v1.7

Hello Galactic Survivalists!

Welcome to the release of the version 1.7 update!

For all of you who supported us with bug reports and feedback in the previous experimental version (many thanks for this!) and for all of you who followed the publications, the following is not entirely new. Nevertheless, it may contain one or two short-term bug fixes that you may have been waiting for. As always, you can find the list of fixed bugs below!

As a little additional info: Thanks to the support of our active community, more than 300 bugs have been fixed in the last few months alone! :)

For all others who are just starting with Empyrion or are looking for information on Update 1.7 for the first time, we have summarized the most important new features below.

1. New decoration system
   More than 200 new assets have been added to build even more exciting planets in the future. For now examples of the new decoration system which can be found on three distinctive demo planets in the game.
   
2. Visual Effects upgrade on water and grass
   Water is no longer a static surface, but shows a ripple effect, for example on the beach or when being affected by forces like thrusters or hover engines. The grass now also reacts to your movements and to pressure waves from vessels and other forces.
   
3. Harvestable Plants
   We have reworked the harvestable plants across the board with improved and high quality new models.
   
4. AI Wayfinding / Pathfinding
   The wayfinding has been improved for all creatures spawned on terrain. Additional changes have been made to prepare for new ways of handling in the future.
   
5. Status Effects & Medical system update
   The status effects have been newly coordinated. There is now also the possibility of using a medical item that is actually not suitable for a complete cure of the disease in order to at least slow down the progression of this disease!
   
6. Crouching is now possible! ;)

Aside from the changes mentioned above, for all creative galaxy builders, lots of new options for designing the galaxy, the nebulae to new settings for items and blocks have been added to the latest version!

For all players looking for new content, POI and missions, there is also new stuff to do and find. Almost 100 new ships and stations have been added to 1.7 thanks to the tireless builders from the community. Satellite hacking is now also fully implemented. More information on missions and gameplay is now also available in updated entries in the in-game Empyriopedia (F1).

As always, please remember:

All details, as well as the list of further changes, adjustments and especially bug fixes can be found in the changelog below!

Report bugs and issues for the public release right over here:
https://empyriononline.com/forums/bugs.24/

Your Empyrion Dev Team

Disclaimer
You do not need to start a new game with this update. BUT in case you are continuing a single-player game from a previous version or from an pre-public release experimental version of this version and would like to see the new planets/playfields or play the new mission, manual action might (!) be required. Same accounts for Multiplayer games.

Please use the pinned help thread in the ’FAQ & Feedback’ forum which provides an overview of possible help workflows and further information on this topic: https://empyriononline.com/forums/faq-feedback.25/

• New water system update: Players, vessels & weapons can interact with waves
  
• Quality settings in the video options:
  Low: No waves & no water interaction
  Medium: Waves enabled without water interaction
  High: Waves enabled & water interaction

• DECO TEST planet added with new terrain decoration. Go to galax map and search for the 'ContAr1a95' and ‘SMbh’ sun types ( system search > type search).
  These planets are currently set up to show some of the upcoming new deco for terrain.
  https://empyriononline.com/threads/exp-1-7-new-deco-testing-planets.99073/

• The artists have put quite some effort in our "old" harvestable plant lineup and gave them a facelift in terms of optics and quality, sometimes creating all new versions!

• Through improvements to the current player controller, it is now possible for your game avatar to kneel (aka ‘crouch’). Whether behind a cover, in front of the Zirax or so that you can crawl through a narrow passage - there are many new possibilities.
  
• Improved character movement so when the movement keys are no longer pressed the character also stops moving.
  
• To crouch hold down the C key & to toggle crouch double tap the C key

• A new character controller (CC) has been implemented in the game as a first iteration to improve AI movement. The goal was primarily to avoid the huge zig-zags of AI when moving in certain circumstances.
  
• The new controller affects only AI with the newest behavior and only outside while the AIs are on the terrain (not inside POI).
  
• This new CC could be extended later to other ground AIs if there is a need.
  
• What is new with the new CC compared to the old CC:

1. The new CC smooths the path generated by the path finder:
   
   The white boxes are generated directly by the path finder. The blue/black cube is the smoothed version of the original path.
   
   
2. The AI will now strictly follow the smoothed path (see above) contrary to the old CC where the AI was following only very roughly the path defined by the path finder especially at high speed:
   
   With the old CC here, the AI can be far from the path from time to time while zig-zagging (yellow) around the path defined by the path finder (white boxes).
   
   
3. The fact that the AI position and movement are precisely controlled now at any speed allows some new behaviors like for example a ramming behavior.
   
   
4. Important : the AIs can still get stuck. It seems that the path finder still has in some cases some flaws and inaccuracies that sometimes lead to bad paths. This is an old bug that will be addressed soon.

• As mentioned above the status effects system has been extensively revised please use this thread for more information about changes & where to give feedback:
  https://empyriononline.com/threads/exp-1-7-status-effects-rework.99072/

• Added lots of new POI and vessels for UCH, ARC, Wastelanders, Legacy, Colonists, Warlords, Polaris! Thanks to all builders and contributors! Full overview: https://empyriononline.com/forums/showroom-submissions.108/
  
• Updated: TheLegacy now has some POI in BoF territory (Lore-related change; FarrAbandoned POI group will now spawn under THE LEGACY)
  
• Updated POI: Trading Station (Col), Freighters, Burial Chambers, Kennex Station, Legacy Matter Converter, Trader Stations, Kriel Defense Station, Zirax DS Radar + Defenses.
  
• Added new POI and vessels: Phoenix (Warlord), several Space Wreckages (SV, CV), Polaris Trading station (Homeworld), Ghyst Stations (HQ, Radar, Fusion Reactor, Forward Base), Zirax Gas Refineries & DIONIII Labs, Xenu Com Station, Rados Agristation, Kriel Arcanum+Nexus Dual stations (Homeworld), Murky Hollow (Arena)
  Thanks to Escarli, sulusdacor, Kaeser, Vermillion, ravien_ff & all contributors
  
• Updated: Farr FAITH OPV (MatCz), Xenu Dronebase (Escarli/Vermillion)
  
• Added: Hunter Warlord OPV (Funog)

• Toolbelt inconvenience:

1. Re-assign items from player death backpack to previous slots in toolbelt
   
2. Auto-fillup of toolbar item stacks on manual pickup
   
3. Auto-fillup of toolbar item stacks on "take all"

• PlayerDrone: adjusted movement/rotation so that it uses less momentum to get it nearer to the new player controller. Use key "AutoLevel" to toggle between "Z rotation enabled" on and off
  
• Added possibility to extend the shield using new properties ShieldCapacityBonus and ShieldRechargeBonus (allowed on a block with an EnergyIn property). Added more information to console cmd 'shield <entity id>'
  
  ShieldCapacityBonus: 1000, type: int, display: true ShieldRechargeBonus: 500, type: int, display: true
• Added possibility to support tracer beams on ranged weapons. When you add 'TracerIsBeam: true' the tracer will be treated as a beam and set to the length of the hit ray.
  
• First implementation of block penetration support for ranged weapons:
  
  PenetrationDepth: 10, display: true
• GalaxyMap: added possibility to show region names by using "LabelName", "LabelColor", "LabelSize",”LabelLYDistance”:
  
  LabelName: "The Center" # Name shown on the galaxy map; Note: there are no default fallback values for COLOR and SIZE! If you set LabelName, you need to define LabelColor and LableSize as well! LabelColor: "0.9, 0.2, 0.2" # Color of the label. Can add optional Transparency “0.9,0.2,0.2,0.2” as an Alpha Value LabelSize: 100 # Size of the label (Font Size) LabelLYDistance: <distance in LY> # optionally allows to set a distance to the player where the label shows up, if the player is farther away it will hide
• GalaxyConfig: added better possibility to configure nebulas by using NebulaSpawnCount and NebulaColorIndex within a StarRegion_X block
  
• GalaxyConfigFile: LabelName supports now "n" to do a line break, also the size is not confined any more
  
• Search star dialog: added type & key navigation
  
• Ship Rigidbody collision detection mode changed to ContinuousSpeculative
  
• Added: Localization for loading screens
  
• Added: New model for Laser Pistol (T1)
  
• Changed: Added dedicated SKIP answer options for dialogues with long text passages (Please Re-Test all missions & let us know where we could add SKIP answers in addition!)
  
• Updated Empyriopedia with Explorer Token Missions for Default Multiplayer
  
• Updated: Journeybook: Entries now become visible while playing through the story missions (Charakters, Important knowledge)
  
• Updated: Empyriopedia: Main faction info entries now become visible while playing through the story missions
  
• Updated: Main Loca, PDA Loca, Dialogues Loca (incremental update as of 14 10 2021)
  
• Updated: Updated GalaxyConfig.ecf with new REGION label settings & examples
  
• Added: Home Systems for all remaining factions (first iteration)
  
• Added: Explorer token now given for warping to the sun of a factions home system
  
• Added 'reloaddata' console command to allow in-game reloading of config file data (use 'help rd' to see usage details)
  
• Added better error output to get rid of error messages like "IdMapping: no name for id CPUExtenderLargeT5 found in 'The Ayamara'! Skipping."
  
• Added: Hacking satellites (placed in sun orbits) for reports now has dedicated Communication, Science, Exploration, Security and Military dialogues, consoles AND satellites for the main factions (Zirax, Polaris, Trader, Kriel); Others will follow.
  
• Added report hacking satellites for Pirates, Colonists, ARC, Wastelanders and Farr
  
• BlocksConfig: added new property "RepFac" (f.e. use RepFac: 0.1) to allow to scale the reputation loss/gain when destroying a block (f.e. to make some blocks more/less "valuable" for reputation changes)
  
• Added possibility to give damage modifiers to entities: add in EClassConfig.ecf a new property "Material" with any string and reference this material in ItemsConfig.ecf for the weapon as DamageMultiplier_X material
  
• Distant Stars: adjusted so they are a bit more crisp and do less flicker on camera movements. Nearer stars get more color and bigger, farther stars are smaller and less colored. Being at the center of the galaxy, stars should still be in acceptable size (only the nearer ones get big).
  
• Rockets now orient themselves towards the turrets up direction when firing (and not towards the world up direction). This helps if the rockets use special animations or effects.
  
• Updated localization for all languages (Main, PDA, Dialogues; incremental as of 11 11 2021)
  
• DialogueSystem: added functions UnlockTechTreeItem/IsTechTreeItemUnlocked to allow unlocking tech tree items from dialog. Can be used for example in missions as reward. Use -1 as UnlockCost to only allow unlocking from the dialog system.
  
• Updated Derpacks POI (Exclusively found in Polaris Homeworld Orbit)
  
• Changed POI sound of Aeon Club POI (Exclusively found in Trader Homeworld Orbit)
  
• Empyriopedia: Deactivated Doctors Journal, Biologists Guide, Explorers Journal for the time being in order to avoid confusion between game updates until relevant game and mechanic changes are finalized.
  
• Swapped galactic position of Containment Areas 1a95 and 13b7 to better fit mission progress
  
• Added story mission 11 'Murky Christmas' (For ease of testing, a new save game is recommended; Note: issues with deco growing into moon POI are known)
  
• Added message when entering one of the new deco testing planets
  
• Updated Robinson Protocol initial game start reflecting status effects changes of EXP Phase 2(now you get a Dermal Burn instead a Broken Leg); Please retest
  
• Updated Tales of the Past mission in regards to the changed medical items you need to get rid of the dermal parasites; Please retest
  
• Slightly increased health/food levels for Easy (full) and Medium (300 instead of 250) difficulty game start due to changed status effect on game start
  
• Updated/adjusted both Robinson Protocol and Tales of the Past mission dialogues and texts related to the status effect changes and other required updates. Note: Your localization might show the English default texts until the changes are made in our languages.
  
• Added a few new starter POI (Synth Lab around Ancient Tower, Convoy near the Heidelberg, Bunker near the Polaris Sanctuary, Wreckage near downed SV Dart in Zirax Territory)
  
• Added FXAA/SMAA/TAA Anti-Aliasing Settings
  
• Updated Empyriopedia on MP default scenario to current state
  
• Activated Explorers Guild discovers missions for MP default scenario
  
• Murky Hollow: moved moon closer to temperate planet (To not exceed 15 AU warp range of Santa Sleigh SV)

• Fixed tracers clipping through target (fixed for static objects, still clipping if you are moving into the direction of the tracer)
  
• Fix for driller beams and other ranged weapons staying active when ESC or other window get opened
  
• "If you continue flying you will die" message appearing incorrectly when close to a planet now disabled
  
• "Show on HUD" marker doesn't automatically get removed after the device has been removed by the player.
  
• Parallax Occlusion Mapping texture issue with certain blocks
  
• Removing O2/Fuel from tanks via logistics deletes them
  
• Vessels sporadically moving after playfield changes when setup on a repair block
  
• Blueprint window doesn't include tags in filter
  
• Avatar size increase when exiting a seat
  
• Exception spam when reactivating the HUD whilst in a cockpit
  
• Faction Reputation Info page showing wrong info in some places for different factions
  
• Mission or trader dialogue disables the Jetpack
  More fixes can be seen here also: https://empyriononline.com/forums/fixed.90/

• https://eah.empyrion-homeworld.net/download/patch-notes-emp-admin-helper-full

• Added Christmas Event. (Follow the mission in the PDA)
  
  
• Added Santa’s Workshop, Santa’s Express, Santa’s Sleigh and Santa’s Christmas Tree POIs. (Thanks to Decurion1965, iClustaFlux, Ray and Willow)
  
• Added Santa’s Elf Hut. (Thanks to Escarli)
  
• Added Short Range Prisoner Transport. (Thanks to Fractalite)
  
• Reduced the Legacy Space Drones in Black Hole to 5-10 (from 10-20)
  
• Forbid base building in Asteroid Field & Trading Station Systems
  
• Removed the Legacy from Asteroid Field & Trading Station Systems
  
• Adapted Explorer's Guild dialogue text to not hint for rewards anymore
  
• Add second sun (Neutron Star) to Cygnus System
  
• Add Credibility Mission for Free Colonists

• Fixed Merdar Start PDA Mission
  
• Fixed Trader buy/sell on Carbon Substrate (PlasticMaterial)
  
• Fixed trader buy/sell on Nitrocellulose (NCPowder)
  
• Fixed trader MilitaryT2 not showing all items
  
• Fixed Explorer's Guild reward been given in some cases
  
• Fixed Vessel wasn't allowed to be in CSW System
  
• Fixed not all meteors spawning on Void
  
• Fixed Polaris Credibility Mission
  
• Fixed exit portal in the Golden Freighter Mission