Alpha build 78 is live, and it brings faction contracts. It is a required update: Steam offers it by itself (exit Steam completely and start it again if it has not appeared), and older builds can no longer join.
Faction contracts
- From commander level 20, every one of the eleven factions posts three contracts a day. Open them with the new handshake button on the HUD, beside the battle reports button. Each faction has its own tab, and you can hold three contracts at a time, from any factions.
- Contracts ask for work you already do: hunting Tide patrols, destroying Tide ships, winning a battle against another commander, holding your base, mining, delivering resources, working deep-space signals, keeping a fleet at a planet, fighting an incursion flagship, or building modules. Each faction favours its own kinds of work.
- They pay standing with the faction and blueprint fragments, never coins. A contract runs until the end of the day after it was posted; claim it when it is done.
- Rivals. The factions come in five pairs: Iron Vanguard and Crimson Fleet, Solar Empire and Void Syndicate, Technocrat Union and Miner Rebellion, Celestial Order and Shadow Brokerage, Deep Space Explorers and Nomad Clans. Some contracts cost you standing with the rival and pay 50% more for it. The Freelancers have no rival.
- Five tiers of standing: Neutral, Recognised, Trusted, Honoured and Exalted, kept forever. Recognised gives you the faction's title to wear (Iron Brother, Crimson Blade, Sunsworn...), and Exalted a second one. Below zero a faction is Wary of you; far below, it turns Hostile and offers you only the work that costs its rival nothing. Your own faction starts you at Recognised.
- Field report: once a day for each faction, hand it 10 blueprint fragments for 250 standing.
- Contract Weekend: a new weekend event in which standing from every contract counts double.
- Fleet Admiral Voss introduces contracts, briefs you on each faction the first time you open its tab, marks every tier you reach, warns you when a faction turns against you and tells you when a contract is done.
This is a long road on purpose: reaching Exalted with every faction should take about a year. Honoured and Exalted will open a faction's modules and hulls to you once each faction researches and builds only its own, as we posted. Trusted's hull paint comes with hull mastery, a later update.
Also fixed
- Weekly bounty progress and medal counts made in the last half minute before a server restart were lost. They are now kept.
- A mining field's label could show through an open panel at the right of the screen.
The changelog has the whole list, and the player's guide has a new chapter on contracts, with every kind, tier and title.