VO 1.8.289 includes:- Added more optimizations to reduce possible lag during large player battles.- Private messages, guild, group, and vote actions no longer reveal online status for privacy reasons.We're been doing a lot of server-side optimization, to improve performance in large battles and build towards the even more epic situations we all want to see. Thus far, we've had a lot of success, although bigger changes are in the works. This latest version includes some tweaks that are nearly a thousand times faster for very specific situations (but perhaps only twice as fast in common cases).This is not all related to PvP performance, some of it includes the behaviour of NPCs and how well we can get them to work when scaled to really large numbers. I would like to see some terrifyingly large fleets of capships and escort-fighters.In the meantime, we are also still debugging a rare, but persistent issue in our threaded sector code that's currently running in Grayspace. So, if you experience sudden logouts in that area of the game, please submit a ticket and let us know. We're instrumenting and debugging the hell out of it, but it's quite a sporadic issue.Once these improvements have matured a little further, we'll run some big Events and see how it all shakes out. Thanks everyone, have a great weekend!

Just as a quick heads-up to our player base: No Guild Software or Vendetta Online servers were exposed or vulnerable to the recent Heartbleed security compromise. All our servers make use of non-vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software, largely due to our particular choice of server platforms and (frankly) happy circumstance on our part. Thus, we have remained secure throughout this disclosure, and we were never compromised on this specific issue.We have been tracking this issue since it first came to light, and we will be continuing to do so, while also carefully working through our own infrastructure and codebase to make sure we aren't affected by any secondary or tertiary ramifications of this vulnerability, and taking steps to mollify our own healthy paranoia. We remain vigilantly dedicated to keeping your data secure and private.

VO 1.8.288 included:- Optimized of UI updates when mining asteroids.- Capship energy drain now properly persists between NPC and player controlled capships.- Capships can no longer be used to conquer stations by wedging it into the docking bay of the station when it is conquerable.- Players are now notified if they get Temp KOS by damaging a conquerable station defense turret.- Fixed conquerable station issue when a Temp KOS player attempts to conquer the station. The 30 secon requirement was no longer in effect after that case.- Fixed conquerable station issue when players set it as their home station. They weren't properly respawning there and were bounced to a different station instead.- Fixed problem when a player owned capship was destroyed when the owner was logged off and logging back in would send them to a station other than their home station.- When a player logs in while in a station and they are not allowed to dock at that station (access key is revoked for example), the player is bounced to another station but their ship stays at the original station. The player will need to regain access to the station to get their ship back.- Fixed disconnect error when a passenger is in a capship when it explodes.VO 1.8.287 included:- All grey space systems are now running the experimental threaded code. Please report any problems through support tickets.As the final release note states, we have rolled out the new sector code to all sectors in grayspace. We'll be continuing to monitor things, and then eventually roll it out to the entire game. We're doing this in stages to make sure our fixes don't compromise other areas of game stability.At the same time, we aren't convinced that we've fixed all hit-check related issues with these architectural change, and we're continuing to monitor and enhance things as we move forward. If you experience problems with shots not hitting, please submit a Support Ticket to let us know when/where. If you're seeing a large ping time, then that is likely to blame, but we're targeting those occasional situations where the ping times are very low, but hits are failing to register.There will be a major next-generational enhancement to the engine rolled out soon, allowing far higher asteroid densities, which will first appear in a few sectors. In the long run, this will completely re-make the face of our galaxy, and make expansion of the universe a far easier and more interesting concept.Have a great weekend, everyone.

VO 1.8.285-286 incuded:- Conquerable station sectors Bractus M-14, Latos I-8, and Pelatus C-12 are now running experimental code to test a solution to weapon hits sometimes not registering. Please test these sectors and report any problems through support tickets.- The virtual mouse (when used through a gamepad controller) on mobile devices now highlights the virtual keyboard button that was selected so multiple presses of 'A' on the gamepad will repeat the same action again.Please note the changes to the current conquerable station sectors. We've been putting a lot of development effort into tracking down and eliminating the periodic "no-hit" issues that crop up during certain types of player events. We think we have greatly improved the situation, but as the changes are quite major, we're unwilling to roll them out universe-wide without smaller "regional" testing in specific sectors. So, testing and feedback on this new implementation is both welcome and likely to result in a more rapid adoption of the new code throughout the galaxy.

VO 1.8.284 includes:- The Capship Shipyards station maximum cargo storage limit has been increased to 150,000 from 50,000 cu.- Windows Store version has been updated to add gamepad support, tweaks to graphics settings on AMD tablets, and capship owners can control their own turrets like how PC/Android platforms can already do.- Capship owner's mines no longer get triggered by their capship.- Updated the Oculus SDK to drastically reduce drift.- Capture-The-Cargo convoys report updates on their respective channels (201/202) again.Several larger projects are also proceeding in the background. We're working on improving the scalability of larger player events, as well as tracking down some persistent bugs that have been cropping up from time to time. Graphical updates are also in the works, and a more thorough post with some before/after shots will appear soon.We've also added joystick support for iOS, and will be releasing an iPad update with joystick support in the not too distant future.

VO 1.8.283 includes:- Group owner's mines will no longer detonate on other group members if the mines were layed before the group was created.- Mines will no longer detonate on a group member if the member joined the group while in the proximity of the mine.- Fixed Voice Chat cross-talk.A few fixes here, but much greater and more important development is currently in the works.We've long planned to roll out a "universe redux", a far denser and larger assortment of asteroids within individual sectors, along with an expansion and potential explorability of the greater galaxy.Our universe and game engine have always had this in mind, going back many years. But now with far higher densities of objects, we need to engineer some clever optimizations to allow us to still generate wholly "new" parts of a galaxy, without necessary needing to do a "patch" (ie, wholly new content that is dynamically added, while connected to the live game). This set of optimizations lately boils down to a couple of things, a way to effectively transmit complex arrays of data to the client very quickly over a network, and methods of optimizing our rendering of very large and complex environments over extreme view distances.Right now, we're working on the first of the two, developing "smart objects" that contain programmatic information about how they're utilized, allowing a single object to expand into massive asteroid ring, or any other feature, once it has been interpreted by the client. This gives us a lot of flexibility for re-using assets in interesting new ways. Plus, the actual data sent across the network is far less, resulting in much improved load times.From our testing over the past week, we found in the best-case scenario (connected to the test-server on local gigabit ethernet) that load times of a complex sector were cut to 1/10th of what they are when loading the sector content the "traditional" way. These improvements would be even better when used over the actual internet.Beyond these next-generation changes, we're also doing capacity testing, to improve the responsiveness of the game under large battle scenarios. This should allow us to track down and squash any remaining bugs in larger multi-player environments, while also helping us scale up our battle situations and allow the ever-more gigantic battles that we envision for the future.Plans are still in the works for rolling out new Trident variants, along with some cool new artwork and content drops that I'll be talking more about in the near future.

VO 1.8.282 includes:- Trident Type M maximum shield strength bumped to 40k.- Player-owned capship shield repair timer now resets after each hit, like the NPC shields.- Group health and sector list health now includes shield strength.- Shield strength while manning a player-owned turret now shows the correct value.- Repair guns no longer damage player-owned capship shields.- Shields no longer look like they disappear when the capship pilot mans their own turret.- Fixed infrequent lua error when the capship pilot launches from their own capship.Mostly a lot of fixes for the recent, major capship enhancements. More significant updates are in the works, once we've gotten the recent updates stabilized. (Yes, more Trident variants are coming as well).One thing that looms pretty large on our to-do list is the long-running "universe redux" plan, that will include re-working the entire universe with far larger, denser and more complex fields of asteroids. We're working on advancing our engine technology, on both the network and rendering sides, to allow us to expand on the dynamic, procedural sectors to scenes of truly.. epic scale. Combined with some updated assets, and future shader/renderer improvements (lighting/shadow/etc), I think this is going to be pretty amazing. It will also play into the expandability and explorability of an expanded universe, which has obvious gameplay ramifications for all the "territorial ownership" content I've been talking about.As we get a bit closer, I'll start to post some screenshots from some of this work.

VO 1.8.281 includes:- Player-owned capships now have shields that work the same way as NPC capship shields.- Ships stored in capships can now have their ammo refilled by the capship owner without having to launch and dock with the capship.At long last, player-owned capital ships now feature re-charging shields, just like their NPC counterparts! This was an important step in development, making the shields persistently the same whether the player logs off or not. All of this is going to be very useful in the future, when we're dealing with more cases of larger player ships, player-owned stations, territory and factions.Please continue to bring any issues to our attention on this. Major changes always bring up the potential for bugs, and while this underwent an entire extra week of testing and tuning, there's always the potential for something to be missed. We want to squash any bugs as quickly as possible.Another feature was also added in this latest release, but not yet enabled. I'll discuss that in a future post, when we're closer to rolling out that feature.Thanks everyone, have a great weekend!

VO 1.8.280 includes:- Added Sony DualShock 4 support to Android and Windows.- Faction logos now display properly on ARM Mali Android devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition.- Players can no longer dock to capships with CTC cargo. It will need to be jettisoned first.- Radar extender addons now only work if they are equipped as addons, not if they are in your cargo hold.- Google+ Achievements are now supported in the Android Play Store and sideload versions.- Fixed PVP Veteran 1 achievement for Amazon GameCircle and iOS GameCenter.- Added a 'Log off' button to the mutually exclusive faction choice menu.- Your character name is now displayed in the faction choice verification menu.- Added a 3 month non-recurring in-app purchase to the Android version, supporting Play Store "Gift Cards".- Persistent capships now mirror the player's weapon addons after player log-off. VO 1.8.279 included:- Pressing X+Y at the same time on the gamepad in Android now displays the gamepad help menu that shows what the different controls do.- Dialogs with 'Do not show this again' checkboxes now default to the OK button being focused instead of the checkbox.- Attempt to fix clipped screen on HTC One devices.There are a lot bigger changes and deeper fixes in the works, as we continue to test and tune and respond to feedback following the factional changes and new capship features. We expect to also have some new content dropping in the near future, but for the moment we're focused on making the persistent capships as robust as possible. These same code-paths being implemented for capships are going to be used for player-owned stations, player-owned convoys, factions and other mechanics down the road, so it's very important that we lay a solid groundwork.We also have some new graphical and environmental changes in the pipe, which I'll talk about next week. Have a great weekend, everyone!

These are some pretty major updates..VO 1.8.278 includes:- Serco Vulture Guardian turbo drain changed from 56 to 55, top speed increased from 220 to 225.- New Raptor UDV available in UIT stations, requires high Admire standing with UIT, also minimum of Dislike with both Serco and Itani.- Faction standing for major "foreign" nations (to which your character does NOT belong) are now capped at +600. This only impacts Serco, Itani and UIT standings, there are no changes to minor and corporate factions. For instance, this means if your character is UIT, the highest Itani faction standing you may acquire is "Respected" (the reverse also being true). The levels of "Admire" and "Pillar of Society" are reserved for native faction members.- Serco/Itani mutually exclusive faction standings have been changed to equalize at Neutral (0). This means that if a character achieves +600 with Serco, the character's Itani standing will fall to no-higher-than -600, and visa-versa.- The default faction standings for Itani on a new UIT character has been changed to Neutral (0) to reflect the updated mutual exclusion of Itani/Serco.- Player-owned capships now inherit the owner's keychain so the capship won't get attacked in conquerable stations.- Player-owned capships are always visible on the keyholder's radar no matter how far away they are in the same sector.- Turreted non-capital scale ships no longer persist.- Player-owned persistent capships should now use their custom name.VO 1.8.277 includes:- Players can now leave their capship if they have a flyable ship in the cargo hold. The ship is chosen in the PDA Tactical->Hangar tab. When the capship owner docks to their own capship, they can regain control of the capship through the PDA Tactical->Operations tab. Passengers will experience a short interface update when the capship owner logs out/in, launches from, or regains control of the capship.- Capships now stay around for 5 minutes after their owner logs off.- When a player logs in and they have a capship floating anywhere in space, it will immediately spawn whereever it was last located.- Capship owners will be notified if their capship is under attack. The capship's health in the owner's inventory list does not currently update.- While the capship owner is not in control of their capship, it is displayed in the sector list as the custom name of the capship if set, or the owner's name plus a unique identifier.- The capship owner currently can always dock with their own capship even if no space is available, so they cannot be locked out of the capship.- The same capship access key currently works for all of a player's capships. This will change to allow a different access key per capship in a future update.- The Connecting dialog text has changed and now includes a timeout progress-bar.All t