeep but not the expenditure system.
  
  
• Colony Limits
  • Planets have a maximum number of colonies that can be placed on the planet. If the planet has more colonies then the colony cap, all colonies will be considered under corruption.
  • While in corruption
    • Facilities cannot produce or research
    • Mining facilities do not produce minerals
    • Colonies do not grow
    • Colonies do not generate income (but they still have expense)
    • Colonies cannot go invulnerable
  • These effects do not apply to planets that a player started on (the homeworld). This is not the same planet as the one used for invulnerability. It is the planet the player spawned on (or respawned on) and does not change.
  • Tiny can support 2. Each size is one more, up to 6 for Huge.
  • The current count and limit has been added to the planet tooltip.
  • The budget window has the current colony cap and the number of colonies in that environment
  
  
• Unit and Facility Recycling (Senate Proposal)
  • You can now recycle docked units.
  • 95% chance of recovery of undamaged components including engines, radars, weapons, shields.
  • 25% of intact, undamaged, armor plates
  • 25% the cost to build the structure
  • The parts will be stored in the colony storage on a planet.
  • Dismantling ships and structures on a planet has not changed. The parts still fall on the ground.
  • You can recycle ships in space. The parts will goto the engineer doing the work. If full it will attempt to place the cargo inside the engineers battlegroup.
  
  
• Trade Changes
  • List a unit for sale is now permanent.
  • Ships put up for sale in the open market are considered permanent sales.
  • While for sale, ships do not require warpoint upkeep.
  • Once a ship is placed for sale, it cannot be removed from the for sale list. Instead, it can only be recycled.
  • When a unit is purchased off the open market, the buyer pays the warpoint upkeep charge as part of the purchase price.
  
  
• Rewpawn Changes
  • Respawn systems will no longer be generated.
  • Spawn systems will be generated as they are today.
  • When a player respawns (initiates their contingency plan), they will be given the choice of system to respawn in. The list is based on systems that are respawn systems and unlocked systems. This includes most of the systems within the game at present. The respawning player will be able to determine a lot of details about each system in the list before making a decision.
  • Once the system is selected, a special space engineer will be created and placed randomly within the system. The unit will have max speed, max maneuver, max radar visibility and max detection. The space engineer will only be able to produce command center structures. Once the command center is constructed, the space engineer is removed from play and the command center will automatically build a single engineer. At this point, the contingency plan timer will begin (the 24 hours).
  • When the command center is built, the player's homeworld will be set to that planet.
  
  
• Combat Rating Adjustment
  • We are adjusting the combat rating calculations to be more in line with what they should be.
  
  
• Transport Updates and Fixes
  • You can now rename your transports.
  • Added a warning message when adding colonists to transports and routes. It should be known that crowd control is condoned, however its not risk free.
  • Fixed a bug when deleting a route step or action item that left things out of order. The player would typically be unaware of this until their next login.
  • Fixed a bug that caused unloading of components set to a percentage to always be 100%.
  • The window positions now save. Double clicking a transport will display the Orders window.
  
  
• Misc
  • Available Resources now sorts and groups items. Engines.. Radars..
  • Unpowered Labs and Factories are no longer listed in the colony management window.
  • Using the email contact window will no longer let you add the same person twice via excessive clicks.
  • Adjusted the client startup initial request of Claimable items to be sooner.
  
  
• Bugs
  • A bug introduced in the last patch prevented email waypoints from working

• Micro components are no longer able to be designed
• Units and Facilities that had micro components on them can no longer be built
• Existing components that are considered micro components are now marked Invalid Designs and can no longer be used to design new units and facilities
• Existing component designs that are considered micro components can no longer be built
• Units and facilities that have micro components on them and are built were not removed but are considerably more vulnerable to reliability failure (aka flux)

• Now properly requests selected item's health
• The default color of an item in the list is white to indicate no data
• There is a new progress bar style background to show overall selected structural health
• Added Options -> Gameplay -> Show MultiSelect Health Bars (default is on)

• The colors for an in progress mission were adjusted to be friendlier to the eye
• Corrected the color for a finished step whose points were greater than required. It should now show green.

• This will now show your current rank in the Senate Title box with Ex if you are Ex-Ranked
• The Next title for an Ex-ranked player is blanked as you may be falling many ranks
• The title for foreign players now properly shows Ex-Ranked status even if they choose to display another title such as Chief Scientist
• The list of controlled planets in the Diplomacy window are now sorted by name and planet number

• More things that you are unable to do are disabled, greyed out or alert you

• Split off Alloys out of Minerals to make things easier
• Added a Personnel section for Templates
• Transports now show a total transport count at the top of the list (X/100)
• When selecting a mineral there was a leftover click-through where you could accidently click the Copy Template button

• Mission Results waypoints for Mineral Survey are now "REALLY" sorted properly
• Some window placement improvements on the tech builders for varying resolutions
• Cancel Launch will now cancel an entire group of units similar to Launch All
• Guild Rank creation is now possible again
• Any facility that produces only one item will now auto-select that item
• Game client and chat client now have timestamps added for chat