Welcome back Pilots!
Arriving on Friday October 23rd is the next Quality of Life update. Full patch notes will be available on Friday. You can look forward to many upgrades and improvements, and a new Mech variant to collect: the Mantis B Assault Mech. This patch is designed to be compatible with your current save files. However, for the new mech variant to be available for manufacture on the worlds of the Hyades, you will need to start a new campaign.
New Variant: Mantis B Assault Mech
The Mantis B replaces all four of the small energy hardpoints of the traditional Mantis with small ballistic hardpoints. This configuration allows for both long range and hard hitting weaponry, but at the cost of increased reliance on limited ammunition weaponry.
Assign Weapon Groups via Refit Bay
This much requested feature is almost guaranteed to improve your piloting experience. Setting up weapon groupings inside the Refit Bay allows modification of firing groups before dropping directly into a war zone. Fiddling with hotkeys to setup firing groups while under direct assault during a hot drop is now a personal choice rather than a fact of life.
Master Unit List
The in-game encyclopedia now includes a Master Unit list, where you can browse every unit in Drop Command. This will be available through the new Encyclopedia Core. You will also find master lists for all planets, star systems, stellar empires, pirate factions, and mercenary companies operating within the Hyades.
Empire Encyclopedia Pages
Empire names are now hyperlinked to their own Encyclopedia entries, each detailing a great deal of useful information for savvy diplomats and warmongers alike. These dossiers include empire personality, location of an empire's capital world, total fleet strength, and more.
Empire Updates
A frequent point of concern is the propensity for new empires to form inside a star system mostly controlled by the player empire. For this reason, new empires are now 90% less likely to form in a system which is controlled by another empire (this change will not apply to empires formed by mercenary companies).
Empires will now prefer to expand their borders through direct conquest via territory annexation rather than using diplomatic takeovers. While diplomatic takeovers will now be rare, they will still occur occasionally, and the method of takeover will now be evident in the accompanying news reports.
Another issue players have experienced is the unpredictability of opposing empires taking control of planets. To help communicate empire hostile activities, planet displays will now show an empire influence bar next to the player influence bar when an empire is actively working to take over the world.
When a new empire is founded on a planet for which the player has completed an Aid Mission, the new empire will automatically gain +50% mutual opinion of the player empire. This ensures future diplomacy with the fledgling empire to be significantly more cost effective while good relations are maintained.
And Plenty More
Full patch notes will be available when the patch goes live. I hope to see many pilots new and old this weekend, good hunting!
