Patch a11.11 – Change Log

LOADING SEQUENCE

A massive refactor of the loading sequence has taken place!

• Asset bundles are now fetched from a CDN, which should result in more consistent and quicker downloads across the globe.
• Assetbundle loading is now done asynchronously in the background while mandatory asset bundles are now correctly waited for when login in for the first time.
• Logging into the game is now significantly faster.
• New Loading Sequence.
  • A loading bar now indicates the overall progress of the loading.
  • Process Border Painters and Cell Painters are now done in the background and do not hinder loading.
  • Process Lighting is now only done once between maps.
  • 10 new loading images are now displayed when players log in that give players an overview of the game (you get a new image each time you log in).

GRAPHICS

• Updated the graphics and made some fixes for the black hole (check out the lightning!).
• Made gas giants smaller.
• Updated the visuals for the vortex; it’s now big and menacing!

AUDIO

We are proud to introduce Starborne’s new original soundtrack complete with some super-cool features!

• 32 new tracks (old tracks removed, we thank them for their service).
• Zone and zoom level track triggers.
  • Different playlists are active depending on your zoom level and what part of the map you’re looking at!
• Tracks composed and designed so that two tracks playing simultaneously harmonize creating endless variations and super-smooth cross-fades!

BUGS

• Fixed a bug where the tutorial sequence notification didn’t dismiss itself when all the steps were completed.
• Fixed issue with reward items not rendering correctly.
• Fixed over elastic scroll views in Shipyard and Create A Fleet dialogs.
• Fixed issue where rewards dialog flashes previously rewarded cards when showing a cache.
• Fixed issue where Labor icon was appearing distorted in text fields.
• Fixed a bug where fleet number at a station kept increasing whenever a fleet returned from movement, displaying the wrong amount of fleets operating from the station.
• Fixed an issue where the combat report sabotage icon was wrong.
• Fixed numerous bugs regarding Alliance invitation/application system.

UI

• Map pin tab shows notification indicator when alliance pin is added.
• Trading Post shows resource income in tooltip.
• Booster offers can show discount banners.
• Movement billboards (movement icons on the map):
  • Added more information to the tooltip of movements on the map.
  • Removed the ‘A’ fleet icon to simplify them and lessen the crowds of movement icons.
• Removed many redundant or legacy UI elements from the client that were not being used.
• Recent activity (destroyed stations & top recent battles) is no longer generated for battles against NPCs.
• Alliance member list should now be masked correctly when scrolling.
• Made significant optimizations to station anchored UI elements.
• Visual refresh for Spy Reports panel, Politics panels, and many dialogs and buttons.
• Made the station model in station planner render more accurately.
• Show all radial menu options if now on by default.
• Updated the styling for items in the Shipyard queue.
• Added ability for buildings to have Flavour Text, more entries coming.
  • Some buildings and organizations already have flavor texts!
• Added new styling for ship queue items.

BUILDINGS

• Changed MIC Offices
  • Time cost reduction for heavy and capital units increased to 2% per level, up from 1%.
• Fixed Dyson Shell
  • Now has costs defined for level 11-20.
• Changed Royal Pilot School
  • Removed the current effect. (30% XP gain for supplied fleets)
  • Added old effect from Vessel Parts & Demolition organization. (20% less time cost for light units)
• Removed Vessel Parts & Demolition from the game
• Moved Huang’s Emporium to tier 3.
• Added Robwell Freight Brokerage, tier 4 industrial organization.
  • 50% cargo capacity for freighters departing the station.
  • Station stream capacity increased by 750 for metal, gas, and crystal.
• Fixed Primwell & Hauft
  • Removed the effect which gave 750 streaming capacity for crystal and gas.

Note: While shuffling buildings and organizations around or changing their effects entirely is not something that would happen on a live server, we have this happening now for the pre-beta test server. It is not expected that this will affect many player stations on the pre-beta test server, for those that are affected: blame Snoogms.

STORE

• Minor tweaks to purchase limits and platinum costs for card offers in the store.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Build x Outposts now triggers after the correct amount of Build Outpost movements.
• Reworked the credit rewards for claiming hexes, more credits are given for early tasks in this chain but a larger portion of the total amount lies in the higher end of the chain. The total amount of credits increased to 900, up from 820.

EMPIRE

• Resource cost for building new stations reduced to 9k (3k of each resource), down from 15k.

CARDS

• Removed crafting costs for prime cards (they weren’t craftable, just tidying up).
• Width Matrix and Breadth Matrix now properly affect the entire cargo of the fleet instead of solely the base cargo of the units (e.g. they’ll increase the cargo given by buildings, policies and cards, too now).
• Natasha Fer duration lowered to 2 days, down from 4 days.
• Willard S. Gamish (new card)
  • Legendary Station Character.
  • Uncraftable, does not drop from caches, only attainable via the welcome offer.
  • Duration: 24 hours.
  • Fits stations level 1 and 2.
  • Decreases the resource cost of all buildings by 10%.
  • Provides 45 metal, gas and crystal per hour.
  • Provides 10 credits per hour.
  • Flavour text:
    “THAT’s your middle name!?” Natasha burst out laughing. “Wait ’til the guys hear about this!” She found herself unexpectedly and quite intimately face to face with the old man. There was no humor in him. “Before you wager your popularity on gossip Miss Fer, I urge you to pause and consider the possible ill-effects such blabberin’ might have for your person.” And she did.
• William Chattle (new card)
  • Legendary Station Character.
  • Uncraftable, does not drop from caches, only attainable via the welcome offer.
  • Duration 24 hours.
  • Fits stations level 2, 3 and 4.
  • Decreases the resource cost of specialization buildings by 5%.
  • Decreases the resource cost of organizations by 5%.
  • Provides 300 metal, gas and crystal per hour.
  • Provides 10 credits per hour.
  • Flavour text:
    “If I kill a hundred people on a faraway planet, none here would care. But if I kill one on their doorstep it’s suddenly very traumatic. Don’t let people’s hypocrisy limit you, my sweet. Rise above.” –Bill Chattle to his daughter Rosemary when she was 10.

LOCALIZATION

• Fixed a spelling error for the XAOC Fireside NPC tooltip.
• Added the explanation for resource output tooltips when hovering productions in the selected station pane.
• Another pass on in-game text for achievements, cards, policies, buildings, factions, and outposts to simplify, clarify and standardize texts.
• Overhauled the description texts for win conditions under Politics > Overview.
• Fixed a spelling error in Chattle’s Human Resources.
• Another pass of an ongoing task to improve readability and unify all tooltips and text references across the game:
  • Added concise steps and instructions for every single task achievement in the game.
  • Outpost tooltips and descriptions in the Building Planner reworded to be more helpful and descriptive.
  • Building descriptions to be inline with the new text design and uniformity.
  • Added green and red color tags to Buildings and Organization bonus and malus effects respectively.
  • Unified faction tooltip descriptions in line with the above methodology.
  • Alliance Station, Forward Operating Base, and Dyson Sphere building descriptions tidied up.
  • All Card descriptions and tooltips unified and colored accordingly.
  • First pass of green and red color tags added to some Policy effects.
  • Added resource icons to cards which award resources.
    Italicized NPC flavor texts and improved legibility between flavor and instructional portions of their tooltips.
  • Various spelling errors and grammatical fixes.
  • All references to “Harvest Yield” replaced in favor of “Harvest Rate”.
  • All references to “Attacking” now more accurately specify “Raiding” and “Assaulting”.
  • All references to “Harvest Yield” now referred to as Harvest Rate.
  • All references to “Movements” now explicitly state the exact movement affected.
  • All references to “Build” (movements) now specify whether it’s a Station Build or an Outpost Operation (build/upgrade/downgrade/recycle/augment/repair).
  • Tooltips for NPCs have received an overhaul with fancy italics and some texts. Special shoutout to Sci for his significant contribution here! <3

PERCENTILE BONUSES TO RESOURCES

• All percentile bonuses to a station’s total resource output now multiply flat bonuses too.
• Pyroprocessing card: 15%
• Spinal Crux card: 100%
• Industrial Complex building: 1.5-15%
• Mars Prosper League faction: 25%

MISSIONS

• Reduced the radius in which a new mission will spawn from a completed mission to 4 hexes, down from 5.

FACTIONS

• Mars Prosper League
  • Trading Ports should now have their intended 50% harvest rate (they were harvesting at 75% like normal TPs).
  • Trading Ports now properly increase the station’s streaming capacity by the same amount they harvest.
• Tianchao
  • Now have two extra spies.

FLEET EXPERIENCE

• Unit destruction
  • Destroying a light unit is now worth 2 XP, down from 10.
  • Destroying a heavy unit unchanged at 10 XP.
  • Destroying a capital unit is now worth 50 XP, up from 10.
• Industrial movements
  • Upgrading outposts base XP lowered to 7, down from 30.
  • Build a station XP value lowered to 100, down from 250.
  • Solar Flare harvesting XP value lowered to 30, down from 100.
• Scout/Recon movements.
  • Placing a probe XP value unchanged at 5.
  • Revealing a mission XP value lowered to 5, down from 50.
  • Sabotage station base XP value lowered to 10, down from 20.
• Station bombing
  • Station destruction base XP lowered to 200, down from 1000.
• Mission running
  • Base XP value lowered to 15, down from 50.

NPCs

Note: Most NPC changes per NPC station type does not take effect until a new NPC station of that type is spawned onto a map (mostly only new Marauder Camps are spawned after a game has begun).

• Fixed an error where some NPC type’s IDs were swapped causing some NPCs to appear in wrong places on the map.
• Marauder Camp (spawn NPCs)
  • Now start with 4k of each resource, down from 8.5k.
  • Refineries increased to level 4, up from level 3.
  • Container Port level 1 – [ ] down from level 2
• Marauder Outpost
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 7.
  • Now start with 12.3k of each resource, down from 24.6k.
• Marauder Settlement
  • No changes.
• Legion Vanguard Station
  • Now has the Home Guard card, increasing their claim strength by 1.
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 7.
• Combine Production Plant
  • Now has the Home Guard card, increasing their claim strength by 1.
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 9.
• Marauder Home
  • No changes.
• Tianchao Hideout
  • Refineries decreased to level 2, down from level 10.
  • Fleet spawn time set to 1 hour, down from 24-48 hours.
  • Now start with 12.3k of each resource, down from 24.6k.
  • Now has the Empyrial Guards card, increasing their claim strength by 2.
• XAOC Slave Camp
  • Now has the Governor’s Mansion building at level 10, increasing their claim strength by 5.
  • Now has the Empyrial Guards card, increasing their claim strength by 2.
  • Now has the Home Guard card, increasing their claim strength by 1.
  • Now has the New Horizons organizations increasing their claim radius by 1.
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 10.
  • Now start with 12.3k of each resource, down from 24.6k.
• MPL Mining Hub
  • Now has the Empyrial Guards card, increasing their claim strength by 2.
  • Now has the Home Guard card, increasing their claim strength by 1.
  • Now has the New Horizons organizations increasing their claim radius by 1.
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 10.
  • Now start with 12.3k of each resource, down from 24.6k.
• XAOC Fireside
  • Now has the Empyrial Guards card, increasing their claim strength by 2.
  • Now has the Home Guard card, increasing their claim strength by 1.
  • Now has the New Horizons organizations increasing their claim radius by 1.
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 10.
  • Now start with 12.3k of each resource, down from 24.6k.
• Binderburg Research Facility
  • Now has the Sovereign Power card, increasing their claim strength by 50.
  • Refineries decreased to level 2, down from level 10.
  • Now start with 12.3k of each resource, down from 24.6k.
• Gelecek Compound
  • Now has the Sovereign Power card, increasing their claim strength by 50.
  • Refineries decreased to level 2, down from level 10.
  • Now start with 12.3k of each resource, down from 24.6k.
• Atlas Central
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 10.
• MPL Production Plant
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 10.
• Legion Military Base
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 10.
• Atlas Complex
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 10.
• Combine Installation
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 10.
• Tianchao Court
  • Refineries decreased to level 5, down from level 10.