Again, I say that this thread is entirely full of spoilers. Don't come here looking for help on stuff - ask in the Beginner's forum. You can get a much less spoiler-ey answer there.
So, again I'd like to say that. Read this at your own risk! Don't blame me if you find something you didn't want to.
If you'd rather have a thread of new stuff in the game without spoilers, ask I might help out.
Charon Pirates
The Charons have been outfitted with a new ship called the Charon Frigate - you'll have to play pretty far into the Korolev missions to meet it. Too early in the game it's a real toughie, but I waited until around St. K's to continue with the Korolev missions. It's specs are:
Weapons: Four turbolasers with a wide firing arc, and a NAMI missile launcher, with a hundred or so missiles.
Defences: No shield, with a dozen segments of Advanced Reactive Armor.
Centauri Raiders
The Centauri Raiders have been given a boost of development to be accomodated into the new Eridani. Two new ships (the Centauri Raider and it's Heavy counterpart) are added, along with a new station.
The plotline is that you have to remove the Centauri from Eridani. First, you pick up a 'destroy a centauri base' mission from a Commonwealth slum, after which completing you get pointed to the Haisu station, which is under seige from the Centauri. After freeing the station, they ask you to kill the Centauri Warlord, and give you a missile rack they managed to hide. They point you in his direction. Go there and kill him - he dies in one hit from a missile.
Commonwealth
We now have a further insight to how life for the common folk is in the Commonwealth with the new Commonwealth slum stations, where you're able to listen to the complaints the people have - one station's looking for a carbon scrubber, others are miserable about the Centauri, etc.. A couple of quests can be picked up at these places - quite often they ask you to remove Centauri or Charon presence from the system. The main Centauri plotline is also picked up at a few of these stations.
Korolev
The Korolev stations have had a large amount of development on them. The general mission structure is much clearer, thanks to the addition of a database section of the Korolev containing three sections - one details most of the Charon ships, giving an image, specs (weapons and armor), and a general description of each ship. It is, however, missing the Drake-class Missilecruiser and the Tripoli (possibly the Marauder platform too; I think the Charons use those).
Another section details specifications of each freighter that you may have to escort, with weapons and armor, speed, etc., and some general history on each ship. The third section is where you can keep track of your successful missions, it showing how many of each ship class you've successfully escorted.
You also now get told what the worth of each freighter's cargo is, I don't believe it matters much but it's interesting nonetheless.
The new ships are the varients of the Anatares model (the Antares I, II and V), and the varients of the playable starting freighter (EI100, EI200 and EI7000).
There's a new logo (in Russian and English) and insignia for the Korolev too.
Huari
The Huari have a couple of new stations. More plot-based content is revealed on the Design page of the Transc website about them:
And that you do. You need to find a gate in deep space in a random (lvl 6) system (The gate is one of those special ones ('Majellan') like in Elysium), about a jumpdrive's jump away from the furthest-out orbit (example).A hundred and fifty years ago the Huari Empire ruled the area known as the Ungoverned Territories. But the Sung Slavers, wielding their formidable technology, invaded Huari space and nearly exterminated their culture. Now the Huari brood inside of their massive fortresses, suspicious of everyone who approaches. But through it all, the Huari remain hopeful that one day they will reconquer their worlds. Their priests foretell a time when a stranger will appear and help the Huari to defeat the Sung and rebuild their proud culture.
However, when you get there you'll probably be attacked; in order for Huari not to attack you, you'll need to have destroyed at least 8 Sung stations (not including fortress walls or particle turrets - either the slave camp, fort or fortress). Here's the result if you don't befriend them first and go on a killing spree when they attack you : (and I just noticed a typo in that screenshot)
Anyway, actually finding the gate is pretty difficult. From what I read from the Huari.xml, there's some sort of living object (a symbiote or something) you need to do it the coded way. You need to use a temporary coma-inducing drug with the symbiote in your inventory, and then when you wake up there will have been co-ordinates added to your ship's computer (i.e., Huaramarca will be mapped when you get to the system it's in).
The way I found it, however, was through a Domina station; I often use them to map out systems where they're in by contemplating, and the gate just happened to be in that system. Another way to find it may be through the Nebular Vision power, and you can probably find it through long and painstaking searching.
So, if you've located the gate and managed to befriend the Huari, you'll enter the enormous Huaramarca system, the Huari hideout system - the Huari ships monitoring the inbound (and only) gate will instantly turn green.
First thing - to the temple! It's the largest station there, and if you still need help it's the top station in this image. Upon docking you'll greeted by a potato (or Apotamo as he's actually called, but first time I read it that's what it looked like to me
) and given an interesting monologue about the history between the Huari and Sung.Now comes the interesting, and first poetic bit. He jumps you with a needle, putting you in some sort of dreamlike coma:
And now, you get a bunch of choices, and depending on what choices you make, you're given a particular mission by the Huari. You start off with a choice of going to two places. When you get to one of those places, you get another two choices, etc.Apotamo touches your shoulder and you feel a sharp pain. You see a small needle in his hand.
"Don't worry, you will not be harmed. Let's see what the Light has to say to you."
The temple walls glow and shift with amazing colors and you hear a distant music so beautiful that you fall to your knees in gratitude. A profound peace envelops you and your consciousness fades into a pinhole of light.
Slowly you wake up and find yourself beneath the wide open skies of a beautiful planet. Though you have never been to Earth you recognized it immediately.
One set of choices gives you the 'Defend huari' mission, where an enormous fleet of Sung magically appears about halfway between the gate and the temple, consisting of about a dozen earth slavers and a hundred or so wind slavers (bring anti-particle shields+armour!!!!), which you need to completely destroy, and it's reinforcements.
Another set of decisions gifts you with the 'Attack sung base' mission, which I didn't end up with but the name is rather obvious.
The third set of decisions will take you to the 'DragonSlaver' mission, where again I didn't end up with it but I assume you need to hunt down and kill the Dragon Slaver.
-> Choices diagram!! <-
More coming once I've finished.
Domina
All the Domina powers have been finished, and the old ones look quite a bit better.
Here are their names, and descriptions:
Sustain
An old one, the sustain effect looks 3D now. When used, the text reads: "Invoking the sustaining powers of Domina!"
Strengthen
Strengthen is an old power, which doubles the strength of all of your weapons (i.e., increases their strength by 100%). When used, the text reads "Invoked the strength of Domina!"
Nebulous Sight Like a system map ROM, but reveals ALL bases in a system. When used, the text reads: "A vision from Domina reveals hidden stations."
Genuity
I had trouble getting this one to do anything for a while, until luckily one time the text read "Domina has revealed a way to upgrade your reactor!", and sure enough, I now had a 1.2GW reactor. Awesome! ^_^ I've now also had my shield's HP increased 40%.
Desparate Escape
This works automatically and you can't trigger manually, though it has to be used beforehand to trigger, I believe. This triggers when you are on the verge of the death. The blue shield will appear on your ship, protecting you from attacks, and Domina says "Escape now my child" (or similar).
Prescience
I aslo cannot figure out what this one does.
Shatter
Fires a blue wave (like ares missile explosions, or penitent station shots) that disintegrates all enemies (and possibly allies - I didn't test on greens) similar to the Iocrym Quantumsphere Disintegrator.
Circle of Wrath
A new power, an expanding purple ring of instant killness. Not tested on Iocrym.
Visual
It's much easier to differentiate between dead and living stations - the thinner squares on your LRS are dead, the thicker are living.
Explosions; not just visual, but still very eye-opening. It's fun seeing capital ships explode, and Sung Fortresses are great too because when you kill the station the explosion obliterates the surrounding wall-turret-things.
Modding
New stuff
NotForSale tag
hpBonus
ALL of them? I skipped one since it was ontop of a planet... I guess I could go back since my kaidun shield can withstand the blast...
