"Sirius Gameplay" Game Update August 22, 2017

[Narokath]

Game Update August 22, 2017

Between 7:00 AM and 10:00 AM UTC+2, the game servers will shut down for a new game update to be deployed.

"Sirius Big Bang" aka "Sirius Gameplay" Update Changelog

Two new Ancient Bosses on Ring 5 Planets

• Each ring 5 planet now always has three bosses: Ancient Giza, Ancient Soris and Ancient Amarna.
• Ancient Giza is still spawned by collecting intel.
  • The amount of intel required for spawning the Ancient Giza has been reduced, from 100 to 33 (which means that collecting one intel will add ~3% to the Giza spawn progress bar).
  • The cooldown time before another Ancient Giza can be spawned has been reduced, from 3 hours to 15 minutes.
• Ancient Soris can be spawned by hunting special “Red Ancient” units; damage these units until they start heading towards a certain rally point; accompany each unit until it reaches the rally point; once a certain number of “Red Ancients” has gathered, Ancient Soris will spawn.
• Ancient Amarna disguises itself as a regular Ancient unit and will appear only after its disguise has suffered a certain amount of damage.
• Ancient Soris and Ancient Amarna can only be spawned again 15 minutes after they have been destroyed.
• The three Ancient bosses have different, non-overlapping sets of blueprints.

Changes Related to Jump Ships

• Removed the 24h jump drive cooldown for Jump Ships. A new jump can now be made as soon as the jump drive is refilled.
• Added the ability to instantly refill the jump drive by paying a certain amount of clan cryonite. Refill costs are lowest on the innermost ring and highest on the outermost ring. The instant refill ability can only be accessed in orbit through the “Singularity” tab.
  • In order to prevent accidental refills, a confirmation prompt message window has been implemented.
• Increased Jump Ship purchase price from 75,000 to 150,000 clan cryonite to better match instant refueling and traveling costs.

Changes and Additions Related to Blueprints

• Starting with ring 3, Sirius pirates will now drop blueprints for the AnIn-1800 Rapid tank.
• The Sirius Brotherhood and Organic Stripes color patterns now drop in Sirius.
• Sirius planets’ blueprint sets now minimize overlap, meaning that a certain type of blueprint is unlikely to be found on another Sirius planet at a given time.
• Blueprint type distribution between Ancient units has been improved:
  • A number of blueprints has been moved from stronger to weaker units. Due to the greater availability of these blueprints, the amount required for completing them has been increased.
    • Affected blueprints (all variants): Afterburner, Aggrobomb, Blaster, Collector, Shield, Mine, Orbital Strike, Repair Droid, Repair Field, Materializer, Rockets, Sniper Blaster, Sticky Bomb, Stun Charge, Stun Dome, Thermoblast
  • A number of blueprints has been moved from weaker to stronger units. Due to the reduced availability of these blueprints, the amount required for completing them has been decreased.
    • Affected blueprints (all variants): Aim Computer, Attack Charge, Attack Droid, Perforator, Repair Field Turret
  • Ancient Ammon, Shysis and Khons as well as Ancient Horus, Phyrus and Isis will also drop blueprints now.
  • The amount of blueprint parts required for completing items assigned to Ancient units is as follows:
    • Ancient Ammon, Khons, Shysis: 18 parts required
    • Ancient Horus, Isis, Phyrus: 14 parts required
    • Ancient Abasis, Ignomes, Odion: 12 parts required
    • Ancient Anubis, Keops and Osiris: 5 parts required
    • Ancient Amarna, Giza and Soris: 2 parts required
    • Any blueprint that you had already completed before this update will now show the correct updated amount of parts in your blueprints list (e.g. 2/2 -> 5/5, 14/14 -> 12/12).

General Sirius-Related Changes and Improvements

• Significantly reduced enemy unit hit points in rings 2 to 4.
• Ancient Anubis, Osiris and Keops can no longer target as many pilots at a given time as an Ancient Giza, reducing the overall damage they can deal.
• Mission rewards have been adjusted to reflect the increasing difficulty level from ring 1 to 4.
  • Ring 1 and 2 missions provide smaller rewards than before, while ring 4 rewards have been increased.
• Sirius rings 2 and 4 now rotate counter-clockwise.
• Pathfinding routines have been improved so that missions with NPC units that employ pathfinding should be more robust.
• To be protected units in Sirius missions “First Exploration”, “Hidden Gas Sources” and “Escort Extractor” now have increased HP so they last a lot longer when being attacked.
• Fixed incorrect unit naming in Sirius mission “Just Pull the Lever?”.
• Attack Field and Repair Field Turrets deployed by Ancient units have had their levels increased from 70 to 82; also they now have proper names.
• Removed Sirius ring 5 alliance instancing; this feature was introduced to deal with Giza availability and loot scaling issues in the past. Said issues have now been addressed through an extensive catalogue of changes (reduced spawn cooldown, reduced amount of intels to be collected, introduced new loot drop mechanics, added two additional ring 5 boss units per planet) so that alliance instancing is no longer needed.
• Fixed a wide range of issues related to the Sirius star map user interface, including a potential UI freezing issue.
• Once summoned, Ancient Giza will now show up on the map.
• The stun items in Ancient units now correctly correspond to the units' levels.

Chat-Related Improvements

• The system-wide chat has been changed into a global (server-wide) chat.
• Chat message history has been increased from 20 to 50 message entries.

Other Changes

• Shooting mines will no longer drop any items.

Other Improvements

• Extensive server backend improvements leading to reduced server startup times (about 70% faster) and improved server startup stability.
• Implemented less intrusive item purchase confirmation; instead of a pop-up window, a standard message will now inform about the newly-installed item.
• Changed the day and night cycle for Sirius planets and Kalabesh so an optimal look can be achieved, reducing shadow issues as well as fixing planets being too dark at night time.
• Added lens flare effects to the lowest graphics settings preset because they only have a minimal impact on performance.

Other Fixes

• Fixed stun domes in Draconis mission “The Mantis Queen” having almost no effect because their level was set too low.
• Frenzoid Mantis now return fire when their HP is below 50%.
• Fixed an issue that caused pilots to enter combat mode when their pod was hit by area-of-effect damage.
• Fixed an issue that could lead to mission-related units staying visible for pilots who left their squad during the mission.
• Unified activation time of Attack Charges (instant activation).
• Fixed sun effect visual issues in the Sirius starmap.
• Resolved a range of issues related to automatic kicking of spaceships to the Draconis wormhole (e.g. Jump Ship is destroyed).
• Fixed an issue that led to Sirius Clan Conquest Ships crossing the wormhole to Draconis when a clan's Jump Ship was destroyed while the Conquest Ship was still manned.
• Fixed issues related to the "donate log file to clan" UI.
• Various smaller UI fixes and improvements.

Versión Española [Hecha por la Comunidad]: Actualización del Juego - 22 de Agosto de 2017
French version : Mise à Jour du 22 Août 2017
Deutsche Version: Spielupdate 22. August 2017