Release Notes - August 19, 2010

System

Hey gang!

Here's the patch notes for tonight's maintenance. Enjoy!


General

• C-Store screenshots have been updated for tribbles, species, and emotes.
• Crates no longer clip into each other in the Assimilated Cruiser PvP map.
• You can no longer walk through certain crates in the Assimilated Cruiser PvP map.
• The environment no longer flickers in the cave on Risa.
• Warp Plasma now dissipates if the player who dropped it leaves the map.
• Several optimizations have been made to the gameservers.
• Level 51 enemies will now drop Mark 11 items.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes your Away Team would disappear when moving from ground map to ground map.
• The sound of the pools on Orias III no longer persists if you beam up while near them.
• The description for the Caitian Pounce trait has been updated.
• The Cold Dwelling trait has been added to the Unknown species abilities list.
• The camera no longer jitters if your target takes up most of the screen.

PvP

• Public Games:
  • Improved matchmaking. Games will start more frequently and will have equal numbers of players per team more often.
  • Improved the PvP Queue UI:
    • Queue list has been reworked to be more readable.
    • Each queue displays an average amount of time it will take to get into a map.
  • The queue minimum requirement for large battles has been reduced to a lower value (smaller game) after a queue timer expires, allowing for both large and small games to be accessible from the same queue.
• Challenge System:
  • Players can now challenge other players to private PvP matches
  • Up to 20 players can participate
  • The teams can be mixed faction
    • Feds can invite Klingons to these matches, and they can be on the same team.
  • Participants can be from any tier
    • All tier 5, or any mix of tier 1 through 5
  • The teams can be unbalanced
    • For example, 10 tier 1 ships vs 2 tier 5 ships
  • The map the game will be played on can be set specifically
    • Maps are still restricted by game type
  • Players can set the number of kills to win on Arenas
  • Players can set the amount of influence to win on Capture and Hold maps
  • Players can set the amount of Station Health is allotted in Assault Maps
• Challenge System UI:
  • There are team lists where players can change which team they’re on
    • Click and drag your name to the team you want
    • The initiator of the challenge can adjust the team of anyone participating
  • There is a chat window embedded in this window for all players that have been invited
• Consoles can once again be interacted with in the Shanty Town Assault map.
• The Queue Alert will always show when a queue is ready.
• The Delay button will now be removed from the Alert window when the player gets invited to a match.

Missions

• Diplomatic Investigations in the Arucanis Arm are now on the same timer as the other Diplomatic Investigations.
• Various typos have been corrected in the mission, Standoff.
• All enemy and friendly NPCs will reset when the Fluidic Space Fleet Action is completed.
• The Cestus System now shows its name in the map and mini-map.
• The issue where aid the planet missions wouldn’t allow the player to complete an in progress mission has been resolved.
• In the mission, Trick or Treat, your Bridge Officer’s name displays correctly when being prompted.
• The Betreka Nebula now pops up the right message upon exploration perk completion.

UI

• Fleet Banks have been redesigned!
  • Permissions and Log have been moved to separate windows instead of tabs.
  • Permissions are now organized similarly to the Fleet Settings window.
  • A few improvements have been made to how the game handles fleet permissions.
  • A “New Repository” button has been added. Formerly, you had to click a disabled tab in order to purchase a new one.
• Text display has been improved in several locations in the Fleet Settings UI.
• Purple-quality Mark X ship items can once again be fitted onto your ship while you are on the ground.
• Anonymous players now show as Offline to players in their Friends list.
• Anonymous players no longer show “Player has logged in” and “Player is logged out” right after one another when logging in.
• The Minimum Rank dropdown menu in the Fleet Information UI now shows the proper number of grades for Rear Admiral, Lower Half and Upper Half ranks.
• Text can no longer be entered into disabled fields.
• The Bridge Officer Trainer UI now saves your preferences from previous sessions.

Known Issues:

• Fleet Bank: Pressing the New Repository Button does not unlock another bank slot.
• We are working on adding wing animations for Birds of Prey and Intrepid ship models. An early version of this animation has snuck into the warp in/warp out cutscene for the B’rel Bird of Prey.