[Nohbody]

Original article

Istvan:

It's been way too long since the prior patch, and things are now largely up to observations of how the main features behave "in the wild". Due to limited testing resources, feedback from the community will be very important to any further adjustments of the things that were changed, especially of equipment and ships.

In the meantime, I will commence work on the 1.0110 features this week, after all JOSSH documentation for features in this patch is complete.

Quite a lot of important stuff changed in this patch. The new features in patches 1.0109 and 1.0110 represent the first of several planned steps to evolve and modernize Jumpgate, in an effort to bolster the game's continued survival.

Please note - the outage for this patch will necessarily be somewhat longer than usual.


v.1.0109 - August 27, 2006
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-Faction Conflict I patch released.

-Added new insurance system for Civilians. Rookies and Military pilots receive full coverage from their faction. Documentation on JOSSH.

-Added bounty source icons for the HUD, making it easy to determine the factions offended by a targeted pilot.

-Sector Claims feature removed as part of insurance code changes; will be replaced with factional Territory Control in upcoming Faction Conflict II patch.

-Kills of Civilians no longer update a kill stat, much like kills of pilots flying under the Rookie registry.

-Added factional Military Registry and signup interface.

-Added 7 factional Military Missions: Courier, Procurement, Recon, Patrol, Espionage, Raid, and Combat.

-Added Military medal hierarchy for completion of missions and Tours of Duty.

-Added Military demerit medals, affecting awards and access for Military missions, along with methods for amnesty.

-Adjusted ENEMY mode radar to include Military pilots of a Hostile faction.

-Altered F1 chat to a semi-global state to promote factional military use. Non-local transmission keyed to tuned beacons.

-Activated a Military Intel map tool for Optis originally implemented in patch 1.0104 - documentation on JOSSH under Opti Commands.

-Rebalanced characteristics of a majority of the shields, for variety and usability.

-Bomber changes: speeds increased to fleet speeds; guns cut to reduce dogfighting capabilities; cargo adjusted to carry reloads.

-Quantar ship role exchange: Monsoon is now the Quantar Bomber. Tornado is now the Quantar HF. Small adjustments made to both ships appropriate to their revised roles.

-Dragon (Oct HF) shield slot set to sz3 as part of the shield rebalance process.

-Added a new GM utility command to help with events.

-Corrected a minor issue allowing a check for rank promotion to occur twice upon a dock event.

-Fixed an apparently longstanding bug in Scout photo mission generation that could allow a null target if taken from Hyperial or Amananth.

-Fixed a problem with the Trade interface on POS breaking when POS Options was selected during a trade.

-Linked JOSSH factional standings display sliders to game information on faction relationships.

-Fixed problems preventing operation of JOSSH weather display since 2003.

-Added "sell all" market interface button to help speed up large-quantity sales in stations.

I'll be attempting to coordinate RP material with Themis later this week, if possible.

[GrimGriz]

Woot!

Factional beacon chat is the bomb!

[QrazyKermi]

So it appears to have gone live yesterday. Anyone have any thoughts on it yet?

[vorlon31]

looks good to me so far - just gonna log in agaon and give it another look.

[Algore]

Defier nerf is interesting. Quants gonna have to start running after one shot now rather than 2. Might encourage different flight styles and increased ship choice though which woould make things more realistic and interesting.
Dragon down to S3 shield should appease a few peeps and irrtate those that use them.
Increased variety of missions for military pilots is nice touch, along with F1 being multi sector. Again any encouragement to flip beacons is a good thing imo. Not worked out how to use my lvl to see if bad guys are about, but maybe it's not on yet.
First impressions are very optimistic, but only a couple of hours in so far. First impressions good so far though. Very reliant on more peeps being online..................

[spork]

The shield rebalance is a lot bigger than just a Defier nerf. Many shields are now useful. And with a slightly less uber Tempest/Raven fleet (though a Canopy adds an even lower mass option for the quick ships), add in the Nado HF or Phoon/Nix + Haven or Canopy. Now we might see something like mixed fleets, which was really the whole balancing push of Ep2 behind the crazy imbalance of the Dragon to its HF counterparts. Only time will tell if it all works out though...we were really short handed for combat balance tests as Istvan stated. We did our honest, impartial best and Ist will be listening to public opinion.

The Dragon got equal armor (and equal mass cut) to compensate, so it actually is a tad lighter since the Makk is heavier than the sz3's. Not like Dragons did a lot of running to recharge anyway, and this way at least it's not got a tow shield which always seemed illogical to me. So I think no one should be pissed or pleased about the Dragon staying essentially status quo. The move also eliminates the sz4 category from fighting ship balance, so sz4s can be tweaked w/o a huge ripple effect.

F1 being multi-sector is meaningless due to so many pilots not flying for their faction. For instance, I won't use it for anything important now since I know someone like doe could be listening (or Balrog to Sols or B&C to Octs), whereas previously if I knew doe wasn't in sector I could have used it...though usually I just used TS anyway.

To view other MT pilots, go to the Map screen and hit what used to be the sector claim fist. It's beac dependant, which is a very good thing as Al said.

And for the love of all that is good, Quantar has a viable HF at last! Roh has finally gotten off his fat ass and plead our case to Hamalzah.

[spork]

Hm...the Edit feature seems to not work for me just now...

I was going to add about the Nado HF:
And since it uses guzzies, it remains a slug but has a lot more left over power than the Truder and a much better profile and +1 FF over both Drag/Truder to compensate for its smaller shield/armor, so it remains non-cookiecutter. Again, we'll have to see how it plays out in RS, but I've liked it so far.

[Evolution]

Interesting.

[GrimGriz]

So what'd they do to the nado exactly...up it's armor and shield size?

Also, what were the bomber changes all about? What's up with those now?

My favorite part so far is the multisector F1. Last night Istvan said he'd look to see if he could separate pirates off of F1. I don't really care if non-friendlies can read it. It's particularly nice to be able chat with the other good-guy Solrains (i.e. LupinOne & Lavey) regardless of f5. I think this particular change will have the most positive effect on factionalism.

I'm not worried that if I say "Algore just downed me in GL" some spies will know. It's still safer than :chat was. I'd just be careful about saying stuff like "I'm restocking guardians at SC", but that goes for any channel really.

[Ambrosius]

Bombers were made less viable for dogfight battles and more viable for bombing runs (go figure).

[spork]

Just in looking at the sim stats...

Nado = increased top speed, nerf defier (proxy boost), removed 2 sz8 missiles. Cuda/Monsoon reduced guns to 4*sz2 (Raptor 2*sz2+1*sz4), increased speeds (Raptor/Cuda), gave Raptor guzzies (increase thrust), gave Monsoon +2 sz8 missiles, decreased Monsoon speed/thrust (moved to Rushes). Thinking: Bombers shouldn't be pseudo-HF gunship dogfighters, but should be missile/torp bombers against buildings/assets. Which is fine as long as all factions had a viable real HF gunship, so now hopefully they do.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong about f1.

[Radi]

Nado lost one modx.

[spork]

Yeah, I said it had +1 over the other HFs, but neglected to say that it lost 1 to get there.