Version 4.00 Beta 4 (204597)

• New Feature: Bulletin board system to keep track of offered missions.
• New Feature: Beta 3 Major overhaul of external view (enabled menus, target elements, external view in highways, and more). Feedback welcome.
• New Feature: Beta 4 Economy logging and statistics (feature now partially functional).
• New Feature: Beta 4 Time acceleration using SETA (feature now fully functional).
• New Feature: Beta 3 New mission to obtain player ship jump drive (feature now available).
• New Feature: Beta 3 New missions to hack stations and obtain rare or valuable items.
• New Feature: Beta 3 You can now find and craft rare weapon modifications that increase your weapon's stats when installed.
• New Feature: Flight School tutorial.
• Added 'Fly to position' order selecting a position via map click (Replaces 'Fly to Zone' order).
• Beta 3 Added ability to access various features (event monitor/info point interaction, comms, mission/trade offers, etc.) while remote controlling drones.
• Beta 3 Added event monitor and ability to open menus while remote controlling a torpedo (improves feature introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Added ability to claim ownerless capital ships by placing NPC on platform.
• Beta 3 Added current target as default destination for autopilot hotkey (Shift+A), uses mission objective as before if no target set.
• Beta 3 Added new Nyanae ships to Omicron Lyrae, replacing the Gigurum ships there.
• Added heat damage from engine jets.
• Beta 3 Added new "very hard" difficulty level.
• Beta 4 Added navigation skill influence on effectiveness of AI pilots.
• Beta 4 Added efficiency influence on cooling rate so that some weapons (e.g. Pulsed Maser) don't stop building up heat when damaged.
• Beta 4 Added mouse look for camera rotation in all external views and in the cockpit (middle mouse button - ability to remap will be added).
• Beta 4 Added new M-sized traders to Republic of Cantera faction.
• Beta 4 Added notification if a player squad drone was lost or killed.
• Beta 4 Added missing ion and plasma resource fields to Maelstrom.
• Beta 4 Added weapon modifications as possible but rare mission rewards (improves feature introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Added BBS functionality to more missions (improves feature introduced in 4.00).
• Added savegame compression.
• Beta 3 Removed option to replace a working architect, which broke the both of them!
• Beta 4 Removed legacy shaders.
• Improved small ship AI to use boost in combat situations based on pilot skills.
• Improved behaviour when following mission target using autopilot.
• Improved HUD toggle now toggles more elements and works in more cases. Feedback welcome.
• Beta 3 Improved speed of medium sized ships.
• Improved mouse accuracy in menus.
• Improved station manager logic to better coordinate multiple owned ships.
• Improved FXAA colour-correction.
• Beta 3 Improved highway entry/exit sounds.
• Beta 3 Improved crash reports to indicate whether game has been modified.
• Beta 3 Improved balancing of ship prices (increased price of container transporters by 50%, reduced other medium sized ships by 25%).
• Beta 3 Improved NPC behaviour when flying through Jump Gates to clear the area.
• Beta 3 Improved accuracy of combat damage calculations when player is not present.
• Beta 4 Improved balance of pirate wings for easy and normal difficulty.
• Beta 4 Improved auto-aim behaviour when not firing at cursor.
• Beta 4 Improved docking behaviour of ships.
• Beta 4 Improved guided missiles flight behaviour.
• Beta 4 Improved target selection using gamepad controls.
• Beta 4 Improved text quality for smaller fonts in some rare cases.
• Beta 4 Improved readability of target element texts.
• Beta 4 Improved event monitor to show information about environment object in drone mode (improves feature introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Improved cargo capacity of Nyanae traders in Omicron Lyrae slightly (improves feature introduced in 4.00).
• Changed default setting for menu display from "Side Console"-mode to "HUD"-mode.
• Fixed trade ships assigned to stations not respecting their new commander's subordinate range.
• Fixed being able to issue multiple transfer orders for the same wares when using ware exchange with a station.
• Fixed another scenario that could lead to incorrect amounts of unavailable units.
• Fixed incorrect quantity of bought fuel cells on 'Refuel' order if the ship had already some fuel.
• Fixed several bugs with Marauder Pirates not being able to steal dropped containers from their targets.
• Fixed several cases resulting in ships getting stuck when following other ships out-of-sector.
• Fixed missing command info for mining drones and for transport drones picking up ware containers.
• Fixed stations complaining when player destroys an ownerless ship.
• Fixed broken game controls after interacting with a trade offer while controlling a drone.
• Fixed aim-at-indicator being displayed incorrectly when remote controlling a drone.
• Fixed rare cases where objects showed incorrect outlines.
• Fixed encyclopedia display of maximum speed for capital ships.
• Beta 3 Fixed player ship sometimes jumping positions when changing zones while flying on autopilot.
• Beta 3 Fixed engine ambient sound volume and pitch not working correctly during autopilot.
• Beta 3 Fixed autopilot stopping when following a ship that changes zones.
• Beta 3 Fixed autopilot continuing when entering a remote-controlled drone.
• Beta 3 Fixed remote controlled missiles not moving while entry animation is running.
• Beta 3 Fixed AI roll rotation in several flight behaviours.
• Beta 3 Fixed small AI ships ramming into the player when boosting in some combat situations.
• Beta 3 Fixed event monitor hints overlapping the "Press F" text on the HUD eventmonitor.
• Beta 3 Fixed capital ships boosting backwards or sideways.
• Beta 3 Fixed broken aim indicator when controlling a drone.
• Beta 3 Fixed station owned in Empire Builder not being able to replace Construction Vessel.
• Beta 3 Fixed plot Construction Vessels being boardable.
• Beta 3 Fixed station managers losing their account when involved in ware exchange trades.
• Beta 3 Fixed ships on autopilot sometimes not accelerating to full speed (e.g. when player ship leaves a highway).
• Beta 3 Fixed player ship getting stuck at the exit of a highway if a menu is open.
• Beta 3 Fixed Xenon fighters being capturable.
• Beta 3 Fixed being able to shoot dumbfire missiles backwards in external view.
• Beta 4 Fixed broken jumpdrive not allowing refuel order to be given (still not allowed if jumping required to refuel).
• Beta 4 Fixed garbled text on target elements in Russian localisation.
• Beta 4 Fixed accumulating highway ad signs.
• Beta 4 Fixed calculation error with recommended budget resulting in value sometimes being too high.
• Beta 4 Fixed incorrect flight orientation on AI drones and Xenon fighters.
• Beta 4 Fixed wrong rotation on the mining movement of medium miners.
• Beta 4 Fixed player ship auto-roll when menus are open and the auto-roll option is off.
• Beta 4 Fixed capital ships flying too slowly or getting stuck when avoiding other ships.
• Beta 4 Fixed certain ships not being able to pick up collectables.
• Beta 4 Fixed Active Missions menu getting stuck during tutorial.
• Beta 4 Fixed dark or black loading screen when pressing ESC quickly after starting a new game.
• Beta 4 Fixed player being able to click on invisible UI elements, such as while HUD not displayed.
• Beta 4 Fixed several missions not cleaning up properly.
• Beta 4 Fixed traders having too much reduced scrap metal.
• Beta 4 Fixed hack panel missions telling the player to return to ship when docked.
• Beta 4 Fixed case where jump drive mission would not show mission objective to jump to a jump beacon (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Fixed case where jump drive mission would not end because an objective got stuck (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Fixed problems with the player auto pilot going through jump gates.
• Beta 4 Fixed tumbling highway ships when the player exits highway.
• Beta 4 Fixed production resource consumption not being calculated correctly in rare cases.
• Beta 4 Fixed double "Cr" in logbook messages for money transfer for Fuel Cells.
• Fixed area damage increasing with lower framerates.
• Fixed issue where a 'static' effect remained over the event monitor during the plot.
• Fixed Particle Repeater weapons building up heat slower at higher framerates.
• Fixed player ship not being able to enter highways with an open menu.
• Fixed rare case of missing highway/gate/ship group target elements after starting/loading a game.
• Fixed rare case of non-working input controls after starting/loading a game.
• Fixed interact menu not always being on top of other target elements when using mouse/gamepad controls.
• Fixed current target not always on top of all other target elements.
• Fixed target elements not always on top of other target elements which are further away.
• Fixed rare cases of clicking on a target element actually targeting another object.
• Fixed target elements jumping when interacting with it while controlling a drone.
• Fixed rare cases of crosshair showing weird animations.
• Fixed rare cases of UI issues when switching to/from external and/or drone view.
• Fixed cases where weapon panels showed startup animation in cases other than entering the ship.
• Fixed various trade price discrepancies in menus due to incorrect rounding.
• Enabled radar while remote controlling drones.
• Fixed target elements being visible through the player ship and player drone in external view (new feature in 4.00).
• Fixed aim-at-indicator being displayed in external target view mode (new feature in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed missing target elements when switching from target view to external view (new feature in 4.00).
• Fixed heat damage from engines applying to the ship the engines belong to (new feature in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed heat damage from engines still being applied when engine is wrecked (new feature in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed heat damage from engines not being applied after ship changes zone (new feature in 4.00).
• Fixed incorrect truncation when displaying money in menus (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed case incorrectly allowing player to target objects in external target view (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed black cockpit monitors when undocking from a station/ship while in external view (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed bad flight paths that sometimes could occur when NPCs navigate through areas with dangerous regions (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed occasional graphical flash on entering a highway (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed clothing on some character appearring black (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Fixed game over not showing player ship explosion (improved fix to come).
• Beta 4 Fixed game starting in non-default full-screen resolution when running it for the first time.
• Fixed game freezing when quitting the game with Alt+F4 while in loading screen.
• Fixed startup issues with corrupted or incorrect DLLs in Windows system directory.
• Fixed several small memory leaks.
• Beta 4 Fixed more causes of crashes.
• Beta 4 Several more small performance and memory optimisations.