Crossfire 2.0 Dec/Jan Update

In June I announced and did a relative big update which later on caused some instabilities.
A fix I released worked for most of the players but for some unknown reason it didnt work for all.

Personally i assume that this fix didnt work for only a small group of players which by default seem to have problems with the game.
I cant tell for sure but some players constantly appear in the cheat logs with bad installations.
Since all other players never appear in the logs I can only assume that the affected players are either doing something wrong or something causes problems so that patches and fixes can not apply correctly.

So for meanwhile half a year I am in the situation to know that something is wrong, but I have no possiblity to tell what it is since on my PC everything works great and I wasnt able to find one of the affected players being able and willing to allow me to do the required tests on their PCs.
With other I have no possibility to check what is causing the problems for a relative small amount of players, and no possibility to check if the problems with the June update and ongoing "bad installation" bans are in any way related.

The planned re-release of the mod in 2016 was canceled due to these problems and I dont intend to do a re-release until I really know whats going on.

However, its end of the year, winter holidays, etc. and I decided to release a new patch for the mod.
Unlike before I didnt want to deliver more content (systems, bonus missions, etc) but focus more on making the existing game a bit more interesting.
So the patch which I intent do release end of December 2016 / beginning January 2017 will focus around the good old dynamic universe feature that was known from earlier Crossfire versions.

This feature has its main focus on multiplayer.
To be honest I am not sure yet how detailed this feature will be. Maybe I manage to create the settings for the full dynamic universe with all possible events. Maybe I will just release a basic verion of it containing a few events and make regular updates in the following weeks.

Events that might be possible are:
- alien invasions into Sirius and Altair space.
- jumpgate/hole malfunctions
- space weather -> ion storms, increased solar radiation... etc.
- other random effect (dunno right now).

it means that they may not work
but i will design it so no system gets cut off

it will just force players to use different paths

ill see what I can do

additionally to these plans I will try to modify the daily update routines to shorten the amount of time between market updates and server restarts

Micro-update:

• the clan base in Omicron Gamma should offer missions after the next server restart
• the clan base in Purian Lake should offer missions after the next server restart
• starting tomorrow, the gap between market updates and daily server restart should be reduced to only 5 minutes. That means that with the last ion storm announcements the market updates should start.
  I require information if its working correctly.

... yes, you are right
lets delay the update release by 1-2 years

I wish other freelancer modders would still consider the mod awards a good way to promote their work and FL has a whole.

As already mentioned in my New Year wishes I am somewhat behind the development due to RL stuff.

However, this week I was able to catch up a bit and created the first Dynamic Universe events and tested them offline.
Online tests will follow next week.

Since I have no idea how the CF2.0 anticheat will react and how good the update routines can deal with the data I will introduce the events bit by bit.
For the beginning no more than one Dynamic Universe event will activate at a time.
Maybe later combintations of events will be possible but I first have to find a solution to updating news on the bar depending on which event currently is active.

The current set of events are limited to the X-3043 system (this system is a good choice for doing the first tests).
Events are:

• A Nomad invasion.
  Fighters and capital ships a bit away from Planet Crossfire and the docks to attack other ships and players.
  I intend to keep this type of event running for a duration 2-4 days (the duration will vary).
• Solar Activities.
  Solar activities will usually have a duration of 2 days. On the first day a large area around the sun (up to 100k) will cause "high" radiation damage (200HP). This radiation will fade and on the 2nd day it will only have 1/4 of its original strength.
• Gate malfunctions.
  Since it is not intended to cut off systems from the rest of the game, the malfunctions will only happen on the Custodian gate, the Nephele gate and the Omicron Alpha gate.
  Such malfunctions will have a duration of only one day. The affected systems have a 2nd gate so players can leave and take a different path.

Personaly Id like to create similar event for a bunch of other systems aswell and have multiple events at the same time. But for this to happen I first have to solve a few problems regarding the news at the bars where I want to display whats currently happening (Sirius News Network... and maybe some coalition news channel if coalition systems get included into this dynamic universe)