Perpetuum

Update news for 2010-08-24 - Intrusion

Spotlight features

Intrusion

With this update we are introducing a very basic territorial control system called Intrusion.

Note that this is not the extensive player-built-structures-with-sugar-on-top-system that we are planning for the future, but we still wanted to give you a reason to pew-pew the hell out of each other till we arrive there.

Intrusion

So what is Intrusion then?

It's basically a system where you can attack and claim outposts for your corporation and get a share of the income it generates and use its facilities at greatly reduced prices. So if you plan to have an outpost of your own, be prepared that you will need to lure other players to your outposts so that it's actually worth for you. How you do this is up to you of course, be it lower market prices or social engineering.

Intrusion events are randomly generated for each of the 9 outer zone outposts that are included in this system. You can check upcoming events and everything connected to Intrusion in the Corporation management window under Territorial warfare.

Please check the ingame help on territorial warfare for further information and don't be afraid to ask on the forums if you still have any unanswered questions.

Important: the first Intrusion event will start on Friday, 2010-08-27 17:18 server time, so all of you can make yourself familiar with the system until then.

Security changes

All police towers have been removed and tighter secure areas are taking their places. Agents residing in these secure areas cannot be attacked unless they have an active PvP flag. Secure areas can be displayed on the radar by selecting Map type/Syndicate protection, and you can also see a secure area icon on locked Agents when they are in such areas.

We have also changed the logout mechanics: the time it takes to make your robot disappear from the terrain is 2 minutes in non-secure areas and PvP zones, and 1 minute in secure areas and non-PvP zones. This can be either instant or safe logout, but for either case the timer is canceled if you move, are locked or are being shot at by other players.

Gameplay

  • New: Item volumes are now shown in field/loot containers.
  • New: The PvP-flag on other Agents will now start blinking 10 seconds before it expires.
  • New: Items are now packaged automatically after they are repaired.
  • Fix: You can now click through the graphic effect of geoscanners.
  • Fix: Players could walk into blocked terrain.
  • Fix: Changes in speed calculations to prevent exploits.
  • Fix: When repairing multiple items the repairshop will now open up even if you don't have enough money, showing the fee in red so you can uncheck some items.
  • Fix: Insured robots will now be skipped when attempting to package multiple items.
  • Fix: Harvester modules didn't stop when used on plants with 0 minerals.
  • Fix: Moving an excessive number of items from/to field containers was very slow and sometimes caused crashes.
  • Fix: The insurance list was not updated properly when extending or canceling an insurance.
  • Fix: The recycle option was missing when multiple assignment items were selected.
  • Change: CTs and scanning results cannot be traded directly anymore.
  • Fix: The reload process of geoscanners produced a scanresult item too.
  • Fix: Corrected inconsistent slope calculations between client and server.

Robots and modules

  • Change: Astoc M45 light autocannon's optimal range increased to 40m, and falloff to 150m.
  • Fix: Reduced the surface hit size of the Troiar from 3.00 to 2.75.
  • Fix: Slope capability was switched for light and assault pelistal robots (51<->56 degrees).
  • Change: Removed the energy neutralizer bonus from Troiar.
  • Change: Reduced the shield absorption bonus of the Ictus from 5% to 2% and increased the neutralized energy amount from 5% to 8% per level.
  • Change: Removed the energy drainer bonus from Ictus.
  • Change: Range extenders now affect missiles.
  • Change: Reduced the range of ballistic missiles from 350 to 300 meters (from 420 to 360 meters in case of mission reward missiles).
  • Change: Geoscanning accuracy extension bonus increased from 3 to 4% per level.
  • Change: Geoscanners are now unique modules (only one per robot allowed).
  • New: Introduced electrostatic dispersion for energy drainers and neutralizers. The effects are similar to the explosion size of missiles: using medium size modules on smaller targets lowers their effectiveness.
  • Change: Removed the 100 item limit when moving items between containers.
  • Fix: Multiple loot containers spawned from one NPC on rare occasions.
  • New: Added a mining amount modifier parameter to miner modules.
  • Fix: Removed the optimal range parameter from geoscanners as it is obsolete now.

Graphic engine

  • Change: The big tree models are now faded consistently to prevent floating foliage.
  • Fix: The visual effect of the ECM was broken.

Extensions

  • New: Added 'Convergent electrostatics' extension for reducing the effects of electrostatic dispersion.
  • Fix: 'Optimized engineering' did not affect auxiliary accumulators.

Industry

  • Fix: The base efficiency of recycling plants has been reduced.
  • Fix: Production cycles have stopped when you were outside.
  • New: An error message is sent now when a new production cycle cannot start for some reason.
  • Fix: Standard NEXUS modules were sometimes skipped during kernel research. Those who are missing them now will be able to "fill the holes" by performing new research.
  • Fix: Sorting production jobs by progress should now work properly.
  • Change: Rebalanced facility levels due to the Intrusion system.

Corporations

  • Fix: Previously when transferring a CEO role the new CEO was required to have the same level of corporation management extensions as the former one. Now it is only required to have sufficient extension levels to support the current number of corporation members.
  • Change: Corporation storage rental fee is now 50 000 NIC on starter zones too.
  • Fix: Corporation members are now sorted by name by default.
  • Change: Corporation storage logs are now on by default.
  • New: Corporation storages and folders are now sorted alphabetically.
  • Fix: Changing corporation-wide standings when on the terrain was not propagated to other corporation members.

Assignments

  • New: Confirmation popup when using abort from the right-click menu of assignments.

Market

  • Change: Base value added tax has been increased to 12%.
  • Fix: Fixed default sorting and sorting of large numbers.

GUI

  • New: The NPC tag icon (+) is now shown on the landmarks window too.
  • Fix: Added the missing HP bar back to the landmark information panel.
  • Fix: Occasionally disappearing deploy button.
  • Fix: Modified damage modification parameters were not shown in blue.
  • New: Added a blue information button to robot icons in the landmark information and targeting computer windows.
  • Change: Moved the transactions panel to the main sidemenu of the Agent profile window.
  • Fix: You could click through the robot status window.
  • New: The lock circle will now blink during locking when targeting ground tiles.
  • New: Right-click menu items are now more separated to prevent misclicks.
  • New: Added a corporation ID column to the landmarks window (you can turn it off just like other columns by right clicking the column headers).

General

  • New: Added a search box on top of ingame help windows.
  • New: English-language ingame news are now sent out to all other languages too.
  • Change: Removed duplicate chat channels and merged members from them.
  • Fix: If you blocked then unblocked another player he/she was automatically added to your friends list.
  • Fix: Online/offline status in the friends list was broken.
  • Fix: The topic of password-protected channels is now hidden in the chat channels window.
  • Fix: Squad name lengths are now limited.
  • Change: All new players are now automatically added to the 'General chat' channel.
  • Fix: Fixed various client crashes.

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