Greetings Fellow Captains! Time for our first weekly wrap up, bringing everyone up to date on the patch notes for this week. For those who want to follow it day to day, be sure to keep an eye on the Google Docs thread, which Aren updates as he goes along! You can find that here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/134aQGWrGfiwQFpcmsk0IxLsfS8WcB9rrXez2XNJVnB8/edit Some of the highlights this week include a new ship, the Corvette, ambience enhancements such as birds and fish, environmental effects, etc., new quests, ship customization, dyes, etc. Aren has created a video to show you some of the changes in our first two weeks on Steam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZQQMXxyYBc For those more inclined to read than watch, here are all of Aren's notes through today: **CHANGE LOG** **In Development** * Fix for the issue where players could duplicate themselves in multiplayer. **2014-10-24 - Now live** * Added birds to the game, further improving ambiance (50%+ graphics). * Added snow to the arctic climate (75%+ graphics). * Ineligible quests (such as capture X when it has already been captured) will not show up anymore. * Added a minimum placement distance to all structures. * Towns will no longer request structures if they are already present. * Added a new quest for towns with excess resources that let you buy them with a 15% discount. * You can now sell back trade cargo to the town that you bought it from, just in case you can’t find somewhere else to sell it (remember: hover over towns on the map to see what they need) **2014-10-23** * Fixed an issue where structures could spawn inside a town. * Added /team chat. * Added visible quantities to town tooltips on the map, and they will be visible for all non-hostile towns now, not just those of your faction. * Town tooltips on the map also show how close the town is to growing in size. * Dead ships should no longer count for the team balancing logic. * Fix for some minor messages that were showing up in MP. * Towns belonging to other factions will now auto-repair your ship, same as your own faction’s towns. * Chat will now automatically fill in /global or /team for you when you start typing based on the last used value. * Players no longer respawn on top of other ships in some situations. * The number of ships should now gradually go down after players leave. * Reworked how loot is picked up to resolve a minor MP issue. * Added marine life (75%+ graphics). **2014-10-22** * You should no longer be able to pick up the same loot multiple times in MP. * Another attempt to get rid of RFC #1 messages in MP, seeing as last change didn’t quite do it… * It should no longer be possible for two ships to spawn in the same town on top of each other in MP. * It should no longer be possible to flip over ships in MP, or make them go underwater (for real this time!) (Note: you can still tip them over, just not upside-down anymore) * Found the code that was causing ship explosions to insta-kill nearby ships and removed it. **2014-10-21** * Higher challenge areas should now spawn more difficult ships. * XP for capturing objectives should now be adjusted by the challenge level properly. * With the new legendary loot being priced at absurdly high values, max item price when sold to towns is now 5000 rather than unlimited. * Fix for the harmless RFC #1 message that was occasionally showing up in MP. * Improve Structure talent will now also buff defense and no longer has an expiration. * Newly placed buildings will now auto-build themselves. * Buildings now cost more to create and repair in higher challenge areas. * Turns out damage applied to sails wasn’t done quite right. Fixed now. * Added a Chain Shot ability. Players start with it, same as Volley. Boosted by the same talent as Volley. * Added corrosive and explosive ammunition coating (goes into the previously unused item slot). Corrosive bypasses some defense and explosive does extra damage to buildings. * AI will now react to captured towns in a much more hostile manner in higher challenge level areas. * AI’s initiative range will now increase with challenge level. * All quest experience will now scale properly with the challenge level. * Ships are now worth a bit less experience to balance out the extra XP from quests. * Reinforced sails talent is now 3 times more effective, but has 3 points instead of 2. * AI will now go after all visible targets in mid to high challenge areas, no matter how far they are. * Friendly AI units weren’t as powerful as they should have been compared to pirates. * Fixed an issue where player stats were not sync’d properly initially in MP, leading to discrepancies with player movement and very noticeable jitter. **2014-10-20** * Added customization items to the game. You can now find items that let you dye your sails, paint your hull, and change the symbol you see on the sails. * Pirates should no longer try to capture anything in the starting areas. * Increased the starting movement speed a little. * Reduced the explosion force from smaller ships. * Quest-spawned pirates should no longer attempt to capture anything. * Everyone will now gain experience from trading. Exchange will gain more. * Larger towns will now take longer to capture. * Towns will now show how many quests they need completed in order to grow. **2014-10-19** * AI ships should no longer explode randomly. Only when they actually get stuck. * Pirates in heroic areas (challenge 9-12) now have defense, making Poison Cloud’s debuff very useful to have there. * Changed item quality colors, adding one more (for heroic gear). Don’t panic if your purples become blues. Stats didn’t change. * Added player ship customization support: sail color, hull color, symbol, pennant texture. * Note: I added support for this, not in-game UI yet. Meaning you can mod it now. The actual in-game items (dyes etc) will come in the next update. * Modded content is now loaded from My Documents/Windward instead of steamapps/Windward. * Added a new ship -- Corvette. High-end light vessel. * Rebalanced trading somewhat. Challenge level now affects prices, but the excess production/stronger need discounts are now 5% per extra point rather than 10%. Diplomacy is still just as effective, which makes it more important for traders. * Factions no longer have faction-restricted ships, but rather get a 30% discount for their favored ships. **2014-10-18 ** * Fixed the lockout zone issue. Whew! Multiplayer should now work fine even outside LAN. * Reduced repair costs down to 8% of what it was in 10-17. * You can now get auto-repaired in neutral towns. * Dedicated server will now load worlds from the same place as the game and you can use the “-world WorldName” parameter to choose which one it will load. * Build town skill should no longer lead you to invalid locations. * Added stat information (hover). For earlier notes, please see the Google Doc linked above!