Pilots,
Bulla Animarum opens tomorrow morning, and one of its missions cannot be completed by a single pilot.
That sentence is the release. Everything below explains it.
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Ninety seconds of it
Before you read any of this: we filmed the whole thing.
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Watch the trailer (90 sec)
Mining, cruising, landing, the auction house, and a lot of the new combat. It moves fast on purpose.
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Bulla Autumnalis — final standings
It closed this morning, after thirty days. It was the first expedition where the ore stopped coming to you: you had to fly down and land on it.
🥇 snowpepsi — 15,970
🥈 Pink Nyanko — 10,970
🥉 Garkbit — 7,469
Then TerPen at 3,095, Pixelwambo at 1,134 and Commander Shepard at 399.
Two pilots reached Autumnus, the fifteenth and final gradus. Nobody has held that rank before.
snowpepsi and Pink Nyanko finished first and second in the Cartographer's Call as well. Two expeditions, the same two names at the top, and Garkbit arriving from nowhere to take third. Congratulations to all six of you, rewards are in your gifts section.
Where Autumnalis led
Two research programmes ran through those thirty days. Both of them have now delivered. Ours produced two instrument classes that have never existed in Zero-G before. The other side produced an answer.
Vinculum Aegidis — you can give your shields to another ship
This is the first item in Zero-G that does nothing whatsoever on its own. A Vinculum Aegidis opens a channel from your ship to another pilot's ship and pushes your shield strength across it. Your shields drop. Theirs rise. Nothing else happens. What you spend is time. Each unit buys a fixed amount of channel, and the two versions differ in how much, and in how far apart you are allowed to be:- Vinculum Aegidis Minus — one unit holds the channel open for 1 second, and the two ships must stay within 5 km of each other
- Vinculum Aegidis Maius — one unit holds the channel open for 5 seconds, at up to 20 km
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Clepsidra — recovered, not manufactured
The Clepsidra is a time artifact, found in the field rather than built at a yard. Minor and Maior. They are the first objects in the game that came out of the expedition rather than out of a blueprint. Which is the point: Autumnalis was not only a race for tonnage. Something was out there. |
And the swarm improved too
Minor Stingers. Alien drones, and they do not arrive alone. If you put every cannon on one drone you will lose the fight — the rest of the swarm simply keeps working while you are busy. Use split fire. This is the first enemy in Zero-G that punishes the tactic that has always worked. The name is deliberate. A Minor Stinger implies something that is not minor. The Ghost Finder scouts and Salamander frigates you already know have been reworked alongside them, and the aliens' jumps now predict where you are going rather than where you are. Flying in a straight line stopped being a plan in 5.5.4.Two new destroyers, built for exactly this
Velite — 6 cannons, 45 rate of fire, 25 power, 6 km range. Armour 5,000. Shields 12,000. Maximum 12 g. Velite Custos — 8 cannons, 45 rate of fire, 30 power, 10 km range. Armour 6,000. Shields 15,000. Maximum 14 g. Look at those two numbers together rather than separately. A Velite carries more than twice as much shield as hull, and its guns reach six kilometres against a cutter's fifteen. It has to close, it cannot absorb much once its shields are down, and it is carrying far more shielding than one ship fighting alone can ever use. Which is to say: the Velite is not a ship that happens to work with a Vinculum. It is a ship that was designed around one. |
Read this before you take a ship into a fight
If you have not flown since the start of October, combat is not the system you left. |
- Energy weapon ranges are drastically shorter. If you open fire at the distance that worked in September, nothing happens. This is deliberate — long-range fighting returns with missiles.
- Fights last much longer. A fight that ends in four seconds cannot be played well, only won or lost.
- Stances cost something now. Manual doubles your top speed. Evasive triples it and stops your shields regenerating entirely.
- Double-click an alien and every cannon switches to it at once. Learn this first.