[2021] v1.7 Experimental I

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

v1.7
Hello Galactic Survivalists!

Welcome to the release of the version 1.7 EXPERIMENTAL update!

If you follow us on Discord, Twitter, Facebook or in our forums, you've probably already seen one or two changes for the upcoming version. Among other things, this is the first iteration of a new fluid effect system that reacts to interactions with the respective fluids (water, lava) - be it when a vehicle is moving fast, being shot at, wading through, or just having a nice swell on the shore. Further improvements for this are planned.

The AI pathfinding on terrain has also received a far-reaching improvement. Obstacles such as trees, stones and plants will be recognised better in future and the movement paths will be smoothened.

Aside from purely technical changes, for all creative galaxy builders, lots of new options for designing the galaxy, the nebulae to new settings for items and blocks have been added to the latest version!

For all players looking for new content, POI and missions, there is also new stuff to do and find. Almost 100 new ships and stations have been added to 1.7 thanks to the tireless builders from the community. Satellite hacking is now also fully implemented. More information on missions and gameplay is now also available in updated entries in the in-game Empyriopedia (F1).

We also updated Invader vs Defender with a big surprise coming at the end of Experimental for our Official Servers

As always, please remember that to test the new content (including the test planet for new biomes) it is best to start a new savegame with the Experimental version. Changes to this area during Experimental may make it necessary to restart or manually update certain areas of the game.

All details, as well as the list of further changes, adjustments and especially bug fixes can be found in the changelog below!

As always please note:
Report bugs and issues right over here: https://empyriononline.com/forums/showroom-submissions.108/
Fixed bugs for the Experimental branch can be found here: https://empyriononline.com/forums/tracking-filed.91/
Fixed Experimental version bugs can be found there: https://empyriononline.com/forums/fixed.90/

For discussing the new and updated features, please head over to the Experimental Feedback forum: https://empyriononline.com/forums/experimental-features-discussion.35/

Your Empyrion Dev Team

v1.7 B3602 Changes:
Water system update: - New water system update: Players, vessels & weapons can interact with waves
- Quality settings in the video options:
Low: No waves & no water interaction
Medium: Waves enabled & no water interaction
High: Waves enabled & water interaction



New Character Controller for AI: A new character controller (CC) has been implemented in the game as a first iteration to improve AI movement. The goal was primarily to avoid the huge zig-zags of AI when moving in certain circumstances.

The new controller affects only AI with the newest behavior and only outside while the AIs are on the terrain (not inside POI).
This new CC could be extended later to other ground AIs if there is a need.

What is new with the new CC compared to the old CC:
The new CC smooths the path generated by the path finder :


The white boxes are generated directly by the path finder. The blue/black cube is the smoothed version of the original path.

The AI will now strictly follow the smoothed path (see above) contrary to the old CC where the AI was following only very roughly the path defined by the path finder especially at high speed :


With the old CC here, the AI can be far from the path from time to time while zig-zagging (yellow) around the path defined by the path finder (white boxes).

The fact that the AI position and movement are precisely controlled now at any speed allows some new behaviors like for example a raming behavior.

Important : the AIs can still get stuck. It seems that the path finder still has in some cases some flaws and inaccuracies that sometimes lead to bad paths. This is an old bug that will be addressed soon.

POI’s: - Added lots of new POI and vessels for UCH, ARC, Wastelanders, Legacy, Colonists, Warlords, Polaris! Thanks to all builders and contributors! Full overview: https://empyriononline.com/forums/showroom-submissions.108/
- Updated: TheLegacy now has some POI in BoF territory (Lore-related change; FarrAbandoned POI group will now spawn under THE LEGACY)
- Updated POI: Trading Station (Col), Freighters, Burial Chambers, Kennex Station, Legacy Matter Converter, Trader Stations, Kriel Defense Station, Zirax DS Radar + Defenses.
- Added new POI and vessels: Phoenix (Warlord), several Space Wreckages (SV, CV), Polaris Trading station (Homeworld), Ghyst Stations (HQ, Radar, Fusion Reactor, Forward Base), Zirax Gas Refineries & DIONIII Labs, Xenu Com Station, Rados Agristation, Kriel Arcanum+Nexus Dual stations (Homeworld), Murky Hollow (Arena)
Thanks to Escarli, sulusdacor, Kaeser, Vermillion, ravien_ff & all contributors
- Updated: Farr FAITH OPV (MatCz), Xenu Dronebase (Escarli/Vermillion)
- Added: Hunter Warlord OPV (Funog)

Misc: - Toolbelt changes:
Re-assign items from player death backpack to previous slots in toolbelt
Auto-fillup of toolbar item stacks on manual pickup
Auto-fillup of toolbar item stacks on "take all"
- Added possibility to extend the shield using new properties ShieldCapacityBonus and ShieldRechargeBonus (allowed on a block with an EnergyIn property). Added more information to console cmd 'shield <entity id>'
ShieldCapacityBonus: 1000, type: int, display: true
ShieldRechargeBonus: 500, type: int, display: true
- Added possibility to support tracer beams on ranged weapons. When you add 'TracerIsBeam: true' the tracer will be treated as a beam and set to the length of the hit ray.
- First implementation of block penetration support for ranged weapons:
PenetrationDepth: 10, display: true
- GalaxyMap: added possibility to show region names by using "LabelName", "LabelColor", "LabelSize",”LabelLYDistance”:

LabelName: "The Center" # Name shown on the galaxy map; Note: there are no default fallback values for COLOR and SIZE! If you set LabelName, you need to define LabelColor and LableSize as well!
LabelColor: "0.9, 0.2, 0.2" # Color of the label. Can add optional Transparency “0.9,0.2,0.2,0.2” as an Alpha Value
LabelSize: 100 # Size of the label (Font Size)
LabelLYDistance: <distance in LY> # optionally allows to set a distance to the player where the label shows up, if the player is farther away it will hide

- GalaxyConfig: added better possibility to configure nebulas by using NebulaSpawnCount and NebulaColorIndex within a StarRegion_X block
- GalaxyConfigFile: LabelName supports now "\n" to do a line break, also the size is not confined any more
- Search star dialog: added type & key navigation
- Ship Rigidbody collision detection mode changed to ContinuousSpeculative
- Added: Localization for loading screens
- Added: New model for Laser Pistol (T1)
- Changed: Added dedicated SKIP answer options for dialogues with long text passages (Please Re-Test all missions & let us know where we could add SKIP answers in addition!)
- Updated Empyriopedia with Explorer Token Missions for Default Multiplayer
- Updated: Journeybook: Entries now become visible while playing through the story missions (Charakters, Important knowledge)
- Updated: Empyriopedia: Main faction info entries now become visible while playing through the story missions
- Updated: Main Loca, PDA Loca, Dialogues Loca (incremental update as of 14 10 2021)
- Updated: Updated GalaxyConfig.ecf with new REGION label settings & examples
- Added: Home Systems for all remaining factions (first iteration)
- Added: Explorer token now given for warping to the sun of a factions home system
- Added 'reloaddata' console command to allow in-game reloading of config file data (use 'help rd' to see usage details)
- Added better error output to get rid of error messages like "IdMapping: no name for id CPUExtenderLargeT5 found in 'The Ayamara'! Skipping."
- Added: Hacking satellites (placed in sun orbits) for reports now has dedicated Communication, Science, Exploration, Security and Military dialogues, consoles AND satellites for the main factions (Zirax, Polaris, Trader, Kriel); Others will follow.
- Added report hacking satellites for Pirates, Colonists, ARC, Wastelanders and Farr
- BlocksConfig: added new property "RepFac" (f.e. use RepFac: 0.1) to allow to scale the reputation loss/gain when destroying a block (f.e. to make some blocks more/less "valuable" for reputation changes)
- Added possibility to give damage modifiers to entities: add in EClassConfig.ecf a new property "Material" with any string and reference this material in ItemsConfig.ecf for the weapon as DamageMultiplier_X material
- Distant Stars: adjusted so they are a bit more crisp and do less flicker on camera movements. Nearer stars get more color and bigger, farther stars are smaller and less colored. Being at the center of the galaxy, stars should still be in acceptable size (only the nearer ones get big).
- Rockets now orient themselves towards the turrets up direction when firing (and not towards the world up direction). This helps if the rockets use special animations or effects.
- Updated localization for all languages (Main, PDA, Dialogues; incremental as of 11 11 2021)
- DialogueSystem: added functions UnlockTechTreeItem/IsTechTreeItemUnlocked to allow unlocking tech tree items from dialog. Can be used for example in missions as reward. Use -1 as UnlockCost to only allow unlocking from the dialog system.
- Removed the momentum in rotation on ships as a test please try this out with all vessel types in first person view & third person view & give feedback on what you think about this change!

Fixes: - Fixed tracers clipping through target (fixed for static objects, still clipping if you are moving into the direction of the tracer)
- Fix for driller beams and other ranged weapons staying active when ESC or other window get opened
- "If you continue flying you will die" message appearing incorrectly when close to a planet now disabled
- "Show on HUD" marker doesn't automatically get removed after the device has been removed by the player.
- Parallax Occlusion Mapping texture issue with certain blocks
- Removing O2/Fuel from tanks via logistics deletes them
- Vessels sporadically moving after playfield changes when setup on a repair block
- Blueprint window doesn't include tags in filter
- Avatar size increase when exiting a seat

More fixes can be seen here also: https://empyriononline.com/forums/fixed.90/

EAH:
- https://eah.empyrion-homeworld.net/download/patch-notes-emp-admin-helper-full

Updated IvD scenario: Changes: - Added Short Range Prisoner Transport. (Thanks to Fractalite)
- Reduced the Legacy Space Drones in Black Hole to 5-10 (from 10-20)
- Forbid base building in Asteroid Field & Trading Station Systems
- Removed the Legacy from Asteroid Field & Trading Station Systems
- Adapted Explorer's Guild dialogue text to not hint for rewards anymore
- Add second sun (Neutron Star) to Cygnus System
- Add Credibility Mission for Free Colonists

Fixes: - Fixed Merdar Start PDA Mission
- Fixed Trader buy/sell on Carbon Substrate (PlasticMaterial)
- Fixed trader buy/sell on Nitrocellulose (NCPowder)
- Fixed trader MilitaryT2 not showing all items
- Fixed Explorer's Guild reward been given in some cases
- Fixed Vessel wasn't allowed to be in CSW System
- Fixed not all meteors spawning on Void
- Fixed Polaris Credibility Mission
- Fixed exit portal in the Golden Freighter Mission