Hi Galactic Survivalists!

The Alpha 8.0 Experimental version is already shimmering on the horizon - time to update you on our progress again!

1. Solar System Generator
The "SSG" is making good progress. The most recent version now includes a full preview for planets, orbits and the solar system!



For planets and orbits, we not only added indicators of ore deposits/asteroids and POIs, but you can now also see all NPC spawn points as well!

(each little dot represents a spawn point and the red area is the new starter biome)

2. Planets
In the past week we made three major improvements:
2.1 New terrain with considerably increased view distance

(left: new, right: old)

We still have to decide about the actual view distance from a gameplay perspective. As you can see, the new terrain would allow for a VERY huge view distance)

2.2 Red and green wall removal
We improved the removal of the red and green walls (still needs testing). In the below screenshot, we are in the far north (actually the sun never sets here) beyond the former red wall and we are looking north. Pre-Alpha 8, this area was blocked. If you continue in this direction you will actually cross the north pole.


2.3 The outside view of the planets in the orbit now looks much better

...and also the 3d planet map has better visuals:


3. New food and item drop system
As promised, we can now have a more closer look on the new food and item-drop system, you will test in the upcoming Experimental version.

3a. New item drop groups
As explained in the last dev blog we changed the single-purpose food & item drops system into a basic set of groups.

- PlantProtein
- NaturalSweetener
- Grain
- Berries
- Fruit
- Mushroom
- NaturalStimulant
- Vegetables
- Spice

Each harvestable plant in the game, that is relevant to a food item or meal, will drop an item that is named like one of these groups. For example: Corn and Wheat plants will get you GRAIN.

There are other plants, that did not see a change yet, like Varon Root still drops Varon Roots, but this might change as we explore categories and new food groups in the future! We are of course open to any suggestions on that matter. ;)

3b. Alternative ingredient crafting
In addition to these first set of groups (might be expanded in the future as we add more plants and planets!) we still have a few collectibles

- Egg
- Milk
- Meat

There is a slight change as well - or better: new alternatives. Having those is often a key, for example if you are in desperate need of a collectible and you simply cannot find it or you ran out of ammo in the c(h)ase for meat.

Whatever the reason is, we thought it is a good idea, to add a few test cases in Alpha 8, like being able to craft Meat and Milk from PlantProtein, Vegetables (Starch!) and Water. Pretty much like it is done already today in the real world. Of course this is the 25th century way doing it. There are a few more recipes added like this (like PlantProtein can be extracted also from Vegetables, etc).

Eggs are the only exception from this new rule, as there is no logic replacement for them yet. As an alternative to hunting the dinos, we added little nests you can pick up the eggs from.

As a side effect, we now can officially claim that you can fill your food bar without having to HARM A SINGLE ANIMAL in the game. :D

Final word on the new food and drop groups: Bear with us that we do not reveal all the recipes yet, as they might still change, but as we said, you can now also SELF-GROW ALL of the ingredients you need for any food item in your growing plots!

We also made sure the categories are that flexible, so we can have all the ingredients dropping from wild plants - at least for the starter worlds. The plants dropping for example BERRIES of course might be different on a temperate world compared to an icy or desert world.

Full overview of the items, currently needed to craft all the new food AND medical templates:


(all icons are work-in-progress)

4. Status effects and their remedies

While the change of the food and drop items is pretty straight forward, the new status effects and the medical items needed to cure them, have seen a nearly full rework for 8.0.

Before you look at the full overview screenshot below, which contains nearly all status effects that can affect your player avatar (We just left out a few that are still work-in-progress or questionable if they will make it into 8.0), a quick info about the new status effects.

4a. Staged effects
In the old system, most of the status effects were isolated and had only very few connections like the Parasite 1-2-3 stages. This is now more of a standard.
- There are up to THREE stages to each status effect
- The Stage-1 effects are fairly easy to cure
- The following stages are more demanding and show more severe effects (also spawning side-effects)
- The initial status effects have a fairly long duration. The duration is significantly reduced with each stage, what means: if you do not take care early on, you can be in serious trouble soon.
- There are a few "terminal diseases" that will not convert to another effect (Stage 3) and are very deadly (WiP Rule-of-thumbs: you can currently survive up to 100 real time seconds from full health)
- The individual diseases of stage 1 and 2 are not that deadly as in 7.x, but certain status effects will start other effects or if you cure them, they will fall back to a lower stage instead of being fully healed.

4b. Branches and medical items
To handle the medical items typology, needed to cure the new diseases, we split the status effects into few very distinct "branches", which are colored accordingly in the overview below.
- Antibotics
- Antitoxin
- Antiparasite
- Antiradiation
- Bones
- Temperature

Except for temperature (which is cured by food, beverages and so on), each branch also represents the medical item you need. Example: For the "Antibiotics" branch, you use Antibiotic Ointment, Pills and Injections.

Speaking of this, the STAGES have a simple and straight-forward logic which type of medical item is used for any status effect:

Stage 1 = Ointments
Stage 2 = Pills
Stage 3 = Injections



4c. New medkits
As we want to offer alternatives here as well - and in order to not overfill the inventory in mid- and late game - we also added three types of Medkits that are subsummizing the effects and medical items for each stage of a branch.

That means:
- With one of these kits, you do not need to carry around pills and injections and ointments for a branch, but just one kit.
- Each kit is also offering a considerable health-points boost
- Each kit does not cost the same amount of ingredients as the individual remedies combined would cost you, but is up to 50% more efficient!
- In return, the crafting of medical kits takes much longer.

The new medkits are set up as follows: (Work-in-progress!)

- Trauma Kit = addresses all status effects coming from the Antibiotics and Bones branch
- AntiToxin Kit = takes care of the Antitoxin branch
- AntiParasite/Radiation Kit = combines anti-radiation and parasites remedies
- Regeneration Booster = this not a real kit, but it is an easier-to-craft (compared to the kits) and non-perishable way to carry around a specialized "health points regeneration"-item.



Any ideas for better kit-names? Send us your suggestions! :)

Yours,
Empyrion Dev Team

Hi Galactic Survivalists!

The Alpha 8.0 Experimental version is already shimmering on the horizon - time to update you on our progress again!

1. Solar System Generator
The "SSG" is making good progress. The most recent version now includes a full preview for planets, orbits and the solar system!



For planets and orbits, we not only added indicators of ore deposits/asteroids and POIs, but you can now also see all NPC spawn points as well!

(each little dot represents a spawn point and the red area is the new starter biome)

2. Planets
In the past week we made three major improvements:
2.1 New terrain with considerably increased view distance

(left: new, right: old)

We still have to decide about the actual view distance from a gameplay perspective. As you can see, the new terrain would allow for a VERY huge view distance)

2.2 Red and green wall removal
We improved the removal of the red and green walls (still needs testing). In the below screenshot, we are in the far north (actually the sun never sets here) beyond the former red wall and we are looking north. Pre-Alpha 8, this area was blocked. If you continue in this direction you will actually cross the north pole.


2.3 The outside view of the planets in the orbit now looks much better

...and also the 3d planet map has better visuals:


3. New food and item drop system
As promised, we can now have a more closer look on the new food and item-drop system, you will test in the upcoming Experimental version.

3a. New item drop groups
As explained in the last dev blog we changed the single-purpose food & item drops system into a basic set of groups.

- PlantProtein
- NaturalSweetener
- Grain
- Berries
- Fruit
- Mushroom
- NaturalStimulant
- Vegetables
- Spice

Each harvestable plant in the game, that is relevant to a food item or meal, will drop an item that is named like one of these groups. For example: Corn and Wheat plants will get you GRAIN.

There are other plants, that did not see a change yet, like Varon Root still drops Varon Roots, but this might change as we explore categories and new food groups in the future! We are of course open to any suggestions on that matter. ;)

3b. Alternative ingredient crafting
In addition to these first set of groups (might be expanded in the future as we add more plants and planets!) we still have a few collectibles

- Egg
- Milk
- Meat

There is a slight change as well - or better: new alternatives. Having those is often a key, for example if you are in desperate need of a collectible and you simply cannot find it or you ran out of ammo in the c(h)ase for meat.

Whatever the reason is, we thought it is a good idea, to add a few test cases in Alpha 8, like being able to craft Meat and Milk from PlantProtein, Vegetables (Starch!) and Water. Pretty much like it is done already today in the real world. Of course this is the 25th century way doing it. There are a few more recipes added like this (like PlantProtein can be extracted also from Vegetables, etc).

Eggs are the only exception from this new rule, as there is no logic replacement for them yet. As an alternative to hunting the dinos, we added little nests you can pick up the eggs from.

As a side effect, we now can officially claim that you can fill your food bar without having to HARM A SINGLE ANIMAL in the game. :D

Final word on the new food and drop groups: Bear with us that we do not reveal all the recipes yet, as they might still change, but as we said, you can now also SELF-GROW ALL of the ingredients you need for any food item in your growing plots!

We also made sure the categories are that flexible, so we can have all the ingredients dropping from wild plants - at least for the starter worlds. The plants dropping for example BERRIES of course might be different on a temperate world compared to an icy or desert world.

Full overview of the items, currently needed to craft all the new food AND medical templates:


(all icons are work-in-progress)

4. Status effects and their remedies

While the change of the food and drop items is pretty straight forward, the new status effects and the medical items needed to cure them, have seen a nearly full rework for 8.0.

Before you look at the full overview screenshot below, which contains nearly all status effects that can affect your player avatar (We just left out a few that are still work-in-progress or questionable if they will make it into 8.0), a quick info about the new status effects.

4a. Staged effects
In the old system, most of the status effects were isolated and had only very few connections like the Parasite 1-2-3 stages. This is now more of a standard.
- There are up to THREE stages to each status effect
- The Stage-1 effects are fairly easy to cure
- The following stages are more demanding and show more severe effects (also spawning side-effects)
- The initial status effects have a fairly long duration. The duration is significantly reduced with each stage, what means: if you do not take care early on, you can be in serious trouble soon.
- There are a few "terminal diseases" that will not convert to another effect (Stage 3) and are very deadly (WiP Rule-of-thumbs: you can currently survive up to 100 real time seconds from full health)
- The individual diseases of stage 1 and 2 are not that deadly as in 7.x, but certain status effects will start other effects or if you cure them, they will fall back to a lower stage instead of being fully healed.

4b. Branches and medical items
To handle the medical items typology, needed to cure the new diseases, we split the status effects into few very distinct "branches", which are colored accordingly in the overview below.
- Antibotics
- Antitoxin
- Antiparasite
- Antiradiation
- Bones
- Temperature

Except for temperature (which is cured by food, beverages and so on), each branch also represents the medical item you need. Example: For the "Antibiotics" branch, you use Antibiotic Ointment, Pills and Injections.

Speaking of this, the STAGES have a simple and straight-forward logic which type of medical item is used for any status effect:

Stage 1 = Ointments
Stage 2 = Pills
Stage 3 = Injections



4c. New medkits
As we want to offer alternatives here as well - and in order to not overfill the inventory in mid- and late game - we also added three types of Medkits that are subsummizing the effects and medical items for each stage of a branch.

That means:
- With one of these kits, you do not need to carry around pills and injections and ointments for a branch, but just one kit.
- Each kit is also offering a considerable health-points boost
- Each kit does not cost the same amount of ingredients as the individual remedies combined would cost you, but is up to 50% more efficient!
- In return, the crafting of medical kits takes much longer.

The new medkits are set up as follows: (Work-in-progress!)

- Trauma Kit = addresses all status effects coming from the Antibiotics and Bones branch
- AntiToxin Kit = takes care of the Antitoxin branch
- AntiParasite/Radiation Kit = combines anti-radiation and parasites remedies
- Regeneration Booster = this not a real kit, but it is an easier-to-craft (compared to the kits) and non-perishable way to carry around a specialized "health points regeneration"-item.



Any ideas for better kit-names? Send us your suggestions! :)

Yours,
Empyrion Dev Team

Hi Galactic Survivalists!

Weekend is coming, so time again for another progress report on Alpha 8.0! :)

We are still working full throttle on our Alpha 8.0 main topic "larger planets", but we can now say that the finish line is already visible. Said that, it might take still some time until the first Experimental version will hit. One of the reasons is, that the new planet generation leads to the need of rebuilding a major portion of all the adjacent mechanics, from placing plants down to temperature scaling - which needs to be readjusted from the ground up again. Same applies to the SolarSystemGenerator (SSG-editor), as these two topics are closely entangled with each other.

While the new planets become more and more tangible, we made progress in a lot of other areas as well.

1. New Game start
In the last dev Blog, you had a lot of questions about the new game start, suit constructor and sleeping. We will try to answer some of those, although this is still a work-in-progress topic.

- Sleeping -

Q: Are there limitations, like not being able to sleep when I am followed by enemies?
A: We are currently working on the details - especially on those conditionals what will or will not work or happen while you sleep. We'll update the details in a dev blog as soon as they are set in stone.

Q: How does sleeping work and where can I sleep?
A: For now only the Escape Pod has this feature. If this mechanic works, we can (and will) add the feature to other devices, like beds.

Q: Does sleeping work in Multiplayer or Coop as well?
A: No, this will remain an exclusive feature for single player in the near future. As a side note: To make this feature work in Multiplayer, ALL player would need to go to "bed" at the same time, as we cannot advance time if a player is still "active". We might possibly find a solution for this in the future, maybe for small-groups MP like Coop, but until then, this will remain a single player only feature

Q: When forwarding time aka 'sleeping' in MP does not work, what about having a 'save logoff' instead?
A: Yes, we already considered 'saving' your re-entry by using a Clone Chamber or similar. This is already on the list for future updates, but not in the scope for the initial Alpha 8.0 as a lot of side-effects that result from this need to be taken into account (like what happens if the ship is destroyed or captured or the device is removed and so on...).

- Suit Constructor -

Q: What can I do with the Suit Constructor?
A: We are currently evaluating what makes sense to add. We do not want to replace the Survival Constructor or move it just into the suit. Details are currently worked out, as the also take into account the latest changes to food recipes and new tech given at game start (Survival Tool)

Q: What is the Survival Tool?
A: This is a little helper that can be produced free of cost in your Suit Constructor. You can break some stones for ore and it has a low-power defense mode to scare away animals, but it is not suitable for a real fight. The Survival Tool is meant to be used in the very early game and situations where you have lost all your stuff and need to start over. It is not a replacement for proper weapons or drills.

Q: Does the Suit Constructor drain energy?
A: Most likely not - at least not in the Alpha 8.0. This is pretty much subject to change in the future when the overall topic of 'Suit energy consumption' will be addressed (also relates to Light, NV, Boosters etc).

2. Food Templates and Ingredients drop rework

In the last blog, we indicated that we will change the way how food templates and ingredients are handled.

The primary goals are
- all primary food items should be craftable form self-growable plants (excluding templates that need meat or eggs)
- all primary food items should be craftable on all starter planets without having to leave the planet
- all food items should make sense in certain use cases, what means having distinct benefits in some, but not all areas of food, health, stamina.

Now, there here comes the tricky part.

Right now, each and every plant is dropping exactly ONE specific item. Tomato drops Tomato, Pumpkin drops Pumpkin, Wheat drops Wheat, Corn drops Corn, Wormplant drops Alien Honey..you get the point. Same is true for the harvestable-only plants. If we want a playfield to offer a certain ingredient, we would always need to place the plant, which leads to the appearance of the same plants on different planets..or the inavailability of certain meals.

That's where the change happens: Instead of dropping unique items like Pumpkin, Tomato and so on, this plant-group now drops "Vegetables". Pearthing and Space Oranges are now dropped as Fruit. The templates will then ask for Vegetables and not specifically for Tomato or Pumpkin anymore.

This opens up other possibilities: Alien plants like Bulbshroom or the EggPlant now also can drop Vegetables, but we can freely place them in the biome where thy fit and on the planet they should appear without loosing the availability of a certain meal.

For the farmers, this opens up the possibilities that you can choose from a larger range of plants that provide you with the needed ingredients. As different plants now drop the same ingredient, we will balance those around drop amount and growing time to make them distinct.

More info coming in one of the next dev blogs.

On a side note: we will use the same approach also for medical templates.

3. Art Department

Last, but not least, our Art guys have something cooking for you.

Commander Chair:


Fallen logs for swamp biome:


New Alien plant:


Heavy pressurized window set (WIP):




New sentry gun (WIP):


New railings/catwalks (WIP):


Enjoy your weekend!

Empyrion Dev Team

Hi Galactic Survivalists!

Weekend is coming, so time again for another progress report on Alpha 8.0! :)

We are still working full throttle on our Alpha 8.0 main topic "larger planets", but we can now say that the finish line is already visible. Said that, it might take still some time until the first Experimental version will hit. One of the reasons is, that the new planet generation leads to the need of rebuilding a major portion of all the adjacent mechanics, from placing plants down to temperature scaling - which needs to be readjusted from the ground up again. Same applies to the SolarSystemGenerator (SSG-editor), as these two topics are closely entangled with each other.

While the new planets become more and more tangible, we made progress in a lot of other areas as well.

1. New Game start
In the last dev Blog, you had a lot of questions about the new game start, suit constructor and sleeping. We will try to answer some of those, although this is still a work-in-progress topic.

- Sleeping -

Q: Are there limitations, like not being able to sleep when I am followed by enemies?
A: We are currently working on the details - especially on those conditionals what will or will not work or happen while you sleep. We'll update the details in a dev blog as soon as they are set in stone.

Q: How does sleeping work and where can I sleep?
A: For now only the Escape Pod has this feature. If this mechanic works, we can (and will) add the feature to other devices, like beds.

Q: Does sleeping work in Multiplayer or Coop as well?
A: No, this will remain an exclusive feature for single player in the near future. As a side note: To make this feature work in Multiplayer, ALL player would need to go to "bed" at the same time, as we cannot advance time if a player is still "active". We might possibly find a solution for this in the future, maybe for small-groups MP like Coop, but until then, this will remain a single player only feature

Q: When forwarding time aka 'sleeping' in MP does not work, what about having a 'save logoff' instead?
A: Yes, we already considered 'saving' your re-entry by using a Clone Chamber or similar. This is already on the list for future updates, but not in the scope for the initial Alpha 8.0 as a lot of side-effects that result from this need to be taken into account (like what happens if the ship is destroyed or captured or the device is removed and so on...).

- Suit Constructor -

Q: What can I do with the Suit Constructor?
A: We are currently evaluating what makes sense to add. We do not want to replace the Survival Constructor or move it just into the suit. Details are currently worked out, as the also take into account the latest changes to food recipes and new tech given at game start (Survival Tool)

Q: What is the Survival Tool?
A: This is a little helper that can be produced free of cost in your Suit Constructor. You can break some stones for ore and it has a low-power defense mode to scare away animals, but it is not suitable for a real fight. The Survival Tool is meant to be used in the very early game and situations where you have lost all your stuff and need to start over. It is not a replacement for proper weapons or drills.

Q: Does the Suit Constructor drain energy?
A: Most likely not - at least not in the Alpha 8.0. This is pretty much subject to change in the future when the overall topic of 'Suit energy consumption' will be addressed (also relates to Light, NV, Boosters etc).

2. Food Templates and Ingredients drop rework

In the last blog, we indicated that we will change the way how food templates and ingredients are handled.

The primary goals are
- all primary food items should be craftable form self-growable plants (excluding templates that need meat or eggs)
- all primary food items should be craftable on all starter planets without having to leave the planet
- all food items should make sense in certain use cases, what means having distinct benefits in some, but not all areas of food, health, stamina.

Now, there here comes the tricky part.

Right now, each and every plant is dropping exactly ONE specific item. Tomato drops Tomato, Pumpkin drops Pumpkin, Wheat drops Wheat, Corn drops Corn, Wormplant drops Alien Honey..you get the point. Same is true for the harvestable-only plants. If we want a playfield to offer a certain ingredient, we would always need to place the plant, which leads to the appearance of the same plants on different planets..or the inavailability of certain meals.

That's where the change happens: Instead of dropping unique items like Pumpkin, Tomato and so on, this plant-group now drops "Vegetables". Pearthing and Space Oranges are now dropped as Fruit. The templates will then ask for Vegetables and not specifically for Tomato or Pumpkin anymore.

This opens up other possibilities: Alien plants like Bulbshroom or the EggPlant now also can drop Vegetables, but we can freely place them in the biome where thy fit and on the planet they should appear without loosing the availability of a certain meal.

For the farmers, this opens up the possibilities that you can choose from a larger range of plants that provide you with the needed ingredients. As different plants now drop the same ingredient, we will balance those around drop amount and growing time to make them distinct.

More info coming in one of the next dev blogs.

On a side note: we will use the same approach also for medical templates.

3. Art Department

Last, but not least, our Art guys have something cooking for you.

Commander Chair:


Fallen logs for swamp biome:


New Alien plant:


Heavy pressurized window set (WIP):




New sentry gun (WIP):


New railings/catwalks (WIP):


Enjoy your weekend!

Empyrion Dev Team

A preview of our new terrain shader

Hi Galactic Survivalists!

We are a bit behind schedule with our blog post about the new Solar System Generator because we are currently reworking parts of it. Thus, we thought it does not make sense to reveal info which is already outdated in the very moment we post it.

However, don't worry - more info about the new tool for easily creating your very personal solar system will be published in the near future. For example on how to utilize the new "planet tilt" setting, which will allow for different day/night cycle length on the northern and southern hemisphere of a planet!

Instead of a walk-through of the "SSG" (Solar System Generator), we want to provide you with some quick info about our progress on some of the other, more gameplay-relevant features!

Let's roll :)

1. Game Start

• If you start a new default game, the new SSG system will randomly pick names from a database of around 600 playfield names. So if you start a new game with a different seed, your planets will have different names!
  
• You will be able to "sleep" in your escape pod to forward time and it will not despawn (SP only)
  
• You will have a very limited "Suit Constructor" at your disposal (slow, only the very basic items like a food item, bandages etc)
  
• We are planning to provide you with a much better survival experience as a game start. More details to come...

2. For Scenario Creators

• You can still use the system with a fixed sectors.yaml and fixed planet names!
  
• You will now have the possibility to place POIs and Ore Deposits BY BIOME!
  
• You will be able to preview the POI and resource distribution in the SSG
  
• The PDA system now offers repeatable missions!

3. For Builders

• You can now set Hotkeys for console commands. Having SI turned to off, godmode on, teleport and more can be activated at the same time with a simple hotkey click!
  
• Automated doors now have an override priority for Sensors: if you add a sensor/signal to a door, the door-integrated auto-opening will not be triggered.
  
• Devices with Sensor Input and Output fields can now send and receive signals. Before, SEND did not work as long as the device was set to listen/receive signals at the same time. Note: you cannot create blink-lights this way, because of an integrated Loop-Protection. But we will add a proper "blink lights" feature in the course of the 8.x development!

4. New Status Effects
The current status effects rarely rely on each other and do not develop into a more serious disease if not treated well or at the right time.

The new status effects system will focus on this a bit more, so not caring about an open wound, might you get to an infected wound and a serious Sepis right away.

See the current status-effects tree (Work in progress)



There are basically always 2 or 3 stages of where a "base disease" can evolve into.

The planned templates-rework for curing diseases will reflect this approach. While an easy-to-craft bandage or paste or even a hot beverage might be enough to remove the status effect in the Stage 1, the following stages might need Pills or even Injections, which will need more ingredients and time to craft.

So having the right medicine available will be much more important and we will put more focus on this in future iterations to convert the currently used "broadband heal-everything"-item approach to a more logical and specialized gameplay where certain medicals have their own purpose not shared with others. And - very important! - without making it a grind in terms of getting the ingredients needed!

Said that, to make sure you are not overwhelmed with having to search for rare ingredients on far away planets, we plan to change what and how plants and deco drops the needed stuff. This also will contribute to a changed food-template system.

We'll detail how this works in one of the next blogs - as soon as this is technically implemented and tested. ;)

Last but not least, here are some previews of the visuals improvements that will be waiting for you in Alpha 8 such as a brandnew terrain shader with amazing blending capabilities between textures, major update of decoration placement & quality & performance and much more...




Any questions? Do not hesitate and write us in the comments!

Have a great weekend!

Empyrion Dev Team

PS: Look who is back again and might play a role in the upcoming story missions ;)

(thanks to LiftPizzas for the refurbish!)

A preview of our new terrain shader

Hi Galactic Survivalists!

We are a bit behind schedule with our blog post about the new Solar System Generator because we are currently reworking parts of it. Thus, we thought it does not make sense to reveal info which is already outdated in the very moment we post it.

However, don't worry - more info about the new tool for easily creating your very personal solar system will be published in the near future. For example on how to utilize the new "planet tilt" setting, which will allow for different day/night cycle length on the northern and southern hemisphere of a planet!

Instead of a walk-through of the "SSG" (Solar System Generator), we want to provide you with some quick info about our progress on some of the other, more gameplay-relevant features!

Let's roll :)

1. Game Start

• If you start a new default game, the new SSG system will randomly pick names from a database of around 600 playfield names. So if you start a new game with a different seed, your planets will have different names!
  
• You will be able to "sleep" in your escape pod to forward time and it will not despawn (SP only)
  
• You will have a very limited "Suit Constructor" at your disposal (slow, only the very basic items like a food item, bandages etc)
  
• We are planning to provide you with a much better survival experience as a game start. More details to come...

2. For Scenario Creators

• You can still use the system with a fixed sectors.yaml and fixed planet names!
  
• You will now have the possibility to place POIs and Ore Deposits BY BIOME!
  
• You will be able to preview the POI and resource distribution in the SSG
  
• The PDA system now offers repeatable missions!

3. For Builders

• You can now set Hotkeys for console commands. Having SI turned to off, godmode on, teleport and more can be activated at the same time with a simple hotkey click!
  
• Automated doors now have an override priority for Sensors: if you add a sensor/signal to a door, the door-integrated auto-opening will not be triggered.
  
• Devices with Sensor Input and Output fields can now send and receive signals. Before, SEND did not work as long as the device was set to listen/receive signals at the same time. Note: you cannot create blink-lights this way, because of an integrated Loop-Protection. But we will add a proper "blink lights" feature in the course of the 8.x development!

4. New Status Effects
The current status effects rarely rely on each other and do not develop into a more serious disease if not treated well or at the right time.

The new status effects system will focus on this a bit more, so not caring about an open wound, might you get to an infected wound and a serious Sepis right away.

See the current status-effects tree (Work in progress)



There are basically always 2 or 3 stages of where a "base disease" can evolve into.

The planned templates-rework for curing diseases will reflect this approach. While an easy-to-craft bandage or paste or even a hot beverage might be enough to remove the status effect in the Stage 1, the following stages might need Pills or even Injections, which will need more ingredients and time to craft.

So having the right medicine available will be much more important and we will put more focus on this in future iterations to convert the currently used "broadband heal-everything"-item approach to a more logical and specialized gameplay where certain medicals have their own purpose not shared with others. And - very important! - without making it a grind in terms of getting the ingredients needed!

Said that, to make sure you are not overwhelmed with having to search for rare ingredients on far away planets, we plan to change what and how plants and deco drops the needed stuff. This also will contribute to a changed food-template system.

We'll detail how this works in one of the next blogs - as soon as this is technically implemented and tested. ;)

Last but not least, here are some previews of the visuals improvements that will be waiting for you in Alpha 8 such as a brandnew terrain shader with amazing blending capabilities between textures, major update of decoration placement & quality & performance and much more...




Any questions? Do not hesitate and write us in the comments!

Have a great weekend!

Empyrion Dev Team

PS: Look who is back again and might play a role in the upcoming story missions ;)

(thanks to LiftPizzas for the refurbish!)

Hi Galactic Survivalists,

We released a small patch on the Alpha 7 branch. Please continue to report bugs and issues here: https://empyriononline.com/threads/bug-reports-alpha-7-6.36123

Next week, we will post another "Road to Alpha 8: Development Update" where we will provide more info about the upcoming Alpha 8 release - especially the Experimental phase.

Changelog: Alpha 7.6.1 (Build 1466)

Changes:
- Optimized turrets to obtain a big performance gain when a lot of turrets are involved
- Removed the “last open“ mechanism in favor of “open log if mission is active“ if PDA is opened (e.g. open PDA with an active mission > show PDA log page)
- Changed the way how the "energy left" is calculated for a base: now we only take into account the current amount of energy in fuel tank + battery and divide it by the current consumption

Updated Akua + Omicron Playfields:
- Trading Station is now further away from enemy POIs
- Omicron: resource deposits are placed around wreckage POI
- Akua: resource deposits are closer to wreckage POI

Tutorial Update:
- Added info on how to re-read messages to some of the message popups
- Adjusted wording of some messages
- Added Alien honey to Greenhouse2 fridge

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed: Problem with huge number of drones gathering at position (0,0,0)
- Fixed: HV's getting stuck under water after going through the green wall.
- Fixed: Survival Constructor 'Allow faction access' & 'Show on map' missing from UI.
- Fixed: End of stairs can create an invisible block
- Fixed: Problem that resource asteroids did not spawn when a low amount was configured in yaml
- Fixed: After removing the capacitor, the solar panel LED's remained on until the game was reloaded
- Fixed: Problem with "ManagerShipFighter Write unknown task" warning
- Fixed: Playfield server exception spam
- Fixed: Several other internal exceptions

Updated Empyrion Admin Helper (EAH) Tool
Patch notes - 1.40.3.7
- Added: Changed Player column "Cheat" to "Warning"
- Added: Backpack Backup working for remote slave
- Added: Config Discord: Send Auto-Chat's to discord
- Added: Deposit Check (only on local tools): For now it lists all deposits and their current status. The refresh function has to be delayed till A8.0
- Added: Feedback for GetShipDown
- Added: New Items
- Added: Structure limits: Added overall limits for CV/SV/HV Player/Faction
- Added: Admin Profile: Fill automatically with all in-game admins
- Added: Player/Structure: Warp to me
- Fixed: Logs about wrong triangle count
- Fixed: To many space warnings on full backups
- Fixed: Removed Hoover vacuum cleaner and added Hover ;)
- Fixed: Structure limit: Warning sound not right. Now showing high warnings for the last 3 messages

For more details, please visit: https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-emp-admin-helper-eah-free-v1-40-0.5771/page-39#post-215938

Hi Galactic Survivalists,

We released a small patch on the Alpha 7 branch. Please continue to report bugs and issues here: https://empyriononline.com/threads/bug-reports-alpha-7-6.36123

Next week, we will post another "Road to Alpha 8: Development Update" where we will provide more info about the upcoming Alpha 8 release - especially the Experimental phase.

Changelog: Alpha 7.6.1 (Build 1466)

Changes:
- Optimized turrets to obtain a big performance gain when a lot of turrets are involved
- Removed the “last open“ mechanism in favor of “open log if mission is active“ if PDA is opened (e.g. open PDA with an active mission > show PDA log page)
- Changed the way how the "energy left" is calculated for a base: now we only take into account the current amount of energy in fuel tank + battery and divide it by the current consumption

Updated Akua + Omicron Playfields:
- Trading Station is now further away from enemy POIs
- Omicron: resource deposits are placed around wreckage POI
- Akua: resource deposits are closer to wreckage POI

Tutorial Update:
- Added info on how to re-read messages to some of the message popups
- Adjusted wording of some messages
- Added Alien honey to Greenhouse2 fridge

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed: Problem with huge number of drones gathering at position (0,0,0)
- Fixed: HV's getting stuck under water after going through the green wall.
- Fixed: Survival Constructor 'Allow faction access' & 'Show on map' missing from UI.
- Fixed: End of stairs can create an invisible block
- Fixed: Problem that resource asteroids did not spawn when a low amount was configured in yaml
- Fixed: After removing the capacitor, the solar panel LED's remained on until the game was reloaded
- Fixed: Problem with "ManagerShipFighter Write unknown task" warning
- Fixed: Playfield server exception spam
- Fixed: Several other internal exceptions

Updated Empyrion Admin Helper (EAH) Tool
Patch notes - 1.40.3.7
- Added: Changed Player column "Cheat" to "Warning"
- Added: Backpack Backup working for remote slave
- Added: Config Discord: Send Auto-Chat's to discord
- Added: Deposit Check (only on local tools): For now it lists all deposits and their current status. The refresh function has to be delayed till A8.0
- Added: Feedback for GetShipDown
- Added: New Items
- Added: Structure limits: Added overall limits for CV/SV/HV Player/Faction
- Added: Admin Profile: Fill automatically with all in-game admins
- Added: Player/Structure: Warp to me
- Fixed: Logs about wrong triangle count
- Fixed: To many space warnings on full backups
- Fixed: Removed Hoover vacuum cleaner and added Hover ;)
- Fixed: Structure limit: Warning sound not right. Now showing high warnings for the last 3 messages

For more details, please visit: https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-emp-admin-helper-eah-free-v1-40-0.5771/page-39#post-215938

Hi Galactic Survivalists!

Last week, we set up a thread where everyone had the possibility to write down questions about the upcoming larger planets. We finally found time to compile all the answers to a shiny Q&A document for your reading pleasure - to be found below ;)

What's happening behind the scenes at the moment?

While the first internal version has been released to our QA team yesterday, the dev team continues to work hard on the design and layout of the new biome system.

The new "Terrain and Biome Generator" will not only allow to distribute the biomes according to certain criteria, like temperature and humidity (Read more: https://empyriononline.com/threads/alpha-7-6-balancing-bug-fixes-and-alpha-8-info.36122/) but it will also allow to generate procedural terrains. Yes - procedural terrain generation is back (no fixed heightmap planets anymore) - in the quality of the Alpha 7 planets and maybe even better!!!

Here are some screenshots of the new terrains:








The best thing is that the "Terrain and Biome Generator" is an in-house production and can be used for creation of playfields and planets by any owner of the game. You will see it will be very easy to create new planets!

For those of you who missed the overview of the main features for Alpha 8, here we go:

- Larger Planets: increase size from the current 8x4km (32km²) up to 32*64km (2048km²) playfields!
- Updated planet-tech: biome distribution based on humidity and temperature!
- Solar System random generator: just swipe a few sliders and create a solar system on the go
- Procedural terrain generation
- Improved AI behavior (the new NPCs will behave much more natural and will better react to the players)
- New and improved threats (and possibly a new and more varied threat-progression)
- Repair-2-Blueprint
- Better Creative and Building tools

Stay tuned for another blog post about Alpha 8 soon.

Thanks for reading

Empyrion Dev team

===============

LARGER PLANETS - Questions & Answers

== Global Changes ==

Q: Will the planets that have been made before 8.0 now be unplayable or can we convert them from 7.x to 8.0 version?
A: Since we completely changed the decoration system, you will need to add the new decorations to the old heightmap planets with the help of our new editor.

Q: Will the GREEN BORDER with pathing/waypoint problems* be taken care of?
A: Yes - we intend to solve this problem.
[SIZE=3]*Game currently does not pick the shortest route for a marker that lies directly behind the green wall in front of you, but sometimes goes "around the planet"[/size]

Q: Will the larger planets remain square heightmaps wrapped around cylinders or will they be changed to spherical planets, where you can travel to the north and south poles?
A: The playfields of any planet are still rectangular maps, but we aim to improve the technical limitations (red and green wall) to a point where you will hardly notice them.

Q: Are there going to be any changes to performance that I should anticipate (such as more RAM usage, CPU usage, etc) for single player and servers?
A: The new larger planets themselves will not have a higher performance impact.


== Planet Generation ==

Q: Are main biomes treated the same like the sub-biomes now (in yaml definition, entity-distribution etc.) ?
A: Yes

Q: Will it be possible to give a size-range of the generated planets in the generator with possible biome ranges?
A: Yes

Q: Will it be possible to have more generation parameters (like amount of resource rich planets, amount of inhabited planets etc.)?
A: Yes, we will provide several parameters to control the generation of the solar system

Q: How will you handle flora and fauna if the tool you have developed allows complete random and custom planets to be made (or an entire solar system)?
A: Fauna and flora distribution is handled as before, but is much more convenient with the new generator.

Q: Are you planning on adding a wider variety of fauna and flora, or are you considering keeping flora and fauna species rigid with the specific biomes found on the planet surface. e.g. Spider only spawning in a forest, but due to this it will spawn in every forest on every randomly generated planet? The concern is that every planet will have the same flora/fauna since planets will have similar biomes due to each planet accommodating a vast array of biomes now.
A: This pretty much works like before. The creator can choose where he wants to spawn deco, NPC and POIs. There is no such thing like an "universal biome reference".

Q: Will the generator include the ability to cluster POIs better?
A: The generator will allow you to pull the POI setup from your .yaml and directly displaying in the editor view! Same for ore deposits.

Q: Is it possible to have multiple biome types within the same planet ?
A: Of course! This is the overall goal of the new generator/editor approach!

Q: Are there multiple different large planets in the make or do we start with just one?
A: We will rework all the planets that are currently in the game, so you will have a similar same selection as before.


== Global Planet-related Topics ==

Q: Will all planets be the same size?
A: No. The solar system generator will randomize the planet size (note: The same seed will give you the exact same solar system)

Q: Is the heightmap limit remaining the same, so the distance from the surface to orbit or down to the core, regardless of the diameter of the planet?
A: For the moment, we have the same overall playfield height but it may change depending on the size of the planet.

Q: Will day-length vary based on different planet sizes? Or would this only be based on planet rotational-speed, which is not added in game yet?
A: For now the day-length is the same on all planets. However, we plan to integrate tilted planets so that the day/night ratio depends where you are on the planet (eg longer days and shorter nights on the northern hemisphere and vice versa on the southern hemisphere)

Q: Will resource nodes be more spread out on larger planets due to the current limit of nodes we have right now on smaller planets? I.e. If a small planet has a max of 9 Iron deposits on its surface, is a larger planet also going to be capped at 9?
A: The deposits amount and count can still be set in the .yaml. So it is up to the creator of the playfield. However, we might introduce an automated scaling parameter that takes into account the planet size

Q: Will custom terrain files (XMLs and heightmaps) be usable on multiplayer scenarios?
A: For 8.0 this is not yet possible. However, the new procedural planets can be used for multiplayer scenarios.


== Gameplay ==

Q: Will the max traveling speed be increased ?
A: The traveling speed is limited by how fast the terrain is generated. In the current state, we are not planning to significantly increase travel speed.

Q: Will the view range be adjusted and will LODS/view distances be increased so we can see objects further since the planets are bigger?
A: We are currently not planning to increase the view distance.

Q: If planets are larger on the surface, does this also mean the spherical representation of the planet in the space playfield will also be larger?
A: Yes.

Q: Will there be quirks such as it is faster to get to the other side of the planet by going to space first?
A: As long as we do not increase the heightmap of playfields, yes this would be a shortcut. Think of how a rocket nowadays can get faster from point A to B if it goes through space.

Q: On larger planets, would the solar panel theoretically have a wider "sweet spot" due to a wider area that the sun is hitting? i.e. On a small planet you only have say 500m where you are near the equator, but a large planet could be 2km (providing random numbers)?
A: Yes

Q: Will the entire planet share the same weather?
A: We are currently not planning to change the overall weather system. We might add biome-dependent weather.


== POI & Dronebase Threats =

Q: Will there still only be one Drone Base that provides drones for the entire planet, or will there be regional drone bases?
A: We could increase the number of drone bases to have regional bases. However, we are not yet sure to include this feature in A8

Q: Will drones and transporter have an increased speed factor, reaction agility, larger attack force due to larger planets ?
A: Yes.

Q: Will there be more than one Patrol Vehicle per planet?
A: This is pretty much up to the creator of the playfield.

Q: Will we see larger POI settlements now with larger flat areas and will it be easier to spawn POIs without a drastic change in drop or climb of terrain
A: The larger planets will have larger areas of "flat terrain" (Of course this depends on how the playfield creator designs the terrain)


== Deco & Additions ==

Q: Will there be more ENTITIES (POIs, RESSOURCES, Drones, animals, enemies, etc.) on the larger planet possible (right now very limited) ?
A: There is an entity limit for any playfield. This means the amount of NPC, POI, deposits that are on the planet at the same time, is limited. However, we are planning to increase the entity limit per planet.

Q: Will there be caves, deeper oceans, underwater caverns and large redwood forests with this larger planet update.
A: This is planned for the future.

Q: Can we get few more planet types aka 'I want new additional planet textures'?
A: Additional terrain textures will be considered in the future.

Q: Are you planning to introduce different GASES as environmental factors on new planets to make them more diverse & dangerous?
A: Entirely new planet types are planned for the future, yes!

Q: Will you introduce "ice" as ore in underground rock form on some barren, desolate or toxic future planets (and in space in asteroids)?
A: This is also a topic for a future update (more different materials in general)

== Other ==

Q: Are there any plans to make the space playfield larger as well to keep it from feeling too crammed together?
A: Yes, the space playfields can now be significantly increased as well (probably more than 100 times the current size)

Q: Will way-points act any differently? A big planet could have lots of spots marked and really start to fill up your screen. A player might only want to see them within a certain distance, or they might want to hold down a key for a quick check against them.
A: This is planned for the future.

Q: Will there be something dynamic between POIs, proper AI vehicles, wildlife migration routes, regular Zirax patrols, anything?
A: We are currently working on improving the ground AI. Expect some cool stuff and stay tuned for more info on this topic in the near future.

Q: Will we see a first implementation of a wildlife pecking order, meaning territorial behaviour less randomised, more centralised on certain environmental conditions according to species.
A: We are currently working on improving the ground AI. Expect some cool stuff and stay tuned for more info on this topic in the near future.

Hi Galactic Survivalists!

Last week, we set up a thread where everyone had the possibility to write down questions about the upcoming larger planets. We finally found time to compile all the answers to a shiny Q&A document for your reading pleasure - to be found below ;)

What's happening behind the scenes at the moment?

While the first internal version has been released to our QA team yesterday, the dev team continues to work hard on the design and layout of the new biome system.

The new "Terrain and Biome Generator" will not only allow to distribute the biomes according to certain criteria, like temperature and humidity (Read more: https://empyriononline.com/threads/alpha-7-6-balancing-bug-fixes-and-alpha-8-info.36122/) but it will also allow to generate procedural terrains. Yes - procedural terrain generation is back (no fixed heightmap planets anymore) - in the quality of the Alpha 7 planets and maybe even better!!!

Here are some screenshots of the new terrains:








The best thing is that the "Terrain and Biome Generator" is an in-house production and can be used for creation of playfields and planets by any owner of the game. You will see it will be very easy to create new planets!

For those of you who missed the overview of the main features for Alpha 8, here we go:

- Larger Planets: increase size from the current 8x4km (32km²) up to 32*64km (2048km²) playfields!
- Updated planet-tech: biome distribution based on humidity and temperature!
- Solar System random generator: just swipe a few sliders and create a solar system on the go
- Procedural terrain generation
- Improved AI behavior (the new NPCs will behave much more natural and will better react to the players)
- New and improved threats (and possibly a new and more varied threat-progression)
- Repair-2-Blueprint
- Better Creative and Building tools

Stay tuned for another blog post about Alpha 8 soon.

Thanks for reading

Empyrion Dev team

===============

LARGER PLANETS - Questions & Answers

== Global Changes ==

Q: Will the planets that have been made before 8.0 now be unplayable or can we convert them from 7.x to 8.0 version?
A: Since we completely changed the decoration system, you will need to add the new decorations to the old heightmap planets with the help of our new editor.

Q: Will the GREEN BORDER with pathing/waypoint problems* be taken care of?
A: Yes - we intend to solve this problem.
[SIZE=3]*Game currently does not pick the shortest route for a marker that lies directly behind the green wall in front of you, but sometimes goes "around the planet"[/size]

Q: Will the larger planets remain square heightmaps wrapped around cylinders or will they be changed to spherical planets, where you can travel to the north and south poles?
A: The playfields of any planet are still rectangular maps, but we aim to improve the technical limitations (red and green wall) to a point where you will hardly notice them.

Q: Are there going to be any changes to performance that I should anticipate (such as more RAM usage, CPU usage, etc) for single player and servers?
A: The new larger planets themselves will not have a higher performance impact.


== Planet Generation ==

Q: Are main biomes treated the same like the sub-biomes now (in yaml definition, entity-distribution etc.) ?
A: Yes

Q: Will it be possible to give a size-range of the generated planets in the generator with possible biome ranges?
A: Yes

Q: Will it be possible to have more generation parameters (like amount of resource rich planets, amount of inhabited planets etc.)?
A: Yes, we will provide several parameters to control the generation of the solar system

Q: How will you handle flora and fauna if the tool you have developed allows complete random and custom planets to be made (or an entire solar system)?
A: Fauna and flora distribution is handled as before, but is much more convenient with the new generator.

Q: Are you planning on adding a wider variety of fauna and flora, or are you considering keeping flora and fauna species rigid with the specific biomes found on the planet surface. e.g. Spider only spawning in a forest, but due to this it will spawn in every forest on every randomly generated planet? The concern is that every planet will have the same flora/fauna since planets will have similar biomes due to each planet accommodating a vast array of biomes now.
A: This pretty much works like before. The creator can choose where he wants to spawn deco, NPC and POIs. There is no such thing like an "universal biome reference".

Q: Will the generator include the ability to cluster POIs better?
A: The generator will allow you to pull the POI setup from your .yaml and directly displaying in the editor view! Same for ore deposits.

Q: Is it possible to have multiple biome types within the same planet ?
A: Of course! This is the overall goal of the new generator/editor approach!

Q: Are there multiple different large planets in the make or do we start with just one?
A: We will rework all the planets that are currently in the game, so you will have a similar same selection as before.


== Global Planet-related Topics ==

Q: Will all planets be the same size?
A: No. The solar system generator will randomize the planet size (note: The same seed will give you the exact same solar system)

Q: Is the heightmap limit remaining the same, so the distance from the surface to orbit or down to the core, regardless of the diameter of the planet?
A: For the moment, we have the same overall playfield height but it may change depending on the size of the planet.

Q: Will day-length vary based on different planet sizes? Or would this only be based on planet rotational-speed, which is not added in game yet?
A: For now the day-length is the same on all planets. However, we plan to integrate tilted planets so that the day/night ratio depends where you are on the planet (eg longer days and shorter nights on the northern hemisphere and vice versa on the southern hemisphere)

Q: Will resource nodes be more spread out on larger planets due to the current limit of nodes we have right now on smaller planets? I.e. If a small planet has a max of 9 Iron deposits on its surface, is a larger planet also going to be capped at 9?
A: The deposits amount and count can still be set in the .yaml. So it is up to the creator of the playfield. However, we might introduce an automated scaling parameter that takes into account the planet size

Q: Will custom terrain files (XMLs and heightmaps) be usable on multiplayer scenarios?
A: For 8.0 this is not yet possible. However, the new procedural planets can be used for multiplayer scenarios.


== Gameplay ==

Q: Will the max traveling speed be increased ?
A: The traveling speed is limited by how fast the terrain is generated. In the current state, we are not planning to significantly increase travel speed.

Q: Will the view range be adjusted and will LODS/view distances be increased so we can see objects further since the planets are bigger?
A: We are currently not planning to increase the view distance.

Q: If planets are larger on the surface, does this also mean the spherical representation of the planet in the space playfield will also be larger?
A: Yes.

Q: Will there be quirks such as it is faster to get to the other side of the planet by going to space first?
A: As long as we do not increase the heightmap of playfields, yes this would be a shortcut. Think of how a rocket nowadays can get faster from point A to B if it goes through space.

Q: On larger planets, would the solar panel theoretically have a wider "sweet spot" due to a wider area that the sun is hitting? i.e. On a small planet you only have say 500m where you are near the equator, but a large planet could be 2km (providing random numbers)?
A: Yes

Q: Will the entire planet share the same weather?
A: We are currently not planning to change the overall weather system. We might add biome-dependent weather.


== POI & Dronebase Threats =

Q: Will there still only be one Drone Base that provides drones for the entire planet, or will there be regional drone bases?
A: We could increase the number of drone bases to have regional bases. However, we are not yet sure to include this feature in A8

Q: Will drones and transporter have an increased speed factor, reaction agility, larger attack force due to larger planets ?
A: Yes.

Q: Will there be more than one Patrol Vehicle per planet?
A: This is pretty much up to the creator of the playfield.

Q: Will we see larger POI settlements now with larger flat areas and will it be easier to spawn POIs without a drastic change in drop or climb of terrain
A: The larger planets will have larger areas of "flat terrain" (Of course this depends on how the playfield creator designs the terrain)


== Deco & Additions ==

Q: Will there be more ENTITIES (POIs, RESSOURCES, Drones, animals, enemies, etc.) on the larger planet possible (right now very limited) ?
A: There is an entity limit for any playfield. This means the amount of NPC, POI, deposits that are on the planet at the same time, is limited. However, we are planning to increase the entity limit per planet.

Q: Will there be caves, deeper oceans, underwater caverns and large redwood forests with this larger planet update.
A: This is planned for the future.

Q: Can we get few more planet types aka 'I want new additional planet textures'?
A: Additional terrain textures will be considered in the future.

Q: Are you planning to introduce different GASES as environmental factors on new planets to make them more diverse & dangerous?
A: Entirely new planet types are planned for the future, yes!

Q: Will you introduce "ice" as ore in underground rock form on some barren, desolate or toxic future planets (and in space in asteroids)?
A: This is also a topic for a future update (more different materials in general)

== Other ==

Q: Are there any plans to make the space playfield larger as well to keep it from feeling too crammed together?
A: Yes, the space playfields can now be significantly increased as well (probably more than 100 times the current size)

Q: Will way-points act any differently? A big planet could have lots of spots marked and really start to fill up your screen. A player might only want to see them within a certain distance, or they might want to hold down a key for a quick check against them.
A: This is planned for the future.

Q: Will there be something dynamic between POIs, proper AI vehicles, wildlife migration routes, regular Zirax patrols, anything?
A: We are currently working on improving the ground AI. Expect some cool stuff and stay tuned for more info on this topic in the near future.

Q: Will we see a first implementation of a wildlife pecking order, meaning territorial behaviour less randomised, more centralised on certain environmental conditions according to species.
A: We are currently working on improving the ground AI. Expect some cool stuff and stay tuned for more info on this topic in the near future.