First, I'd like to wish all of you a very Happy Holiday Season and thank you for a great year! This is the second patch as promised that provides additional bonuses to end mission loot, a new device that lets you scan for lifeforms in mission areas, a cleanup pass on the movement/interaction system and more. This is the last patch this year, and it has been a very busy year indeed. I have big plans for 2019 and I hope you enjoy the content and updates to come.

Here are the patch notes:

UPDATED: At the end of missions and when you clear hostile facilities and explore locations, you are now awarded better bonus equipment. Originally this was going to be a crate. I'm going to reserve that for major bosses that will reward epic items, and now grant these reward items as described below.
All granted items are now useful - no more health kits or junk items.
All granted items are of exceptional quality or higher.
You now get three guaranteed items at the end of missions.
Other rewards remain the same - Faction, cash rewards, and ammo are still granted depending on whether the location is a faction mission or a explore location.
--Short missions and explore locations - A chance for a legendary - a total of three granted equipment items (weapon, armor, shield or mod)
--Medium missions and explore locations - A high chance for a legendary - a total of three granted equipment items (weapon, armor, shield or mod)
--Long missions and explore locations - A guaranteed legendary - a total of three granted equipment items (weapon, armor, shield or mod)

UPDATED: A cleanup pass to the movement and interaction system. Overall this brings a few things in line with where they should be as far as object interaction and movement is concerned. Still more work to do on this.
--When moving to a location, if you click a chest, object or NPC, the closest team member will branch off and interact with that item instead of ignoring the object and continuing to move to the destination.
--If a PC is moving towards an object to interact, other team members will stop and wait.
--If a PC is moving towards an object to interact, another click to move will interrupt the interaction and clear the interaction queue.

UPDATED: The help screen while in space has been updated.
UPDATED: When rolling over grenades and health kits popups, descriptions are now displayed on the screen so you can see what kind of grenade or health kit you are selecting.
UPDATED: The high-resolution space option now also displays higher resolution materials for planets.
UPDATED: In higher level encounters, enemy groups are less likely to be generated with multiple missile launchers. Sure, that was fun, but it can also be overwhelming.
UPDATED: New color coding icons for equipment tiers in all menus.
UPDATED: You can now translocate directly to your ship from anywhere on a trade station if you have the Halamis Translocator equipped.

ADDED: A new device exclusive to the Shikaru faction. Shikaru faction vendors now sell the Lifesign Tracker. This device exposes all lifeforms in the current mission area on the radar for 10 seconds. Enemies out of range of the scanner are displayed at the edge of the radar display. You can use this in any mission area to help you track down those elusive enemies hiding in small rooms or in the larger mission areas like caverns and stations. The device has a 2-minute cooldown. The device cannot be used to reveal ethereal creatures. The device uses a global cooldown so other team members that also have the device equipped will need to wait until the cooldown expires. The cooldown persists between saves. There will be many more useful devices coming to the game - cloaking devices, resource node scanners for salvaging, drones for scouting areas and destroying upcoming turret placements in missions etc.

ADDED: Bloom filter setting in the video options screen.

FIXED: A bug that would display the wrong number of available faction tokens when purchasing an item from a faction vendor.
FIXED: When purchasing an item from a faction vendor, the text sent to the log now correctly indicates that you used tokens to purchase the item.
FIXED: The beacon icon now disappears if active when you FTL out of a star system.
FIXED: Blending issues with nebula effects. Overall, nebula effects now better match the star system sky and are more subtle.
FIXED: Removed duplicate log entry when turning in faction missions.
FIXED: A floating container in one of the mission areas and a number of other visual glitches in various mission areas.
FIXED: A mission enemy that was linked to a group on the other side of the mission map in one of the mission areas.


A little of what you can expect for the NEXT content patch:



The first set of final models for some of the ships (10 total)
Victory FT-2 - Light Fighter
Arrow FT-1 - Light Fighter
Triumph ITC-4 - Interceptor
Rovah MK-1 - Explorer
Talon ATKR-2 - Medium Fighter
Khaal ATKR-4 - Heavy Fighter
Tarsus MRCH-2 - Light Merchant
Severin MRCH-2 - Light Merchant
Heron MRCH-3 - Light Merchant
Exetor ATKR-7 - Heavy Fighter

Cargo transfer on stations
Ground mining drone system
Commodities and trading tied to the beacon system currently in the game
Updated animations
Improvements to the pace of combat (tied to the new animations)
Faction Agents will buy scan data

That's not all of course and I'll be working my way through the "What's Next" and "Roadmap" posts on the forums as I move towards Alpha.