Perpetuum

Update news for 2011-08-25

Spotlight features

New level 1 assignments

16 brand new level 1 assignments have been added for all three main Alpha terminals: 6 combat, 7 industrial and 3 logistics ones, and at the same time we say farewell to the old level 1 assignments. We’re also introducing a few new assignment types and revamping some old ones.

  • These new mining and harvesting assignments now ask for new experimental minerals that you can get from mining and harvesting normal minerals and plants. We have also removed their completion radiuses, so they can be completed anywhere.
  • Added production assignments with objectives for creating calibration templates and mass production.
  • Transport assignments will not send you from terminal to terminal anymore, but to item collectors or item suppliers out on the field.

Relation system changes

  • From now on terminal facility relation bonuses will be only calculated from industry-related contractor corporations.
  • The current 27 (9 per faction) NPC corporations have been reduced to 3 per faction. Instead of half-breed combat/industrial or industrial/logistics corporations, there are now only pure combat, industrial and logistics oriented ones, and these are the clear providers of matching assignments.
  • Achieved relations for every character have been merged by taking the highest relation value amongst the old set-of-three NPC corporations and applying that to the new supercorporations. Negative relations have been reset to zero.

Random NPC spawns

We’re introducing new random NPC spawns, where you can’t really be sure what you’ll be up against next. The NPC ranks in one spawn will only vary by 1 or 2 levels and they are of the same faction, except for the occasional industrials.

These locations also have a small chance to spawn new elite NPCs. These have +50% health, but in turn have significantly better drop rates, 100% kernel drop chance, and they can even have up to 3 kernels instead of only one. The designations of the elite NPCs are "Rabid" for Thelodica, "Darkstar" in case of Nuimqol, and "Mighty" for Pelistals.

To give you some hints of their whereabouts, here is the list of sectors where they can be found:

New Virginia: Keinich Bay, Fort Donnerth, Bellicha
Attalica: Radholme East, Blaha, Galoly Belil
Daoden: Chotassia, Ruydado, Matsu Shoto
Shinjalar: Dampalor, Inqular Bay, Inqular Peninsula
Hershfield: Nurno-Hailax District(2), Nurno Central
Tellesis: Weyster Port, Enkopp, Weyster Central
Norhoop: Fort Beuvis, Uria Belil(2)
Alsbale: Brightstone, Fort Douglas, Naynitch
Hokkogaros: Abbuthilia, Vougar Maas, Gavastarc
Kentagura: North Iseitsu, Laosura, Ghuron
Domhalarn: Hillmanoc, Koykili, Moyar
Novastrov: Danarchov, Ursels(2)

You can read about these changes in more detail on our devblog.

Gameplay

  • New: Introducing basic pathfinding: robots will now try to automatically navigate around obstacles when using doubleclick on the terrain, or shift-leftclick on the radar.
  • New: Added unstack by volume option to the unstack window.
  • Fix: Unstack value inputs are now limited to the maximum of the source stack.
  • Fix: Selecting "Delete folder" on a default geoscan result folder also deleted results of the same zone in user-created folders.
  • Change: Players with Syndicate protection on them cannot be locked now.
  • Change: Increased the speed and range of Observer NPCs.
  • Change: Grand Observers have now only 50% chance to drop Observer kernels.
  • Change: Rebalanced NPC plasma drops: the set amount of plasma in loot now follows more closely the time it takes to kill a specific NPC.

Robots and modules

  • Change: Seth base accumulator capacity decreased from 4750 to 4000 AP (Mk2 too).
  • Change: Seth shield bonus changed to 5% accumulator capacity increase per level (Mk2 too).
  • Change: Reduced the weight of T2/T2P light EM-guns.
  • Change: Increased the weight of T4/T4P light EM-guns, all medium EM-guns, and T4/T4P medium gauss guns.
  • Change: Increased the weight of T2/T2P and T4/T4P light HCL lasers, and all medium HCL lasers.
  • Change: Increased the range of light T3 lasers and EM-guns, and medium LCL lasers (and their prototypes).
  • Change: Medium EM-gun hit dispersion increased from 9 to 10.
  • Change: Reconfigured the armor hit point reduction, demobilizer resistance and mass reduction parameters of all lightweight frame modules.
  • Change: Increased the weight of armor repairer tunings and reduced their armor repair cycle time bonuses.
  • Change: Shield hardeners are now passive modules, and their shield absorption modification bonuses have been halved.
  • Change: Doubled the base absorption ratio of shield generator modules.
  • Change: Reduced the weight of weapon tunings, and they received an additional critical hit chance modification bonus. Important: the critical hit chance bonus applies to all other types of weapons as well, for example a missile tuning will only boost the damage and cycle time of missile launchers, but it will provide critical hit bonuses for turrets too.
  • Change: ERP changes: the name related primary damage recovery has been reduced from 70% to 60% for T3, and from 90% to 70% in case of T4. Secondary damage recovery has been reduced for all tiers.
  • Change: Various slug and energy cell ammo changes:
Magnedart slug: optimal range modifier changed from -75% to -20%, damage changed from 36/72 to 28/56 (small/medium).
Compositecore slug: changed to kinetic damage only and removed the -50% optimal range modifier.
Incendiary/Liquidcore slug: damage changed from 14+8/28+16 to 13+9/26+18 (small/medium).
UDC slug: changed from kinetic only to multiple damage type.
Multi-spectral energy cell: changed to thermal damage only and removed the -50% optimal range modifier. Renamed to "Thermic".
Photokinetic/Sonic energy cell: damage changed from 14+8/28+16 to 13+9/26+18 (small/medium).
"Volcano" energy cell: changed from thermal only to multiple damage type, and renamed to "Apocalypse".

Corporations

  • Change: The relations panel in corporation management is now visible to all corporation members, but of course modifying them is still only possible for those with the necessary privileges.

Assignments

  • Change: Removed all negative relation "rewards" from all assignments. Aborting assignments will still give negative relations!

Market

  • Change: Increased the NPC buy order prices for plasma on beta islands.

GUI

  • New: The right pane of the world map is now resizeable (This was implemented in a previous patch but was missing from the patch notes.)

Sound

  • New: Added 6 new music tracks. Also available on our website as usual.

General

  • Change: Career kills now lists all your kills and not just the recent ones. (This was changed in a previous patch but was missing from the patch notes.)
  • Fix: Client window position was not properly saved in multi-display scenarios.
  • New: The components tab in item information windows can now also be exported to CSV.

Special

  • Change: Incremented the age of DEV Crm and DEV Quodys by 1.
  • New: Added the official W.I.F.E. type NPC to DEV Alf's personal squad.

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