Alpha build 79 is live, and it brings alliance operations. 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.
Alliance operations
- Every week your alliance gets an operation: one big goal the whole alliance fills together, with a second goal beside it. Open it on the new OPERATIONS tab of the Alliance screen.
- Five operations, in turn, the same for every alliance: Iron Harvest (mine minerals), Tidebreaker (win battles against Tide fleets), Deep Draw (mine helium-3 and antimatter), Far Signal (work deep-space signals to the end) and Supply Convoy (hand over minerals from your stores).
- The goals are sized by your members when the week begins, so a small alliance has as fair a chance as a big one. Everything counts wherever it happens: mining, battles won against Tide fleets, signals worked, modules built, even work that finishes after you signed off.
- Three steps pay everyone who took part, the moment they are reached: 50% pays 10 blueprint fragments, 75% pays 25 fragments and 3 Tide cores, 100% pays 5 Tide cores. The secondary goal pays 25 fragments when it is full. A member who is away is paid at their next sign-in. Operations never pay coins.
- Taking part means adding a quarter of one member's share to either goal; the page tells you how much that is each week. Everyone who took part is paid the same, and one operation pays you a week.
- Banners. Every week your alliance finishes an operation at 100% adds a mark to that operation's banner, and the banner turns bronze at 1, silver at 4 and gold at 8. Banners belong to the alliance: they hang on its OPERATIONS page and its OVERVIEW, and show when it is picked in FIND ALLIANCE.
- Supply Convoy weeks have a HAND OVER button: each press gives 50,000 minerals from your stores to the convoy.
- Fleet Admiral Voss introduces operations, announces each week's operation, and marks every step and every banner that turns silver or gold.
The first operation, Iron Harvest, begins on Monday 26 October at 00:00 UTC. Get your fleets to the asteroid fields.
Also new
- The ship bay holds more ships at every shipyard level: 5, 10, 18, 30, 48 and 70 ships for shipyard levels 0 to 5 (it was 5, 8, 12, 18, 25 and 35).
Fixed
- A Deliver contract's bar, the amount your stores hold and its CLAIM button did not follow your stores as resources came in until you signed in again. They do now, and a Deliver contract never asks for more than your stores can hold. Thanks to the tester who reported it.
- After a reconnect, the alliance badge could be missing from your commander card, and the Alliance screen did not open.
- Progress on the weekly alliance orders made in the last half minute before a server restart was lost. It is now kept.
The numbers of alliance operations are starting values and may change after the first weeks. The changelog has the whole list, and the player's guide has a new chapter on operations, with every goal, step and banner.