TEC: Pirates, Planets, and Plunder Change Log

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TEC: Pirates, Planets, and Plunder Update

Release Status: *** RELEASED ***

June brings us warmer weather (in the northern hemisphere), sun, and a time to relax. Seems like the perfect time to update Pirates! This month we’ve updated the bounty system, added Pirate Raid events, modified planet components, and much more.

You’ll notice that it’s now easier to field more capital ships early in the game; and that there are more derelicts to collect than before. We’ve also updated the bottom bar of the UI and made a bunch of other improvements. Check out the full change log below for details!

Note: This update is not save game compatible with prior versions.

Change Log

Pirates & Bounty

  • Added Pirate Raid events: Pirates will periodically send a raid to the planet with the highest bounty. Now it’s even more important to keep your bounty below other players!

  • Removed Pirate auction penalty (i.e., no more pirate raids for the player(s) who lost the auction).

  • Bounties are now visible to all players.

  • Bounties are now placed on the target of Pirate raids (either from a player directed raid or a raid event).

  • Bounties can now be paid off by the player with the bounty.

  • Pirate raids will now be aborted if bounties are fully paid off.

  • Pirates are no longer allied to other minor factions.

  • Added AI logic to counter pirates and bounties.

  • Added: Pirate Mercenary Base for TEC Rebels - A covert meeting point where pirate mercenaries can be hired.

  • Changed: Smuggler’s Den to a Pirate auction reward.

  • Renamed: Pirate Mercenaries research subject to Pirate Persuasion.

Planet Component Item Updates

  • Added: Archeology Center for desert planets - A hub for survey teams to stage expeditions into the desert where they hope to find valuable items in the shifting sands.

  • Added: Ferric Mining Rig for ferrous planets - Mining machinery heavily modified for the iron-rich substrate boosts metal extraction rates.

  • Changed: Gas Crystallizer - Further observation of Vasari resource collection inspired the TEC to design machines that convert gas harvesting byproducts into highly prized Andvar.

  • Changed: Hardened Bunker to Command Bunker - Constructs an underground command center to protect local military leadership from bombardment. Gives Planet Health and increases Military slots.

  • Changed: Geothermal Planet to Metal Smelting Plant - Many points of limited volcanic activity provide easy access to energy, improving the local economy.

  • Changed: Secret Military Lab to a minor faction reward.

  • Renamed: Autonomous Refinery to Orbital Mining Control and restricted to only asteroids and moons.

  • Removed: Tactical Relay.

  • Removed: Regional Government Office from ferrous planet types.

  • Added trade capacity to Commercial District, High Pressure Domes, and Ice Processing Facility.

  • Items moved into unbuilt slots now make their ability unusable and make that ability’s persistent buff dead if it had one.

  • Items moved into unbuilt slots no longer apply their modifiers and mutations.

  • Already built items (e.g, auction rewards) don’t take effect until the slot finishes building.

  • hud_owned_unit_item_button now renders the missing slot status overlay for built items in unbuilt slots.

Derelicts

  • Balanced derelict spawning around home planets. There is now a non-zero chance a derelict is spawned adjacent to the home planet.

  • Improved derelict header names. Replaced levels 0, 1, 2 with nicer descriptions (rare, epic).

  • Improved derelict generation options. Allows mixing and matching resources and exotics in more interesting combinations.

  • Increased derelict chance for exotics in early game.

Gameplay

  • Added Event system (currently only populated by the Pirate Raid event described above).

  • Improved Akkan’s Colonize ability: Buff duration increased from 150 to 180; planet track build price savings increased from 8/16/24/32% to 10/20/30/40%.

  • Improved Akkan’s Inspiring Broadcast ability: Antimatter cost reduced from 60 to 50; duration increased from 20 to 25; weapon reload rate bonus increased from 15/20/25/30% to 20/25/30/35%.

  • Fixed Ragnarov abilities' firing angles and autocast behavior.

  • Changed Ankylon to fire forward instead of broadside.

  • Fixed weapon firing angles on both titans.

  • Added tight firing angle to Marza’s Raze Planet ability.

  • Fixed Sova’s Missile Battery not firing at long-range targets.

  • Improved Culture propagation.

  • Rebalanced resource asteroid counts.

  • Added hard constraint to building structures that are too big for some gravity wells.

  • Fixed weapon modifier bonus discrepancies.

AI

  • Fixed titans not leveling up abilities.

  • Added AI titan building.

  • Fixed player AI picking planet to build structure that is never viable.

  • Added AI logic to counter pirates and bounties.

Unit Control

  • Added setting to control whether “move in formation” is the default movement behavior or not.

  • Issuing attack orders to stacked units will now target the closest unit(s).

  • Changed Scuttle hotkey to only work if associated advanced window popup is open. This should help prevent accidentally scuttling with the delete key.

  • Fixed bandbox with Shift behavior. Will now only remove units if no units got added. This is more consistent with Windows Explorer behavior and makes it easier to quickly add more units to a selection.

  • Fixed Shift select not working in selection window.

HUD

  • Updated bottom bar!

  • Set default DPI to 75%.

  • Fixed bookmark pips overlapping notification icons.

  • Fixed some HUD elemental not refreshing with planet/ship name changes.

  • Improved fleet build window readability. Moved counts into status icon area to make them easier to read and more prominent.

  • Moved player icon/name above planet mesh.

  • Updated unit selection background fill colors.

  • Updated unit selection window background fill and lines.

Tooltips

  • Fixed planet tooltip showing 0 for unbuilt structures.

  • Fixed auto-scaling of icons in tooltips ignoring aspect ratio.

  • Improved planet tooltips: Changed ordering, grouping, and removed some items into advanced mode (press Alt) to keep the view of planets more focused on what is important to the planet.

  • Added tooltip line groups: Allows abilities to further customize their tooltips by breaking up values into logical groups. Ex: loyalist titan ability friendly gravity well values vs. in neutral/enemy gravity well values.

  • Improved research tier waiting on research labs tooltip. Now shows current/future/required to help explain why tier upgrading is stalled.

  • Fixed weapon modifier tooltip discrepancies.

Models

  • Added: Oceanic planet.

  • Updated: Ferrous atmosphere.

  • Updated: Orbital cars.

  • Updated: TEC Prova shield.

  • Updated bounding spheres and boxes for all units.

Visual Effects

  • Fixed asteroid bombing effect not hitting the surface of the asteroid.

  • Updated titan ability colors.

Audio Effects

  • Updated normalization and attenuation on phase jump sfx.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed constructor frigates getting stuck (again).

  • Fixed some rare crashes and asserts.

  • Fixed crash when placing certain planet items (v1.13.3).

  • Fixed a sync error in multiplayer (v1.13.4).

Modding

  • Added give_weighted_npc_rewards action atomic.

  • Added player_has_available_supply action_constraint.

  • Added ability to have items be mutually exclusive.

  • Added asset cost as a possible cost for using abilities.

  • Added mutually_exclusive_items to unit_item_prerequisites.

Misc

  • Updated Colonize ability icon for colony cruiser.

  • Fixed missiles adding to kill count of ships that it hits.

  • Changed front end forum link to link to the forum homepage.

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14,060 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Sins2 Forums Top

Great to read the natch potes! I think the additions and changes will make the game once again feel fleshed out a lot more, which is great for replayability (testing and providing feedback to you guys) until the Vasari arrive.

Regarding the modding part "added ability to have items mutually exclusive", what items exactly? We discussed this in the discord, and I'm very happy to see you indeed added this. We focused mainly on research topics, so I assume that's in there, but what else is? Components (ships and planets)? Abilities? Even buildings on a per planet basis?

Keep up the great work :D

Reply #2 from Sins2 Forums Top

Nice to see AI will build Titans now, thought I was going crazy when I was running out games into the tens of hours with no AI titans showing up.

Sins 2 is building up slowly but surely into something really nice.

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Reply #3 from Sins2 Forums Top

Thanks!

Reply #4 from Sins2 Forums Top

When was this supposed to be released? Or was it released already and I missed an auto update?

EDIT: I'm blind, it says test edition. Wonder why Test version never said anything about an update. Oh well, something for me to "test" this weekend.

Reply #5 from Sins2 Forums Top

Epic's launcher will often start updating games before you even get the store page to display, so they're easy to miss.

Reply #6 from Sins2 Forums Top

How do you get a bounty off your planet? The game mentions something vague about "paying your bounty off" but it doesn't explain how! Or even how to place a bounty on a planet.

Reply #7 from Sins2 Forums Top

Quoting xclavex, reply 6

How do you get a bounty off your planet? The game mentions something vague about "paying your bounty off" but it doesn't explain how! Or even how to place a bounty on a planet.

 

I believe to place a bounty you click on an enemy owned world, and on the bottom left UI panel there is an option to place a bounty, I assume it would be the same way to pay off a bounty but I'm not sure. I don't tend to use Pirates much, but after seeing the them show up with nearly 1k fleet supply in the late game I will probably reconsider. I definitely will be looking to try out placing bounties next game I play.

I agree with the general feedback that the game doesn't really explain or show you much when it comes to using the bounty system. I would love to see Pirates and even Minor Factions that aren't traders become a more "living" part of the game systems as you play. Like say its ~45 minutes into a game and you show up to an uncontrolled system to conquer and there is a minor faction there that has built up some defenses, maybe even has a Starbase out encouraging you to rush some long range heavy torpedo ships to take it down. All while the faction itself is slowly earning income and building ships from the beginning of the game until its been destroyed.

Reply #8 from Sins2 Forums Top

Quoting Heretic9591, reply 7


Quoting xclavex,
reply 6

How do you get a bounty off your planet? The game mentions something vague about "paying your bounty off" but it doesn't explain how! Or even how to place a bounty on a planet.



 

I believe to place a bounty you click on an enemy owned world, and on the bottom left UI panel there is an option to place a bounty, I assume it would be the same way to pay off a bounty but I'm not sure. I don't tend to use Pirates much, but after seeing the them show up with nearly 1k fleet supply in the late game I will probably reconsider. I definitely will be looking to try out placing bounties next game I play.

I agree with the general feedback that the game doesn't really explain or show you much when it comes to using the bounty system. I would love to see Pirates and even Minor Factions that aren't traders become a more "living" part of the game systems as you play. Like say its ~45 minutes into a game and you show up to an uncontrolled system to conquer and there is a minor faction there that has built up some defenses, maybe even has a Starbase out encouraging you to rush some long range heavy torpedo ships to take it down. All while the faction itself is slowly earning income and building ships from the beginning of the game until its been destroyed.

 

I spent 20 minutes checking every button, key combo, corner of the screen trying to figure out how to pay the bounty off but frustratingly I was unable to figure it out, so my planet has a permanent bounty on it which is really annoying because they won't attack anybody else as long as I have a bounty.

Reply #9 from Sins2 Forums Top

Quoting xclavex, reply 8


Quoting Heretic9591,
reply 7






Quoting xclavex,

reply 6


How do you get a bounty off your planet? The game mentions something vague about "paying your bounty off" but it doesn't explain how! Or even how to place a bounty on a planet.



 

I believe to place a bounty you click on an enemy owned world, and on the bottom left UI panel there is an option to place a bounty, I assume it would be the same way to pay off a bounty but I'm not sure. I don't tend to use Pirates much, but after seeing the them show up with nearly 1k fleet supply in the late game I will probably reconsider. I definitely will be looking to try out placing bounties next game I play.

I agree with the general feedback that the game doesn't really explain or show you much when it comes to using the bounty system. I would love to see Pirates and even Minor Factions that aren't traders become a more "living" part of the game systems as you play. Like say its ~45 minutes into a game and you show up to an uncontrolled system to conquer and there is a minor faction there that has built up some defenses, maybe even has a Starbase out encouraging you to rush some long range heavy torpedo ships to take it down. All while the faction itself is slowly earning income and building ships from the beginning of the game until its been destroyed.



 

I spent 20 minutes checking every button, key combo, corner of the screen trying to figure out how to pay the bounty off but frustratingly I was unable to figure it out, so my planet has a permanent bounty on it which is really annoying because they won't attack anybody else as long as I have a bounty.

 

Sorry last night I looked and its in the Advanced Options panel, that button is in the bottom right. The pay off bounty is pretty unbelievable, to pay off 8000 bounty, you have to pay 28000. No thanks, I'd rather just let the world fall and then rebuild it after.

Reply #10 from Sins2 Forums Top

Agreed, we'll be fixing that.

Reply #11 from Sins2 Forums Top

Quoting Heretic9591, reply 7

[...] I would love to see Pirates and even Minor Factions that aren't traders become a more "living" part of the game systems as you play. Like say its ~45 minutes into a game and you show up to an uncontrolled system to conquer and there is a minor faction there that has built up some defenses, maybe even has a Starbase out encouraging you to rush some long range heavy torpedo ships to take it down. All while the faction itself is slowly earning income and building ships from the beginning of the game until its been destroyed.

That sounds like a neat idea. Neutrals that develop rather than just wait to be conquered.