Release Status: *** COMING SOON ***

June brings us warmer weather (in the northern hemisphere), sun, and a time to relax. Seems like the perfect time to update Pirates! This month we’ve updated the bounty system, added Pirate Raid events, modified planet components, and much more.

You’ll notice that it’s now easier to field more capital ships early in the game; and that there are more derelicts to collect than before. We’ve also updated the bottom bar of the UI and made a bunch of other improvements. Check out the full change log below for details!

Change Log

Pirates & Bounty

• Added Pirate Raid events: Pirates will periodically send a raid to the planet with the highest bounty. Now it’s even more important to keep your bounty below other players!

• Removed Pirate auction penalty (i.e., no more pirate raids for the player(s) who lost the auction).

• Bounties are now visible to all players.

• Bounties are now placed on the target of Pirate raids (either from a player directed raid or a raid event).

• Bounties can now be paid off by the player with the bounty.

• Pirate raids will now be aborted if bounties are fully paid off.

• Pirates are no longer allied to other minor factions.

• Added AI logic to counter pirates and bounties.

• Added: Pirate Mercenary Base for TEC Rebels - A covert meeting point where pirate mercenaries can be hired.

• Changed: Smuggler’s Den to a Pirate auction reward.

• Renamed: Pirate Mercenaries research subject to Pirate Persuasion.

Planet Component Item Updates

• Added: Archeology Center for desert planets - A hub for survey teams to stage expeditions into the desert where they hope to find valuable items in the shifting sands.

• Added: Ferric Mining Rig for ferrous planets - Mining machinery heavily modified for the iron-rich substrate boosts metal extraction rates.

• Changed: Gas Crystallizer - Further observation of Vasari resource collection inspired the TEC to design machines that convert gas harvesting byproducts into highly prized Andvar.

• Changed: Hardened Bunker to Command Bunker - Constructs an underground command center to protect local military leadership from bombardment. Gives Planet Health and increases Military slots.

• Changed: Geothermal Planet to Metal Smelting Plant - Many points of limited volcanic activity provide easy access to energy, improving the local economy.

• Changed: Secret Military Lab to a minor faction reward.

• Renamed: Autonomous Refinery to Orbital Mining Control and restricted to only asteroids and moons.

• Removed: Tactical Relay.

• Removed: Regional Government Office from ferrous planet types.

• Added trade capacity to Commercial District, High Pressure Domes, and Ice Processing Facility.

• Items moved into unbuilt slots now make their ability unusable and make that ability’s persistent buff dead if it had one.

• Items moved into unbuilt slots no longer apply their modifiers and mutations.

• Already built items (e.g, auction rewards) don’t take effect until the slot finishes building.

• hud_owned_unit_item_button now renders the missing slot status overlay for built items in unbuilt slots.

Derelicts

• Balanced derelict spawning around home planets. There is now a non-zero chance a derelict is spawned adjacent to the home planet.

• Improved derelict header names. Replaced levels 0, 1, 2 with nicer descriptions (rare, epic).

• Improved derelict generation options. Allows mixing and matching resources and exotics in more interesting combinations.

• Increased derelict chance for exotics in early game.

Gameplay

• Added Event system (currently only populated by the Pirate Raid event described above).

• Improved Akkan’s Colonize ability: Buff duration increased from 150 to 180; planet track build price savings increased from 8/16/24/32% to 10/20/30/40%.

• Improved Akkan’s Inspiring Broadcast ability: Antimatter cost reduced from 60 to 50; duration increased from 20 to 25; weapon reload rate bonus increased from 15/20/25/30% to 20/25/30/35%.

• Fixed Ragnarov abilities' firing angles and autocast behavior.

• Changed Ankylon to fire forward instead of broadside.

• Fixed weapon firing angles on both titans.

• Added tight firing angle to Marza’s Raze Planet ability.

• Fixed Sova’s Missile Battery not firing at long-range targets.

• Improved Culture propagation.

• Rebalanced resource asteroid counts.

• Added hard constraint to building structures that are too big for some gravity wells.

• Fixed weapon modifier bonus discrepancies.

AI

• Fixed titans not leveling up abilities.

• Added AI titan building.

• Fixed player AI picking planet to build structure that is never viable.

• Added AI logic to counter pirates and bounties.

Unit Control

• Added setting to control whether “move in formation” is the default movement behavior or not.

• Issuing attack orders to stacked units will now target the closest unit(s).

• Changed Scuttle hotkey to only work if associated advanced window popup is open. This should help prevent accidentally scuttling with the delete key.

• Fixed bandbox with Shift behavior. Will now only remove units if no units got added. This is more consistent with Windows Explorer behavior and makes it easier to quickly add more units to a selection.

• Fixed Shift select not working in selection window.

HUD

• Updated bottom bar!

• Set default DPI to 75%.

• Fixed bookmark pips overlapping notification icons.

• Fixed some HUD elemental not refreshing with planet/ship name changes.

• Improved fleet build window readability. Moved counts into status icon area to make them easier to read and more prominent.

• Moved player icon/name above planet mesh.

• Updated unit selection background fill colors.

• Updated unit selection window background fill and lines.

Tooltips

• Fixed planet tooltip showing 0 for unbuilt structures.

• Fixed auto-scaling of icons in tooltips ignoring aspect ratio.

• Improved planet tooltips: Changed ordering, grouping, and removed some items into advanced mode (press Alt) to keep the view of planets more focused on what is important to the planet.

• Added tooltip line groups: Allows abilities to further customize their tooltips by breaking up values into logical groups. Ex: loyalist titan ability friendly gravity well values vs. in neutral/enemy gravity well values.

• Improved research tier waiting on research labs tooltip. Now shows current/future/required to help explain why tier upgrading is stalled.

• Fixed weapon modifier tooltip discrepancies.

Models

• Added: Oceanic planet.

• Updated: Ferrous atmosphere.

• Updated: Orbital cars.

• Updated: TEC Prova shield.

• Updated bounding spheres and boxes for all units.

Visual Effects

• Fixed asteroid bombing effect not hitting the surface of the asteroid.

• Updated titan ability colors.

Audio Effects

• Updated normalization and attenuation on phase jump sfx.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed constructor frigates getting stuck (again).

• Fixed some rare crashes and asserts.

Modding

• Added give_weighted_npc_rewards action atomic.

• Added player_has_available_supply action_constraint.

• Added ability to have items be mutually exclusive.

• Added asset cost as a possible cost for using abilities.

• Added mutually_exclusive_items to unit_item_prerequisites.

Misc

• Updated Colonize ability icon for colony cruiser.

• Fixed missiles adding to kill count of ships that it hits.

• Changed front end forum link to link to the forum homepage.