Server-Side Release

A server update is being pushed tonight, which includes the following:- Escort mission delivery NPCs now take priority over generic NPC traffic when docking to stations.- NPCs now more aggressively target mines if they are between the NPC and its target, or if the NPC is damaged by the mine.We'll be continuing to evolve the NPC AI behaviour, please let us know how it's working.Happy Holidays, and have a great weekend, everyone!

Happy Holidays, Newsletter Update

Happy Holidays!We've released a Newsletter update, which is available here for those who do not get it in their email Inbox:https://www.vendetta-online.com/newsletter/12.2019/newsletter.12.2019.htmlWe've spent some time on server-side tools and analytics over the last couple of months, so I took the unusual step of illustrating how this helps us internally. Hopefully some of you find that interesting, or at least it helps convey why we needed to put in that time.Basically, it's far, far easier for us to release new gameplay, if we have better tools to tell us "how well" it's all actually working. These improvements have been incredibly helpful so far, and we're really excited about how they'll enable us to make broader changes to the game.As usual, the Holiday Promo is active, between the 24th through the end of the year, and we encourage people to stop by for the various scheduled Game Events:- December 26th, 7:30pm CST (12/27 @01:30 UTC) - Hive Ion Blaster War- December 28th, 8:00pm CST (12/29 @02:00 UTC) - Corporate Sector Run- December 29th, 5:00pm CST (12/29 @23:00 UTC) - Championship Race- December 29th, 7:00pm CST (12/29 @01:00 UTC) - Vet Week Bus RaceYou can also find the Events on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vendettaonline/events/All the best, everyone!

Server-Side Release

Tonight's update is entirely server-side and requires no game client update.These updates are inspired directly from player feedback and reports on the Forums, and we've attempted to improve the related situations. If you continue to find problems or negative ramifications, please continue to post to either Suggestions or Bugs, as appropriate.- Station Defense Turrets will now clear out mines, in addition to the Station Defense Fighters. This may help mitigate some reported situations relating to the conquest of stations.- Unaligned Pirates now have different defend behaviour, with a more careful allocation of available defense resources. This should be an improvement, but will probably need further tweaking, and is expected to continue evolving in the future. Forum feedback on any further problems are certainly appreciated.- In situations where the pilot of a capital ship has the Key to a conquerable station, and the other player(s) controlling their turret(s) then attack the conquerable station defenses, the entire capship will now be flagged as TempKoS for the next 15 minutes.- Fixed a new (rare) sector crash that had appeared in the past week, relating to sector startup and analytics.- New administrative (guide) commands added to enhance management of "public" channels (1 and 100), in keeping with the discussions in the Toxicity RFC from earlier this year. These are the first steps of moving from the vote-mute system to a new "report" based mechanism.(The above release notes will likely also be added to the next client-side patch, to show up in the game patch log).That's all for now. Remember to stop by for the Behemoth race on Sunday! 5pm Central.Have a great weekend, everyone.

Vendetta Online 1.8.501

VO 1.8.501 includes:- Fixed problem with NPC capship turrets, causing them to not take damage.- Fixed issue with not being able to change the command for the Start button on gamepads on PC platforms.- iOS version now requires iOS 12 or newer. iPhone 5S is now the minimum spec.- iOS version now fully supports Xbox One and Sony DualShock 4 controllers with App Store update (some differences in support between iOS 12 and 13).- iOS now offers recurring Subscriptions via In-App Purchase, after the App Store Update, including the requested 12-month option.- iOS version now defaults to rendering shadows for new installs.- iOS version now supports OpenGL ES 3.0, with instanced rendering.- iOS now has multi-threaded rendering enabled by default.- iOS version now defaults to 4x anisotropic filtering, with two dynamic lights.- iOS textures and effects have been improved in quality, particularly normal maps.- Fixed issue with iOS version not saving changed gamepad commands.Lots of updates, particularly for iOS. Obviously, some of these will require an iOS App Store update, but hopefully that will be approved next week.This update actually has broader ramifications beyond iOS itself, because in order to release a "universe-redux" type of expansion, we had to finish updating the game engine across all platforms. Android happened a few months ago, now iOS, etc.Please report any issues on the Bugs forum. Have a great weekend!