1.9 Alpha 2

New releases and announcements from George and the staff.
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george moromisato
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1.9 Alpha 2 is ready for testing!

You can download at: https://downloads.kronosaur.com/TranscendenceNext.zip

New features:
* When items are enhanced you can see how they got the enhancement in the cargo inventory screen.
* Unknown items are identified at stations selling them
* The Near Stars Expansion is available for those with Eternity Port: https://multiverse.kronosaur.com/transE ... &release=1
* Improvements to Dvalin and his rewards, plus new image for Rasiermesser factory
* Improvements to Novaya armor (requires CC)
* New Wolfen images
* New Urak sentinel, Steel slaver, and Tundra images

Complete list of fixes: https://ministry.kronosaur.com/program. ... ed&tag=118
API 46: https://ministry.kronosaur.com/record.hexm?id=88044
New TransData: https://downloads.kronosaur.com/TransData.zip

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release. As always, please let me know what you think!
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Aury
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Thanks george - that OR is super helpful, and its great to see ATS happen in an official way via the near stars expansion
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PM
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Took a break from mod maintenance to play a game, without any expansions (no Corporate Command or Near Stars). I picked Wolfen as my starter ship, as usual.

New Wolfen sprites look nice. They seem a bit bigger than the old sprites. With all of those Wolfen sprites, I have a question: Is there a mechanist Wolfen among the new Wolfen variants for Vault of the Galaxy? Once part 2 comes out, I would like to pick Wolfen (or Centurion/X or Minotaur) as the starter, and upgrade it to a mechanist ship.

Now to Dvalin...

Dvalin was really useful this time around. The factory spawned in Sanctuary. I managed to save the Urak hardware and other stuff and get all rewards up to Dvalin armor. The first two rewards were not very useful since I had already bought a Minotaur and have super-blast plate and omni TeV-9 pre-installed. (The rewards were not bad, just that they were sidegrades and better off sold for cash.) Dvalin armor was a great upgrade to super-heavy blast plate (immunity to EMP from Barbary and Dwarg Masters), good enough until I find level 10+ armor. Later, after more killing and looting up to Jiang's Star, I backtracked to donate more items and got the Ion9. It came early enough, but without WMD (and no omni), it was not as useful to me as the mark V and TeV-9 combo Minotaur had. I needed WMD on my main gun, and Ion9 does not have it. Probably would be more useful on a smaller gunship like Wolfen or Freyr.

Also, seeing "Dvalin valuable" appear on items was a nice touch. If anything, maybe make that attribute disappear from items once player gets all of the rewards.

BUG: After I got the mission to find Dvalin, the mission (and big green circle) did not clear after I docked the Rasiermesser factory.

The new useable item UI is really nice. Now, the likes of laser amplifiers are more useful for repairing broken items in the cargo hold than to raise main gun damage by a measly +10%. Of course, player probably want to buff their endgame ion or thermo weapon to +150%, but for everything else before, repairing an item to sell or install seems more useful.

Another welcome addition: Ship equipment persists from ship to ship. I had saved a second enhanced visual display for Minotaur, used it, and the message said I already had it installed. Then I double checked the cargo hold and noticed the trading recommendations from the trading computer ROM originally installed on Wolfen were still displayed.

I should try another game with both Corporate Command and Near Stars, but that will wait for now. I have mods to update.

BUG: I tried device with +tracking on a cloud weapon, and some of the shots do not inherit velocity of the source. This is the same bug that afflicted all cloud weapons and was fixed some time ago, but this time, it only applies to cloud weapons that have been granted a +tracking enhancement.

With nothing else in mind for now, this is all.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
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Two things:

Given how early Dvalin Ion9 can be obtained, it would be nice if the powerUse was lowered from 200 MW to 150 MW. When I got Ion9, my reactor was only 250 MW, and no one else in the Ungoverned Territories sold any reactors bigger than that. While I mentioned in my last post that I did not use it due to no WMD, even if I wanted to, the powerUse was too high. A reward that you want to use is not much use if your ship is not powerful enough to use it. At least Dvalin armor needs no power to use, just money and a Black Market shipyard.

For the other thing, this is behavior I just noticed in alpha 2, and I not sure if it is a bug. After opening ship configuration within Dock Services (for upgrades, installation, or removal), gsource changes from the host station to the playership about a second after the screen was opened. This means when I add actions that rely on gSource, they break! Before 1.9a2, I think gSource was always the station, and I do not remember gSource changing within a second. Now, gSource is the station for a moment, then changes to the playership. I do not know what is going on. What it does is break extra actions I add from a mod to Dock Services.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
relanat
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The new Ras factory looks great. I especially like the dockscreen background image and how the tail of the Corp cruiser goes over into the pane area.

And the new enhancement info is good. Previously all enhanced items looked very much the same.

Refering to PMs non-clearing of the 'Find Dvalin' mission bug, this happens when the player changes playerships after starting the mission. Lots of missions are doing this.
Stupid code. Do what I want, not what I typed in!
PM
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Remembered one more thing I liked, items are identified at shops! That is really nice. The most noticeable aspect is getting that first jumpdrive from Thor's is much cheaper, only 40,000 credits instead of the (not-so) unknown alien device at 100,000 credits. Also, no more need to buy a ton of unknown ROMs early and spam them hoping to get targeting program.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
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Started another game with both Corporate Command and Near Stars Connection on (with Wolfen in Eridani), and ended it a bit before Sanctuary. Some comments.

With so many systems in New Beyond, I could take my time or at least not pass through Charon to reach St. K's. Managed to become Korolov Legend just by completing too many missions without failure (eleven in this game).

With the new item UI that allows enhancing consumables to be applied to anything on or in the ship, I used them mostly to repair broken items. Adding +10% or other minor bonus seems lame compared to repairing a high-value item to sell or use. Even weapon optimizers or shield enhancement ROMs were taken and used to repair stuff. Another thing, since the new weapon efficiency ROM works on weapons up to level 10, I have been hoarding them for endgame to repair broken high-level items. Granted, I stopped the game before I got that far, but that was the plan if I resume the save later.

Evern is a very good ship, probably about on par with Minotaur. While it does not have linked-fire omni, it has all-purpose nine slots... and mostly the same stats as Minotaur, maybe a bit more agile. Nine all-purpose slots is a big deal. The biggest hurdle was raising enough euros to buy it from the Diarchy at Sol! I used the currency exchange station at Sol to swap half of my credits to enough to buy the Evern. Evern sort of reminds me of the Cobra Mk III from Oolite, in its shape (angular wide-load wedge) and role that it does everything well.

The thing I noticed most was the story or dialog text when your character is supposed to talk. In Stars of the Pilgrim, the pilgrim feels like a somewhat non-descript protagonist, or the "Everyman" or "Generic Guy"; while in Eternity Port, the mercenary feels like a someone with a greedy streak, like early Han Solo. Once I enter Near Stars and look for missions, it feels like the pilgrim becomes a different person by bringing up payment and using a somewhat different style of speech. It would be nice if dialog options could vary by character class. Enough so that your character's behavior appears consistent.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
erwgd
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Got an EI200 at St. Kats' to collect Dvalin valuable items. Taking the Sanctuary path, I was able to get all his gifts without any backtracking. His Ion9 and armor really are a great set of gear.

The superlattice crystal is very nice! It gave my plasma shield a chance against Ares and Dreaming Raiders.

Earth capships are nice to have in the Outer Realm. Having a UAS fleet chip handy made dock services available from the Khurasan dreadnoughts, found all the way up until Heretic! I had a Diarchy marque for the Alexei-Leonov cruisers, but without backtracking I didn't have enough Euros to install any level 10 weapons.
hairyharryz2
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Not sure if these are bugs, but on 1.9 Alpha 2 with Corporate Command I had 2 issues with my current run:

1. All Teraton nests no longer stock any items, but can still trade as normal and items sold to the nest does remain in the territory. This does not affect overall game-play other than if I am trying to mix max 150% on both primary and linked weapons fire on the Minotaurs.

2. I had Corporate Trade Stations (the massive ones that gives quest) not spawn past 1 system after St. Kath, so I could not go up to max promotions as there are no more quests to give and no more stations to give them.
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 I can’t speak to the second issue, but the first one is definitely a bug. Fortunately, it’s a bug that has already been fixed for the upcoming 1.9a3 release.
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Ferdinand
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hairyharryz2 wrote:
Sat Nov 23, 2019 5:18 am
I had Corporate Trade Stations (the massive ones that gives quest) not spawn past 1 system after St. Kath, so I could not go up to max promotions as there are no more quests to give and no more stations to give them.
In my previous run with CC i noticed this too, but did not finish that one (only went as far as Yiangs star), so thought that the RNG was just unfavourable to me.
I'll keep an eye out on my current run. If neccesary i'll make a ticket on the ministry
hairyharryz2
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Ferdinand wrote:
Sat Nov 23, 2019 11:00 am
hairyharryz2 wrote:
Sat Nov 23, 2019 5:18 am
I had Corporate Trade Stations (the massive ones that gives quest) not spawn past 1 system after St. Kath, so I could not go up to max promotions as there are no more quests to give and no more stations to give them.
In my previous run with CC i noticed this too, but did not finish that one (only went as far as Yiangs star), so thought that the RNG was just unfavourable to me.
I'll keep an eye out on my current run. If neccesary i'll make a ticket on the ministry
Thanks for everyone's feedback. For the run involving the Corporate Trade Stations issue, I checked all systems using TX-explorer. The very last system with a Corporate Trade Station 1 system after St. Kath's said "All ships have moved on to deeper systems" when I go to Operations for more missions, which usually should instead give me a system with the next corporate station from my previous experience?
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