Dear awesome community. In less than two weeks STARDROP will leave Early Access on February 1st, 2019. After working on this title for almost four years it's time to release it in full.

The main campaign is finished and I have been and still am going over lots of smaller details and bugs while polishing here and there. I'm very happy with the state the game is currently in and I have been updating the public build the past few days.

I've also been able to use a lot of the bug reports that you guys sent in over the years to do my best and fix issues. I'm incredibly grateful for that and I hope you'll keep reporting stuff so that I can make the game better and better.


I've been going over the androids post process effect, making the effect a bit stronger, yet still have it be subtle. One of the things I always think about is, since this game takes place in the future, technology should be really advanced, yet, I find it much more fun to take that knowledge with a gran of salt in favor of adding a distinct, aesthetic difference when looking through their eyes. Adding contrasts helps enrich the experience which to me is more important.


I've also been working on adding more contrast within the existing levels. I've been going over these levels and trying to add to the scenery in various ways. Be it by adding more smaller props, refining some of the triggers or just experimenting with materials. It's time consuming work but it's fun and it pays off, at least, that's what I'd like to believe.

Having said all this, let's see what else I have on this update's agenda, shall we?

I want to make it very clear that once the game leaves Early Access I will still continue to work on it. I will remain patching out as many bugs that I'm able to, some of which might have slipped through and I also still have new content planned. I also will keep going back to earlier parts and see what else I might add/tweak to make the game better but only if it adds to the game and not overdo anything in particular.


I am re-creating one of the old side missions because as some of the other older levels, was just not up to the quality standard and I felt I could take this chance to do more with it. I am planning to create a small story around it and I want to expand the entire mission a little bit more as well. Nothing drastic but to the extent that it will be more than what it used to be, hopefully along the liens of Echoes.

Other new content is also planned as well but I don't want to discus this too much right now because I am still fleshing it out.

With these new updates I have also, finally, taken some time to dig into my Mini-Map mechanics and was able to add new functionality to it, which people have been asking for.


First: You'll now finally be able to move the map around using the movement keys. There's a cap on the range but you'll be able to see a lot more of the map now, which should make things a lot easier.

Second: You can now also zoom in and out. The zoom levels are predetermined but I am sure that they are more than sufficient. Pressing the zoom key will enable you to toggle between the three zoom levels at will.

Third: This is a minor tweak but I am very sure it will be appreciated. I changed the icon color regarding DataPads from red to blue. So now you can more easily differentiate usable objects from actual DataPads which should clear up some confusion.

Stealth has also been tweaked. When you walk you make sound but it felt that the androids ability to sense the player was too high, so I lowered the sound levels and I feel it's a lot more fair for the player making it a lot easier to remain undetected.


If you run, you'll make the most noise and they will still be able to pick up on that relatively easy, but walking really makes you a lot more quiet. Sneaking makes you basically undetectable.

I also created a bug thread. This thread is meant for anyone to report issues prior and post release. Of course anyone can still post their own threads, but it would help me to have most issues in one place around release so I can make sure the game has no game-breaking bugs or other annoying issues.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/552880/discussions/1/1741105805750624923/

It's been a while since I created the Play Guide and it was time to take a look at all the things it was lacking, which was quite a lot. I've gone over it and have been adding more and more to it.


It's not finished yet, but as it is, this should be of great help to new and even older players. I've done my best to explain most of the mechanics, yet I left out a few not to spoil everything.

I will keep tweaking it where it makes sense. I hope you guys will find it useful and please feel free to suggest changes or additions, etc, if you think it could be improved.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=928579725
I've also been busy tweaking the store page. Removing all the Early Access stuff, since it will be outdated very soon. I also made sure all the screenshots are up-to-date and I cleaned out the text.


I'm also going over the Gif's. Lowering their size and also updating them to reflect the game on release.

That's it for now. I will keep working on the Play Guide. I want to create a new overview video but I haven't had the chance yet.


If you have any suggestions or feedback, please let me know. I will always do my best to listen and act on them where I can.


A new update will be popping up around release, so stay tuned. :)

Take care everyone!
Joure & Team V

Hello Exiles!

We hope 2019 and January have been treating you well so far.
Picking up on old traditions we wanted to let you know our rough plans going forward, to keep you in the loop as much as we can.


We have a an additional hotfix planned for early next week that will address a few crash issues as well as control input issues that led to problems with movement, camera and shield behavior. We're also further addressing issues with players flooding a server and impacting other player's performance and play experience.

This patch will go live for PC first and will be available for consoles a few days after, as soon as it is cleared by Microsoft and Sony CERT.

After this, we will finalize another TestLive update to address some of the issues reported and further work on our performance improvements. If you haven't already, please check out all the changes and updates including Purge improvements. We're very thankful for any feedback and input.

The current TestLive Patch, including any additional updates, is scheduled to go live at the and of January or Start of February at the latest. We want to make sure it is as stable and as optimized as possible in addition to gather as much feedback as possible from your side about new things that have been added. (Again, please check out what's coming right here.)



Part of our focus is to refine core mechanics, make exploration more exciting and improve experience as well as the leveling curve. We already have our Purge improvement/fixes on TestLive. January and February will see updates where we will gradually deploy more patches to our Test Servers which deal with the following issues, additions and improvements:

• More updates for the Purge
  
• More performance updates
  
• Improvements to AI behavior and controls
  
• Progression balancing from starting experience to end game (parts of this is on TestLive already)
  
• Improvements and additions to make exploration both more dangerous but also more rewarding (more on this soon!)
  
• Fixes to UI and Admin Panel
  
• Avatar, Siege and Raiding balancing and improvements
  
• More Exploit fixes
  
• Building Quality of Life Improvements

Stay tuned for more juicy details and info for each of these areas as we progress

The proposal was first mentioned more than 1 and a half years ago, in FFF-191. Since then, we kept mentioning it in our blog posts and players kept asking about it.
After a lot of back and forth within the team on whether we should implement it or not, and how it should work, we finally have it almost ready for 0.17.



To refresh your memory: the quickbar is changed from being a separate inventory to simply a shortcut bar to the player's main inventory. It will mostly work like the current quickbar, except item slots can only be filters.

This means that when you place, for example, an Inserter in the new quickbar, it creates a shortcut telling you how many inserters of that type you have in your main inventory. Clicking the shortcut, will grab the first available stack from the inventory. That shortcut will stay there throughout the game, even if the inserters are depleted temporarily.

This solves quite a few annoyances:

• No more random items appearing in the quickbar as you craft them.
• No more items moving to different slots when they get depleted and re-crafted.
• No more using the quickbar to carry things around.
• No more "will this be crafted to inventory or to the quickbar?".
• No more confusion when shift-clicking an item if it will go to the quickbar or the trash slots, or somewhere else.
• Guides the player to make proper shortcuts. Players are much more likely to remember shortcuts they created themselves.
• Player is in full control of the quickbar instead of the game trying to be 'smart'.
• Managing 1 inventory is simpler than managing 2 inventories.
• Relevant item counts.

The main inventory size was increased by 20 stacks to compensate for the inventory slots that now became shortcuts.

A suggestion that quickly gained traction was the ability to configure and switch between multiple pages of shortcuts, not just two.
So the new quickbar is actually 10 pages of shortcuts that you can configure as you like: e.g. a page for general factory building, a page for combat, a page for building trains, a page for building outposts, a page for oil processing, a page with utility blueprints. It's up to the player to configure these pages as they like.



When clicking on the button next to one of the selected pages, a page selector will open which shows all 10 pages of shortcuts. You can then easily select what page(s) you want to actively use and see on the main screen. The number of pages visible on the main screen is configurable.
The page selector also acts as an extended action bar, allowing you to quickly grab an item or blueprint that you don't commonly use, or allowing you to quickly configure your pages.

The default keyboard shortcuts changed a bit: keys 1 to 0 will pick the item in the slots of the top selected page. Shift + 1 to Shift + 0 will change the the top selected page. So an advanced player will be able to quickly swap pages to build what they want.

A feature for more advanced players is the ghost cursor: When selecting a 'buildable' item from the quickbar or when using the pipette tool, if you have no items of that type in your inventory, a ghost will be placed in the cursor instead.

It's a common situation where for example you build something and you run out of inserters. So instead of crafting more or running to the other side of the base to get more, you can place ghosts, continuing to focus on designing what you are building instead of being distracted.



To avoid confusion for new players, this feature is off by default and can be turned on in the interface settings menu.

This is still work in progress, since big changes are also coming to the blueprint library. The plan is that you will be able to create shortcuts for blueprints from the blueprint library. This means you can place your most commonly used blueprints and books in one of the shortcut pages and use them directly from the blueprint library without clogging your main inventory.

There was some talk following last weeks GUI progress update, as to why we don't release now, and finish the GUI's during the experimental phase. One major clarification I'd like to make, is that it is not only the GUI that is not yet finished. While GUI is currently the largest task remaining to be done for 0.17, there are still some other non-GUI features that are yet to be completed:

The new fluid system (FFF-274) is almost complete, but it is yet to be merged into master. After internal testing we have been making efforts to tune the new behavior, specifically how throughput over distance and flow with different fluids works.

The new Biters and Worms have been showcased already in previous blog posts (FFF-259, FFF-268), and the last puzzle piece is the new Spitters. Alongside a graphical update, we have also been experimenting with some functional changes to the enemies.

We presented our most recent developments on the map generation in FFF-258. Since that post, there have been some further planned changes and improvements, specifically to the placement of tiles, biomes, trees, doodads, cliffs.

It seems to always be the case, but $nextUpdate is going to be the biggest Factorio release so far. While some initial playtesting shows that most things are stable, we have yet to have our typical office-wide week/fortnight of playtesting and tweaking. Inevitably things that we need to solve will come up during this playtesting, so it would be unwise to release before it is complete. There are also over 50 unsorted bug reports in our forum, which we will need to sort through.

Looking over what is left to be done, It is clear to me that the release won't be ready in January.
When we are ready to release 0.17, its launch definitely won't be a surprise. We will announce the exact date in the FFF at least the week before.

As always, let us know what your think on our forum.

Updates to W40K: Inquisitor - Martyr will be released. The updates will be applied automatically after the scheduled maintenance and when your Steam client (in on-line mode) is restarted. Please also note that during maintenance, players will be unable to login.

• Fixed a Warzone crash issue occurring with German localization
  
• Fixed missing strings at Cabal Tech Tree upgrades
  
• Enemy unit HP bars are now correctly displayed in Co-Op
  
• The Disorient skill now properly affects knocked down enemies
  
• The skill description of Corrosive Agents now properly shows Poison damage
  
• The Salvage All confirmation prompt now properly indicates that items across all inventory pages will be salvaged
  
• The Fiery Form skill now properly adds +15% damage reduction
  
• The Damage over Time mastery now can be used on the Assail skill and properly provides DoT bleed damage
  
• The Hinder Movement, Telekinetic Shock, Psychic Shackles and Blindness masteries now can now be used on the Constrict skill
  
• The Anti-Spatter Nozzle passive skill now properly deals Burn damage to the enemy
  
• The Death Augury skill now works properly in Co-Op and does not drop off after cutscenes
  
• The Call Astartes world skill has been fixed and now summons a maximum of 3 Space Marines during Defense missions
  
• Fixed obstacling across all Spaceship map dead ends
  
• Fixed spawn points across several Open World maps
  
• The player character no longer tries to pick up grenades and supplies with a full belt and inoculator when pressing the Use button
  
• Added collision to the Hall of Heroes terminal and the Angel Statues on the Command Bridge
  
• Fixed an issue where the player character's footprint effect would appear in the air when using jump skills
  
• Fixed an issue where signums were floating above the character if they equipped an Eviscerator
  
• Fixed an issue where players could not research the Cabal Tech Tree with controller despite having influence points

• Faster execution animations for normal and medium enemy types (without an additional slow-mo effect & rotating camera)
  
• The Soul Harvest Ritual skill received a new buff icon

• The camera no longer zooms out unnecessarily when starting missions at special POIs such as the Unholy Cathedral

We're busy building new (free) tracks and putting the final touches on Team Mode, while you wait check out Ep. 5 of our Dev Talk series! Today Rollcage programmer, Rob Baker talks about his history as a programmer in the 90’s, and how he was happy living his life out in Indonesia until a little game called GRIP came along!

As always, drops your comments below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i9bwmATWME

Hello warriors!

New weekly update is live! This week we made many changes to improve the economy and combat balance. We focused on tweaking the Contribution Points gain and prices of goods purchased from the Glory vendors. We also worked on improving the shieldman build, both increasing its’ value for players who specialize in that role and to improve the overall balance in various combat scenarios, as well as tweaking balance between various types of weapons.

There are also improvements to the State of War time management, jumping, client-side performance and many more. Check these changes on your own!

See you in battle!



Changelog v.0.8.7.9

Economy Balance:

In this and upcoming updates, we’ll be working on balancing the Contribution Points. Though it’s a typical end-game currency, our data analysis tell clearly that there’s a huge gap between “veterans” and less hardcore players, since the former ones can gain even 30x more CP daily than players who play more casually. This huge disproportion prevents us from achieving proper balance of the Gloria Victis economy. For this reason, we introduced the first iteration of CP balance improvements:

– Increased amount of CP earned for completing Daily Challenges
– Introduced a Mentor system which rewards both the “Greenleaf” players who reach level 40 and their Mentors with the same amount of CP – the system description can be found below
– Introduced a system allowing the “Greenleaf” players to reward other players with both CP and Mentor Points
– From now on, goods purchased from the Glory vendors for CP, which can also be purchased in the Supporter Shop, are automatically used instead of being moved to the player’s inventory
– Updated prices of the items which can be purchased for CP

Combat Balance:

We focused on addressing several recent combat balance problems:
1. Overwhelming existence of shieldman build which could be achieved without specializing into it, allowing DPS players using shields as effectively as would the dedicated shieldmen. It had serious downsides for players specialized as shieldmen, as well as for archers and “rogue”-type builds using fast, yet low-damage melee weapons, such as daggers.
2. Negative aspects of the shieldman build, such as being stunned when the shield endurance ends.
3. Balance issues in shieldwall vs large group scenario
4. Lack of balance for several weapon types. List of changes:
– Introduced shields types: light (tier 1-2) and heavy (tier 3-5)
– Introduced reducing the damage multiplier by equipped heavy shield by 10% and only 2% for light shields, in order to reduce efficiency of players using 2-handed weapons with shield equipped; this change inflicts more meaning to specializing as either DPS or shieldman in order to achieve maximum efficiency in combat and increases the viability of dagger users
– Light shields only reduce the damage multiplier very little, becoming effective for low-level players and reducing the level/equipment gap between high-level players and new characters, and allowing archers to use shields for close combat weapons without penalties to damage
– Increased damage dealt with 1-handed weapons by 10% to compensate the damage multiplier reduction inflicted by equipped shield for players specializing as shieldmen
– Updated the shields’ endurance for each tier:
* Tier 1 – 215
* Tier 2 – 245
* Tier 3 – 355
* Tier 4 – 395
* Tier 5 – 450
– Removed stun applied to a defender when the shield endurance ends – it had negative impact on a shieldman since once the endurance would regenerate, the shield could take only few hits before its’ endurance will end again, ending with another stun applied; this effect also happened for players with “Last Stand” ability which instantly regenerated a part of the shield endurance after blocking 3 hits with a weapon in a row
– Buffed the “You Shall Not Pass” ability which lowers the shield endurance reduction when a player blocks 3 attacks in 3 seconds with a shield, increasing the skilled shieldman’s efficiency in shieldwall vs large group scenario
Buffed the “Vanguard” ability which increases the shield endurance – it’s one of the starting abilities so it’ll be especially useful for new players who would like to specialize as a shieldman, reducing the level gap and increasing the skill factor
– Increased the 1-handed spears’ armor penetration from 5% to 10%, since they can only stab and require fighting in the front line due to close range
– From now on, daggers apply bleeding effect on every strong attack, even without the “Marksman” ability – it increases the effect’s stacks now
– Increased the bleeding effect’s duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds in order to make daggers more viable in comparison to other weapon types
– Added weak bleeding effect to stabs done with 1-handed swords which lasts 10 seconds, doesn’t stack and its’ damage can’t be increased – change done in order to make 1-handed swords more viable in comparison to other weapon types
– Rebalanced the Halberd of the Lordly Haven by reducing its’ damage from 144 to 132 (which is the same as the best tier 3 weapon), increasing its’ price to 85 silver coins and reducing its’ durability from 12000 to 4000 – this change was done because this item can be purchased from NPC vendor instead of being crafted, had statistics of the high-tier weapons and has an unique range
– Rebalanced the Greatspear of the Hordun Temple by reducing its’ damage from 130 to 124, reducing damage ratio for attacks other than stabs, increasing the stamina attack cost from 23 to 26 and reducing its’ durability from 12000 to 4000 – this change was done because this item can be purchased from NPC vendor instead of being crafted, had statistics of high-tier weapons and has an unique range

Quality of Life improvements:

– From now on, each guild province’s State of War can be set to all of the available time windows
– Improved the State of War time management system, which should eliminate cases where some provinces have different time than other provinces controlled by the same guild or alliance; the time change is done immediately if there’s no token placed on given location
– From now on, Nation chat is restricted to a single server in order to increase its’ clarity
– Improved hits detection, making it unable to hit players through walls
– Improved jumping over small objects, such as fences
– Disabled looting allied players without enabling the Friendly Fire trigger, except for looting traitors – this change was made to prevent accidental cases where a player unaware of the situation would become a traitor
– Added Steam achievements for reaching level 40 with at least 1 character and being marked as another player’s Mentor
– First iteration of the players’ nameplates update – the first part was to optimize the system so it can be enhanced visually, also from now on the nameplates display order depends on the distance to given players
– Added slight camera shaking effect when shooting with bow with full power
– Improved position and waypoints of NPCs in numerous player-controlled locations
– Added nourishment value to Honey and set its’ food quality to 4, so it can now be used to restore hunger
– Introduced Spanish translation of NPCs and items

Fixes:

– Fixed found issues causing “Connection didn’t expired yet” bug
– Fixed an issue allowing to close the account’s nation change window when the time to change has already expired
– Fixed an issue allowing to select the current nation when changing it
– Fixed armor penetration for bows
– Fixed issues with Ismirean and Midlandic first questlines preventing players from taking the reward and proceeding to the next quests
– Fixed an issue causing that Leaktown’s farm had too low soil quality
– Fixed an issue causing that Ghosts' Chieftain, boss from the Sea Wraiths world event, used to spawn in few locations in the open world
– Fixed holes in the female body model appearing when equipping specific armor parts
– Fixed descriptions of various abilities: Vanguard, Last Stand and You Shall Not Pass
– Fixes to various translations

Commanders, Toxic Alien Bugs have been detected swarming across New Earth this weekend! These Invaders will provide lucrative rewards if your Hero can defeat them.

Toxic Alien Bugs will be available until 7AM (UTC) on Monday 21st January!

Also on Monday, the regions Sigma 2, Alpha 3 and Bravo 3 will be brought offline at 10AM (UTC) while we prepare them for the region merge! We expect this to last for 2 hours. After this, players on those regions will be able to move across to their new region & will receive their rewards from the Blackout Event!

Tankers!

In today’s episode we’ll be discussing the status of overdrives. We’ll also be telling you about development plans for this year, and challenging you with a Mega VLOG Stunt.

Check out V-LOG 199 right below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy3PqoSQxq0&feature=youtu.be

Your suggestions for Newbie Tips
Parkour Stunt (V-LOG 199)
Tanki Online Mobile
Drones - Tanki Online Wiki
Question of the Week Submissions

Good time of day, fighters! Already passed two whole days since the last patch! So that’s why we’ve prepared another update today!


We’ve made a decision to return PvP-Arena in this patch with some remakes. Now PvP-arena available only for faction players and you can get into Arena only from Michalych and Valera accordingly. The spawn points on arena now belong to factions that let to split players into 2 teams automatically. Also, the points counter is added to the arena which has a cooldown after 15 minutes. We’ve decided that the 15 min cooldown should be enough for the match. When the match becomes finished, players have 5 minutes to prepare for the next battle.

Let us note that the development of the Arena not completed and it will be improved gradually. It’s an experiment.


Different problems with animation, such as nuts throwing, brass knuckles attack, snuggle and grenade throwing, are fixed. Moreover, we’ve changed aim animation: now when you run and aim, the character switches from “running” to “walking”.


The matador has got a new attack.


The algorithms of the getting experience in PvP battles are changed. Now players from the one faction, one team or group don’t get experience for killing each other. Also, the method of calculation for PvP-experience has changed: than higher a difference between you and your enemy you have than lower experience you get. We made this decision because players in collusion with each other used PvP-experience to develop their characters faster.


English localization has got major improvements in this update. Thanks to the community, English localization got a better quality of the translation. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this. Special thanks to the player named as “ДедДонатер” (MSK-1)/ “Алиса” (USA-1) for his help in translation.