2019.2 release notes
(expected deployment: May 6-10)
New content and features
- New Cerberus ship: Storm (RS9+, equipped with Dart Barrage)
- New RS8 Module: Hydrogen Rocket (allows firing a rocket using Hydrogen collected on the Miner)
- Blue Crystal and Orbs level 10 will now spawn on RS10 planets
- Miners level 2 and over can be programmed to mine only on from specific sectors (Yellow Star only)
- Miner can now be upgraded to level 6
- Load All/Unload All buttons on the Shipments dialog (Yellow Star only)
Gameplay changes
- Combat updates 5 times a second (30 times per hour in White Stars), up from 1 times a second/6 times per hour. Damage per second values are otherwise unchanged.
- All weapon damage rates are now multiples of 5. Barrage DPS values were slightly tweaked up or down on various levels accordingly.
- All combat is now properly affected by the Time Warp module
- Battleship heal rate increased, now depends on Battleship level (new max repair time is 1 hr for level 5 Battleship)
- Time Modulator effect increased from levels 1-13, price decreased for levels 1-5
- Miners don't immediately return to planet when their asteroid is depleted if they have capacity remaining. All Miners now work more efficiently when the player is offline.
- Reduced prices and timers for early game content such as RS1 modules and early planet upgrades
Module Changes
- Mass Battery: DPS increased on level 2+ (does not affect Cerberus Interceptor)
- Genesis: Fixed issue where genesis may not work if used on a White Star planet sector. Asteroids created with Genesis show up faded in the Time Machine and cannot be used as move targets for Time Machine scheduled commands.
- Dart: Damage applied now properly affected by Unity on the firing ship, and by Fortify on the target ship.
- Cargo Bay Extension: Capacity and Hydrogen use increased on levels 9 and 10, new level 11 available
- Time Warp: Now properly affects firing rates for all weapons. Overlapping time warps do not stack visually, the highest level time warp draws above lower levels.
- Barrier: Overlapping barriers from the same team no longer draw on top of each other. Enemy Barrier in White Stars and Blue Stars draw with a red color.
- Enrich: 1500 limit per asteroid no longer applies in White Stars
- Destiny: Enemy rockets don't count for activation (requires enemy ships in sector, as per description)
- Sanctuary: Destroyed ship will not return to a planet with Cerberus in the same sector
- Dispatch: Fixed issue where the teleport time was longer than normal on Red Stars with multiple participating players
- Can no longer use a jumpgate to jump away while a teleporting module is activating (Teleport, Dispatch, Leap)
Corporation improvements
- Inactivity tolerance setting can be set in the Edit Corporation page, to show a red dot next to members that have not logged in recently.
- Search Corporations page allows filtering by recent Red Star and/or White Star activity.
- Members kicked from a Corporation cannot join again for a while (unless invited back)
- Joining a Corporation from an invite will no longer fail if the player doesn't meet the Corporation's minimum influence setting
- Every player can opt in to receive notifications when a private Red Star search at a specific level starts, or when a message to all Corporation members is sent out (notifications on Steam only show while the game is running, connect your game with a mobile device to receive push notifications)
White Stars
- 20vs20 slot removed
- Each Corporation can now run two White Stars simultaneously
- Available hydrogen increased on all star systems, especially 15v15
- New reward levels system - fill the reward bar with mining, combat and relic activity to maximize rewards (the rewards bar will not appear on stars that started before the update and those stars will give out old rewards). Excess rewards will be stored in an Inbox message for up to 3 days and will no longer be converted to Crystals.
- Ongoing White Stars dialog (will show ongoing White Stars, except for stars where one or both participating Corporations have disabled public broadcasting)
- Time Machine: Future commands are scheduled on the current tick, instead of the next one. Scheduling a command less than 4 minutes into the future will no longer work.
Blue Stars
- Ships from the same Corporation as the viewer show green in replays
- Blue Star leaderboards will start showing a link to last season's results (starting with Season 6)
- Fixed an issue where Cerberus ships wouldn't target Lone Battleship's Darts
Red Star Influence changes
- The number of Cerberus ships that need to be destroyed to gain influence is now different for each player and depends on their current influence score
- Maximum influence greatly increased, especially for higher Red Star levels
- Influence is now only affected by Red Stars. White Stars will no longer award or take away influence.
- Players on the Influence leaderboards will lose 3% of Influence points for every 3 days without a successful Red Star run at the maximum level supported by their scanner.
Miscellaneous
- Station and ship construction button added to the HUD (home star only)
- New nebula and star visuals on RS9&RS10
- Module buttons will show grayed out in all cases where the module cannot be activated
- When there's a module upgrading its icon will show on the Technology HUD button
- Jump All setting on the Jump dialog persists across sessions
- Next/Previous selection buttons no longer scroll the camera unless the newly selected object is off screen
- Joining an ongoing private red star will fail during the last minute of the match, or if the match is full
- Salvage and Research objectives now also work with higher level Artifacts
- The option to request diplomatic relations now always shows up on the Player Info page, regardless of star system
- (mobile) Ships list shows up on Landscape mode only
- (mobile) The device's Autocorrect settings should now be respected on the chat keyboard
- (Steam) Mouse wheel scroll is now smooth on all UI windows
- (Steam) Fixed an issue where ships lost in a supernova lingered on the Ships List
- (iOS) Minimum iOS supported version is now 9.3.5