Alien Invasion

Update Friday October 29th 2004

Version 15.6.8

- Fixed a client crash bug related to morphing and wielding certain items.





Update Tuesday October 26th 2004

Version 15.6.7

- Fixed the upkeep cost on cities in the new coastal areas.

- Made a code change to hopefully address an elusive client crash problem that has been very troublesome to raid parties in e.g. Pandemonium.

- Added some surprises for Halloween.




Update Thursday September 23rd 2004

Version 15.6.6

Game Mechanics

- The Alien XP (AXP) gain has been increased with a factor varying roughly between 4 and 2.5. The highest increase is seen at the lowest levels, with the highest levels getting the 2.5 factor. This also means the AXP loss when dying has been increased.

- You now get an informative error messages when trying to invite yourself to a private chat group.

- We've done some tweaking of how (and how much) healing draws attention from groups of enemies. E.g. Doctors should now have an easier time (though not necessarily an easy time) when involved in alien attacks.

- City upkeep costs have been greatly reduced.

- City Controllers will now "remember" their health level even when the server restarts. This should thus be the last time you see a change in City Controller health during downtime.

Quests

- The missions to deliver items to Eco Red will now resolve properly when you complete the task.

World

- It's no longer possible to stay at the ICC Shuttleport beyond level 19.

- Some more city areas have had their suppression gas level corrected to 75%.

Monsters and Non-Player Characters (NPCs)

- Alien generals will no longer involve themselves in the battle if their subordinates have been able to achieve the objective.

- Torrith the Ancient has returned from his early retirement, figuring he would try camp some more players to reach Age Title 30 (Venerable) after all.

Items

- We've added a smaller ECM tower. This tower is not as efficient as the larger one, giving one attack every 5 days on average when turned on. Apart from that it works like the larger ECM tower.

- The MTI 99 Agent Match Pistol and MTI 99 Rebel Match Pistol had a too powerful Stun effect on them. This was a bug. The stun effect has been removed from the weapons.

- The Nophex Cube has had its NoDrop flag removed, and will now be available.

- While working on a better system for it we've disabled the entrance to Clinique Plastique.

GUI

- Added option-panel checkboxes for controlling which windows should close when pressing the Esc key.

- Fixed the "Ignore user" entry in the friends view context menu.

- The X button for closing a container window (e.g. loot window or backpack window) is now always visible.

- The Faction window now displays the faction names correctly again.

- Added an NCU icon to the mini-toolbar.

- Fixed a bug causing items in one backpack to sometimes be rearranged when moving items between two other containers (like when looting items from a corpse into your inventory).

- It is now possible to disable auto-arrange on the reclaim container.

- The reclaim window now got its own config-entry (no longer share with corpses and chests).'

- You can now move your target and fighting target's health bars.




Update - Wednesday September 15th 2004

Version 15.6.5

We've changed the Alien XP system to work more like the regular XP and SK system. This means Alien XP will no longer carry over to the next level, and losing Alien XP will no longer bring you below what's needed for your current alien title. We have also tweaked the Alien XP needed for each alien title.




Update - Friday September 10th 2004

Version 15.6.4

Game Mechanics

- Random alien attacks will now happen every 7 days on average if you have an active cloaking tower and every 3 days on average if not. The attacks have a greater chance of happening at the times of the day when members of the organization are typically online.

- Turning off the cloaking tower now attracts aliens like hecklers to a Complete Healing Doctor. Turning a cloaking tower on or off may only be done once per hour.

- The Alien XP formulas have been updated. The gain is higher, the loss is lower, and teaming now gives a proper bonus. In addition, the gain now scales with the character level so that a level 180 player killing a level 180 alien gets more AXP than a level 20 player killing a level 20 alien.

- Read more about alien attacks, counter-attacks and the Alien XP system as "Game Director Marius Enge talks about AI":http://www.anarchy-online.com/content/news/articles/8226L.

- A bug related to quests causing loss of backpacks has been corrected.

- Money stored in the city upkeep account are now stored safely. Due to previous problems with this we have given all cities built before this update 30 extra days before the first upkeep fee is deducted. We expect to adjust the actual upkeep costs in the next update.

- When depositing money to the city upkeep account, you will no longer lose more money than the upkeep account may hold, even if you try deposit more.

- Several nano programs have been removed from stacking line 0, as stacking line 0 is not really used.

Quests

- It's now possible to take some time off between missions given by Uncle Bazzit.

- You will no longer get any XP or credits as a mission reward the first time you bring information about the Structural Analyzer to Uncle Bazzit.

- The mission to get rid of Dr. Krank now contains more information.

- You will no longer be able to get the mission to bring back a Vagabond Cloak if you are level 25 or above.

Monsters and Non-Player Characters (NPCs)

- Brandon Thorn now knows better, and won't wish you safe travels when you say goodbye.

World

- Due to a petition among the alien troops, their pilots have corrected some of their flight paths to avoid dropping the troops over water.

- The aliens have corrected some transport beam problem, making entering spaceships easier at some locations. The beam focus was some distance above ground. There is much discussion among the aliens whether fixing this was a good or bad idea.

- Some city areas have had their suppression gas level corrected to 75%.

- A bug with a city area in Belial Forest has been corrected and the area may now be put into use.

Items

- Essential Human DNA is now being sold by Uncle Bazzit.

- Nano cubes are not available as mission rewards anymore. They were available here by mistake.

- High quality Controller Recompiler Units are now more common.

- Certain profession networks have been able to get hold of some Low quality Controller Recompiler Units, and are distributing these.

- The prices at Leets-R-Us have been raised to prevent exploits.

- Limited time offer! Clinique Plastique now offers its services at half price (50.000.000 credits). Buy now! Only valid for a century or so.

Trade Skills

- Nano Programming Interface now works better in armor creation.




Update - Tuesday September 7th 2004

Version 15.6.3

This update is to fix a client crash bug related to loading playfield collision data.




Update - Friday September 3rd 2004

Version 15.6.2

Alien Attacks

- Aliens will now attack cities regularly. The system is currently set to perform attacks at least twice per day per city, but lacks the option to trigger an attack by turning off the cloaking. Turning off the cloaking increases the chance of getting an attack sooner though. The system is open to tweaking and changes based on "player feedback":email:feedback@anarchy-online.com.

- Players without the AI expansion will no longer be assigned a place in a boarding team.

Player Cities

- Only the top three ranks of an organisation may now build and demolish buildings and access all panels of the city controller interface.

- The city upkeep account will no longer reset when the playfield restarts.

- Cities now correctly requires a Grid House before members of the owning organisation may use the grid exit leading to the city. This will also prevent people from exiting the grid outside the playfield.

- A city area that showed no map in the controller interface has been fixed.

Pets

- The buffs for the pre-order bonus leet pets now work properly.

User Interface

- Added checkboxes for the hide-controlcenter, and hide-rollupbar states to the option panel.

- The "option panel->GUI->Control Center" is rearranged a bit, and now greys out options that are currently unavailable due to other dependencies to make it more obvious how things work.

- The rollup-panel now unhides if a new window open inside it.

- The rollup-panel refuses to scroll further up when the bottom half is empty. This prevents people from "losing" their windows by scrolling them off the top of the screen, but leaves enough room to resize the last window.

- Buttons no longer get transparent when disabled - only their colour changes.

- You can now terminate a drag-and-drop operation with the Escape key.

- Fixed a bug causing items to be reshuffled when adding items to backpacks.

Technical

- Fixed a server crash caused by people attempting to recruit non-player characters (NPCs) to their organisation.

- A bug causing a backpack to be lost in very specific situations while trading with an NPC has been fixed.




Wednesday September 1st 2004

Version 15.6.1

*Note*: This is only the changes that apply to everybody, regardless of having Alien Invasion installed or not. Please refer to the "AI guide":http://www.anarchy-online.com/content/guides/aoaiguide/ for information about player cities and more.

Graphical User Interface (GUI) upgrade

The GUI introduced a year ago has gotten another upgrade, and we now consider it complete. As a result of this the old GUI is no longer supported, and everybody will have to use the new one from now on. While we consider the new GUI complete we will continue to add features to it as needed, like with Alien Invasion.

New starting area

ICC now handles immigration to Rubi-Ka, and newcomers choosing to start on Rubi-Ka will encounter a new start-up playfield with quests, aliens and non-player characters (NPCs) tailored to make the transition into the game easier. Everybody starts as neutral, but may choose a side before leaving this playfield.

Game Mechanics

- Being blinded now properly turns the view area completely black in all situations.

Monsters and Non-Player Characters (NPCs)

- Several creatures that weren't flagged as bosses now are, giving them some immunities and longer corpse decay time. Other creatures that were flagged as bosses by mistake have had their immunities and long corpse decay time removed. There are still some creatures that remain to be corrected.

World

- The entrance to the Condemned Subway in Old Athen has been demolished. People have found a new one in West Athen though.

Items

- Several Keeper and Shade nano crystals above quality level 125 are now available in missions. These were left out by mistake earlier.

Shadowbreed

- Corrected a feedback error with unlocking Shadowbreeds.

Pets

- Mortificant no longer has numbers in its name.

Technical

- Client-side wildlife (small fishes, bunny creatures, butterflies, etc) has been tweaked a bit to remove some strange situations.