Elite: Dangerous Powerplay 1.3 Beta Incoming (changelog)

Hi everyone,

The Elite: Dangerous Powerplay Beta will be available for download for those players with beta access, from approximately 4PM BST today (26/05/2015).

The bug reporting forum can be found here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=121

Thanks in advance to everyone who takes part, and for all the feedback we get from you playing! We can't wait to see what you think.

Here's the full change-log:

New Content/Features:

• Powerplay added
  • Power map views added to galaxy map
  • Added power information and action screens
  • Power specific ship modules added
  • Power specific ambient traffic added
  • Spawn AI to hunt player if they defect
  • Power specific goods and actions added
• Playable ship Imperial Courier added
• Playable ship Diamondback added
• Cargo/Mining chunk collection drones added
• Fuel transfer drones added
• Prospector drones added
• Mission system overhaul
  • Inbox integration for branching missions
  • Missions scaling up based on rank
  • Missions scaling up based on reputation with mission giver
  • Mission targets can be generated in supercruise rather than USSs
  • Spawned AI difficulty determined by mission (if spawned by mission)
  • Missions requiring only mineable materials added
  • Revamped military progression missions
  • Added Founders and Elite ranked missions
  • More mission variants added
  • Chatter tables updated
• Updated bounty system
  • Bounties cannot be paid off (Pilot's Fed contact is gone!), but expire after 7 days.
  • Major factions don't record crimes anymore, only minor factions. (You may have major faction stuff in your saves left over from the previous system).
  • Fines now take 7 days to expire, but never coexist with bounties (bounties absorb fines and dormant bounties with the same faction).
  • Expiry only actually happens when you login, hyperspace or resurrect. (This stops cases of „I attacked a wanted ship that had no bounty a few seconds ago“)
  • Friendly fire values relaxed
• Add select nav target functionality to system map
• Add mining bonus for mining operations within extraction sites
• Added Painite as a minable commodity
• Added osmium as a minable commodity
• Added low and high intensity resource extraction site scenarios
• Loan ceiling scales based on player's highest Elite rank
• Founder decal now gold
• Added crimes for reckless flying (collisions) within starport no fire zones:
  • Shields only collisions above speed limit is a fine
  • Hull damage only above speed limit is a larger fine
  • Ship destruction within short window after collision above speed limit is a bounty
  • Respects 'Report crimes against me' setting
• Allow any general purpose slot on any ship to contain a fuel tank module
• Show progress to next PF rank
• NPC chatter works in supercruise
• Added rank up messages and animations to inbox

Stability Fixes:

• Fix crash when entering icy rings as they have no possible minerals
• Fix possible stability issue with AI entering resource extraction sites
• Fix access violation when interdicting NPCs
• Fix crash when taking high res screen shots with super sampling turned on
• Don't try and transfer group leadership for player-owned groups
• Fix a crash in keyboard helper when it is unable to find a keyboard locale
• Fix for skybox render crash on exit
• Fix for memory crash in system map
• Fix a crash in the system generation
• Fix rank-restricted ships being purchasable and causing server errors
• Fix for streaming crash on shut down
• Fix server error entering some empty systems
• Prevent Module Data Gather crashing when setting modules while looking at the fire groups tab
• Fix for invalid shield value in network traffic
• Fix ships setting their faction to the non-existent „Anarchy“ faction when there aren't any factions around
• Fix AI crash in combat zone
• [OSX] Fix memory allocation crash
• Don't kill the server if we have a hash collision on system name
• Fix issue with low level maths during ship docking
• OSX: Don't crash if an attached joystick has an invalid product ID
• OSX: Fix crash if memory allocation fails
• OSX: Fix for various crashes on launch associated with some keyboards and locales

General Tweaks/Fixes

• Fix ring scaling on stars in system map
• Made the streaks on the Cobra windscreen less noticeable, but more balanced
• When we're clearing bounties and resetting hostility states, make sure we do it on remote authorities as well.
• Searching for 'PAND' in the galaxy map brings up 'PANDAMONIUM' as the first result fixed
• Galaxy map camera now caches its current position for retrieval on returning to the galaxy map
• Fix planet popping on approach
• Replaced the mute button mode (toggle/hold) with a bespoke option which allows for toggle, push to talk and push to mute modes
• Enabling wing beacon enables voice comms fixed
• Stop the system info popup preventing clicking the system itself
• The minimum value of the lighting curves for stars has been altered so that it scales from a universal base value with star temperature
• Moved the UI camera lock on option to the input options screen, to hopefully make it more visible
• Updated all resource extraction scenario CSM's to heavily reduce the number of NPC's
• Fix missing black hole effect in certain systems - such as Phua Aub SO-Z
• Make trade voucher redemption menu options consistent with bounty vouchers - separate menu items for each, and local factions only
• Fix police ships spawning at lawless mining scenarios
• Reset current target contact when pressing the „select next route system“ key
• Fix Shield Bank Module not filling properly; this lead to a missing cell when using „reload all“ option in station services
• Fix to Render order problem with section of Adder cockpit
• Changed WING RANGE to EXCEEDS WING for nav panel system buttons
• Fix some new modules the wrong amount of ammo (e.g. Shield Cell Banks)
• Rebalanced mass lock values across all ships to fix various inconsistencies and also ensured ships overheat when self destructing
• Population data inconsistencies between galaxy and system map fixed Belt information are now displayed for stars in the system map
• Fix surprise non-zero throttle after pre-flight checks (unless you're using the throttle axis binding)
• Toxic corrosive damage from carried cargo now ignores broken modules
• Fixed the Fer-de-Lance clipped inside landing pad
• Prevent sleeping cargo canisters from penetrating asteroids
• One suspected cause for driver micro-stutters addressed
• Weapon lighting optimisations
• Lighting overdraw optimisations to ship exteriors
• Lighting overdraw optimisations to ship cockpits
• Lighting overdraw optimisations to landing pads
• Fix radiators being damaged and broken by corrosive cargo when nothing else could touch them
• Self destruct and Reboot/repair are not shown in the functions tab when in supercruise
• Headlook disabled during panel focus fixed
• Transaction pane now matches entries using both the id and the type, so the focus no longer jumps to a different section when it updates
• When nav lock auto jump fails and suppresses a warning, also suppress the audio for the notification
• Default ships to not being full-members of factions - only police/military should be full members. Escorts/wingmen will get the full-member status of their lead
• Give escorts/wingmen a default generic escort chatter table rather than the same as their lead
• Make AIs respect the FSD cooldown timer, the same as the long timer for players (as NPCs never submit)
• Fix incorrect orbital period for Pluto
• Move Castellan Station away from Lave 2 to prevent people not being able to supercruise away
• AI not subject to heat targeting mechanic in same way as players fixed
• Make SSAO respond to being toggled in the options menu
• Docking computer not working at outposts fixed
• AI ships experiencing difficulty leaving Orbis starport interior fixed
• Docking computer gives wrong setting fixed
• Removed extra radius added to the 'am I close enough to dock' maths so the distance on the GUI matches the distance required to allow a successful docking request
• Fix problem of Outfitting showing the incorrect maximum ammo for Shield Cell Banks
• Disable vignette effect for debug fly camera
• Fix typos in Leestian Evil Juice description
• Update to pirate scanning behaviour. Always scan, whatever the threat value, but potentially block attacking because of threat
• Updated station ad screens
• NPC bounty hunter scanning update: New chatter triggers added. Added new behaviour: if target is scanned, found to have a bounty below the minimum (but non-zero), warned, then later scanned again, it will then be attacked
• Make sure we spend fuel when we hyperspace, even if disconnect before the save-on-arrival
• Adjusted military archetypes in war zones, to distinguish them a bit more from lockdowns and the subsequent blockade. Won't interdict clean ships in war, as they are too busy fighting a war to do that
• Made the stars and planets wait until they are ready to render, this will fix planets showing up as white for a short time after entering the game
• When police scans a wanted target that has a very high threat score, previously it would ignore it; now it starts attacking, says a chatter line, and calls reinforcements
• Wing beacon is turning off or timing out and not updating the GUI fixed
• When the player equips a module and their ship has insufficient power - we should warn them about power management
• Fix no distinction between dormant and active bounties in the transactions panel
• Fix throttle going to full when hyperspacing from normal space with FAOff and without using the throttle axis
• Interdictions do 10% of the damage of a normal emergency drop
• Chance that NPC escorts won't flee but stay and fight
• Fix for Commuters having a crazy high chance to flee when their hull got to about 50%
• Improved and highly optimised Hangar lighting
• Visual improvements, rebalancing and optimisation to hangar particle effects
• Fixed typo in basic discovery scanner description
• Fix typos in water giant description
• Fix spelling for Luyten 347-14 system permit
• Remove extraneous space in class M star description
• Fix incorrect starting explorer description
• Remove unneeded secondary economy from Auta Isuang
• Jovian texture replaced wrong default terrestrial texture, schematic height params for this planet type slightly raised for better definition
• Fix turrets set to Target Only deciding to fire when you're in the hangar
• Adjusted the height of the flood lights around the large landing pad (raised them up by 5 metres) so that they interfere less with the Chat panel in the GUI
• Give turret mounts the ability to track 5 degrees down past horizontal, to help ships like the python be able to actually hit small ships in front of it
• Friendly fire rules should apply to player Vs player, not just AI
• Fix NPCs not giving themselves local bounties
• Added ampersand character to text rendering on starports
• Don't allow NPC's to jump if they have 0% hull
• Prevent docking after the police 'notice' that a player is wanted. This is the same reaction with committing a violent crime near the station
• The contents of an asteroid are now deterministic again, and will be the same every time a players logs in and for every player
• A history of mined asteroids is stored per player on the web server. If a player tries to mine a previously mined asteroid, they get nothing
• Asteroids can now contain up to 3 minerals, chunks still contain 2 minerals
• Fix typo in star class L description
• Don't go through the process of choosing a new group leader if when the leader dies we aren't the authority, as this will be an authority transfer rather than the leader dying
• When a ship is dying and we're setting its behaviour to „Just hit me“, we only need to set this as the current behaviour, not the default state
• Fix repeat exploration scans cancelling previous scans
• Outpost hangars now have new and improved lighting
• Rich hangars and inner dock now have new and improved lighting
• Fix underside of flood light poking through a hangar and a texture issue on a LOD in the Rich Station interior
• Fix police defending wanted ships in their own faction
• Thickened up the fine strut detail on the Solar Array LODs which was causing a lot of aliasing as much of the geometry could become sub-pixel at distance. This seems to have improved render quality somewhat, especially in the mid-range LODs
• Fix the test that zeroed throttle when docked to only zero when docking state *changes* - allows the throttle to work when using accumulated controls during a pre-flight check
• Don't show a ship's health bar if the schematic is showing a subsystem/module
• Fixed the decal cameras for the Imperial Clipper
• Make sure that an NPC appears after an interdiction if it has been interdicted by more than one player
• Make sure that the lead ship wouldn't always head for the wake to drop out into the interdiction
• Fix alignment issues with tiny and medium hardpoints, and also splits the doors into separate CSM files so that they can open independently
• Fix rings becoming invisible when entering or exiting supercruise
• Docking computer resets timer back to 10:00 fixed
• Docking computer cannot land the ship if the player resumes control after the docking computer has piloted the ship inside the station fixed
• Eagle interior cockpit now has texture
• Fix for Asp landing gear not locking down
• Improve Vulture LODs
• Fix landing gear for Type 6
• Fix landing gear for Type 7
• Fixed shadow sharpness on cockpits
• Fed Dropship Lowest LOD fix
• Add a 'Hostile' sign in the same place as the 'Wanted' sign to indicate when the police will attack the player due to bad reputation
• Add a missing check that meant mines were being targeted even if there was a better target around
• Added rank progress bars
• Decal pass for Mercenary paintjobs
• Chaff now affects turrets and gimbals by the same amount
• Improvements to engine effects overhaul
• Improved the appearance of the Hauler drive effects
• Stop Spinning AI Ships in Supercruise
• AI will try to avoid crossing a player's firing line
• Optimisation for partial name search in galaxy map
• Fixed hole in Adder cockpit geometry
• Pilot and chair added to external cockpits
• Reduced range of Medium Empire thrusters light so it doesn't illuminate the Empire Courier's cockpit
• Cap bounties to 10 million per jurisdiction - fines remain unlimited
• Fixed Asp Gun Barrel Clipping in Outfitting
• Inconsistency in the Class Y dwarf stars description fixed
• Minor Typos in the Lakon Type-9 Heavy ship text description fixed
• Fixed some mixed up commodity labels in French
• Fix broken non-breaking spaces in French
• Make sure that the gunsights system has sensible start values to prevent odd jumping
• Fix a few cases of people with old weapon loadouts being unable to fire
• On the galaxy map, „Plan Route“ should be „Route Planen“ in German
• FSD cool-down timer should read „FSA-ABKÜHLZEIT“ in German
• When receiving machine details in response to wing/invite, try to connect to the machine - fix for some invites not getting through
• Various translation fixes
• Altered flicker on light to be more subtle in Fer-de-Lance cockpit
• Shields persist in supercruise
• Fixed not being able to supercruise through a completely invisible ring
• Steadily loosen rank limits on supercruise interdiction as security decreases
• Allow players to adjust their power pips in Supercruise
• Make every capacitor recharge at max rate while docked, since station UI can steal the power controls, leaving players without any sys energy to bring their shield back up
• Station entrance VFX optimisations
• Don't skip the long shield recharge delay on location transition if your shield were at 0 health
• Fix 2.5s hyperspace transition time when jumping from Supercruise
• Don't duplicate ships when following a wake
• Landing gears are initialised 'down' if you start docked, instead of starting 'up' and immediately deploying
• New take on chaff effect, visible from greater distances
• Encourage mining chunks to float away from asteroids, not inside them. Also push them out along that direction a little when spawning to help prevent fast moving asteroids from rotating through the new chunks
• When weapons have a shot blocked and fail to fire, no longer drain weapon power spuriously
• Adjusted some hitcheck were it may be possible to ram your way through a wall in the Coriolis station due to an acute angle in the mesh
• Transactions panel will now update the vouchers if they change while it's open
• When firing at a moving target turrets confusion is affected by distance so that turrets are more easily confused by sharp manoeuvres at short range than long
• Confusion is based on the acceleration of the target in both absolute space and relative to the firer
• Rather than Wobbling when the gun gets confused, turrets now tend to lag behind their target instead.
• Fix for cartography data being fetched but requested in the previous page refresh
• Shipyard now accounts for fitted modules in the Shields and Armour values
• Prevent cap ship fighters spawning on top of each other
• Only apply capital ship exclusion zone to player ships
• Don't say „Warning! Landing gear“ when approaching a landing pad if your gears are currently deploying
• Class 2 Seeker missiles sometimes fire backwards in a Python fixed
• Tweaked ammo amounts for multicannon and rail gun.
• When targeting a Point of Interest, show the second detail as the name of the body it's around rather than the type of body. Also show minor faction names instead of major faction
• Fix for weapons that fire atomic bursts - rather than draining energy per shot, the energy for the whole burst is drained up-front to prevent the burst getting oddly straddled over time if you're low on power
• Added support for warming up shaders - a likely issue causing the big stalls approaching planets
• Added better description to highlight the technical limitation of the kill warrant scanner
• Fix clothing and consumer technology being the wrong way round in Russian
• Speculative fix for Achenar star description is missing in German version
• Medium pulse turret stopping aiming fixed
• Stop AI ships jumping with a destroyed Frame Shift Drive
• Shorten some French strings to fit on the gauge panel better
• Fixed incorrect permit ID for Phekda that was causing it to appear as a debug
• Update to the Police Hivemind numbers, slight rebalance to minimum delay, max strength and max bounty numbers
• Balance pass on SC hunter/target chatter distances
• Added alternative mapping for CH combat stick
• Fix some inconsistencies in ship vs. environment collisions
• Increase persistence for NPCs that are hunting player ships for various readings - this means they are more likely to chase for longer and not so easily thrown off the scent
• The new collision crime now checks both ships in the collision; if either has Report Crimes set to true then it'll issue a bounty to both.
• Adjusted weapon impacts to reduce spin craziness
• Fix to part of Type 9 cockpit which stuck out so far it could be seen rendering through external hull
• Fixed a problem where in menus players could choose to play in a private group which they weren't yet members of
• The forth user who joins the wing will appear as 'In the menu' to the third user despite being in game fixed
• Redesigned control scheme based on suggested scheme found on the forums for Warthog controls
• „Prism as One“ faction has no description fixed - along with any other Imperial cooperative factions
• Fixed some errors in the Imperial Slaves commodity description
• Text cut-off in OUTFITTING: FRAME SHIFT DRIVE fixed
• Fix spelling for CS Camelopardalis
• Mines now do both thermic and explosive damage
• Dead NPCs no longer taunt from beyond the grave
• Stop NPCs jumping if they are about to die
• If stellar surface tessellation fails then make sure we try again on the next frame
• Prevent immediately restarting an interdiction tether when an interdiction succeeds
• Don't show multiple locations for mission stations in the galaxy map
• Further changes to how people manage turrets:
  • Turrets not in a firegroup won't do anything.
  • Turrets in Fire at Will cannot commit Assault.
  • Turrets in Fire at Will won't fire at illegal targets.
  • Target Only is now a manual/latched fire mode, and can be used on illegal targets.
  • Fix a non-deterministic 1-frame lag in weapons fire.
  • Remove the crime exception for point defence guns as they're now covered under the above rules.
• Fixed missing mass value for Type 9 reactive armour
• Add consumed by and produced by information to Chemical Waste
• Improved model culling with stations
• Orerve description states system is a planet fixed
• Fixed some incorrect Russian words
• Improve reconnect handling if a connection to the game server fails
• Try not to spawn players inside asteroid belts and more specifically not inside asteroids
• Russian translation for 'Jettison All Cargo' fixed
• Network optimisations for copying game objects
• OSX: enable [Cmd]+[V] to be used to paste text (as [Ctrl]+[V] is used on Windows)
• OSX: Fixed the broken planet rings on OSX caused by mips not being generated correctly
• Police ships shouldn't ram the player just because they are scanning them
• Updates to ring fog system
• German language feedback pass integrated
• Balance pass on metal types in different ring types
• When we are docked, do not allow anything to add wear to our ship
• Show whether a black market is present on the station in the system map
• Galaxy map popup now always shows who is in charge of a system, regardless of which view is active
• OSX: Fix for game window being positioned incorrectly on a secondary monitor arranged to the left of the primary monitor, in OSX System Preferences terms
• OSX: Fix for the game thinking that the [Enter] key is still held down after using the [Alt]+[Enter] key combination to switch between windowed and full-screen modes
• OSX: Fix for a Core Animation warning on shutdown
• Modules can be repaired partially from the repairs screen
• Indications to commodity descriptions for their legality (if applicable)
• Popup message to go with the inbox message when the player gains a Pilots Federation rank

Audio:

• PowerPlay interface and PowerPlay Galaxy-map audio added.
• Diamondback audio.
• Empire Courier audio.
• PowerPlay reward modules audio added.
• Audio for new drone types.
• New ship voice lines added.
• Added separate GUI blip for when collecting a chunk.
• More station announcer voice characters have been added to all factions.
• Rank animations audio added.
• Deploy and stow on other ships is now audible.
• Reduced volume of the gui target hit indicator.
• When two weapons of the same type are firing, the volume should no longer increase as much.
• Various tweaks to weapons fire so they more or less sound equally loud and don't drown out engines and impacts.
• Supercruise engines are improved and have subtle 'judder' when overshooting a planet.
• Combat music volume tweaks.
• Improved Cobra engines when at a static speed.
• Torpedo's explode a little more prominently as befit their esteem.
• Fixed several broken Eagle sounds.
• Improved looping audio on Hauler.
• Improved landing gear audio.
• Reduced loud reload on the multi-cannon
• Reduced reverb on weapon deploys, to fix oddness in stations.
• Allowed impacts caused by own weapons to use a bit of the centre channel.
• Tweaks to frame-shift transitions.
• Tweaks to NightTime mode and inaudible explosions.
• Mix pass on shield SFX for other ships.
• Put a slight fade-in on the shield break sounds to make them a wee bit less percussive.
• Improved mix on hyperspace tunnel whispers and flybys.
• Voice comms mix improvements for better audibility.
• Muted unpredictable engine roar on buying a new ship.
• Improved the audibility of collision alert sounds.
• StellarAmbient/Music in System/GalaxyMap tweaked.
• New distance element added for delayed secondary explosions.
• Added section to the logo-ident music to transition gracefully between pre-caching of shaders and menu.
• Improved lift animations have improved sound also now.
• Proximity alarm muted when stationary.
• Added a bit more bass to Cannon fire.
• The beamlaser had major low end issues when the beam connects to a target which has been fixed (and we could make the non-issued bass louder as a result!)
• Added interactive mixing to combat music which responds to how much is going on; fights stay exciting throughout an engagement.
• Volume tweak to ambiences in the system map.
• Improved cockpit ambiences in Gutamaya and Saud Kruger ships.
• Improvements to landing area atmosphere.
• Multi-cannon is a little louder and 'clunkier'.
• Improved target indicator sound to be less piercing at high volume.
• Improved (slightly) Eagle and Vulture sounds.
• Improved differentiation of small, medium and large explosions and redistributed these more evenly across ship types.
• Improved Explosions so that they remain powerful/satisfying even when further away.
• Added sound for when passive scan resolves target as wanted/unwanted.
• Added slight delay to ship voice saying „Target Shields Offline“ so the shield breaking audio is audible also.
• Improvements to deploying/stowing weapons audio.
• Light switching on/off is a little clunkier and audible.
• Improved audibility on heat alarms.
• Reversed the FSD cool-down sound as before it sounded too much like a prelude to a big event.
• Improved audibility of mass lock, safe to disengage and speed warning sound.
• Improved navigating the system map audio when using mouse.
• Improved growl and orientation noises on the Asp, improved boost sound.
• Safe to Disengage, Slow Down gui sounds so they are more distinct from each other.
• Improved construction hubs; added construction ambiences to the bits that are under construction.
• Slightly increased volume of inflicter impacts so they sit better in all mix modes.
• Improved station forcefield in night time mode.
• Fixed issues with hangar bay mechanical noises and landing gear.
• Removed the „warning“ from the no cargo voice asset.
• Shieldboost and Shields going up/down should be audible on others again.
• The explosion when your own ship goes down (booo!) was clipping (double booo!) so now it is at least a nice and clear booo-m!
• Fixed sounds being cut out in the GUI when moving quickly over options.
• Reinstated missing barrel sound on pulse lasers.
• Paintjob audio is audible again.
• Fixed missing audio on Beamlaser Turret medium/small.
• Fixed some silly clicks on fuelscoop.
• Fixed missing front thruster acceleration audio on Orca.
• Fixed a bug that removed all bass from cargo pick up sounds.
• Fixed missing super-cruise thunder.
• Optimized beam impact sounds to reduce memory usage.
• Set pulse laser mechanized elements to use different attenuation to help mix it on large ships.
• Reverbs use less memory.
• Optimisation pass on Black Box flight recorder.
• Improved explosion usage of memory.
• Reduced length of the Panel loop which saves memory.

SERVER SIDE

• Increase mark up when selling illegal goods in black markets
• Apply 10% price penalty when selling modules
• Increased Vequess' tech level and stocked it with shields
• Automatically apply the Sol permit in another situation
• Reduced cooldowns on minor faction states: expansion, war, election
• Increase minimum tech level required to activate the shipyard and outfitting shops
• Reduced the bounty cap to 1 million credits per voucher
• Rename some minor factions to make them more unique across the galaxy
• Increased outfitting stock levels by 20%
• Extremely high and extremely low faction reputations now slowly decay towards less extreme values
• Make smuggling profits count towards trade ranks as well as crime ranks

Update:

• A hot fix for server disconnects is being released in Powerplay 1.3 Beta 2