When a new Empire is created isn't there was some formula that keeps your starting sector some distance from another claimed sector?

It is quite disheartening to spend literally days making a new Empire only to be next door to the most powerful Empire in the game?  Understandably a long lived empire would have far reaching "probe" territory, but landing next door to such a power on the outside fringes of the galaxy just sucks.

Sticky Roofs, Broken Floors, Ghostly Walls
The work on stick roofs created more problems than it fixed.

I think the problems with sticky roofs, falling through floors, and ghostly walls are fixed.

I could not eliminate the need for a hull void on top of areas where vehicles are intended to operate. That includes on top of the road span of bridges and the landing pad at the airport. The void nullifies the obstruction margin that normally exists around hull parts. The void only has to be about a meter thick; more is ok because it is ignored outside the obstruction margin.

I updated the Airport Terminal, Colony Airport Terminal, and Highway Bridge blueprints. I unpublished the other bridges until I have a chance to work on them.

Server Crash
A couple of servers crashed in the past few days.

Fixed an error that happened when a passenger used a turbo lift while someone aboard was in a designer instance. This was positively identified as the cause of the crash in both cases.

Street Lights
I keep going to the roads page to find street lights.

Street lights button moved to roads page on the construction window.

Street Lights in Top Down
In top down view, street lights show an icon in the buildings overlay. They can be overpowering when there are lots of them.

Street lights and bridges were moved to the roads and landscaping overlay in top down view. This is consistent with their placement on the roads and landscaping page of the construction window. Street light icons are now 1/2 the size of road and bridge icons.

Grass on Roads
Sometimes my roads have grass on them in front of buildings, if the building site overlaps the road.

Grass is now removed from roads, even if they are overlapped by building sites.

Finalize Bug
Get a copy of a design from the exchange. Go to the designer and use the open from gear option. The design will not finalize after you tinker with it. Save the design to a file and reload the file and it finalizes ok.

Fixed architect id error.

Boat Scrape Bottom
Sailboats and submarines should make a scraping noise when they rub against the bottom.

Sailboats and submarines now make a scraping noise when they touch bottom while moving.

Firing a turret on a spaceship causes a crash to desktop for me.

Gathering more information. First noticed aboard an old-style.

There are some cases where you'd want to posts guards at what is technically a civilian building. You might want soldiers at an airport or a dock, or guarding your capitol, bank etc - even your avatar's private bedroom.


Right now, you have to somehow splice in a guard post site, which can be difficult, especially if the target location is on an upper floor. Could guard posts, as well as being a standalone building, become a mechanism by which troops are drawn from the military population just as citizens are for citizen posts - to any location? You eradicate all military presence by destroying the military homes, so I don't think it affects balance at all.

You can already do this on ships, more or less - would it be hard just to extend the system to all building types?

I am now sinking into the floor of my ships since the latest client patch today (11/17/18).   Tested on a  simple "Rocket box" and the Haxus Scout (refitted with PNN module).  

If you go prone or recall (no bed), you see through the bottom of the ship into the ground, or when its flying it is like your a stuck bug on the bottom of the ship.   (LLKTXND  and KFRIVND)

Not sure if this is related, but also experience two teleports to the bottom of the ocean while trying to move in a ship when I was sunken to my waist into the hull.

Update from global:
01:19 UTC · Shores of Hazeron
Haxus
I also realize what made the floor break.

01:23 UTC · Shores of Hazeron
Haxus
I will log off here and debug the floor problem when I log back on Monday.

Hi all ::)
To launch  launcher and game parts i need to link libpng12 from VMWare install: 

A player recently suggested a system of shield frequencies. I think it would work kind of like this.

• Defending shield station sets a number, which is the shield frequency. Perhaps has to be set before shields are brought up.
  
• Attacking weapon station sets a number, to penetrate shields using that frequency.
  
• If you get lucky, and your weapon frequency matches their shield frequency, their shield is nullified.
  

• NPC gunners would fire using random frequencies until they got lucky, then would continue using the same frequency.
  
• NPC defenders would lower shields, change frequency, then raise shields when attacker gets lucky.
  
• Frequency would need to be 3 digits or less or the odds of the gunner getting lucky would be extremely low. Is 1 to 255 enough?
  
• Anyone who sits at a shield station aboard a ship should see its frequency number.
  

One of the debug servers started dying about a week ago and finally slipped below the waves a couple of days ago. This killed the debug server grid for a while. It was up and working again by the end of yesterday. Consequent to the down time, some of the changes in this update were not tested yet.

Shields
Shields should charge faster when down. Shields on big ships take a long time to charge, like a month.

Shields received a few changes.

• Shields now have three states: Up, Down and Off.
  
• Shield station power button cycles through the three states.
  
• Shield capacitor charge time is 10 minutes when shields are down, if enough power is available, unless the old charge rate was faster, then that is used.
  
• When up, shield capacitor charge time is 1/10 of the shields down charge time, unless the old charge rate was faster, then that is used. (Should they charge at all when up?)
  
• Shields maintenance power is consumed when the shields are up; this did not change. Maintenance power not consumed when down or off.
  
• Shield capacitor does not charge or discharge when the shield is off.
  
• Stand down order is satisfied by shield down. Off is not necessary.
  
• Repairs and hiding in ground clutter require shields off.
  
• Crew turns shields off when the ship is moored.
  
• Shield projector bases now take 10 minutes to charge from empty, if enough power is available. They are never off or down.
  
• Tool tips, mission orders and NPC verbiage were update to distinguish between "down" and "off" appropriately.
  

• Framework is now the default volume for buildings and spacecraft.
  
• Other volume categories are considered to have the minimum framework necessary to exist. The framework category adds to that minimum structure.
  
• Volume allocated to framework is valued at 4x the hit points of other volumes.
  
• This has the effect of taking away hit points as volumes are "carved out" of the framework, without breaking existing designs.
  
• Street lights no longer allow cargo storage volume. I will republish my street light designs to the exchange.
  
• Increasing framework enables a building to be built in harsher conditions, the way armor does, with thresholds at the same volumes. Armor still works too, so existing designs are not broken by this. They do not assist each other in this determination. One or the other must be sufficient for the environment.
  

• Refit is not really done now but it might work without breaking the ship.
  
• The quality of the resulting systems will likely be incorrectly reset back to the original construction quality of the spacecraft.
  
• All damage to the spacecraft will likely be repaired.
  

You can access a thorough design analysis by pressing [TAB] while seated at a ship station. This analysis does not include the blueprint ID. It would be useful if it did, I think.

As of a recent update, I have begun phasing through certain walls in my ship, passing from room to room unexpectedly and without using a door.

The void and barrier structure of this ship has not changed materially for nearly a year. I am certain this is not due to any changes at my end. Possible to put it back the way it was? The ship is a Dulcinee Croiseur de Poche, ID ending in 501. You can test by phasing between the bridge and the transporter room.

If I remove my helmet while phasing, I will suffocate in the space between room voids.