TEC: Omens of Conflict Update

Release Status: *** RELEASED ***

Our July update has arrived and includes the new Future Orbit System! From the feedback you’ve provided, we heard loud and clear that you wanted a way to see how orbits would affect phase lanes over time. Now you can project these changes up to 1 hour into the future to assist with your plans for dominance.

We’ve also added a new scenario called ‘Twin Giants’, along with several new random map types.

Future Orbit System:

• Added the "Future Orbit System" which allows players to view the future of planets, moons, and phase lanes at any point between the current time and 1 hour in the future.

• Added the "Future Orbits" button to the top bar.

  • Left click the "Future Orbits" button to auto-play into the future.

  • Right click the "Future Orbits" button to open the timeline bar. Click and drag to view an exact point in the future.

  • Press the "~" hotkey and move the mouse left and right to quickly view an exact point in the future.

• If you see an orange bar, the future data is still being generated. This should only happen at the very start of the game.

Scenarios:

• Added 'Twin Giants" scenario. Two massive gas giants and their rich moons sweep through the otherwise sparse inner orbits. Your core empire is relatively stable so expanding onto the unstable gas giant clusters will require careful planning!

• Added 2, 3, and 4 player random maps.

• Fixed accretion disc on "Colliding Empires" scenario.

• Sorted scenarios in scenario picker.

Gameplay:

• Added "Derelict Specialist Team" ship item. Reduces the time to fully inspect derelicts. Will also provide a bonus to experience gained.

• Added "Undersea Caverns" planet bonus. The ocean contains vast caverns providing space for extra planet components.

• Added "Undersea Weapons" planet bonus. Buried deep below the ocean's surface are timeworn remains of ancient military technology.

• Added oceanic planets to "Civic University" buildable list.

• Added volcanic planets to "Military Lab" buildable list and removed oceanic.

• Improved pirate raid events:

  • Added "event active" state similar to "auction active" so that players have more direction on when to increase bounty on enemy planets.

  • Added event levels for pirate raid events to scale up over time similar to NPC rewards.

  • Removed payoff bounty functionality. Made it too easy to ignore the event and simply pay it off afterwards; and was too confusing.

  • Increased the time before the first raid.

  • Reduced the supply of raids.

• Added over-time bounty collection by having supply at a gravity well with bounty on it. You no longer have to destroy the planet to collect bounty.

• Increased starbase and titan armor values.

• When creating a game an extra team is added to match the player count of map. This way a FFA can be setup with no dynamic alliances (each player is on their own team).

Gameplay Bug Fixes:

• Fixed Kol's Experimental Beam ability getting stuck targeting dead units.

• Fixed pirate base having no civilian slots.

• Fixed engagement range not accounting for close range weapons. Pirate Corsair was only ever firing missiles due to engagement range using max range of weapons, not the closest.

• Fixed bug building finite items on planets. (ex. Smuggler's Den auction reward on asteroid.)

• Fixed fleet owned deliverables showing up twice in production window.

• Fixed target filter of Sova Deploy Missile Battery autocast. Should autocast on enemy targets, not friendly.

• Fixed titan engagement range.

• Fixed autocast of abilities that spawn (build) units when trying to place at an invalid position.

• Fixed autocast of abilities triggering when attacking planet. (e.g., Kol using ultimate when bombing planet.)

Unit Control:

• Added implicit hold order when moving to capture derelicts. This way ships won't fly off and attack when still capturing. Only applies when moving explicitly to the derelict as a target, not nearby.

• Focus fire is now preserved when a user attacks a unit stack.

AI:

• Fixed AI not firing Novalith cannon.

• Changed ability autocast to always be true for AI players.

• Prevented AI from building multiple titan factories.

HUD:

• Prevent some unit icons from rotating (e.g., factories).

• Added ability_is_missing_required_available_supply error message. This fixes confusion over why pirate mercenary base item is unusable when at max supply.

• Added new asteroid main view icons.

• Added new increase bounty icon.

• Added per-unit selection to main view icons.

• Added positive and negative buff indicators to ship window. Removes bloat in end-game unit tooltips by having dedicated buff indicator windows on the ship window bottom bar.

• Added research links even if subjects are on the same column. Link goes directly up or down.

• Improved research link pathing.

• Added feedback to NPC rewards that are not usable. NPC market manipulation had no error click sounds or tooltips to say why clicking it did nothing.

• Fixed bottom bar popups sometimes overlapping bottom bar.

• Improved change time scale button: only one icon that doesn't change and show x1.0 in tooltip so it doesn't jitter.

• Adjusted max distance for zooming and panning. Leaves enough breathing room from top and bottom bars but minimizes planet icons collapsing into each other.

• Improved font rendering.

Tooltips:

• Fixed DPS and armor penetration columns of tooltips sometimes being merged together.

• Improved phase travel tooltips.

• Improved tooltip text block line wrapping. Will now grow to wide tooltips.

• Showed item ability upgrade values in tooltips.

• Updated TEC ship tooltip icons.

• Added tooltips for item unit_constraints.

Models:

• Updated Ragnarov missile hardpoints.

• Added level 3 Derelict Loot model.

• Updated TEC shield meshes.

Visual Effects:

• Added missile hit particle effect.

• Fixed external color for particles being applied when it shouldn't.

• Fixed flair effects not using player color if selected.

• Fixed black box appearing around missile impact particles (7/26/23).

Audio:

• Fixed "click failed" spamming dialogue lines for every mouse press. Now throttles the dialog and will play generic click failed sound instead for a time.

Modding:

• Added rotate around axis with 0 radius to rotate particles in place.

• Added orbit_speed_scalar and sync_orbit_to_parent to map creation nodes.

• Added max_planet_component_slots to planet modifiers.

• Added autocast jump range. (e.g., for units like the Novalith).

• Added optional unit_constraint to unit_item to add more flexible conditions for limiting purchase of items (e.g., ship must have specific type of weapons).

Crashes and Asserts:

• Fixed crash in prim3d lines at very rare values.

• Fixed infinite recursion in pending damage when mixing damage-over-time with buff triggers.

• Fixed left and right clicking draggable UI components at the same time causing crashes.

• Fixed sync error in galaxy generator.

• Fixed a crash caused by save games (7/26/23).