*** Vendetta 1.8.264
- Fixed upside down display issue with Android devices with Mali-400 GPUs.
- Reduced network traffic when capships with turrets are in the sector.
- Changed login menu background for ascetic reasons.
- Added ETC1 compressed texture assets for fresh installs of the Android sideload apk (/sdcard/VendettaOnline doesn't exist and the app is uninstalled). This improves memory usage on Mali devices.

So what, the login menu background is now black or something?

Different planet in the background I think.

come on, where are my fellow spelling nazis?

I made the same joke to Ray, greenwall (I said grey). Scared him for a second :) Anyway, it's been corrected in the updater.

Also, cross-posted from News:

What's not mentioned in this update changelog are all the other changes that are happening, like the imminent appearance of the new Vulture (thanks to a server restart), along with development of new Trident variants. There will be a more substantial newspost in the near future.

Oh, also, we think we may (?) have drastically improved capship-combat scenarios that were previously "laggy". The issue we found had nothing at all to do with server CPU load, which is why we never saw evidence of the problem. What's in there for now is a stopgap measure, but still, if you'd like to try some of the sorts of capship gameplay that was previously problematic, let us know how it works. I'll do the same, when I get a chance to run some impromptu cap-battles and things.

The biggest challenge is that everything looks like "lag". The player's computer being slow, the player's network connection being slow, anywhere on the internet being slow, etc etc. It makes this kind of thing a real pain to correlate and understand. Please keep that in mind when reporting any ongoing issues, they may or may not be the same thing, but we'll appreciate the reports nonetheless (Bugs Forum would probably be the best place).

wait -- the new vulture is available now?

"imminent appearance".. where imminent means "about to happen". Not already-has-happened.

I could not actually put the ship into production until the server was restarted (which is why I had no weapons when I was flying it around in-game), but we wanted to keep the server up to debug some "long-uptime" issues. We finally restarted just a few hours ago.

Anyway, now I would like to do a little testing, and potentially allow some limited public usage this coming week. It will not immediately "replace" the old vulture, we'll just bring it in as a variant somewhere and let people play around with it for a little while.

Great update! Looking forward to seeing the upcoming Dent variants. Don't misunderstand, I'm not pushing. And you did a great job upgrading the Vult!

if you'd like to try some of the sorts of capship gameplay that was previously problematic

We'd love to, but they're absurdly overpowered defensively and absurdly under-powered offensively to the extent that pirates are no longer interested in playing because they're un-pirateable, and nationalists are no longer interested in piloting or building them because they are incapable of performing any of the required combat duties (ya know, besides dedicated nuisance).

So yeah, i'd love to go have big capship battles, but to be honest it'd be easier for you to fix capship balance in VO once and for all than it would be for us to get a group of people together sufficiently large enough to test it. It took two years of hard work by many players to build enough conflict and enough tridents to the extent that these battles actually occurred. So here's what I think we need for sustainable trident battles:

1. Buff Avalons substantially and give them guidance. More speed and damage is all thats necessary. If you had more resources destructibility and increasing speed over time would be even better but not necessary.

2. Buff Ctc rewards substantially. 2000x the credits rewards so that groups can make a profit from them and double the amount for bringing them to the UIT as a UIT. Because it's the most reliable catalyst for conflict that we've ever seen besides b8 (which ctc is a part of anyway).

3. Add new turrets and use capital ship grid power limitations to make sure only cap-ships can use them if you don't have the resources to fully overhaul the system. ARF knows how to do this in an elegant and simple manner.

Two simple changes and one slightly more complicated change and we'll see nationalists coming back to play with their cappies, we'll also see pirates coming back because it'll be actually possible to kill a trader in a trident.

This isn't a demand or a suggestion or anything, it's just what I think is the easiest way to reboot conflict.

Checking update program...
Connecting to update1.vendetta-online.com:21024... Connection failed: cannot send
Connecting to update2.vendetta-online.com:21024... Connection failed: cannot send
Can't reach any Guild Software update server!

Unable to connect to the Vendetta Online update server.

I think Avalons warrant making a new "class" of weapon specifically for torpedoes. Make them so they can be targeted and shot down, and keep their speed the way it is (launch velocity + 35m/s), but add a slight guidance that doesn't limit their speed like the way missiles work to make up for the gaps in angles and slow moving capships.

Changed login menu background for ascetic reasons.

lol, this was fixed by the time I saw it.

Well that may be true about avalons, but for the purposes of this discussion it's really not necessary to stipulate they have all the bells and whistles, more just to have them at a point where people are satisfied that they are dangerous enough to tridents to bother taking them on.

I mean I read somewhere that the new trident variants are being considered. It's nuts. They belong in a version of VO where there is the possibility of an actual engagement with them. At this stage it hurts things more putting more tridents in there without a rudimentary system of engagement.

The absurdity of it at the moment is quite off-putting, can we get some sort of indication that you will be alleviating the absurdity instead of contributing to it?

I guess it is a minor issue to be fair. Of the 23ish players I know to have completed tridents, i've only seen two online on 100 in the past few weeks and there are maybe 2-3 others that are active in the game but don't talk on 100 and would never seek combat anyway. But that's not really a good basis for content priority decisions.

No matter how great you make capship combat be, the Serco will still keep their tridents in M-7.
+1 Arf, I like the idea of shooting down avalons

Wow guys. Ok, I was talking about large skirmishes and things, not player capships. I hardly expect people to gather enough player capships together to create the kinds of issues we're trying to fix (which probably won't even be visible without 5-10 embattled ships).

Yes, we're still working on player capships. Yes, I'm still working on making them relevant and usable, and am distinctly aware of their current limitations. Yes, we're working on graphical variants of new tridents, because I've promised two more variants for a long time, and it's a good test of the new realtime-composite shaders.. but I don't intend to release them without greater relevance.

But again, none of that is what I was talking about. Just maybe try getting a bunch of people to play a Large border skirmish or something, and see how it works?

-------------

Patterner: if you continue to have issues, perhaps submit a Support Ticket? Anyone else having update server problems?

I never have lag issues in Deneb... maybe you should ask the aussies specifically, since they always have the most problems with lag it seems.

Well, that's the thing, high-latency connections are something I can't "fix", and "lag" tends to look the same whether it's from the speed of light or an actual issue. But this is for a problem that I've actually seen when playing from a local connection.

It's also directly tied to turrets, and the number thereof, which is another reason why I wasn't expecting player Tridents to replicate much (you'd need like.. 8 tridents to equal one Teradon, or something?). More of an issue with Constellations and Teradons.

Inc, are you talking about what happened in the sector last week where shots stopped registering and all the NPCs seemed to go braindead for seconds at a time?

Yeah, that happens with only one player capship and half a dozen players in a conq station sector, just not consistently.

Anyway, I was just doing some border skirmish missions and things were running smoothly. Cross your fingers everyone :D

But again, none of that is what I was talking about.

Oh. Lulz.