#Dev-Log

I have taken to posting my daily inner workings (those I ‘can share’ with you) over in a separate discord channel. One purely set aside for my Dev reporting on topics I’m working on or have edited or fixed. I will still continue to post my normal Dev posts here when new items are added or there are important changes, but keeping an eye / ear on the #dev-log channel might be a good ‘cup of coffee’ movement now and then so you don’t miss out on small nuance changes, or even news on what I’m currently working on.

Below is a snapshot of the last 4/5 days.

Passengers
Working this morning on resolving an issue that has come to light with certain ‘Passengers’. Now that we are displaying the calculated distance on passengers (something that was not done prior to the table view update) we could see certain passengers had incorrectly calculated distances.

I have located the issue and run a fix over the entire passenger table. There are a few other pages of code that will need updating, but I will have these wrapped up in the next hour.

Corporation (Remote)
In the last few days, I have been reviewing (over on Dev) if it would be possible to create a remote system for controlling your Corporation Offices. This has proven very difficult, as the system was designed to be interfaced with in person (just like Settlements).

I have not given up on the idea but after sinking over 20+ hours into tests, edits and workarounds I haver drawn a line under it for now. I have moved the item on the Office whiteboard back to the ‘re-think’ column and will post if I get any bright ideas.

Player Suggestions
I recently released two new player suggestions, the Homing Beacon Upgrade & the N.E.I Reduction Timer. These are both live after being developed on Dev and tested. Both items can be purchased in the VIP in game store and in the CE Support Store.

Passengers (Groups)
I have run the same fix across the entire passengers Groups as well. Between the two tables that over 110K of passengers to move (now updated).

New Starter
I completed last night the final sections of the new starter code. This adds new items to players when they sign up. Cleans up the initial emails and PM’s they receive and points them at a guide on how to use the items they received.

This is the culmination of several days work to add a little more ‘aid’ to our new players who we often see in help floundering about a little buried under where and what…

Still requires new players to ‘Read’ but hey that’s half of the fun of CE 🙂

They receive new starter items and at level 5 the level Five rewards have been boosted with additional ‘helpful’ items. Buy the time they reach level five they should have two reactors, a cargo expander, 2 scanners, a mining laser, four weapons (2 of each) and a small shield, along with an asteroid scanner and repair unit.

A strong handful of EBKS’s and matrix’s should also aid them should they want to try out combat past the initial Gunny Missions.

I have also edited heavily the initial starter missions to include references to these items in the hope it will aid new players.

I have plans for adding a last small batch at level 10. Items have been located and in come cases created ‘anew’ and I will add in the next few days.

Guides
CE has always had ‘Help Pages’ and way back when they were added we updated and kept them matching the pages you were on. Now the game is over 2000 pages of interactable code (from your side) that’s got a little out of hand to the point we have pages pointing at the wrong help or non-existent help.

Myself and a few players / staff have been working hard to rectify this. We have linked up the first 100+ now to the external Guides site. Whilst doing, so we have reviewed and updated any pages of help that needed it.

We have along way to go. This is tedious and needs a good attention to detail (not always my strongest suit) 🙂 As it stands, in game if the help page has an external feed it will open THAT link (on the guides site). If there is no external feed, it will open what ever existing help exists.

It’s my goal to update all 220+ guides pages internally link, THEN start work on fixing all the 100’s of other in game not linked or incorrectly linked. – This one is ongoing.

Progress – New Buildings
I got side-tracked for a while creating, testing and working with the staff to publish the Cargo Update (love it or hate it). The last few days I have been able to pick up where I left off with the Battleship crafting update.

This will be my primary thrust till it’s released – It means new buildings and processes for pretty much all the major Player owned items like Settlements, Corporations, Genesis Plots, even barges will get a look in.

All of these will build new items for Starbase to process in to Large sections of Battleship components. This in turn will allow for the building of player owned Battleships. The end goal, allowing you to send them through the Jump gate network discovered within the Nebula and try to locate Earth and find out what happened.

Bank Talas Conversion
I posted on the forums viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3899 that I was entertaining a new bank function allowing players to convert Talas in to Credits and Credits in to Talas. Give your thoughts on this and once we have drawn in some more thoughts I will code accordingly.

Bugs Closed
For Kaloseidos, Porrima, SpaceBucks 2 Pending investigation.

Bugs Closed
For Porrima : Issue with Passengers now seems to be resolved and confirmed. I have added some extra code to check for any stragglers or issue passengers, which ‘should’ put them to one side till I can review.

Union Price Hike
After careful review, I have decided it’s time to increase the Union pay-outs per unit distance. This has been applied this afternoon and is now active on Live. All passengers have had their ticket price increased (even if you had them onboard) and any passenger dropped off will reflect the new pricing if they choose to move onward. This places the top end of passenger hauling on the 200K range. (max distance, max Union Rank)

Passenger Carry Limit Raised
Inline with yesterday’s passenger ticket rise (earning you more money) I have had to also increase the ‘allowance’ IE the Union Rank rate that allows you to carry high value passengers. All ranks can now carry higher value passengers – thanks to @mropso for spotting that.

Language Files
I have spent some time today working on some of the language files that were created and laid down over 15 years ago. A lot of these were out of synch with the current game design and ethos – things like ‘Drag in Combat’ for instance no longer exists and only lead to general confusion. I will continue to edit these as I see / hear of reports of old ideas being mentioned.

Starbase Funding Checks
We are now running checks that a starbase has sufficient funds to pay its current running costs for at least 14 days. If this is not the case the starbase functions are placed in lock down until the funding source is corrected.

Long term – should starbases be unable to fund their daily running costs a mechanism will be put in place to remove ownership of the Starbase and place it into the hands of the game Official Receiver. At that point it will be valued and placed on Auction. Starbase once deployed will become permanent fixtures in the CE landscape.

Ashar | Wesbec CPU Increase
I have authorised a slight upward tick in the prices offered by Ashar and wesbec. Both offices when they next generate any new missions will start to use these new slightly increased rates. This is due to careful reviewing of pilot habits and missions taken since the update.

Caitlin Masters: Metallurgical Specialist
Cleaned up her code, was very old and a little antiquated to say the least. I have also reduced the ratio for Ship armour in to Settlement Armour. Also talked with the staff about extending the line she deals in…

Passenger Groups
These guys were in need of some desperate love. There are a lot of funds to be made from moving groups, but it does require some extra investment in the Frames (shadowsword) and the pods for each group. There are currently just over 52K groups waiting movement within the passenger system.

The Group Office was given the same facelift the normal Passenger office was given, same info etc for filtering.

Their ticket price was given a VERY large price hike as it was languishing below standard passengers. These changes are now on the live server.

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The above is from the current #Dev-Log on Discord. As I have it open all day sat next to me, it’s an easy one to update when I complete a task. I wont keep double posting here, so if you want to review the log you’ll need to go read it. As I say I will continue to post major update via my Dev posts here in the forums though.

Coops