Hey, guys!

As already mentioned last week we are currently working on several updates at the same time. And one of them is finished now! The Mining Update is now live on the default Branch!

Mining Changes

We have revised the mining system so that it feels more like the actual mining of raw materials. The most efficient mining lasers no longer convert the mined asteroid directly into resources, but drop ores to be refined at any resource depot. They also deal 100% more damage! And on top of that we increased the amount of ores in asteroids by 33%. With this new system, using a specialized ship, you will make a lot more resources a lot faster by mining than with the old system.
Also don't worry: Using the galaxy map commands of the last update, you can tell your AI ships to mine ores and have them refined afterwards, so you can have your AI ships do the heavy lifting for you!

R-Mining/Salvaging Lasers

From now on, in addition to refining harvesting lasers (the ones that you know already) there will be a new kind of harvesting laser: R-mining and R-salvaging lasers, that drop ores from asteroids and scrap metal from other blocks. Old harvesting lasers will have lower efficiencies, whereas the new R-mining lasers will have extremely high efficiencies (up to 99% for mining lasers!) and double the damage of the old harvesting lasers.

The dropped resource ores and scrap metal can then be refined at a resource depot for a small fee (1% at good relations, 10% at very bad relations).

With the new transporter block and the associated transporter upgrade, fighter squadrons can also collect ores and scrap metal, so have fun building a harvester!

Music & New Icons

Per Kiilstofte and Hannes Kretzer have created new music for us which can now be heard in the game! There is new music for battle scenes and 6 new background soundtracks. In addition, we've expanded the game's sound engine to play music that matches the mood of the sector.
Since we have also been asked many times: You can look forward to Avorion's Soundtrack being available as a DLC soon.

Also: With this update we finally replace the placeholder icons with our own icons! We hope you like them as much as we do!

New Death Behaviors

Deaths in Avorion happen daily. So far, however, it was not always immediately clear why your ship got destroyed. With the new behavior we want to add more clarity. We have therefore introduced a death animation that shows what's happening to the ship for a few seconds (and gives you time to curse that darn asteroid!).
To further cushion your ship's death, you're not immediately reset to your reconstruction site, but are first placed into the drone and briefly invulnerable. Only when the drone has been destroyed and there are no more flyable ships in the sector, you will be returned to your reconstruction site.

Balancing

With this update we're changing the ship founding fee a bit. We had tested a money fee on the beta branch, but we are now discarding it with this update. Instead of just costing iron as before, the material tier increases with the number of founded ships. And of course the starting block will be from the paid material.
Since we're getting regular feedback from you that crew costs too much, we want to reduce the regular crew expenses with this update. So from now on a ship needs less mechanics and engineers and additionally we have drastically reduced the regular salary.

Other Improvements

Of course we also continue our work on other, more general improvements. So the update brings a better flight behaviour of the AI, which can now also fly through denser asteroid fields without getting stuck.
The first time you restart the game after an update, you will be informed in a window about the most important changes. Furthermore we have added new warnings, which show reasons for performance problems.

A detailed overview of all changes can be found in the patch notes:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/announcements/detail/1755745676234588952
https://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/announcements/detail/1800782304064808922
https://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/announcements/detail/1796279341331193929
https://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/announcements/detail/1772637976569115010
https://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/announcements/detail/1772637976603397571