First of all, as some of you experienced it live, massive thank you to the max. player count again!
I can honestly say that I didn’t expect this due the low count of players before, some hate here and there!
So many players were waiting and coming back only on HWS means a lot to us!
This should hopefully show many out there, why we have such a high Vote count as well…
Anyways, I want to make it a short but very informative announcement this time because some things are still on the todo list.
Start experience and issue
No surprise, if 40-50 players are on one planet it laggs for some weaker Computer or Terrain is not instant loaded or teleportation / joining takes some time.
For the next season I will make sure to have more Starter planets to spread the workload and give you a smoother experience!
Starter Ship
Since some players just want to leave the planet as soon as possible there is now the command
egs:spawn
also available for Alliance and Lawless on the Cryo planet. (Freelancer have their own).
You can spawn it only once so make sure you time it right!
Freelancer Start
For me the biggest reward was to see how good the Freelancer Start were doing this time!
Very smooth without the need of buying a ship anymore!
Lawless Start
While “camping” is allowed we will update the Prison Teleport Start POIs to give you the option to teleport back to the Clone Chamber and choose a different Biome. Just in case you want to play also a different Biome.
Prototype Start
The Feedback so far is great and I hope I didn’t make it too difficult.
Please let me know how I can improve it even more.
Note: Once the Planet Vessels are FINALLY fixed for MP, I will integrate them again, to give also HV/SV a challenge on that planet.
Supergates
As we saw in the last season already: Supergates are a feature which should be included by Eleon in the first place. To discover new Oribts with your ship NOT with the normal K warp is a nice addition (also aka Wormhole).
So I wanted to give you even more destinations and logic behind them.
Supporter Playfield Supergate
As some have “found” out, the Donare System is aligned like a Clock. Your only task is to find out which planet is yours. I did this with intention to give the players who owns a planet a proper way to “remember” their spot but enemies a little obstacle to not know it straight away.
PvP Supergates
The Supergate in Black Hole is new and the whole travel routes are a bit different now.
Please give me feedback on that!
On the one hand Supergates should not be totally open and you yolo jump everywhere with it. On the other hand maybe I missed some important travel routes.
At the moment it is for example like this:
- ECC has 2 Supergates - below and above the planet
- The top Supergate brings you to Homeworld
- The Homeworld Supergate brings you to Black Hole or Titan or Armageddon
- The BH, Titan and Arma Supergate let you only travel within this travel net. Use Homeworld to get back to ECC for example
Trade Commodity / Trading in general
A very new system BUT a system I was not able to 100% integrate to HWS 8.X because I ran out of time.
It is a very very complex system if you want to make it right and at the moment the default NPC Trader and some old values don’t make it that good.
What is not ready
I have to release soon a “Economy Patch” where I will rebalance / remove / add certain items for certain NPC Traders. In general I will map all NPC Traders properly to the locations ( for example for all the CCC Trading Stations ).
The Commodity Trader in Walla, Cebo, Atlantis and Binomi are also at the moment only accepting your commodities. No Trader out in the universe offers them to you to buy.
Thus creating such a cool feeling to buy cheap and sell expensive is not that available YET.
I work hard to integrate it the next days.
It’s a soft change, which can be applied after a server restart
However the Golden Globe NPC Trader is ready!
What is ready
Basically, on almost every planet you visit you can see in the Map description something like this
And the idea behind it is
- If you see Economy = Rich it means there IS a special NPC Trader available who sell / buy to very special conditions.
- Average means there might be a NPC Trader or there is a resource crust or in general profitable resources
- Poor indicates none of the above conditions
So as a hint: the NPC Trader on Golden Globe (you might know already where he hides) will sell / buy Gold and Auto Miner Cores at very nice conditions. But maybe there is also more…
What is ready also is already the relationship of the Atlantis Trader and the Stone Statues you found already here and there! (and hopefully you didn’t place them on your Base / trash them 
)
Once the whole system is fully integrated not only good Traders can get rich very nicely but also Hunteres, Pirates or worse will have a lot of new objectives how they can play PvP!
Limits & Taxes
Few things changed here greatly:
- We have now a 7000 Cores limit per playfield - all thanks to DSL
- We have no Taxes anymore except on ECC + ECC System + CSW and the Supporter Planets if reaching 1000 Cores
- Most orbits have now no limit anymore
- The overall global limit is 2 faction and 1 private structure.
- Make always sure to press M ingame and check the info at the bottom right
HWS Garage
It’s crazy how many players waiting for it and poking me non-stop but on EU and NA everything is ready now!
However:
- 1-2 new ships might come in a bit later
- the current 5 new SVs and CVs will be described nicely HERE as soon as possible
- the HWS Showroom will be reworked due some issues in Space…
- PLEASE give feedback on the prices and the ships in general! Are they too cheap / expensive / too strong / too weak etc. It became a bit overwhelming for me to check everything 100%
HWS Photo Shooting tomorrow!
As announced here, we will have tomorrow our very first HWS Photoshooting at the EGS HQ in ECC around 9-10 PM!
PLEASE try to make it at that time to the EGS HQ!
Ju and I will see how we align so many players the best way…
HOWEVER if the Doodle is right and we get 70+ players on the Photo it means we have 70+ players on the playfield which is mind blowing for Empyrion!
Do NOT bring your Class 2-7 CVs to ECC or I will show you my real power!
Excited to see you all on the Photo! 
That said, relieved, exhausted and glad it worked out better than I expected… I hope you had a good season start, although some lag issues here and there (it gets better over time) and you will enjoy quite a lot of new things in HWS 8.X!
Please let me know what you like or dislike even though give it a good time to validate.
