Ahoy there, [strike]landlubber[/strike] Captain! Another month of sailing the high seas comes to a close, heralding more improvements, bug fixes and new additions for you to explore. Improved Steam integration brings forth Trading Cards -- a frequently asked-for feature, as well as cloud-based saves. You can now play on your PC, then continue on your Macbook without missing a beat! Speaking of missing things, don't miss out on the new 6th faction that was recently added to the game. You won't find it at world creation, but you may find its presence known here and there thanks to the recent addition of liberated towns that lets other factions participate in your conquests alongside you. Joining this new faction won't be as easy as others, but those who do manage to obtain the purple flag are in for a few surprises. Solani Syndicate, as the faction is called, is essentially an organized criminal organization with their own unique rule-breaking perks that are yours to discover. Plunder the full set of patch notes below, and don't forget to give your feedback regarding the game's progress on the forum.

2015-01-30

• You can now rename towns again.
• Establishing embassies should now immediately update the world map.
• Added a mod selection window to the start of the game.
• Player characters now get bound to mods used to play them. This means that once you play with a specific mod enabled, you will always need this mod to play with that character. You will be warned before this irreversible binding takes hold.
• When players capture pirate-controlled towns, there is now a chance that they will liberate it for another non-hostile faction instead. For example: a Valiant player captures a pirate town, and instead of it becoming a Valiant town, it becomes a Consulate town. This will add some diversity as well as let players gain reputation with other factions.
• In PvE situations all non-pirate ships now count as one faction for the sake of team balancing. This should reduce lag and keep teams fairly balanced against the pirates.
• Slightly reduced the effectiveness of Diplomacy when it comes to aggro range reduction.
• Flags will no longer be awarded if the player already has them in the vault.
• Path trail will now be visible over terrain as well, not just water.
• Enabled cloud saves.

2015-01-29

• Servers that get removed from the public list will now be immediately removed on clients that are watching the server list.
• Lobby server (used for the server list) will now correctly remove stale servers.
• Hopefully properly fixed an issue that was preventing public servers from reconnecting to the lobby (server list).
• Town icons will now always be on top.
• Unequipping a flag no longer resets the cooldown timer.
• Syndicate now requires players to have at least 50 talent points before offering them to join.
• Added a new skill that will be granted to players after 10 minutes of combat. It’s called I.W.I.N. and I’ll let you guess what it does…
• Added two new quests that you will find among the floating loot.
• Certain quests will now offer items as rewards
• Added /anonymous mode that will hide player’s country flag as well as make them hidden from /who all.
• Spyglass will now provide extra zoom on larger ships.
• 29.1: Trading cards are live.
• 29.1: Improved Syndicate’s base colors a bit.

2015-01-28

• Syndicate players will no longer see “can’t capture anything here” messages.
• Made Windward work on 4k monitors / TVs.
• New players will now always use their faction’s colors until customized.
• Explosive charge should now be usable on a zeppelin that’s not flying.

2015-01-25

• Quest NPCs will now only be invulnerable until the player gets close. After that they’re fair game and players going out of range won’t make them become invulnerable again.
• Poison cloud, inferno and mortar can now all be used outside of combat.
• Reduced the range stat of siege towers at higher levels.

2015-01-20

• Syndicate faction no longer accepts embassies.
• Syndicate players can now always challenge other factions (even if they don’t have a presence nearby), but can’t establish embassies.
• Syndicate faction’s control should now be visible at the top of the screen.
• You can no longer bribe ships if your faction has enough ships on it.
• Captain, Crew and Specialist items will now gain levels as you earn experience. The item level can’t exceed the challenge level of the region you are in.
• Building a siege tower will now complete both the “build a guard tower” and “build a lighthouse” quest, as it counts as both.
• Made Syndicate’s color a little bit lighter so it’s easier to distinguish from pirates.
• Flags will no longer drop for you if you already have that flag in the vault.
• Faction that wins the contest war will now automatically assume control of the entire region.
• Support specialization’s aura’s skill cost reduction will now be visible on tooltips as well.
• AI logic was a bit messed up: they were still updating objectives while in combat.
• AI should now aim water barrels a lot more effectively.
• Faction that wins the PvP challenge will now assume control of the region.

2015-01-19

• Completing a quest will now boost production of a random commodity in the town where the quest was given.
• Delivering cargo will now grant a random quest in the town where the goods were delivered to.
• Guard Tower and Lighthouse building quests should now be available again.
• Offered quests are now going to be less likely to repeat.
• Tweaked the ship’s hull shader, adding some glossiness to make ships look better. Most noticeable with dark colors.
• All factions now have a unique look.
• Added a 6th faction. This faction won’t appear at world creation, and you can’t choose it from the start. You can get invited to join it after doing enough missions for them, however. Note that this faction is a lot more selective than others, so the reputation requirement for it is much higher.

2015-01-17

• Added a theoretical fix to an issue where AI would simply stop doing anything. This is a very odd bug. Unity engine simply stops executing coroutines without any warning or reason. If my “fix” resolves it then I’m going to have to rewrite a lot of code...

2015-01-16

• Fog now prevents capture.
• Added some code to eliminate the player ship duplication bug.
• Minor tweaks to the networking code to improve security and memory management.

2015-01-13

• Permanent PvP setting should no longer prevent stats from accumulating when driving out pirates (for the summary screen).
• You should now be able to steer and accelerate/decelerate at the same time using a controller.
• If the player doesn’t get credit for Edimas, they should now be able to restart that part of the ZPL quest by docking in the same town and right-click advancing the quest as before.

2015-01-12

• 360 controller should now work better with the zeppelin.
• Country flags should now be offset so they don’t obscure the player’s name.
• Added extra checks to ensure that locked worlds can’t be modified.
• Lengthened the respawn timer cooldown that towns get placed on towns after some ship spawns there. Also lengthened the cooldown caused by hostiles being nearby.
• Added some tweaks to hopefully address a couple of minor issues. Improve buff should now correctly repair buildings when outside of combat.