CryoFall - Patch notes v0.25.x (Balance Update)

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The "Balance Update" is ready for testing! Originally we wanted to release a huge update and call it "Factions Update" but it ended up taking too much time to implement everything considering the scope of changes and that patching of A24 took a lot of our time. So, rather than making you wait longer, we decided to split it into two parts and release all of the balancing changes and some of the new content right now in A25 "Balance Update" (which will NOT require the servers wipe when we release it) and all of the remaining big features later in A26 "Factions Update".

=== CryoFall v0.25.1 (A25 Experimental) ===

New features:
    - Creatures will react with aggression and flee sounds now.
    - Added "Extras" menu which now contains major update history of the game and the update art as well as game credits.

Vehicles:
    - New light mech (now will be called Skipper, the old mech will now be called Manul and it's a medium mech).

Creatures:
    - Completely new tropical boar graphics (to make it easier to see which is which).
    - Creatures will react with aggression and flee sounds now.
   
New structures:
    - Electric cooking stove.
    - Projector tower.
    - Mineral processing plant (to refine ores).
   
New items:
    - Super heavy armor.
    - Refined oresΓÇöcopper and iron ore concentrates (produced by new mineral processing plant).

Balance changes:
    - Significant changes to technology trees. Especially in T3 and T4.
    - Some small changes to food recipes to make them more logical.
    - Changed A.P.A.R.T. suit to be more useful, it now offers a great defense against heat and psi, making it a good choice for volcano exploration and against energy weapons.
    - Salt charge is now automatically unlocked when unlocking buckshot. No need to spend unnecessary LP.
    - Blank 10mm ammo is now automatically unlocked when unlocking 10mm standard ammo. No need to spend unnecessary LP.
    - Changed crafting time of many recipes (made them faster to craft).
    - Solar panels are now much cheaper to craft!
    - Hygroscopic granules are now much cheaper to craft (they no longer require any pragmium).
    - All ammo in the game is now about 30-40% cheaper to make.
    - The "Learning" skill is now advanced twice as fast, meaning it will be much easier to gain LP in the mid-to-late game.
    - Organic value from cucumbers reduced 5->3, because everyone was planting them to create fertilizer.
    - Tools (axe, pickaxe, toolbox) are made twice cheaper. No reason to farm resources just to craft them, right?
    - Water now boils faster (twice as fast).
    - Brick wall now uses copper instead of iron.
    - Many crafting stations, manufacturers and other structures are now much cheaper.
    - Armored safe has slightly less durability now (35k->30k).
    - Anti-mutation medicine is now cheaper.
    - Tinker table repair efficiency is now higher (even at skill level zero).
    - Canned food and drinks are now unspoilable. Now there is a bit more meaning in having them.
    - Roasted coffee beans now stack up to 100 and don't spoil at all. It was annoying before, right? :-)
    - Anti-heat gel is now unlocked in T3, while Peredozin is now moved to T4. Essentially switching places.
    - Leather and fur are now considered "organic" and can be placed into the mulch box if you don't want them.
    - Brick walls (T3) and above cannot be damaged by melee weapons now. Only by explosives.
    - Hoverboards now use less energy.
    - Significant changes to many technology trees.
    - Vehicles and vehicle components are now cheaper to craft.
    - Changes to medicine. Now you can craft pharmaceutical chemicals at T3 and many recipes are made cheaper.
    - Crafting prices for implants have been changed to represent their usefulness.
    - "Sand from stone" recipe is moved into the new mineral processing plant. Previously it didn't make much sense that you can craft it at a workbench :-)
    - Bone armor is now significantly cheaper.
    - Miner helmet (T2) recipe doesn't require electronic components now.
    - Oilpods give slightly more berries now.
    - Other minor cost changes regarding certain recipes.

Quests changes:
    - Quest "Mastering technologiesΓÇöpart two" reward increased to 250 LP until we find a better solution in the future major updates.
    - Quest "Craft and equip better armor" now clearly stating that you need to equip any better armor, not only a wooden set.
    - Quest "Craft ranged weapon" now requiring crafting either musket or flintlock pistol.
    - Quest "Plant any seeds" will not consider saplings as seeds.
    - Most quests that are requiring to collect items will not reduce the counter when an item is lost (such as when used for crafting).
    - Other minor changes regarding the certain quest requirements.
   
Other changes:       
    - Implemented aggression and flee sound for creatures.
    - Land claim will trigger raidblock on hit even if it has 0 HP.
    - Mech's pilot will receive the mech's explosion damage (about 30-70% of HP depending on the equipped armor).
    - Increased building restriction distance to other players and creatures (10 tiles).
    - Tech tree: added a checkbox "Do not ask me again" for the dialog "Do you want to research <tech name>?"
    - New added status effect (in the bottom left corner) will play a quick animation to ensure it will be noticed.
    - Oil refinery will stop if any of the output liquids (gasoline or mineral oil) are reaching full capacity.
    - Now it's possible to plant bombs directly over the oil/Li deposits.
    - Icons for light structures (such as oil and electrical lamps) now using a sprite for their active (lighting) state.
    - Updated Geothermal spring graphics.
    - Access list in land claims, doors and safes is now sorted alphabetically.
    - Reduced land claim decay delay for demo version players (not depends on the tier of the land claim).
    - Changed hit sound by wooden armor as players were confused (it was the same sound as hitting a tree).
    - Server description now could be edited by the server operator right from the game (Current Game menu).
    - Updated FMOD Sound System to v2.00.07 which fixes certain issues related to audio playback.
    - Added option to configure the tooltips delay.
   
World changes:
(please note, the current experimental server does not yet include the new map)
    - Reworked many areas to be more balanced and feel better overall.
    - Reworked areas around different POI (points of interest) to prevent them from being walled in by land claims or abused in other ways.
    - Expanded desert area.
    - Added more places on the map suitable for large (3*3 or 4*4) bases.
    - Expanded west part of the map.
    - Many other small changes all around.
   
Fixes:
    - Fixed an issue when it was possible to interact with a container through a closed door in a certain position.
    - Fixed a random rare issue with a watering can desync when refilling it from bottles (cannot refill a watering can until reconnect).
    - Cannot start gathering/looting action if the previous action is not completed.
   
Important:
    - Currently, this update is available in the experimental branch (How to connect) (http://forums.atomictorch.com/index.php?topic=1477.0). Feel free to give it a try!
    - This update will NOT require a server wipe.
    - When deployed on a server of the previous version (A24), the technology tree will be reset and the spent learning points will be refunded by the game server.
    - Community server owners can choose whether to update or not (previous game client version will still be provided via Steam Client "betas").   

And finally, please consider leaving a review (https://store.steampowered.com/recommended/recommendgame/829590/) for the game on Steam if you haven't done so yet!

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=== CryoFall v0.25.1.4 (A25 Experimental) ===

Changes:
- Reduced cost of the pragmium reactor core (also, please note that the reactor cores will last significantly longer in A25 due to the decreased power usage of all the vehicles).
- Modified ruins/radtown loot spawn scripts to ensure crates will be not replaced by garbage piles over time (if the garbage piles are ignored by players). The game server will keep the proportion of the spawned objects exactly as configured.
- Respawn of loot and creatures in ruins/radtowns will no longer happen when there are players inside (thanks to the improved spawn algorithm it will work much better than in A23 and before when we had to enable spawn while players were inside).
- 100% friendly fire (full damage to the party members) is the default (aka vanilla) setting now. We will enable this setting on all the official servers with the A25 release.
- Reduced the collider's size for water collector building so it's possible to pass between two vertically aligned water collectors.
- Energy weapons rebalanced regarding the skill XP and LP provided (previously laser weapons were providing too much LP while plasma weapons provided an underwhelming amount of XP/LP, now it's the same).
- Increased number of the output slots to 8 for the new mineral processing plant.
- Interpolation window adjusted to ensure minimal latency. On the vanilla servers (20 physics updates per second) it will provide about 50 ms less latency which is a significant improvement. However, on connections with the significant packet loss it might lead to noticeably uneven movement of creatures and other players. We're looking for more feedback regarding this and will consider implementing a dynamically adjusted interpolation window.

Fixes:
- The first usage of the night vision after launching the game was glitchy due to the delay of the necessary effects (shaders) compilation. Now the game will wait until the shaders are compiled before enabling the effect.

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=== CryoFall v0.25.4.1 (A25 Release) ===

Improvements:
   - Added visual cues for creature agro sounds.
   - Improved network library ping measurement precision (it's perfect now).
   - Improved movement lag prediction.
   - Network timings are carefully adjusted to provide the best gameplay with minimal possible lag (that's a really huge improvement!).
   - Added a dialog when the tech tree has been changed (if it has been reset).
   - The game server now supports some complex cases of savegames compatibility so it should work better regarding the server mods which are adding new interfaces or changing data structures.

Servers
   - New server rate setting: LandClaimOwnersMax. Use it to setup the max number of players in the land claim's access list.
   - New server rate setting: DoorOwnersMax. Use it to setup the max number of players in the door's access list.
   - Server can run properly on 30 and even 20 FPS setting now which allows to configure and run it on low spec servers or increase the online players limit.
   - Server can run properly even on 5 physics network updates per second rate which might be useful for low spec servers or to increase the online players' limit. However, decreasing the number of physics network updates per second heavily increased latency (due to physics data interpolation as it using the latest two physical network updates).

Changes:
   - The bear attack can break bones now.
   - Moved watering can crafting into Farming workbench (since it's related to farming).
   - Laser rapier will have x2 durability penalty when hitting any buildings.
   - Resource deposits search mechanic (search areas) is introduced to all PvP servers now (previously it was an experiment only on "Global PvP").
   - Only food and other items with freshness (such as herbs) could be put into fridges now.
   - The game will automatically disable mods if it cannot compile them on startup. A dialog is displayed to let the player know about the disabled mods.
   - Rotten plants will give 3-5 fiber instead of 5.
   - Rotten plants and freshly planted ones won't sway in the wind like fully grown plants.
   - The game will no longer share LP with idle (AFK) party members.
   - Doors will no longer react to the AFK players (as previously it was possible to open doors by pushing AFK player who has the door access to it).

Anti-exploit changes:
   - Demo players land claims restriction: now land claims belonging to demo accounts cannot be combined with other players'.
   - Max base size limit: now maximum base size in any dimension is limited to 74 cells (approximately 3 land claims stacked together in a row). This will prevent certain areas from surrounding (however, areas which are already surrounded will be kept as is until the next wipe).
   - PvP servers: it was possible to disassembly and built land claims in such a way that resulted in combined safe storage to exceed 24 slots. The game now will prevent this from happening and request removing the items from the safe storages of the neighboring land claims and then repeat the action.

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=== CryoFall v0.25.4.4 (A25 Patch 1) ===

Improvements:
- New salt icon.
- New bedroll sprite.
- Menu buttons on top of the screen are split into the three groups now instead of single line with 9 buttons.
- Adjusted the swaying animations for farm plants.
- Party list will correctly take the full available window's height.

Server browser improvements:
- Added sort options for every column (server name, online players number, ping, last wiped).
- Added server filters (show incompatible, show empty, PvP, PvE).
- Added colorized ping numbers.
- Incompatible server entries are dimmed with the red tint.

Fixes:
- Reduced "Sprite resolution" setting resulted in incorrect icons for the Projector tower and Vehicle assembly bay.

This is a client-only patch, no server patch necessary and no server patch available.

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=== CryoFall v0.25.4.6 (A25 Patch 2) ===

Improvements:
- Added context menu for party members list entries so now it's possible to open a private chat from there.
- Improved recent servers list for the Home menu.
- Further improved scrolling for the servers list (now it's much faster, entry-by-entry).

Fixes:
- Long door access list was not displayed correctly (overflow over the window bounds).
- Blueprint sprite for the Vehicle assembly bay was rendered with a wrong scale when the sprites quality reduced in the game options.

This is a client-only patch, no server patch necessary and no server patch available.

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=== CryoFall v0.25.4.11 (A25 Patch 3) ===

Improvements:
- Weapon traces are adjusted to match the actual hit points. Useful when you're playing with a large ping as previously the weapon traces were rendered with a delay matching the ping and trace speed and never appeared as actually hitting the character.
- Unclaimed buildings and blueprints will always display a red icon (broken shield) over them so it will be clear that they need to be claimed to have protection.
- When placing a land claim, the game will highlight areas of other players intersecting with the future land claim area so it will be clear where are the intersections.
- The land claim areas rendering improved to provide better visibility during the night time and also to include a slightly different pattern for red and gray areas (so it's clear for everyone including colorblind players).
- After blocking a player in the chat, all the existing messages from this player will be instantly removed.

Fixed:
- In some cases, the game displayed a wrong error reporting that it's impossible to place a land claim as there is a land claim owned by a demo player (it was just only an intersection with another land claim area which is not owned by the player).
- After login on the server, the chat log may have contained the messages from the blocked players.

This is a client-only patch, no server patch necessary and no server patch available.

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=== CryoFall v0.25.4.13 (A25 Patch 4) ===

Improvements:
- Implemented letterboxing for screens with an ultra-wide aspect ratio (previously the game cropped the picture to fit the screen which resulted in a very limited vertical view area especially on 32:9 and 48:9 screens).
- Added screen aspect ratio setting. There is a new "16:9 (PvP max view)" setting which is particularly useful to PvP players as it ensures the view area is matching the server's view area by fitting the game frame without any cropping into the screen bounds (letterboxing).
- "Unprotected structure" icon will be displayed only if you're relatively close to the building or holding the Alt or L key.
- The game will always show a server's welcome message when you log in on it for the first time since the game launch.   
- Added an error window in case of a SharpDX-related crash.

Changes:
- PvP: x2 increased durability decrease when damaging buildings for all melee weapons and tools as in A25 the crafting costs for most of them were made x2 cheaper.
- PvE: pragmium explosion will damage (kill) players nearby (in the same as on the PvP servers).
- PvE: decayed bases will be completely removed from the world when the last land claim there is destroyed due to the decay.

Fixes:
- Pineapples and purple grass will respawn properly (on the existing servers it might take a while to restore their population, cut some trees to help the server!).
- Helmet light could be used on the server-side (consume fuel) while the client doesn't display it this way.
- Extractors in public Li/oil towns had an "unprotected structure" icon.
- PvP: on Land Claim destroy by players, all the items inside the land claim area vanished.
- Performance fix for large bases since the previous patch.

This update is optional (it doesn't break compatibility between client and server of the previous version).

If you're hosting a community server, installing the server update is highly recommended. Please follow this guide to update your server! https://steamcommunity.com/app/829590/discussions/7/3264459260603005606/

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=== CryoFall v0.25.4.16 (A25 Patch 5) ===

Improvements:
- Improved visual and audio effects for the pragmium source pre-explosion stage (earthquake). Now it's clear when you're on the safe distance from the explosion.
Hint for PvE players: you're never on a safe distance if you attempt to simply run away or use a hoverboard. Just pay attention to a certain technology in Tier 3 Industry 3 group. There is something most players don't use much but it's super useful for mining the pragmium sources.

Fixes:
- Support for additional mouse buttons (#4 and #5).

This is a client-only patch, no server patch necessary and no server patch available.

v0.25.4.17
A small follow-up patch pushed fixing an issue with the light source remaining after the pragmium explosion. No other changes.

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=== CryoFall v0.25.4.18 (A25 Patch 6, server only) ===

Balance changes:
- Salt minerals (containing Lithium salts) will spawn in regular mining areas along with iron, copper, sulfur and other minerals.
- Oilpod bushes will spawn in the tropical forest, temperate forest, and swamp.

The changes will take immediate effect however the oilpod bushes require some time to grow and also they need more space so please help the server and cut some trees!

This is a server-only patch currently only for the official PvP servers. We'll provide a server distribution for community servers as soon as we will be certain no further balancing changes are necessary.

Q: Does this patch replaces some iron/copper/etc minerals with salt minerals?
A: No, it's adding new minerals. If there were 20 minerals in the area, now there will be 21-22 and 1-2 of them will be salt.

Q: Are the boreal forest and salt flats obsolete now?
A: No, there are much more oilpods and salt minerals in these biomes so they still have a high value. However, to many players (especially settled in the tropical biome) the game would be more accessible now.

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=== CryoFall v0.25.4.19 (A25 Patch 7, server only) ===

Improvements:
- Creatures AI improved a bit to better understand when it can chase a player on a different height level.
- Network performance improvements and better profiling.

Fixes:
- Power consumers and generators were not disabled when one of the land claims was destroyed (when there are more than a single land claim on the base).

If you're hosting a community server, installing the server update is highly recommended. Please follow this guide to update your server! https://steamcommunity.com/app/829590/discussions/7/3264459260603005606/

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=== CryoFall v0.25.4.23 ( A25 Patch 8 ) ===

Changes:
- Measures against zoom-out mod. The view area is minimized and cannot be modded. Please note: the characters/players already were not hackable (not visible beyond the original view area) with a zoom-out mod but it allowed to see a bit more static objects and more terrain. Now it's not possible anymore.
- Improved caching of textures, sounds, effects (shaders), etc.

If you're hosting a community PvP server, installing the server update is recommended. Please follow this guide to update your server! https://steamcommunity.com/app/829590/discussions/7/3264459260603005606/

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=== CryoFall v0.25.4.27 (A25 Patch 9, server only) ===

Changes:
- Improved spawn of pragmium nodes and creatures in both volcanoes (for servers hosting A25 world map). In previous versions, if one of the volcanoes was mined more often than the other there was a lack of nodes and creatures.
- Improved trees spawn algorithm for the temperate forest biome.

This is an optional server update. If you're hosting a community server and want to update the server please follow this guide! https://steamcommunity.com/app/829590/discussions/7/3264459260603005606/

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=== CryoFall v0.25.4.35 (A25 Patch 10) ===

Changes:
- Hitting T1 land claim will activate a much shorter raid blockΓÇöonly 1 minute (this way it will be easier to start on a PvP server right after the wipe when other players are running around and hitting everything they could).
- Party LP share feature is now disabled by default (previously it deducted 30% of LP gained by the player and distributed it among the other online party members, often leading to confusion when the game displayed an LP gained notification when the player was not performing any activity, and other similar problems). If you wish to restore party share LP for your community server there is a server rate "PartyLearningPointsSharePercent" in ServerRates.config file.

Fixes:
- Fixes an issue when it was possible to get hit with a ranged weapon through the horizontal door when standing too close above it.
- Fixes an issue with a "random" electricity blackout.
- Lava cracks view distance improved to ensure they will not pop-in all a sudden.
- Farm plot view distance improved as well. Plus terrain decals (such as the green moss) will no longer weirdly render over the farm plots in some cases.
   
This is an optional server update. If you're hosting a community server and want to update the server please follow this guide! https://steamcommunity.com/app/829590/discussions/7/3264459260603005606/