Update news for 2012-07-18

Spotlight features

Multi-phase emergency mode

MPC main terminals (and main terminals only) can now enter emergency mode multiple times. Depending on the technology level of the terminal, it has a counter of 3 to 5 times (for standard, advanced and hi-tech terminals respectively) when it can subsequently enter emergency mode. Every time the terminal goes into emergency mode, this counter decreases, and every time a phase passes without emergency, the counter increases. (More specifically, if a terminal comes out of an emergency phase, and the defenders can keep it from entering emergency again in the 2-hour vulnerable window, the counter will increase after those 2 hours. After that, if the terminal is not attacked and taken into emergency, the counter will increase only after 2 days, if it's not already at maximum.) Once the counter reaches zero (ie. it comes out of the last possible emergency phase), the terminal becomes destroyable. Owners of the terminal can see the remaining number of emergency phases when selecting the terminal in the colony management window.

The times when buildings come out of emergency mode can be scanned with intrusion scanners. The scanner will also show how many emergency phases the terminal has left, current one included. (The number is shown in yellow color after the time.)

Gameplay

  • New: Random NPC spawns on alpha islands will now only attack when they are aggressed (this means locking too). The change doesn't affect assignment-related spawns and NPCs spawning from artifacts or beacons. These non-aggressive NPCs have orange-colored icons instead of red.
  • Change: Increased the minimum loot quantity in gamma artifacts by one.
  • Change: Increased the number of waves in normal (non-starred) distress beacons to 10.
  • Change: Added constant elite NPCs to gamma combat caravans (observer and industrial spawns are untouched).
  • New: Added 30 new random NPC spawns to each Alpha 1 island, containing Arkhes and all kinds of rank 1-2 NPCs. (Alpha 2 islands will get a similar treatment soon.)
  • Change: Reduced molecular instability and syndicate protection timers after teleporting from 50 to 20 seconds.
  • Change: Reduced the drop chance of Mk2 CTs in artifacts by 50%.
  • Change: Removed level 1 artifacts from gamma islands, only level 2 and 3 will spawn.
  • Change: Artifacts will now only spawn on passable terrain on gamma islands.
  • New: Teleport buildings got a small interference emission (2.00B in a 500m range).
  • Fix: Roaming NPCs shouldn't run away anymore when they are in combat.

Robots and modules

  • Change: Changed the defense-related bonuses of harvesting-specialized robots to terraforming module cycletime bonus (5% per extension level).
  • Change: Increased the base cycle time of terraforming modules to 18 seconds.
  • Fix: The paint on newly bought or manufactured robots was completely decayed.
  • Fix: Added missing tier level displays for some CTs.

Industry

  • Change: Epriton is now liquid again.
  • Change: Increased the maximum cycles in noralgis plants by 75 (alpha: 50 to 125, beta & gamma: 100 to 175).
  • Change: Replaced the briochit component in T3 modules with titanium.

Corporations

  • New: Added new event messages for new corporation bulletin posts and comments. You can turn off notifications in the event settings tab, as usual.
  • Fix: The corporation bulletin window should now properly pop up at login when there are new posts.

Modular Private Colonies

  • Change: Increased the manufacturing unit of construction blocks to 5. (This effectively cuts the required materials to 20% per piece and increases production rate by 5 times.)
  • Change: Halved the production time of construction blocks, making their production 10 times faster with the above change.
  • Change: Doubled the repair amount of repair nodes to 2000/2500/3000 per 5 seconds (standard-advanced-hitech, respectively).
  • Change: Increased the armor resistance boost provided by booster nodes. (50/75/100 -> 100/125/150)
  • Change: Reduced the material cost of energy transmitters and energy backbones.
  • Change: Increased the construction range of teleports from 500 to 2000 meters (aka. no-build zone).
  • New: Freshly deployed main terminals are invulnerable for 72 hours.
  • Fix: Fixed the construction block requirement of the advanced repair node foundation (this was a display bug only).

Market

  • Change: Reduced the price of terraforming charges to 20%.
  • Change: Removed infinite seeds for MPC building foundations.
  • Change: Reduced the market transaction fee by 50%.

Reimbursements

  • Reimbursed 80% from the old price of terraforming charges and construction blocks purchased on the market from the moment of the expansion patch.
  • We have given 4 additional construction blocks for every block manufactured from the moment of the expansion patch.
  • Reimbursed those players who suffered robot losses to falsely resurrected zombie bots mentioned in this devblog.

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