Patch 9.7.1 - Change Log

Below are the complete patch notes for Patch 9.7.1 which will be applied today at 1530 UTC.

Troop Carrier

-IP cost raised to 12 points, up from 10 points.
-Resource cost raised to 300.000 total, up from 120.000 total.
-Time cost raised to 24 hours, up from 4 hours.

Note: The conquest mechanic has been a great success in many ways and is loved by both players and developers. It is to be expected that such a drastic change to gameplay could see balance tweaks. We want conquering stations to be an alternative to building stations, both choices should have ups and downs. Right now conquering stations is giving a massive advantage in experience per hour via instantly raising a player’s influence total as well as saving players massive amounts of resources and time building up stations. As it stands, the counter-choice of choosing your station placement and building make-up is not weighing up to the advantages of conquering stations, hence these changes.

Forward Operating Base

-Total time cost of all buildings reduced to 7 days, down from 14 days.
-Total resource cost of all buildings reduced to 10.000.000, down from 15.000.000.
-Build cost reduced to 900.000 resources, down from 1.500.000.

Note: We want Forward Operating Bases to play a major part in the game and we want them to be seen and used much more. So we’re lessening their costs and making it easier to build them to completion.

Alliance Stations

-Federal Armory building’s hit point and firepower bonuses per level halved.
-Build cost reduced to 600.000 resources, down from 1.200.000.

Note: While we want the alliance stations to be something alliances dote on for the majority of the game, we want to lessen the restriction to build them and allow alliances with fewer members to start theirs up sooner.

Cards

-Rivet Potential now grants a 10% time cost reduction of heavy ships, changed from 10% resource reduction.
-The following cards now fit Structure, System and Engineering slots: Surveyance Algorithm, Surveillance Module, Spiritual Leadership, Detection Array, Place of Worship, Insurance House, TGE Franchise, Mining Robots, Loading Bay, Pyroprocessing.
-Station cards for outpost have had their slot restrictions changed. Currently all cards for outpost of the same path (Military, Domain, Industry) share the same two slots. This means you can never card for more than two outpost of the same path or double card for one outpost of a given path. These restrictions now consider outpost tiers instead of paths.

• Tier 1 outposts (Missile Battery, Scanner and Mining Facility cards) share Structure and System slots.
• Tier 2 outposts (Fortress, Stargate and Trading Port) share Structure and Engineering slots.
• Tier 3 outposts (Heavy Ship Assembly, Habitation Dome and Mining Colony) share System and Engineering slots.

Furthermore, station cards for outposts are no longer unique. This means…

• You can double card for any outpost and it can be the same card.
• You can single card for any three outposts of different tiers (a card for Missile Battery, Fortress and Heavy Ship Assembly).
• You can double card for an outpost of a certain tier and single card an outpost of a different tier.
• You can single card two different tier 1 or two different tier 2 outposts and still card for a tier 3 outpost.
• Since a host of station cards were changed to fit all slots, you can now fit them into any outpost card scheme you choose that leaves a free slot.
• The exception to this are the Commerce Hub cards, they are still unique and still fit all three slots.

-Medical Bay. Penalty to station harvest reduced to 10%, down from 20%.
-Hospital. No longer gives a penalty to station harvest.
-Carbocubicles. Bonus labor from Habitation Dome increased to 4% per the Dome’s level, up from 2%.
-All cards that are not unique after this change now have the clause “This card is not unique, you can equip multiple copies of it to a station.” added to their description.
-Military Engineers. Time cost reduction bonus decreased to 5%, down from 6%.
-High Command. Time cost reduction bonus decreased to 8%, down from 9%.
-Thorspear Thrusters now also fits Troop Carriers.

Outposts

-Stargate. Max radius of influence is now 7 hexes, up from 6.
-Mining Facilities. Max radius of influence set to 3 hexes.
-Mining Colony. Max radius of influence set to 3 hexes.
-Missile Battery max radius of influence set to 6, up from 4.

Achievements

-Build Queue Extension removed from following achievement rewards:

• Construct 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 buildings. Instead these now grant one more of 30m, 60m, 120m, 240m and a 480m building accelerants respectively.
• Upgrade 100 Buildings to Level 10. Instead this now grants two 120m building accelerants additionally.

-Ship Queue Extension removed from following achievement rewards:

• Build Heavy Ship Assembly levels 1, 2, 3 and 4. These levels now give Rivet Potential instead.
• Build Capital Ship Assembly levels 1, 2, 3 and 4. These levels now give 1, 2, 3 and 4 Dreadnoughts and Carriers respectively.

-Rank bonuses for Scouts and Recons corrected in their shipyard descriptions to their correct values of 8.5 hit points and 3.5 firepower for scouts and 43.75 hit points and 17.5 firepower for recons.

Simplify and speed up Joining

-Introduced MultiOperationalOp which takes in a list of opcodes and performs all of the operations. This is currently only used in the initial phase of login when the client fetches a lot of data.
-Combined the GetEmpires and GetStations into its own Op
-Migrated a few Operations to AServerOp.
-ClaimPainters now initialize on a separate thread freeing the main thread to deal with fetching data from the server.
-Server startup speed up … pre-fetched the resource streams in Station.RecomputeEffects(). This is waaayyy faster but the server is slow to start.

Fixes

-Participants now have their tactical bonuses properly displayed in Combat Reports.
-Removed the “Unclaimed Supply Reward” text in the Supply Reward Panel.
-Fixed a bug which prevented players from freighting to megastructures.
-New sabotage messages now properly update the message counter.
-Turning off combat animations (in settings) now works properly.
-Fixed a bug that caused fleets to be displayed in the wrong station in the Logistics > Fleets UI.
-Streams now properly stop when a station is destroyed.
-Fixed the description of level effects when upgrading the Heavy Ship Assembly.
-Added a timer to the Membership Lockdown feature in Politics > Overview UI.
-Fixed a bug where scan movements failed to discover missions on server startup.
-Fixed a bug where fleets were reset to their old supplying station on server startup.
-Fixed a bug where players were unable to schedule alliance build operations due to the maximum count being reached when it was not.
-Unnecessary broadcasts of Operations removal were sent to clients.
-Added some fail safes client side to help prevent error spam caused by async methods.
-Fixed a null ref situation when handling fleets.
-Added a debug operation allowing GMs to complete achievements for players who have achievements that should be complete but aren’t.
-Fixed a fleet dupe exploit.
-Fixed bugs where fleets would get stuck when the Forward Operating Base jumps.
-Improved server initialization logging.
-Made various improvements to speed up the login process.
-Fixed bug where players were unable to freight to megastructures. Players can now properly send freighters to FOBs, Alliance Stations, Dyson Spheres owned by other alliances in the same Coalition.

Units

-Freighter cargo capacity raised to 500, up from 400.

Policies

-Merchant Fleet bonus to freighter cargo space raised to 13/16/19/22/25% up from 12/14/16/18/20%.
-Commercial Empire:

• Freighter per station bonus now scales with its level. It now gives 1/2/3/4/5 freighters per station owned, up from 2/2/2/2/2.
• Freighter cargo bonus raised to 12/14/16/18/20% up from 6/7/8/9/10%.
  

New Cards

Military Logistics
-Legendary station card, fits Structure, System and Engineering slots.
-Adds 10 freighters to your freighter pool.
-30% cargo for freighters departing from this station.

Ki-Ran Thrusters
-Legendary fleet card, fits the utility slot for Gunships and Troop Carriers.
-Adds 3 speed to the fleet.