Elite Dangerous - 2.2 Beta is live!

Quote from Zac Antonaci

Greeeeeeetings Commanders,

I'm pleased to be able to inform you that there is a fourth beta update which will be going out this morning.

This update includes a Hutton Truck-load of updates, please see the change log below. It will also require up to 2 hours of downtime on the beta servers.

As always, thank you for your continued testing and feedback, please continue to give your thoughts on the 2.2 beta forums!

Thanks!

2.2 Beta 4 Change Log

Stability Fixes

- Fixed crash in the ship launched fighter tutorial
- Fixed crash in the SRV tutorial
- Fixed soft-lock on station services home screen if you spam click the quick refuel/reload/repair button
- Fixed the game locking up when editing/deleting a bookmark
- Fixed crash when finishing VR experience tutorial
- Trying to switch into a retrieved fighter crashes the game fixed
- Fixed an occasional crash in open vr on startup. Prevent presenting when SDK Rendering isn't setup
- Fixed CQC CTF assert when picking up a flag after previously dropping a flag
- Fixed an error in terrain cube sphere mapping
- Prevent attempting to eject a cargo unit that is already queued for ejection
- Livery modules are no longer added to the list of newly purchased modules
- Don't try to access control bindings while they're loading

General Fixes & Tweaks

- Basic flight tutorial, change the way we detect pitch/roll/yaw input so that it also works with mouse controls
- Updated the ship throttle tip in basic flight tutorial to also show throttle axis if present
- Fixed sub targets panel not updating when scanning beacons (nav beacons, tourist beacons etc)
- Fixed headlook not working in station menu
- Fixed missing icon on Science & Research contact screen
- Preparation ethos icon is truncated in Powerplay menu fixed
- Removed VR Missions on platforms that don't support VR
- Audio: Fixed some missing audio in the tutorials
- Various text fixes
- Latest translation batch added

Passengers

- Improved the UI flow when selecting which cabin to place your passengers in
- Plugged in Head of State passengers to the passenger sightseeing missions
- Passengers do not eject themselves after failing a bulk mission until you discard the mission from your Transactions tab fixed
- When you abandon a mission and the passengers eject themselves, the message you receive should now appear in your inbox
- NPC chatter/ AI behaviour seems incorrect during PassengerVIP CEO kill chance wrinkle fixed
- Passenger satisfaction now decreases when taking hull damage if they don't react well to danger
- Updated the values, meaning passengers will get more disgruntled at lower ranks, but remain the same amount as before at higher ranks
- Chief medical officer still expects goods wrinkle after declining it fixed
- Updated the sightseeing kill wrinkle, to have its own hand in state - allowing you to continue to kill the spawned enemies if you want to
- Allow sightseeing to be completed even if a cargo wrinkle is active
- Long distance expedition rewards shouldn't increase with each jump
- Abandoning a long distance expedition should now impact faction reputation
- Make pods the most important thing when working out if we can take passengers
- Make passenger cabins replicate properly
- Ensure that a new destination wrinkle doesn't send you to the port you've just come from
- Updated the passenger quantity for the luxury cabin - can now support 8 passengers
- Removed the destination marker for the visit tourist location wrinkle
- Fixed not getting an inbox message about returning to the nearest dock after abandoning a passenger mission
- Updated the states to prevent it sticking on disgruntled checks
- Cannot accept PassengerStowaway mission message when there is one cabin remaining fixed
- Passenger cabins in the inventory panel now match the surrounding styling better
- If a tourist beacon is planetary, stop non-horizons people from accepting it
- After dying with passengers on board and returning to the game there is no message saying that your passengers ejected from the ship fixed
- Updated the passenger VIP templates with the state change effects for new destination system

Fighters

- Increased boost speed of all fighters
- Rebalanced default speed for some fighters to make them inline with their original design (the Empire Fighter was too fast compared to the others)
- Increased DPS of fighter weapons by 12.5%
- Increased fighter production capability of the size 7 hanger module
- Fixed fuel gauge disappearing when switching back to mothership
- Missing avatar faces on the orders panel fixed
- NPC crew do not have appropriate backgrounds when in your ship or in the fighter fixed
- Added warnings why can't a player deploy a fighter
- Move "Orders" to the top of the menu when interacting with AI fighters/main ship
- Fighter descriptions hooked up
- Able to issue orders using both fighters in the role panel even though only one is deployed fixed
- After hiring, crew sometimes displays negative numbers fixed
- Balance displayed in the Crew Lounge is incorrect fixed
- AI Crew don't appear to be gaining any xp from combat in fighters fixed
- Fixed logic error for allowing non horizons crew in to the crew lounge to fire crew they might have hired when they had horizons
- Added default numpad keys for the new order bindings to each control scheme
- Added in better descriptions for the fighter specific stats
- Re-launching fighters resets ammo and pip setup fixed
- Fixed radar not showing hostiles/allies correctly when switching vessel in a conflict zone
- Helm 'Details' tab should go to ship description
- Audio: Velocity of the ship launched fighter is now set to the same as long as the fighter stow interface is not active
- Audio: Fixed "self" explosions to be triggered to ship launched fighters

Missions

- Ensure that a new destination wrinkle doesn't send you to the port you've just come from
- Fix the calculation of dimensions for portraits in non 16:9 resolutions
- Removed two examples of settlements metadata giving missions the idea that they can be used as skimmer massacre targets
- Switched from MM: SS time format to MMm SSs format for inbox messages detailing a remaining duration for part of the mission. This format avoids the ambiguity from a string like 20:30 (is it 20 minutes, or twenty hours?)
- Updated massacre skimmer missions to reference the skimmer system

Weapons

- ECM balance tweaks: guided missiles and torpedos hit by an ECM charge will now gain a major drunk effect if they did not already have it, causing them to veer off target most of the time. Technically you can still be struck, but previously ECM'ed torpedos would maintain an almost straight trajectory which for ships unable to dodge would mean they got hit anyway
- Dedicated keybinding for ECM. CM do not have to be in a fire group, holding this down will charge the first ECM module on your ship that is ready to go, and releasing will fire it
- Experimental balance change reworking how heat weapons function, similar to our earlier proposal but adjusted with player feedback. Aim of the changes:
- Thermal diminishing returns cut in much harder, previously they would start at 60% and prevent you going over 190%, whereas they will now start at 65% and prevent you going over 95% (down from 80%/120% in our earlier proposal). This means that heat from external attacks alone can never cause module or hull damage
- The heat effects of Thermal Shock are doubled
- The heat effects of Thermal Cascade are 25% more than they are on live (the previous beta heat nerf is being reversed, and then a small buff), combined with a slight nerf to PackHounds to stop them being so superior to other missiles
The goal here is for heat not to be a primary damage mechanism, but be there to punish your target for doing things that generate heat spikes such as SCBs, boosting or firing the hotter weapons. We also want to make it so that it is never worthwhile to stack a lot of heat weapons together: You will get the new full effect from a smaller number of weapons than before, but it can never get anywhere near as deadly and stacking more weapons beyond that point is counterproductive
- Drop the damage of packhound missiles slightly, from 9 per missile to 7.5. They're doing slightly more damage than we wanted given their relative immunity to point defences, and dwarfing normal missile launchers

Ships

- Increased size of internal fuel tank for Beluga and Orca
- Enlarged hit locations on Imperial Fighter so its weapons can take damage
- F63 Condor and Eagle side panels obscured by canopy geometry
- Type 7 Bobbleheads slot 1 and 10 are incorrectly rotated fixed
- Equipped bobbleheads in the Beluga Liner clip into pieces of the GUI fixed
- Tweak up the minimum speed before taking damage when landing on a planet's surface
- Keelback landing gear floating above ground when landing on planet fixed
- Fixed zfighting issues with loading screen for the Federation Fighter
- Adjusted hitcheck for Diamondback Explorer
- Fixes for hanger cameras and decal slots on the imperial Eagle
- Fixed Decal issues on the Cobra MKIV
- Fixed fuel scoop UI position for Fed Assault Ship, Corvette, Imperial Courier, Fed Dropship, Fed Gunship, and Vulture
- Fixed some holes in the mesh for Fed Gunship, Assault Ship and Dropship
- Fixed smoothing group issues on the Type 7
- Taipan's left decal no longer missing
- Taipan fighter decals pass to make them more legible
- Added slight improvements to how accurately ships are snap to the planet's surface
- Audio: Fixed some issues with Imperial Fighter
- Audio: Beluga audio fixes
- Audio: Reduced the volume of the Taipan and Imperial Fighter boosts
- Audio: Added in another layer to the Taipan orientation sounds to give them more weight at lower speeds
- Adjusted mix of the landar/spacedar transition noise. Made a bit softer

SRV

- SRV Bay - Scarab does not show initial vehicle specs despite being selected
- Audio: Added the oxygen mask sounds to the SRV
- Audio: Tweaks to wavescanner so not so overwhelming at organics locations
- Audio: Added spread to wavescanner attenuation shareset, so doesnt pan as harshly

Environment

- Fixed crash site collision on debris
- Fixed the buggy pad in mining object layer, so it snaps to position only, not orientation
- Added fade to organic seed decals to fix cut off on extreme slopes
- Added some more variety to mysterious places
- Fixed some misaligned tunnels in an installation
- Fixed a mysterious thing finding it's way into a cargo canister when being ejected
- Fixed chatter table for trespass zone
- Added depth prepass on fumaroles/ice rocks (slight optimisation)
- Stellar schematics updated for White dWarf, Black Hole, Neutron Star
- Ice Rocks - sublayer tiling rate reduced
- Tunnel Texture in some Installations has a LOD issue with tunnel walls fixed
- Audio: Rebalanced organics audio mix
- Audio: Mix tweaks to crystal sinewave scanner element as it was dominating the mix when in a fumarole field
- Audio: Changes to organics collisions to improve ratio of collision sound triggering
- Audio: Fix for radio chatter not triggering near settlements
- Audio: Some rebalancing for settlement security voice 3 to be clearer on stereo mix
- Audio: Set correct compression settings on Hyperspace stress noises
- Audio: Tweaked micro resource collect GUI sounds

Stations/Ports

- Typo when selecting primary/secondary economy in station generation was changing station types
- Fixed a missing access panel on some of the large landing pads, which allowed you to see through the pad at a certain distance
- Audio: Various ATC fixes

Outfitting/Shipyard

- A module category will appear in the wrong place on the Store Multiple menu if no modules of that type are equipped fixed
- Shipyard - B button doesn't work on sell ship popup fixed
- Stop clearing the remote ships list when we list the ships available at this station - this stops the remote ships list sometimes being cleared when we update
- Added some additional code to track whether a ship is being delivered "here" to control the local ship tab highlighting
- Accessing the livery via the station home screen no longer skips the 'which vehicle' step (if applicable)
- Fixed failing to go back behaviour when using the livery link from homes screen
- Fixed missing blurred background when picking which vehicle to livery
- Overhanging buttons and items in outfitting list fixed
- Changed outfitting filter options to use vectors instead of bitmaps to try to improve clarity
- First module highlighted statistics missing if purchasing to an empty slot fixed
- Removed the swap module option while previewing a fighter or an SRV as the web support is currently not available. This shouldn't cause any issues as the only swappable modules on fighters and SRVs are decal slots
- Updated icons and animation for ship transfer to improve clarity and remove WIP items
- Fixed focusing issues in the modifications screen in outfitting
- Fixed several issues with ship transfer timers
- Updated outfitting button icons to improve clarity

Controls

- Fighter order control bindings no longer visible on non Season 2 clients
- Xbox One: Fixed fighter order control bindings not appearing

Star Jets

- The FSD boost level now uses the larger effect out of synthesis and jet cone supercharge, rather than always using the latter if set
- FSD supercharge status now persists between sessions rather than being wiped on game load
- Added a random initial rotation to stellar jet billboards
- Re-enable jets for OSX

Rendering

- Prevent luminosity class VI sub-dwarf protostars selecting a white dwarf as it's nearest visual class (Please note: a side effect of this is that various TTauri or Herbig protostars will change from white to red/purple. This is not a bug, and is a slightly better representation of their actual temperatures)
- Fixed light cones disappearing when you got behind the source

Player Journal

- Suppress heat warning event if docked
- Tweaks to the “Location” event
- Added a mechanism to import star system names into visited stars cache
- Include Powerplay info in the FSDJump and Location events
- Include PowerplayOrigin in CargoDumped event if relevant

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Quote from Zac Antonaci

Heya guys,

Just a quick post to let you know that there is a new Beta update going live this morning. We're expecting the servers to go down at 10AM BST and the update to be completed within a couple of hours.

Once again, the team have been working incredibly hard and we've got another huge list of changes coming in. As always, your feedback is really valuable so please do continue to test and give your feedback in the beta forums.

2.2 Beta 5 Change Log

Stability Fixes:

- Fix a crash if a planet made completely out of gas cannot hold onto its own gas and so has no mass
- AI fighters can validly spawn as independent ships, not linked to any parent ship, so cope with this case in Fighter Stow
- Fix a crash when a POI tries to spawn the same time the player is disconnected
- Fixed a crash in the role switch panel
- Fix vehicle switching crashes in the SRV tutorial
- Mark a persistent POI as invalid if it fails to find a position for its first attempt, this fixes a crash that it causes on some planets
- Fixed an error with an audio emitter
- Fixed an error with a mysterious thing in the contacts panel
- Fix for an assert failure when loading game into a fighter and using the role switch panel
- Fixed crash when shooting Skimmers due to them not having a vessel ownership
- Fixed soft lock when backing out of launchable livery
- Fixed soft lock when selecting a cabin from your inventory tab
- Added some sanity checking to cargo transfer so we don't try to move from non-existent inventories
- Fix an assert caused by damage being moved between a ship and its modules causing it to lose the original machine the damage came from
- Fixed soft lock in outfitting when the user has the livery vessel selection dialog is open, but then instead selects an outfitting group from the left
- Removed crash telemetry if entering a location takes more than 2 minutes
- Fixed outfitting crash when previewing a fighter while docked at a planet port

General Fixes & Tweaks

- Starport UI: displaying station economy instead of system economy in main screen and commodities market UI
- Fixed issue where CQC stats screen would not update
- Fix an issue where if you disconnect on the match summary of rewards screen in CQC the player character isn't cleared when going back to the main menu
- Fixed commander name on remote clients incorrectly identifying which vessel a player is actually controlling when entering a location
- Fixed bug where wrong icons would be displayed in info panel when being damaged by an engineered weapon
- Water Giant hologram GUI animation issue fixed
- Fix deco layers not showing on abandoned settlements
- Improved clarity when large info panel messages overlap existing log messages
- Cleaned up some of the messaging being used when jumping to a system. We now only show the abort message when the destination is potentially dangerous (currently, when in anarchy)
- By popular request - added the destination star's class type to the info panel message upon initiating a jump
- Fixed the positioning of POI and player markers on the planet map
- Low resolution artefacts on mysterious thing's lens flare fixed
- Removed black bar from station services wait banner
- Avatars with a certain eye blend shape were looking as if their eyes were closed in certain poses fixed
- Audio: The ship voice system now distinguishes between fighter, mothership and srv
- Audio: Delayed the pre-hyperspace exit swell, to restore synchronisation on exit
- Audio: Fix for strange volume changes when entering the main game and on FSD jumps
- Various text fixes

Fighters

- Fixed headlights on the fighters
- Dust layer on Independent Fighter is green, fixed it to dark grey
- Fighters can no longer use boost while they are still attached to the launch ramp
- Fixed Imperial Fighter hitspheres so weapons can be damaged
- Fed Fighter 100% damage paint issue fixed
- Fighters can no longer kill ships inside starports without being shot by the station when mothership is far away
- Fighters will no longer retract their hardpoints when the AI is asked to dock them, stopping the error where a player asked the AI to dock then swaps to the fighter and has no hard points
- Balance displayed in the Crew Lounge is incorrect and does not update on purchasing a pilot fixed
- NPC experience always shows as 50% when they're in the main ship fixed
- Removed the life support, self destruct and reboot options from the fighter
- Fighters destroyed by the mothership jumping away shouldn't count as player kills
- Fixed rendering bug causing text to overlap buttons on the role panel orders
- Fixed issue with right panel in crew lounge not showing data after loading
- The little fighter HUD no longer overlaps the target panel. It now has its own home near your ship's schematic
- Healing lasers now work on fighters
- Moved the 'Request Docking' from fighter bay to helm
- Stop fighters being able to operate beyond 30KM range if you switch to the Mothership at the last second before the SLF explodes
- Stop AI crew members leaving turret mode of mothership on "Fire at will"
- Vessel Status UI (cockpit): display the correct fighter variant name
- Fixed overlapping text on Role panel orders menu
- Fixed hit markers on the ship schematics in the cockpit being the wrong size and appearing in the wrong position for fighters
- Reduced the severity of a few info messages when changing fighter orders. Now uses a small 'log' message type, rather than the big flashy one
- Only show "No active crew" warning when a hangar module is present
- Unable to terminate crew without horizons
- Crew total payment not updating immediately fixed
- Created binding for opening the orders page (RB+B)
- Reactivate the engineer button when switching back from a fighter
- Allow the Orders GUI to move selection to the top of the list to navigate quickly to the bottom order
- Added the available stats to the fighter details page in the role switch panel
- Role Switch panel flashes, and doesn't let player click on slots and order commands fixed
- Fighters under AI Crew control now use the AI friendly fire rules
- Can no longer select ship description text in fighters tab of role panel
- You are able to purchase a SRV or Fighter that you already currently own into the same slot fixed
- Audio: Small changes to ATC. The ATC will not look at what the fighter is doing but instead at the mothership. Calls to the mothership will be forwarded to the player in the fighter
- Audio: Hooked up missile incoming warning on NPC Crews
- Audio: Fixed a bug within the role switch panel, where switching panel items did not send the stop event of the fighter construction
- Audio: Fixed a bug with the role switch fighter construction
- Audio: Fix for crew lines being audible in pause menu
- Audio: Fix for Fighter 'other' sounds stopping abruptly when docking at speed
- Audio: Fix for fighter bay animations sometimes not being heard
- Audio: Fix missing gimbaled fighter beam weapon sounds
- Audio: Added SFX for inflight fighter construction
- Audio: Mix tweaks on fighter docking
- Audio: Mix tweak to Crew lounge sounds
- Audio: Setting Crew comms to be controlled by the "non-player voice communication" volume slider in the options menu
- Audio: Added friendly fire behaviour to the Npc Crew voices
- Audio: Fixed isues with fighter boost caused by flight model changes
- Audio: Fix for the loud boost charge up on Taipan

Passengers

- Added new passenger modules for various sizes and tweaked capacity numbers for all of them as well
- Balance pass on passenger mission rewards
- Balance pass on passenger mission reputation, influence, and state changes
- Add the bonus money for wrinkles into an inbox - so that players know there is a bonus for them if they do the wrinkle
- Removed explorers from the bulk passenger template
- Changed the scan wrinkle for long distance tourist missions to give a bonus for not getting scanned, rather than taking money away if you do get scanned
- Passenger sightseeing mission was blocked from being handed in by inbox request for items fixed
- Don't fail a mission if a fighter is destroyed
- Reduced jump distances for visit tourist locations in passenger VIP missions
- Corrected which VIPs get the wrinkles that they should have
- Remove assert when we try to parse a passenger contract without a passenger cabin container (i.e. in an SRV)
- Stuck in the cabin section of inventory tab in the right panel when you switch to a different ship with a cabin selected fixed
- Changing the POW passengers to appear as security guards to match the text of the mission
- When you abandon a mission and the passengers eject themselves, the message you receive does not actually appear in your inbox fixed
- Allows the player to hand in the cargo without the cargo. Should the player dock at the final station without the cargo, the passengers will get mildy annoyed - preventing the player from exploiting the goods demanded wrinkle
- Ship hull damage while in an SRV or Fighter does not effect passenger happiness state fixed
- Fixed passenger satisfaction decreasing when SRV is damaged
- Body location is now shown on long distance expeditions
- Tourist beacon wrinkle will no longer spawn twice with passenger vip wrinkles
- Tell mission listeners when progression is blocked so they don't try to trigger mission progression during location changes
- Fix the transaction panel to show goods demanded at correct times
- Manifest scanner returning incorrect results from passenger vessels fixed
- No inbox message appears when scanning a Nav Beacon during a Passenger VIP mission fixed
- Long distance expedition missions are not displaying body location of the tourist beacon in the transactions fixed
- Fixed detection of planetary tourist sites
- Audio: Fixed click in loop on Tourist beacon
- Audio: Fixed a very loud tourist beacon

Missions

- Remove meta data that makes invalid settlements a target for skimmer massacre missions
- Template and text changes to show both factions involved in a mission
- Target faction for missions now shown on the mission board when you accept the mission

NPCs

- AI interdictions, only apply the system's security modifier when considering whether we are too strong to interdict the target, not too weak
- Some slight balance changes for AI difficulty/rank spawn numbers, as well as dropping the rank range that AI can interdict at by one for all non-wing AI
- NPC crewed ships now use boost when following player
- Slight balance pass on the Authority ship friendly fire aggro multiplier, we don't want it to be too high, so it's now the same as the Friendly multiplier. Also made sure that the AccidentalDamage dialog is a bit more common
- Ensure low ranked AI ships reset their pips

Outfitting/Shipyard

- Module transfers with delivery times added
- Fix overflow values for very expensive ship transfers
- Fixed bug where paintjobs and items would persist when using breadcrumbs to navigate out the menu
- Added icon for the main ship when selecting a vessel in the outfitting
- Updated vessel selection screen in the outfitting to use new cleaner ship icons
- Allow a non-horizons player to view their horizons ships if they already own them (because they own horizons on another platform)
- When selling a ship of no value, we now show its value as "0 CR", rather than "FREE"
- Shipyard UI sell confirmation popup : replacing "current ship" heading by "ship", and displaying sold ship name instead of current ship
- Don't allow more ships to be transported to a station than the local storage allows
- When populating vehicle list, making sure "selectable" flag is set (based upon purchaseAllowed state) so that the button behaves properly
- Fighter icon on SRV bay fixed
- Stat comparison screen remains during weapon swap fixed

Stations/Ports/Settlements

- Added missing backer station 'Samphire's Solace'
- Added agricultural customisations to Harvestport in Kappa Fornacis
- Fix Station Services availability to cope when services aren't present at all instead of falling through to 'market not found'
- Starport UI: pressing B / exit button in Cartography section of startport UI doesn't exit back to the cockpit and just goes back to home screen as expected
- Fixed one spot light bone being offset in the Foundry station
- Fix to allow the inner dock faction light overrides to work again with the new station customisation system
- Art optimisations for the Nemo Cyber Party Base
- Fixed missing textures on holoscreens
- Fixed VO not matching polity for ATC and announcements
- Fixed some floating industrial planet settlements
- Audio: Fixed loud ambience in station menu when buying/transfering/storing a ship
- Audio: Fixed loud passenger and crew lounge ambiences

Ships

- Rebalanced Type 7 ship to have better toughness and larger internal module slots
- Fixed incorrect Type 6 armour hardness values
- Increased armour, shields and hardness (armour rating) base stats for the Keelback. Increased a single size 3 slot on it to a size 4 slot as well
- The heading gauge now displays during orbital cruise
- Moved the docking bone on the Beluga down to help with docking issues on planetary ports
- Set asp (and asp scout) landing gear door to be open or closed when initialising to up to down
- Diamondback Explorer cockpit handles in wrong place fixed
- Moved Mini panel placement (and tweaked radar position slightly)
- Fix for docking computer crashing into Farseer tower when coming in to land
- Vulture ship kit parts have a lot of wear & tear on them when purchased brand new fixed
- Landing gear can get stuck on if you have recently had an SRV destroyed and then launch from the planet fixed
- While trying to land on a planet - the landing UI will now check against Terrain->Speed->Alignment rather than Speed->Terrain-Alignment. This should make the UI a little more helpful in the majority of situations where the terrain is unsuitable, rather than you moving too fast
- Audio: Only play the hull damaged line if hull has taken damage
- Audio: Mix tweaks on Keelback on full speed acceleration
- Audio: Fixed audio error when turning Thrusters on/off in Taipan
- Audio: Adjusted the frequency balance of the ship voice lines
- Audio: Fixed a couple of clicks in the very low altitude engine elements
- Audio: Tweaks to mix of cockpit overheating sounds

SRV

- Fixed SRV cargo transfer page not displaying cargo after transferring cargo to your ship then going and scooping a new load
- Added self destruct button back to the SRV
- SRV Scarab shown as being in a bay in the role switch panel, when no SRV is present
- On fitting new SRV planetary vehicle hangar all slots are full when viewing the role panel fixed

Weapons

- Remove num pad 6 as a binding for chargECM, it's already in use for fighter order follow
- Small usability improvement for Slugshot turrets, drop the range at which they will auto-acquire targets drastically (down to 500m rather than the weapon's maximum range of 2000m), to stop them wasting shots on things they'll never hit
- Experimental Balance tweaks for Fixed vs Gimbal weapons with travel times. Overall we think larger changes are needed, but for now going with a safe option to avoid over-correcting and will review once these changes settle:
- Projectile Speeds for fixed cannons increased by 20% (for S/M/L/H weapons this has gone from 750/800/875/1000 to 900/960/1050/1200)
- Projectile Speeds for Plasma Accelerators (APA included) increased by 20% from 700 to 875
- Damage for fixed multi-cannons adjusted so that the benefit for fixed over gimbals is much more consistent, and on average larger. Small fixed multis are reduced by 5%, Mediums are unchanged, large and huge increased by 11% and 14%
- Damage for fixed cannons adjusted for similar consistency, small increased by 5%, medium/large/huge increased by 10%
- Damage for Plasma Accelerators increased for a more consistent relationship with equivalent cannons, medium increased by 2%, large by 5%
- Advanced Plasma Accelerator has also had its energy efficiency improved (7 per shot down to 5.5). It now has slightly better damage per capacitor power than a normal Large and deals more DPS, but at the cost of more heat
- Reduction in damage to Reverberating Cascade was a bit much, especially when considered alongside much improved ECM. Returning this to 35% of raw damage punched through to shield generator.(originally 50%, previously reduced to 20%)
- Balance tweaks to buff PDTs:
- Missile health reduced for Small and Medium dumbfire and standard seeker. Now requires 2 point defence hits rather than 3 per missile
- PDT jitter angle halved (from 1.5 degrees to 0.75 degrees).
- Fixed where PDT shots would appear to vanish but would still have an effect at long range
- Fix a reported bug with Containment missiles and their engineer equivalents, the 35 second immunity period was not working correctly for them
- Minor balance tweak for Containment missiles have received a 20% damage reduction and 50% increased time between shots. FSD interrupt mod has gone from a 20->30% reduction and the same 50% increase in time between shots. Reducing their overall DPS so you're sacrificing a little more to use them

POIs/USSs/Installations

- Make sure body volcanism is being correctly read
- Increased the distance at which persistent POIs will spawn from 5km to 15km and also made the persistent POI placement avoid placing near POIS from other placement types
- Fumaroles now no longer spawn all materials of the same type, they will select from a bucket like other mining rocks
- Have more varied states of geological activity
- Fix for POIs getting cleared when swapping into a fighter
- Fixed Occupied Escape Pods in USS appearing as Illegal Salvage/Stolen
- Fixed missing Satelittes schematic
- Added schematics for various mysterious things
- Rebalanced geyser, gas vent and lava spout forces
- Modifications to which geological can spawn where based on the volcanism types
- Fixed the hitcheck for a mysterious thing
- Added mysterious thing schematic
- Fixed broken Geyser forces
- Fix to floating Data Uplinks
- Added audio activity to trigger audio when breaking off collectables from organics
- Fixed missing serverbank audio
- Fixed Lodding Popping on Datapoint
- Updated Large Aerials on Adornments to have new texture, to make them more visible
- Fixed audio for geology fields
- Tunnel geometry not lining up in civilian installation fixed
- Turned on the hitcheck for the scaffolding around the under repair capital ship
- Placed the correct Installation in Ngalkin
- Rebalanced liquid elements of geyser VFX
- Removing Lava and fumaroles from Ice only planets at this is scientifically inaccurate
- Audio: Mix tweaks to abandoned settlements
- Audio: Added low rumble to geyser

Celestial

- Minor optimisation to texture lookup for jet cones
- Jet cone optimisations and quality settings
- Enable BC7 compression
- Fixed some pixelation on ice distant map
- Reduce the minimum star visibility for white dwarves and neutron stars. This fixes an issue where lens flares for those star types would be rendered when the star was occluded by a planet

Tutorials

- Dock and travel tutorial: show correct station entrance pointer at all times during station approach, so that pointer doesn't suddenly jump to the wrong place
- Dock and travel tutorial: Don't allow cargo jettisoning
- Fixed logic loophole where docking and travel tutorial could be waiting for the docking UI to appear indefinitely if the landing gear is deployed very late
- Audio: Fix for incorrect tutorial VO line

Player Journal

- When collecting microresources, include the count in the journal entry
- When scanning a star, include age and surface temperature; When scanning a star or planet, include more orbital details;
- When scanning a planet with rings, more significant figures for ring statistics
- Modification to player journal entry when rewarded a bounty, as it may list multiple factions
- The "ReceiveText" event in the player journal now has a "Channel" value that indicates if player text was received via a wing, local, friend, or direct player chat;
also include npc chat
- Added checks that we're a component on the player's ship before writing an entry in the player journal - applies to the following events: USSDrop, FuelScoop, JetConeBoost, Launch/Dock/Fighter/SRV, HeatWarning, CockpitBreached, MiningRefined
- Include details of all modules stored in the MassModuleStore event
- When transferring a ship, report distance in LY not metres
- Added Commodity Rewards info into MissionCompleted event
- Fixed issue where some received text messages were not written into player journal
- Added a "ScientificResearch" event in PlayerJournal for contributing materials to a research community goal

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Quote from Zac Antonaci

Hey guys,

Great news! There is another 2.2 beta update coming in this morning.

The Beta servers will be going down in a few minutes at 10:00 BST and we will expect them to be back up within a couple of hours.

Here's a nice juicy change log while you wait.

Change log

Stability Fixes

- Allow the "visited stars" map filter to apply to route-plotting
- Fixed crash when starting the game with an HMD for some monitor/resolution combinations
- Fix a low level vertex locking crash
- Fix a crash when self-destructing the SRV
- Fixed JSON error in ship delivery
- If we lose connection with server immediately after connection, before mtu discovery is complete, don't crash, reset mtu discovery for another go around
- Server time synchronisation can soft-lock the game fixed
- Ensure that system map materials get destroyed on shutdown
- Fix crash swapping modules in outfitting
- No longer assert when trying to add an item which is supposed to be empty
- Fix for buyback and stored items being deleted in one array but not another
- Don't crash id planet materials are not sensible

General Fixes & Tweaks

- Neutron & White dwarf schematics fixed
- Fixed star-class info not appearing for some systems when initiating jump
- Fixed supercruise motion indicators not being displayed
- Fixed incorrect integrity value for size 1 class 2 refinery
- Prevent duplicate ships being generated on authority transfer
- Docking computer staying 1km above planetary outpost fixed
- Latest translations added
- Various text fixes
- Award combat rank progression when destroying NPCs from no particular faction

Fighters

- Added in Gimballed versions of the Fighter Weapons so that the lasers don't look so wrong
- Following NPC crew oddities (When NPC crew is flying a player's ship) fixed:
- If MC turrets are fitted and set to Target Only, the combat AI cannot fire them
- Can only use one missile launcher, even if two are fitted
- Missiles are fired at long range and are wasted
- AI doesn't use boost to chase and kill targets, instead lets them get away
- When out of ammo, AI ship should drop back into formation
- Player ships with just missiles won't fight
- After requesting docking, all other order hotkeys are ignored
- AI crew in mothership will not attack targets if they have non combat modules deployed before switching to fighter fixed
- Added clearer message to indicate that the players fighter will be destroyed when they FSD away
- Moved empire fighters hit spheres for the weapons even further forward to help in hitting them
- Use numbers rather than bars for displaying fighter stats
- Wanted NPC has clean fighter fixed
- Fixed bounty credit notification not appearing or being awarded in a fighter when destroying a target with a non-local bounty
- Added loading animation to screen for switching between fighters and main ship
- Fixed missing font glyphs on Role panel when running in Russian
- Fixed commander name having the "Crew" tag on the death screen when killed by a player in a fighter
- Can use hotkeys to send invalid NPC commands to unmanned mothership fixed
- Audio: target destroyed lines of NPC crews and ship voice do not conflict anymore
- Audio: reduced probability of "no more targts" npc crew message down to 40%
- Audio: Fix for Crew member saying wrong line when asked to attack target
- Fix not being able to deploy an SRV or Fighter after resurrecting
- Fix NPC Crew not increasing their total kill count when assisting with destroying NPC and Player ships too low level to award combat rank progression


Weapons

- We think heat attacks have been reduced a little too far, and need a very conservative buff:
- Diminishing returns for heat now limit at 100% (up from 95% in previous beta)
- Damage penalty for Thermal shock reduced to 20% (from 25%)
- ECM needs some slight tweaks:
- ECM will now fire when hardpoints are not deployed
- ECM charge time increased to 3 seconds (currently 2 in beta, 4 in live)
- Hatch Breaker limpets are also having heir acceleration multiplier turned up significantly. For comparison firing at a target 1km away and with both ships matching speed the travel time has gone from roughly 10 seconds down to 5.5
- Improved flight speed and hacking time of all hatch breaker limpets
- Removed strange hatch malfunction behaviour where you could cancel it by toggling power. Hatch breaker limpets and general 'your hatch got damaged' hatch malfunctions can no longer be cancelled
- Slight reduction to the effectiveness of Incendiary rounds for Multicannons:
- Remove the hidden 20% kinetic damage that was left over
- Reduce the fire rate penalty from -10% to -5%
- Net effect is that the DPS has gone down by 4% vs shields and 15% vs hull (if unmodified), leaving the weapon strong but a slightly clearer tradeoff.

Outfitting/Shipyard

- Process transaction cost correctly when fetching or selling a remote module
- UI was being unlocked before hardpoint animation was complete. This should now be fixed
- Module distance incorrectly show when transferring a module fixed
- Adjusted the balance areas of the popups to have an auto width, to account for large balances
- Added module class rating, added warning texts to sell and transfer module popups, gave the clock icon an orange tint
- Made class icon visible, resized the location icon to its, added space between icons and text, tinted transit text to red
- Fixed keeping hold of buyback items once we've bought them back
- Icons resized and centred, added missing class and rating, resized warning icon and added spacing between it and text
- Prevented focus from being lost when pressing Right on the read more section of the module transfer
- The Store [X/X] button is selectable when all 30 slots are full but no modules in the tree are selected
- Ship loadout doesn't update after multiple swaps fixed
- Updated icon positioning and colouring in the Inventory Browser Screen
- Added functionality to the 'Store Multiple Popup', to support pressing 'UI BACK'
- Starport UI: fixed quick action button icons disappearing when coming back from outfitting
- Store multiple modules lists incorrect number when unticking categories fixed
- Damage type tagged as 'labelfield' overlapping fixed
- Adjusted colour of "in transit" text, when focused on
- Made the "Stored Ship" tab, glow white when a ship completes its transfer
- Increased Module Storage size to 60
- Tune credits costs of Ship and Module transfer

Engineers

- Make sure we always get the right string key for existing modification name
- Added ellipses functionality to blueprint text strings. If they are greater than 25 characters an ellipses will be added
- Fixed layout problems in engineers workshop that would cause a scrollbar to appear and have unintended effects
- Fixed bug where engineer special effect animation would always overlay the description of the successful special effect, before the animation had completed

Passengers

- Passenger missions not displaying or paying out rewards on hand in fixed
- Updated the transaction tab for passenger sightseeing conflict, and for passenger vip conflict. They now include the system address for the conflict zone
- Remove commodities bought for passengers when completing a mission
- More balance tweaks for reputation, influence and state effects
- Player has been scanned - When scanned just once, the inbox message will pop up several times until the passenger is disgruntled fixed
- Stop passenger cabins containing passengers from being swappable
- Generic passenger generation now fits cabins with Tourists instead of Generics
- Fixed errors in passenger cabin classes and types
- Fix for passengers hiding when the ship is dismissed (from a planetary landing via SRV) and comes back...
- When you abandon a mission and the passengers eject themselves, the message you receive does not actually appear in your inbox fixed
- Fix Passenger mission problems when swapping occupied cabins between module slots

Missions

- Make sure players in SLFs can get credit for kills in assassination and massacre missions
- Added missing strings for illegal delivery missions

Ships

- Fixed incorrect landing volume for Type 7
- Cannot see Tail Shipkits on Vulture in Outfitting due to camera angle in VR fixed
- Fixed some mapping issues on the Cutter
- Audio: Ship drives silent when respawing over planet surface having died in SRV fixed

Stations/Ports

- Fix for faction lighting being applied to the new station inner docks instead of their own lighting
- Audio: Fixed number station audio events not synced due to time step miscalculation
- Audio: The new flight controllers are too quiet fixed

SRV

- Stop data points showing up on a fighter HUD after been scanned in the SRV S
- Stop fighter mothership pointer appearing in an SRV after the player has been in a fighter

Installations/POIs/USSs

- Fixed some misaligned tunnels on civilian installation
- Make sure that persistent POIs cannot spawn within their minimum separation of each other
- Audio: Fix for silent ambience on a secret thing
- Audio: Fix for number station ambience being audible at infinite distance
- Added new mission tipoff locations to settlements

Celestial

- Audio: Fix for Materials sound wrong on planet surfaces

Galaxy Map

- Reduced loading time for galaxy map
- Fixed some stalls loading the system map
- Bookmarks all disappeared and can no longer create them fixed

Player Journal

- When importing stars from a file into the VisitedStarsCache, interpret any line containing just digits as a starsystem address in decimal rather than a name
- Fixed journal entry for "ScientificResearch"

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Quote from Zac Antonaci

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the delay in getting this up.

Some of you may have noticed that the Beta server has been down for a short while. This is to bring you the 7th Beta update!

Check out the change log below. The servers will be going up shortly.

Enjoy!

2.2 Beta 7 Change Log

Stability Fixes

- Fixed error loading civilian installation
- Fixed a memory leak with the terrain compute shaders
- Updating the contents of module storage in UI was causing the UI to unlock earlier than intended fixed
- Fixed crash in outfitting where players were able to try to access data before it was ready
- Fixed an issue with a highly eccentric planet orbiting a single star and intersecting it
- Fixed an assert in CQC when damaged by an explosion from a destructible
- Module Transfer Crash - Trying to fit a module into a slot that it won't fit into fixed
- Fixed a crash when killing a faction ship
- Fix a server disconnection when boarding an SRV at a planet station after the ship has been destroyed

General Fixes/Tweaks

- Added MassLocks to Cap Ship Docks
- Fixed missing parts of starports
- Many starsystems were controlled by planet settlements. These have all been upgraded to dockable bases
- Bounty vouchers once again split between all wing members
- Allow bounties to be claimed from SRVs again
- Changed cargo scanner text to Manifest Scanner
- Added powerplay overhead cost in various places
- Fixed incorrect Imperial Cutter schematic
- Fixed some jet cone flickering
- CQC: When server logs out, make sure we clean up any pending lobbies
- NPC shouldn't advance their firegroups manager - this might explain some cases in game where NPC ships are not firing all their weapons
- Xbox One: Speculative fix for Xbox player not being restored to the island after resuming from store

Fighters

- Fighter ramming not counting as illegal fixed
- Fixed the incorrect paintjobs used for red and blue in CQC
- Make sure active crew are displayed correctly
- Added an inbox notification when NPC Crew rank up
- Fixed NPC Crew profit share not increasing when ranking up

Passengers

- Updated the tips referenced for political prisoner. They now display the criminal trait
- Fix error when previously occupied passenger cabins are not rebought from the resurrect screen
- Fixed passenger crime scans. Add string for passenger wanted crime

Missions

- Fix missing contract elements for delivery missions triggered by scooping an item
- Prevent disconnection when retrieving data from the previous system and we've already jumped
- Changed the panel to point to the correct text for massacre illegal and massacre skimmer mission templates - The Don't Die wrinkle now shows the correct text on the panel

Galaxy/System Map

- Fix planet scan logic to ensure that planet terrain is only visible if the planet has had a basic scan performed on it
- Fix rendering when there are only Horizons planets in a system

Outfitting/Shipyard

- Added ship summary back to ship details panels for local and remote stored ships
- Don't allow sold modules to have transfer options
- Display a 0% transfer levy when transferring a free item
- Distance Levy [Undefined] Displayed when transferring modules to your current station fixed
- Only display locally stored modules when transferring a module from storage to a pre-selected ship slot
- Fix server error after transferring cargo to a newly purchased ship
- Silent Audio on module store multiple scroll fixed

Station Services

- Fix quick restock button (was showing a full bar when empty), also remove vehicles from the calculation if not vehicle bay is present on the ship
- Adjusted the faction name label within the News Panel. It will now resize and add an ellipses when required
- Fix the contact panel avatar loading (triangles animation)

Weapons

- Hatch breakers can now be blown up by point defence

Player Journal

- Fixed the 'abandon' flag in player journal for cargo ejected from SRV
- Fixed typo in player journal for ModuleRetrieve which was causing broken json
- Fixed missing 'Module' tag in JetConeDamage playerjournal entry
- Some non-settlements were being reported via the "ApproachSettlement" journal entry - was potentially revealing secrets
- Fixed "TransferCost" key in "FetchRemoteModule" journal entry

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