Hey captains!

Gameplay Changes:

• Lower deck items now get a 10% bonus to their stats for being placed in the correct slots.
• Completing quests for the same faction in a province now yields a stacking buff to reputation and influence for that faction. Doing a quest for any other faction resets this stacking bonus.
• AI will now establish new provinces on their own if the player doesn't establish anything new for 40 in-game days (equals to 4 hours IRL).
• Spawned NPCs in encounters will now be of randomized type rather than always using the player's ship type.
• NPCs will no longer go to +7 item tier if the player is level 30. The player's average item level has to be high for this to happen.
• The Sloop is now 20% faster to help newer players get around faster.
• The middle mouse button now orders nearby NPCs to go investigate the clicked target on the map. Shift+Click does the same.
• NPC ships ordered to investigate some target will no longer forget their order the first chance they get.
• A player dying will add a marker to the minimap for a short period of time.
• Boss-tier ships dropping loot will ping the minimap where the item has dropped.
• Pirates will now occasionally raid provinces.
• Other volley's projectiles will no longer lose their ability to damage enemies if one of the volley's projectiles happens to hit an ally along the path.
• Duplicate identical commodities in provinces now increase production: 50% for 2, 75% for 3, 87.5% for 4 or more.
• Reduced bloodthirst's effect down to 15% of damage dealt (was 25%).
• All interdicting pirates were set to be defensive spec'd. Now, they will be a random spec.
• Targeted skills can now be bound to the same controller button as the default cancel action (B by default), and the two won't conflict with each other's actions
• NPCs were apparently always level 1, and no one has ever noticed. This was causing them to have debuffs related to having too many talent points, and their gear was scaled down to be capped at +2, making high-level NPCs significantly weaker than they should have been.
• Added the ability for NPC talent specializations to specify which ship types should be excluded when choosing this spec. For example, Xebec should not be used by support ships.
• Changed how NPCs adjust their talents and item tier to favor adjustment of talent points first, resulting in item tier going up less.

Controller Support

• Added full gamepad controller support to the game, and the game is now 100% playable with a controller. By default, it supports the XBOX 360 style layout, with the appropriate glyphs. The game switches controls on the fly as you use them, so you can play with the keyboard and mouse, then pick up your controller and continue playing, and the game will seamlessly switch and change the UI/keybinds to match. All controller and keyboard key binds are separate, so you don't need to worry about one conflicting with the other as you play. This was a long task that took over a week on its own.
• Diving and fishing minigames now support controller-based input.
• Added a virtual keyboard to the game that shows up whenever an input field is selected with controller input. This completes the Steam's requirements for 100% controller compatibility.
• Controller input now uses the right stick to choose where to fire with manually targeted skills.
  
  
• The right thumbstick will now pan scroll views instead of moving the camera while any UI is open.
• Enter town button now has higher priority than skill keys, making it take precedence while in town.
• Holding the (A) button on the controller now acts as the quick sell/buy/transfer the same way CTRL+Clicking does.
• Changed the left stick click to activate the virtual cursor instead of the Start button.
• The conversation window no longer needs the controller mouse to be active while using the controller.
  

UI & Quality of Life

• Diving and fishing windows will now start paused the first time (when they show a tutorial window).
• Added a "new big hit" indicator. You will notice as you score bigger crits, they will show up as bigger numbers and will stay on the screen longer.
• Town's tax label now shows the appropriate final tax for the mage (commodity, gear and ship markups are now included).
• The regional control indicator will no longer show # of remaining reinforcements if the counters aren't being used yet (prior to the 10-minute mark).
• Conversation window text animation can now be turned off in options.
• The buy/sell quantity slider value now begins at 1 rather than 0.
• Added a tutorial explaining the basics of regional control.
• Made the recent level fix for NPCs backward-compatible with older worlds.
• Added 10 basic emojis.

Fixes & Technical

• Fixed an issue that was preventing faction leaders from entering provinces.
• Fixed inability to interact with faction leader ships.
• Settling a province skill is not the same one as settling a town, fixing the bug allowing many towns to be placed using the province settlement quest.
• Fixed a bug causing +6 items to get horrible stats when leveling up to +7.
• Ripped out the old way of creating player data since it was causing all kinds of issues, and I was tired of trying to get them to work. This will cause older worlds to have odd issues, so it's not recommended to keep playing on those created before April 1st.
• Fixed an issue where combat indicators were listing incorrect sides, such as those involving faction leaders (they should never take sides).
• Explicitly specified ship types will spawn as exactly that ship type (fixed Basher's quest).
• Entering a world with mods now marks the player's profile as having been modded (if the player accepts). Profiles that have been marked as modded cannot be used in worlds that haven't been modded.
• Fixed the inconsistent behaviour of the fast-forward state.