Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.

This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.

• Increased amount of goods used up per tick in consumer stations
• Using up of goods now happens every 2 minutes and is no longer dependent on RNG
• Player owned Consumers by default now don't buy, until they're told to

• Added a button to Consumer where buying can be toggled on/off

• Fixed an issue in turret factory supplier related to using up of goods
• Fixed trading manager UI not getting updated correctly on buy/sell

The Steam Autumn Sale is coming to an end and with that the chance to nominate Avorion for an award.

It would be a tremendous honor if you could head over to the Steam Awards and nominate Avorion for Labor of Love!

Thank you very much and keep having fun with Avorion!

Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.

This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.

"We reworked the behavior of consumer stations. Consumer stations include Habitats, Casinos, Biotopes, Military Outposts, Shipyards, Equipment Docks, and some more. Those stations buy goods and use them up, making them an important economic final sink for trading goods. Those stations use up (read: destroy) goods continuously, so at first we thought it would be unfair to have players pay for the goods delivered to those stations. But this led to valuable goods being delivered to player stations for free, giving players a lot of free money as they can just pick them up from their stations. We've now come up with a different system where those stations no longer get goods for free and still use them up, but without giving players a disadvantage."

• Consumer Stations (ie. Habitats, Casinos, Repair Docks, Research Stations, etc.) must now buy goods instead of getting them for free
• The population on consumer stations buys the goods from the player before using them up
• The population pays 105% of the buy price, netting the player a 5% profit
• Removed transaction tax from player owned Trading Post
• Player Trading Post buys and sells goods regularly, instead of getting/selling them for free and giving players a transaction tax

"We did a necessary compiler update on linux - this is mostly relevant to linux server hosters that use older systems like Ubuntu 14.04 and the like. This may lead to errors with missing libraries, please see the instructions on how to fix the problem on your system if you can't run an upgrade."

• Changed compiler from gcc 4.8 to gcc 5
• This may lead to issues with missing libraries older linux systems. Please refer to this manual on how to fix it:
• https://wiki.avorion.net/Setting_up_a_server#Ubuntu_14.04

• Added a display for how many inventory slots are occupied

• [UBR] Fixed a crash in multi-line text boxes when moving cursor to the left

Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.

This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.

• Added 'wasRepaired' flag to onBlocksAdded callback, in front of the variable argument list 'blockIndices'

• [UBR] Fixed an issue where transform, match block and shape shortcut keys could get stuck
  
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where block-by-block repairs were terminated after the first block
  
• Fixed a server hang related to multithreading
  
• Fixed an issue in trading overview
  
• Fixed an issue with spawning of head hunters while not in a ship
  
• Fixed an issue with stolen cargo warning while not in a ship

Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.

This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.

"We added several QoL improvements to the new building UI that were brought to us through user feedback. We also want to make the new UI a little more self-explanatory."

• Quick Selection in building mode is now saved for each galaxy
• The last state of the quick selection is now saved on the server side
• Holding space now shows the saved designs window if the template brush is active
• Blocks, Turrets, Colors and Saved Designs windows are now centered when activated by their respective hotkey
• Added "Space" hotkey tooltip to the appropriate button in building mode
• Color, Block, Turret or Design windows are now hidden again when another of them is shown via hotkey
• Items can now be removed from the quick selection in building mode by dragging them out
• Added keyboard shortcuts for toggling mirror planes
• Transform/match block/shape checkboxes are no longer unchecked by keyboard hotkey
• Added default blocks for craft and turret building to quick selection bar
• Grid size and scale step can now be changed by scrolling while hovering the respective button
• Added numbers to quick bar in building mode

• Added translatable strings for "¢" where needed and added translation
• Sliders can now be moved by scrolling

• Fixed several server hangs
• Fixed several server crashes related to multithreading
• Fixed a crash when reading/writing global script values
• [UBR] Transform Block mode is now disabled when changing back to blocks from another tool
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where too many undo steps were necessary when coloring blocks
• [UBR] Transforming blocks now leaves the color untouched if no color is selected
• [UBR] Fixed Turret Factory Supplier's goods being all "nil" on reload
• [UBR] Fixed Exotic+ Avorion turrets dropping in starter regions

Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.

This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.

"IMPORTANT: This concerns existing saves! The galaxy generation algorithms have changed and sectors visited BEFORE the update still have the factories of the old algorithms. This means that the supply/demand prediction will mismatch around those sectors. You can fix this easily by simply visiting those sectors. Their factories will be updated into the galactic trade network and supply/demand prediction around them will correct itself. But, if you've been thinking about starting a new playthrough anyways, now would be a good time."

"In order to make these changes happen, we had to do some major restructuring of the procedural generation algorithms. We are now able to reliably predict most of the content of a sector, without having to generate it (thus saving a lot of performance). This is probably mostly important for modders, but it's going to help us a lot with development in the future. Yay!"

• Implemented reliable prediction of what will be generated in a specific sector
• Implemented reliable prediction of which productions (and thus factories) there will be in a specific sector

"We revamped the economy so that factories create a perceptible supply and demand. This supply and demand is regional and will directly influence the prices of goods. High demand -> low prices and vice versa. Most importantly: You can influence this by founding or destroying factories!"

• Factories create a supply and demand area of 25 sectors around them for the goods they require and produce
• Consumers create a (less strong) demand area for the goods they buy
• Sellers create a (less strong) supply area for the goods they sell
• Supply and demand influences the prices of goods
• When supply is high, prices drop
• When demand is high, prices rise
• Impact of a factory on supply/demand doesn't influence their own prices
• Added querying of supply and demand to Trading System Upgrade (details: see below)
• Supply and demand rates influence the prices of all stations in a sector
• Founding (or destroying, hehe) a factory or mine will impact supply and demand (and thus prices) of nearby sectors
• Added tags to goods: Basic, Industrial, Technology, Military, Consumer
• Added specialized regions where mostly Industrial, Technology, Military, Consumer goods are produced
• Added specialized sectors that produce only a single good to mix up supply and demand
• Trading Posts no longer buy a random range of goods, but instead a sample of goods that are being traded in the nearby vicinity
• Goods that are traded a lot (high supply and demand) have a higher chance to appear in a Trading Post
• Trading Posts now both buy and sell the same goods
• Added a turret factory supplier station that sells turret parts

"With the prices of goods being influenced by supply and demand, we want to shift balance more towards that and away from the randomness that it was before. We also made some changes to some goods and how and where they're available to enable a healthy economy."

• Changed the range of goods that consumer stations buy to create a more reliable supply & demand
• Reduced factory lowest and highest personal, random price factors (+/-30% to +/-10%)
• Reduced influence of relations on trading good prices (15% to 5%)
• Trading good prices are now dependent on supply and demand in surrouding regions (+/-30%)
• Prices are now influenced as follows:
• Stock: -10% to +10%, full vs. empty
• Relations: 0% to +/-5%, neutral vs. allied (plus/minus in favor of player)
• Relations: +/-90% to 0%, hostile vs. neutral (plus/minus not in favor of player)
• Supply Demand: -30% to +30%, depending on high demand/supply (high supply: prices drop, high demand: prices rise)
• Factory Base Price: -10% to +10% (random for AI factions, configurable for player)
• Factory base price influences the general price range of your factory (buy AND sell prices)
• Factory base price influences the amount of buying/selling traders that will visit your station
• High base price: More traders that sell at your station, Low base price: More traders that buy at your station
• Note: The base price mechanic was not changed, it's just listed for the sake of clarity
• Increased size of Energy Cell to 1.0 (from 0.5)
• Decreased size of Water (1 to 0.35)
• Reduced amount of Energy Cells produced in a single batch (40 to 25)
• Reduced randomness of turrets and upgrades
• Force turrets now vary less in power and scale with tech (can now be up to 5x as strong as before)
• Reduced price of Shield Reinforcer and Transporter Software
• Increased loot dropped by big pirate ships
• Increased time between headhunter spawns

"We're changing the difficulty settings. We got a lot of feedback telling us that the game is too easy, and we saw that the current 'Insane' difficulty is actually more of an 'Expert' mode. At the same time we know that we have a few difficulties that seem arbitrary. We're fixing this now. Please note that a lot of these changes are still experimental, and we will adjust them based on community feedback."

• Renamed "Difficult" to "Expert", "Hard" to "Hardcore"
• "Expert" is going to be the same as the current "Insane" difficulty
• Adjusted AI ship damage reduction (which is there to make one-to-many-ships combat more fair and fun):
• Beginner: Damage Reduction remains at 97.5%
• Easy: Reduction down (92.5% to 90%)
• Normal: Reduction down (80% to 70%)
• Veteran: Reduction down (60% to 40%)
• Expert, Hardcore, Insane: No more reduction
• Normal & Below:
• Protection against too bad initial relations with immediate neighbors
• Ship blocks are protected from breaking off as long as the ship's total HP are above a certain threshold
• No breaking until ship reaches HP: Veteran: 80%, Normal: 40%, Easy: 20%, Beginner: 0%
• Veteran & Up
• Meaner Enemies: Enemies will take more advantage of long range weapons (should they have any)
• Increasingly improved chance to get a better loot drop rarity
• Expert & Up
• Mean Enemies: Enemies will take full advantage of long range weapons (should they have any) and stay at a distance if they can
• Other factions will have increasingly worse initial relations to the player
• Your own ship's blocks can break immediately on hit, not just after its health going below a certain threshold
• Hardcore & Insane
• Perma-Destruction: No Reconstruction Tokens, no Insurance. Once your ship was destroyed, it's gone for good - including upgrades & turrets
• Once you switched down from Hardcore or Insane, going back up is no longer possible
• Added detailed explanations in menus about the exact impact of the various difficulty levels
• Game difficulty is adjusted on first load, to avoid unpleasant surprises

"This thing just gained a lot more meaning. Use it to view a sector's supply and demand and find good locations to found your factories!"

• A Trading System of Exceptional or higher can query local supply, demand and prices of goods from the galactic trade network
• Exceptional: Query supply and demand in current sector
• Exotic: Query supply and demand of nearby 15 sectors (visible on Galaxy Map)
• Legendary: Query supply and demand of nearby 25 sectors (visible on Galaxy Map)
• When using an Exotic or Legendary Upgrade, you get new UI elements on the Galaxy Map
• Prices can be viewed as a coloring of nearby sectors from cold (-30%) to hot (+30%)
• Supply and demand can be viewed as a coloring of nearby sectors from cold (high demand) to hot (high supply)
• Improved tooltips of Trading System Upgrade
• Added a detailed supply/demand overview tab for current sector

"This menu definitely needed some love. You can now see a detailed overview of what's going on, and how much money it already made (or burned)."

• Reworked layout of Configuration UI
• Renamed "Price Margin" slider to "Base Price" as that's what it actually does
• Added an exact outline about the factories' production, including all goods and parallel productions
• Added overview about influence on prices through nearby supply/demand
• Added overview about money gained/invested by the factory
• Added many tooltips for better clarity

"This is a feature we have long wanted and it basically came for free with the reliable prediction of sectors. Enjoy!"

• You can now buy maps of a faction's territory at their Equipment Docks
• There are maps for a single quadrant of a faction's territory or their entire territory (allies only)
• Traveler's Quadrant Map: Reveals gate connections in the faction quadrant
• Explorer's Quadrant Map: Reveals faction sectors in the faction quadrant
• Faction Quadrant Map: Reveals all sectors, including stations in the faction quadrant
• Faction Territory Map: Reveals all sectors, including stations in the entire faction territory

"Upgrades now stack, we removed the $ sign for the ¢ sign (because - ¢redits), and made some smaller adjustments & improvements to the UI."

• System upgrades can now be stacked in inventory
• Added the ability to highlight supply & demand and price devitations on Galaxy Map
• Replaced textual occurrences of "Credits" and "$" with the "¢" character
• Renamed "Organize Goods" mini-mission to more correct "Procure Goods"
• Loading Screen: Added new hints and reworked hints to fit new economy system
• Implemented scrolling by typing in ComboBoxes
• General improvements to trading UI formatting
• Trading goods are now sorted alphabetically in UI
• Increased icon size of useable items and vanilla items
• Sorting by rarity no longer separates upgrades and turrets from each other
• Reduced size of top-right buttons
• Buttons added via script are now highlighted until they're mouseovered
• Ships Tab is now sorted by Entity Type (Station vs. Ship)
• Added warning message when player sells his ship at scrapyard
• Player is now moved into drone before their ship is sold at scrapyard
• Added a server-global message when Wormhole Guardian respawns

• [Server:]set/getGlobal() functions now support tables
• Moved several sector scripts to a new "sector/background/" folder
• Added more tags to civil ships to distinguish freighters, miners and traders
• Renamed global function "getSectorSeed" to "SectorSeed"
• Renamed global function "getGameSeed" to "GameSeed"
• GameSettings: Added permaDestructionEnabled property
• GalaxyMap: Added new properties to control visualization
• GalaxyMap: Added a new custom color layer for showing custom colors
• Rect: Added a "center" property
• Increased the amount of async lua worker threads to 4
• Renamed "onEntityCreate" sector callback to "onEntityCreated"
• SectorView: Extended API a lot
• GameInput: Added various functions for key pressing/releasing checks
• Rarity: Added a "type" property
• Galaxy: Added aiFactionExists() allianceExists() playerExists() functions
• Galaxy: Server-Global Scripts can now be added to Galaxy
• This moves data/scripts/server/server.lua to data/scripts/galaxy/server.lua
• Added some docs to init.lua scripts
• Added docs for callbacks still happening after callbacks were unregistered

• Adjusted warning message when scripts can no longer be found to not confuse players with minor errors

"As always, bug fixes marked with [UBR] stem from bug reports we got from users. Thank you so much for helping and keep it up! :)"

• Corrected "Aluminium" to "Aluminum"
• Corrected "Silicium" to "Silicon"
• Fixed an issue where Oil Rigs would not count as mines
• Fixed an issue where Mineral Extractors would be counted as mines
• Fixed an issue where "Petty" rarity fighters and turrets were displayed as "Common"
• Fixed an issue where cargo and crew shuttles were displayed with "Petty" rarity
• Fixed several issues with factories not buying/selling from your own ships when buy/sell from others is unchecked
• [UBR] Fixed several issues with AI ships docking
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where relations of a faction to itself were changeable
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where Docks were highlighted for docking when inside station
• [UBR] Fixed an issue with head hunter attacks happening in neutral zones
• [UBR] Improved behavior of scrapyard reputation loss when fighting in a scrapyard sector and hitting the just-destroyed ship
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where there were smuggling controls while in your own sector
• [UBR] Pirates no longer attack their own sectors
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where Fighter AI doesn't attack newly turned hostile entities (i.e. Xsotan) when on defend
• [UBR] Improved behavior of player-owned, AI-piloted ships firing torpedoes
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where inventory selections flickered when hovering recent items
• Fixed some issues with wording of several texts
• Fixed some hangs in server during script callbacks

The building UI structure has remained mostly unchanged over the years, getting more complicated over time. Feedback from you and our experience at GamesCom, Dreamhack etc. confirms that it has a steep learning curve. To tackle this problem we went back to the drawing board. Almost every element of the UI has been reviewed with usability, discoverability and meaningful placement in mind. A lot of work has been put into improving the building UI and we hope you like it!

We brought together what belongs together. All the tools are now listed on the left: Blocks, Turrets, Colors and so on. We implemented advanced features and convenience functions, e.g. transforming all selected blocks with one click.

The stats on the right were tidied up as well. By default only the most importat stats are shown. Each category can be shown or hidden. The influence of crew and energy problems and installed Systems can now be configured. This means you can see the final stats of your massive ship before you have its complete crew on board.

Furthermore, the performance of building operations was greatly improved on both server and client.

• Entity: Renamed getPlan() to getFullPlanCopy() to improve understanding of the function's performance impact
  
• Plan: Added getNumBlocks() function

• [UBR] Fixed an issue where players couldn't enter values to negotiate with factions when playing creative
  
• Fixed a crash when a player is inside a craft that's not his nor his alliance's
  
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where "Transform Block" wasn't applied when selecting a block
  
• Fixed a potential crash when selecting crafts in strategy mode
  
• Fixed various issues in tutorial missions

For the a detailed discussion of the new interface and the full list of all changes, check out the patch notes of the beta branch update:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/announcements/detail/1598143152348481191

"The building UI structure has remained mostly unchanged over the years, getting more complicated over time. Feedback from you and our experience at GamesCom, Dreamhack etc. confirms that it has a steep learning curve. To tackle this problem we went back to the drawing board. Almost every element of the UI has been reviewed with usability, discoverability and meaningful placement in mind. A lot of work has been put into improving the building UI and we hope you like it. There might still be some rough edges. Please let us know what you think!"

Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.

This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.

The old Building Inventory has been broken up into separate specialized windows:

"Being able to quickly find and select the desired block and material is extremely important. Also, for new players, discovering the button that opens this window should be easy."

• Added big "Blocks" button that shows the current block to the top left
• The window now always shows all the blocks
• Unavailable blocks in the current material are shaded
• Scrolling changes the material
• All available shape variations for the current block are shown below
• The blocks selection can be filtered
• Transform and Match functions can be toggled in the blocks window
• Implemented new advanced block functions:
• Select all blocks of the current type
• Transform all selected blocks

• Added big "Turrets" button below the "Blocks" button that shows the current turret
• Added "Mark Installed Turrets As Favorite" button to make them easier to find e.g. when they temporarily need to be removed from the ship

• Added big "Colors" button below the "Turrets" button that shows the current color
• Implemented new advanced color functions:
• Select by color
• Apply color to selection. With these functions color schemes can be changed quickly

• Block-by-block repairing can now be enabled by pressing the button in the top left of the repair window

• Templates have now moved to the "Saved Designs" window
• Designs can now be saved and loaded from the clipboard
• Added combobox to change the material of a design
• Added filter bar
• Workshop designs can be filtered by tag
• Designs can now be renamed

"Most of the time, always seeing the FULL stats of your ships was both overwhelming and unnecessary. To improve this we added several options for you to configure. Influence of Crew and Energy problems can be toggled, as well as the influence of System Upgrades. This means you can see the stats of your craft in full glory, even if you don't have the full crew yet."

• Stats are now configurable
• Categories can be shown or hidden
• Only the most important stats are shown by default
• Improved colors to better differentiate between minor changes and potential problems

"This is the thing at the bottom of the screen."

• The Quick Selection supports Blocks, Turrets and Designs
• It can be filled via Drag & Drop or by pressing a number when hovering a Block, Turret or Design
• The most common context-sensitive shortcuts are shown above the quick selection

• Grid Size and Scale Step can now be set via text boxes
• All View options are now combined in a small View Settings window
• Same goes for Mirroring options

"Your prayers have been heard. Building performance has been greatly improved on both server and client."

• Improved performance of the ship editor
• Greatly improved performance of multi-block operations (remove, add, colorize, change block type)
• Greatly improved performance of undo, redo and repair
• Greatly reduced the performance impact of all of those operations on the server
• Decreased network traffic for fighters and general position updates

"Modders rejoice: We finally got around to adding a search function in the Scripting API docs!"

• Added a search function for the scripting docs
• Several building-related callbacks now support batch processing. The functions in question were renamed and now have variable arguments for the affected block indices
• Renamed onBlockAdded to onBlocksAdded
• Renamed onBlockRemove to onBlocksRemove
• Renamed onBlockRemoved to onBlocksRemoved
• onBlocksRemoved now transmits all the removed blocks, including their removed orphaned children, as opposed to onBlocksRemove, which only transmits the blocks chosen to be removed by the player
• invokeFunction can now be called with script path or index
• Fixed an issue where client sector's invokeServerFunction() was directed to the player, not the sector
• Renamed runRemote[Entity,Faction,Sector]Code and invokeRemote[Entity,Faction,Sector]Function to run[...]Code and invoke[...]Function
• Improved documentation of these functions
• invokeEntityFunction now optionally accepts a table instead of two arguments name and factionIndex
• Added search function to documentation

"Bugs marked with [UBR] are user bug reports. Thanks to everyone for reporting and keep it up!"

• [UBR] Fixed an issue where turrets could be selected even if they were obscured
• [UBR] Fixed some events starting even though game is paused
• Fixed an issue with remote sector calls crashing the server
• [UBR] Crew payment timer is only reset to 0 on payment or destruction, no longer on crew leave
• [UBR] Fixed upgrades sometimes being invisible in system upgrade overview
• [UBR] Fixed some issues with ship AI and docking to stations
• Fixed possible server hangs on login
• Fixed player events starting even though game is paused
• Fixed an issue where the ship builder's safe-mode permitted deletions even if they would remove additional blocks
• Fixed potential crash when boarding

Note: We rolled out a hotfix, fixing crashes in combat and, most importantly, a crash when deleting blocks or pressing Ctrl-Z after coloring a block

• [UBR] Fixed some events starting even though game is paused
• Fixed an issue with remote sector calls crashing the server
• [UBR] Crew payment timer is only reset to 0 on payment or destruction, no longer on crew leave
• [UBR] Fixed upgrades sometimes being invisible in system upgrade overview
• [UBR] Fixed some issues with ship AI and docking to stations
• Fixed possible server hangs on login

We always strive to make Avorion more accessible for new and returning players. To achieve this goal we have designed new tutorial missions. These missions will be unlocked during the game and explain more complicated mechanics such as how to use R-Mining Lasers, Torpedoes, Fighters and how to coordinate your fleet.

In addition to the tutorial missions, long-term quests are introduced. They are given to the player by the adventurer after completing the first dialog and guide the player through the galaxy.

As usual this update also contains a bunch of bug fixes. See the full patchnotes here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/partnerevents/view/1566616051169010324