VO 1.8.612 includes:- Three new custom missions, available in various trees.- Fixed rare issues with NPCs getting stuck traversing sectors.- Fixed several client-side Lua bugs.- Server maintenance and update, further improved server performance and scalability.- Improvements to server-side analytics, measurement of database performance.Much of the major maintenance updates have been performed, a few will be held over until next week. We've continued to expand on the scalability of the game server, as evidenced by some of the large-battle testing from Friday night.Please keep an eye out for any bugs, and quickly bring them to our attention on the Bugs forum. Have a great weekend!

VO 1.8.611 includes (08/26)- Six new custom-made missions, available in various trees.- Further improvements to the memory usage and stability of long-runtime sectors.- Fixed issue with Keyboard/Joystick setting not being saved on Android when a gamepad is connected.- Fixed issue with NPC capship turrets not being able to be destroyed.- Android Play Store IAP prices for non-US currencies have been updated to the current exchange rate.- NPC capships no longer jump out when their energy is too low.- Fixed rare issue with AI paths going through objects.VO 1.8.610 (08/12)- Four new custom missions, structured in various trees.- Improved memory utilization of core game server, beneficial to long-runtime stability.- Fixed Android client crash, when app was backgrounded, due to render thread issue.- Fixed Android client crash, when app was backgrounded, due to UI activation issue.We're wrapping up a lot of crucial scalability and bug-fix work, which has occupied much of the summer, but should make the game much more robust. Next week will likely include some server maintenance, and some further scalability introductions to handle more drastic battles, events and other incursions. After that, we expect to get back to the feature development.Please continue to keep us informed about any bugs you see appearing, via the Bugs forum. Have a great weekend, everyone.

VO 1.8.609 includes (tonight)- Twelve new custom-made missions, available in varied trees.- Major improvements to the sector startup process, which also help common sector-to-sector jump performance, but most importantly mitigate a scalability issue if the sector is under extreme CPU load (huge NPC count, etc).- Additional server-side debugging and monitoring added, to further track down a few persistent issues and further enhance server stability.- Fixed rare server-side issue that sporadically caused NPC navigational AI to not function properly, in certain sectors, for limited times.- Fixed server-side memory allocation problem under higher load conditions (testing with 600 clients per sector).- Migrated all server components to use jemalloc, updated server-side LuaJIT and other mechanisms.- Fixed rare client Lua error when getting remote character information as a player is leaving a sector.- Fixed some other unusual and rare client-side Lua error cases.VO 1.8.608 included (July 18th):- Twelve new custom-made missions.- New server-side optimizations for players with extremely large and complex inventories.- Fixed certain cases where resulting items could be "lost" from manufacturing missions.- Fixed problem with some client CAPTCHAs appearing upside-down.

VO server-side changes:- 150 new custom-made missions (total, since the last Newspost on February 5th).- We have begun testing the process of manually-localizing mission content, but this is limited and hasn't yet expanded to the tutorials.- Changes to NPC navigation (still on-going), to reduce problems with large ships or convoys being delayed under certain circumstances.- Major changes to game sectors (still on-going), improving server-side memory usage, improving scalability, adding analytics.- Major update of the core server packet-router (still on-going), resulting in significantly increased player concurrency and battle-scale capacity.- Many other changes.VO 1.8.607- 1 new custom mission.- Enhanced sector performance under very-large battle scenarios.- Additional server-side analytics, for monitoring sector status.- Improvements to sector memory allocation.- Improved memory efficiency for certain types of sector activity.- Fix for iOS crash relating to Trident Tech liveries on recent iOS devices.VO 1.8.606- 34 new custom missions for various mission trees released over the past few weeks.- Fixed lua error when being bounced back to the originating sector if the destination sector fails to load.- Fixed issue when a sector gets stuck if an NPC is too far away from the center of the sector.- Core server scalability and performance enhancements.VO 1.8.605- 14 new custom-made missions branching off of existing mission trees.- Fixed issue with collisions causing ships to exceed the maximum speed limit.VO 1.8.604- Ten new custom-made missions for various mission trees.- Players are now warned of an imminent captcha in certain conditions so they can move to a less hostile environment when it does pop up.- Fixed crash in the Vulkan driver on MacOS.- Fixed issue with the velocity of turret projectiles being too fast.- Internal fixes to the mission system.VO 1.8.603- Five new custom-created missions.- Linux-32bit version now supports the new localization system.- Fixed issue with Corporate Sector Race not finishing in certain circumstances.- Fixed issue with sectors crashing when AI path-finding matrices grow too big.VO 1.8.602- Three new custom-created missions.- Game account personal information on the website has been moved to its own separate password-protected page, under Account Info, and then Personal Information. This includes the user's email address, etc.- Most PC platforms, other than Linux-32bit, now support the new "beta-test" of the language localization system. Language translations are still very early and will change significantly.- Fixed lua error when attempting to take a mission just as it is removed from the list.- To reduce forum spamming, new accounts that don't have any characters with Level 1 Combat license may only post to the Forums up to 2 times per 24 hour period.- Community Projects Forum threads may now be posted-to up to 1 year after the previous post.- Community Projects Forum posts may now be edited by the p

Server Side updates (Feb 4th):- Four new custom-made missions.- Fixed issue with Queens failing to spawn properly under certain conditions.VO 1.8.593 (Feb 2nd):- Ten new custom-made missions, available in branching trees.- Initial, Android-only "early beta test" of locale support for Chinese (traditional), Chinese (simplified), Japanese, and Korean languages. This involves technically complex font rendering of more than 30,000 unique characters.- Fixed issue causing players to not see their own remote capship in the sector list, when docked to a station in the same sector.VO 1.8.592 (Jan 22nd):- Ten new custom-made missions.- Debugging to help resolve problems on MacOS.- Further diagnostics and logging of internal issues.Lots of work continues on Localization and other areas of the game. Certain types of font rendering are quite challenging, for specific languages, and there are a lot of technical considerations (like maintaining a low memory footprint). Getting this localization development out of the way is important, so we can work on tweaking the interface and content translation in parallel; as issues will crop up with word-length and interface sizing based on the way different languages are structured.Beyond this, there's also some other interesting development happening in the background, which will hopefully be something we can announce before long. Have a great weekend, everyone.

VO 1.8.591 includes (Jan 14th):- Ten all-new custom-made missions.- Fixed Vulkan driver crash on Windows devices that have both Radeon and Nvidia GPUs.- Fixed lighting artifact issue on MacOS OpenGL 4.- New installs from the Mac App Store on Intel macs running MacOS Monterey or newer will default to the Vulkan (Metal) driver with 2 dynamic lights and shadows to reduce stutter. Requires Mac App Store update, pending Apple approval.- Fixed issue with crashes on MacOS Monterey when installed from the Mac App Store. Requires Mac App Store update, pending Apple approval.VO 1.8.590 included (Jan 7th):- Ten new custom-made missions, branching out into different trees.- Added capship 'jettison' command. It jettisons items from the cargo hold, aside from ships in the hangar. It can only be used when the owner is in the same sector as the capship.- Fixed issue with being able to swipe too many times for the Ship Purchase tutorial on Android and iOS.- Fixed issue with custom items, like trophies, becoming blank if dropped by a player's remote capship when it is destroyed.- Fixed issue with the font size of accented letters being too small when using non-English languages.VO 1.8.589 included (Dec 31st):- Ten new custom missions.- Added the ability to change turret loadout during flight, on capships.- Swapping any turret would drop shields for five minutes, and any turret(s) being swapped would be disabled for five minutes from the time of respective swap engagement.- If multiple turrets were being swapped (in succession), the shield-down-timer would reset to 5 minutes from the most recent turret swap.- Turrets and shields are restored when docking to a station.- Turret cannot be swapped if it causes grid usage to exceed availablegrid power.Challenges with MacOS Monterey have apparently been plaguing a lot of games, and ours is no exception. Please continue to report problems on the Bugs forum, and we'll track down or work-around issues as quickly as we can. It is notable that, for the most part, these are "platform" problems (OS and driver bugs), and not actually "game" problems, which can make it a challenge to even figure out why they're happening.. let alone fix them. But, we'll continue to do our best.More fundamental game changes will likely re-appear after we get out from under all the unforeseen "platform-change" bug-fixing. Thanks everyone, have a great weekend.

We recently became aware of an exploit to the "Safari Cruise" mission that could yield an unusually large number of drops, when coordinating tactics across multiple accounts or players. The mission has been pulled offline for the moment, and the drops that were improperly obtained have been removed from player inventories.To reiterate what I wrote earlier this year, on the previous exploit: If you find something that confers an obviously significant advantage and yields an unusually high value in drops or rewards, REPORT IT.For one thing, anything Manufactured or gained via content generated from an Exploit is just going to be lost anyway, whenever we trace and remove the content; and that could include items traded to other players (much like the risks of buying stolen merchandise in the real world, we do not "refund" player trades on exploited game content; so be careful who you buy from, limit your trading to other responsible individuals).Plus, anything other than reporting the problem just ends up hurting the game. It absorbs time for us to do log forensics, it derails carefully-scheduled development plans while we do "emergency analysis" of potential gameplay problems, etc. We have lost months of development time to exploits in the past, which obviously could have been used instead to make the game better, if the problem had simply been reported.We *could* also have a game completely free of issues and exploits, but it would require us to also stop making gameplay improvements. So, if you want to see the game continue to get frequent additions and changes, then you need to be on board with reporting the inevitable problems. We don't have the benefit of a large Q/A team, we rely on our players to behave responsibly and report issues as they find them. It's part of the basic reality of an independent, actively-developed MMORPG.Please keep that in mind.

VO 1.8.587 includes:- Seven new missions, available in several new trees that expand with completion.- New capship command "turbo": engages turbo for up to 10km, on the current heading, then stops.- New capship command "gather": Ship will pick up floating ore. Can also specify type of ore, then only that type of ore will be picked up.- New capship command-chaining: Multiple behaviours may be engaged concurrently with the "add" command. So, a ship might be told to "patrol" and then "add attack hostile", causing the capship to both patrol, and attack enemies. Then one might also "add gather", causing the capship to patrol, attack hostiles, and gather floating ore crates.- "Turbo" and "Stop" tutorial-arrows now vanish once the player touches the respective button.- Fix for Strafe tutorial bug for older updating game installs where Roll was not bound to Tilt.- Updates to the iOS version, adds +ActivateTurrets, Localisations, Async Asset Loading, new Touch-Look flight model, improved battery efficiency, other features recently added to the Android version. Requires App Store update for the features to be available.As usual, the Holiday Promo is now active. Happy Holidays everyone!

VO 1.8.586 includes:- Ten additional missions, building out in trees based on mission completion.- Android adds very basic (alpha) tutorial support for Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Polish and Turkish.- Fixed issue with hidden HUD elements becoming visible when the HUD flashes.- Turbo and Stop buttons now flash and have animated arrows pointing to them in the Strafe Tutorial.- Capella can no longer be quickly destroyed by particular types of ship collisions.- Fixed issue with PS4 controller not displaying correct settings in the editable controller menu.- Fixed crash with Google Daydream VR mode.- Reduced HUD Shake intensity by half, on both PC and Android.A lot of other changes going on in the background, beyond what you see here, but this is what we were able to release in time for the weekend.Please report any problems on the Bugs forum of the game website. Thanks everyone, happy holidays!

VO 1.8.585 includes:- Six new missions have been added.- Added "/tkostime" command, to print a list of where the current character is TempKoS, and for how long.- Android and PC HUD (2D) will now visually shake slightly when Turbo is engaged.- Android and PC HUD will now flash green if you pick up cargo.- Android version will now auto-reconnect and use the last character, if the game was disconnected while backgrounded.- Fixed capship turret gunner exploit that allowed players to halve the fire-delay of certain turrets.- Fixed capship turret owner exploit relating to changing turrets quickly.- Fixed scanners causing false NFZ warnings.- Touch to Select on Android has been temporarily disabled, pending fixing a major issue.A lot more changes coming next week. Please keep us posted on any bugs you find, via the Bugs Forum on the website. Thanks!