SpaceSimCentral

*Upcoming Events*There will be a special developer-run Capture The Flag event onSaturday, May 15th, at 5PM CST, 23:00 UTC. Unique prizes may beexpected. More details will be posted to the forums, as well as thein-game event system, as the date approaches. Notices will also go outvia Twitter, RSS, and Facebook.*Recent Changes*We've made some cool progress lately, including:- More Conquerable Stations! -Two additional conquerable stations have been added to the universe, andall conquerable stations are now visible on radar only to those who havea currently active key. The "S" icon is hidden from all others, which isnow a matter of some importance, as at least one of the stations isobscured in a dense, persistent fog. Additionally, static fog now limitsthe characters shown on the sector list ("u" menu) to only those withinradar range, allowing total concealment through use of radar occlusionand fog. More features are upcoming for conquerable stations, where theymay be used to manufacture special equipment over a period of time, andwhere multiple stations may be needed to work concurrently to buildlarger and more complex equipment.- War Convoys -These special blockade fleets are launched by either the Itani or theSerco every day, depending on who controls the most sectors in Deneb.Each convoy then blockades the grayspace borders of the opposition,impinging on trade and other activity. If the conquest of Deneb shouldbe reversed the following day, then the convoy of the new winner willneed to break through the remaining blockade from yesterday. In thisway, actions from the war front in Deneb have repercussions thatresonate throughout the rest of the galaxy.- Friend Keys -Help your friends check out Vendetta Online! Any account subscribed fora month or longer may now begin collecting "Friend Keys", specialextended-trial key codes that may be sent to anyone you think mightenjoy the game. Accounts may accumulate up to five "Friend Keys" at anygiven time, although each may only be applied to a singlenever-subscribed trial account. As time goes on, more Friend Key relatedfeatures may be expected.- Replacement of the Players Online website list -This was a long-requested but still somewhat controversial change. The"Players Online" list on the VO website has long displayed the names ofall characters currently in-game. Unfortunately, this was extensivelyabused, both by people "data mining" the list to determine whichcharacters were "alts" of other known characters (by never being loggedon at the same time), as well as people seeking out and continuallyhunting down specific individuals over and over again. To improve thissituation, we've removed the Players Online list and replaced it with agraph of relative "player density", colored by Nation alignment. Inaddition, a "Buddies Online" list is also present, which checks againstthe buddies of all characters present in the account used to log ontothe website.- Increased Financial Rewards for Deneb War participants -We have drastically increased the payouts for Dynamic Warfareparticipants in Deneb. Income per kill has increased from 1500 creditsto 5000. Overall skirmish success bonuses have been increased by fourfold. In addition, we plan for more "role-specific" bonuses, for peopleflying Bombers and the like; dropping the shields of a capship willaccrue a special bonus, along with credits-per-percentage-damage for anydestroyed capital vessel. Combined with the existing free shipreplacement for any person homed in the station issuing the Skirmishmission, combat on the Deneb border is on its way to becoming areasonable income-generating activity in VO.- Friendly Fire, New Trade Routes, Ship Tweaks, Etc -Friendly Fire restrictions have been dropped from all space, with theexception of the Itani, Serco and UIT Capitol Systems (six in all).Odia is experiencing large demand for many manufactured products, withCorvus and other local corporations paying top dollar to support a greatdeal of unexplained activity. Consumer Robotics, Civilian Textiles andPersonal Defense Systems number among the items seeing demand spikes inthe region.The Warthog TD has had a serious makeover, with improved armor, thrust,braking, turbo, and more. Cargo capacity and turbo energy usage wereslightly reduced in compensation.*Upcoming Changes*- Launch of the Vendetta Online development Trac -The VO "Trac" is a development wiki and collection of ongoing ticketsdetailing the work we're doing, and what we have planned for the future.The public release of this was a primary feature promised in the lastnewsletter, intended to happen during the month of April. Unfortunately,this has not come to pass, for which I apologize. GDC (the GameDevelopers Conference in San Francisco, back in March) had someunexpected (but positive) results and opportunities, and we have beenfocusing a great deal of attention on a significant new VO feature thathas not yet been announced. There will likely be a press release aboutthis feature towards the end of May, in the run-up to E3.Nonetheless, I am hopeful that we will see the Trac debut in May, withthe complete milestones for VO 1.9 and 2.0, as well as many of ourlong-range plans. This may be something kind of new: a retail-shippedMMORPG allowing public access to our forward-looking designdocumentation and internal development discussions. This is a wholeother level beyond the cooked-down "developer blogs" that ourselves andmany other games have maintained for the last decade. For better orworse, you will be able to see us struggling with new APIs, major bugs,or implementation strategies for new features. Hopefully this degree oftransparency will help inspire further interest in our long-range plans,and allow our userbase to see their own suggestions be scheduled forimplementation, as well as join in watching us check off the varioustickets and milestones that mark the road to our Ideal Game.- Faction Redux, Mutual Exclusion -A lot of work over this coming month will focus on "polish"; areas ofgameplay that while fundamentally implemented, and functional, couldreally use some improved balance or tweaking to make it shine.One area that impinges on many parts of the game is our Faction Standingsystem, which has tended to be excessively lax over the past few years.We will be adding mutual exclusions to the system, such that one may bealigned with the Itani OR the Serco, but not be highly regarded by bothat the same time. This has been planned for years, but following thedrop of Friendly Fire restrictions from most of the galaxy, this needsto take place in the near future. We expect this change to suddenlyalter the relevance of many gameplay factors, such as theabove-mentioned "War Convoys", as their aggression will impact newgroups of people. The exact specifications for how this will play outwill be posted to the forums in advance of release, and we will beallowing people to choose the "side" (Itani vs Serco) with whom theywould prefer to retain higher standings.The Itani and Serco will also not be the only mutual exclusion in place,as some Corporations also have enmity for one another. The degree of themutual exclusion will not always be the same, but there will be caseswhere gaining standing with one group is a tradeoff, as you losestanding with another. In the long run, this should be much better forthe game, and make for a more interesting environment.- Complex Sectors, Fog, and Bot Radar -Truly complex sectors require some technical work that has not yet beencompleted, but you can expect to see more of them in the near future.We're still using the central Deneb ring as our testbed for this, and weintend to make many performance improvements to loading time, and otheraspects, before rolling it out galaxy-wide.Foggy "reefs" that create choke points in the galaxy, and largelyreplace Ion Storms will also be rolled out. However, any effect onvisibility and radar range is problematic for as long as we have botswith magical unlimited detection abilities. Of course, this is anothernon-trivial issue, since their "unlimited" sensor range is of use incertain mission-based activities, where the NPC is spawned far from theuser, so we will likely have to find solutions to several tangentialproblems in the process of changing this.- Economy, Game In General -The economy also requires more attention, a re-working of the way tradeworks in the galaxy, the distribution of items, and what it all"means".. from the lowest newbie in an EC-89, to a vast armada ofConstellations. The economy, for lack of a better term, is a fundamentalroot of my long-planned "Endgame"; a seed from which many things willsprout, and much gameplay will be affected.In General, for the near term, it is our plan to focus a lot of energyover the coming months on "cleaning up" and polishing a lot of ourexisting content. Bringing back and revising "Capture The Cargo" andtying it into the Deneb conflict, fixing silly exploits in Convoymissions, locating most of the dumb gameplay oversights and problemsthat people have had to become "used to" over the years, and actuallydoing something about them.It is never as exciting to tell someone that you're going to be spendinga lot of time "polishing", as opposed to creating the Next AwesomeThing. But I expect that this time will have a greater and more welcomeimpact on our player's enjoyment of the overall game than the majorityof our "Big Gameplay Additions" of the last few years.