Pilots!

Today's entry begins with the information about a new system called "Fleet strength". Now, every ship at its maximum development level adds one point to "Fleet strength". The total strength increases synergy gain for the all the pilot's ships, so the more elite ships you have in your fleet - the faster your development goes!

So, what are you getting if you decide to increase your fleet strength? It's simple: each point of fleet strength increases all synergy gains by 1 %. All fleet strength points stack so the pilots with a lot of elite ships should notice their synergy gains rising!

In addition, to make it easier for to the pilots to increase their "Fleet strength", we have lowered the amount of synergy required to reach the maximum ship level by 50%. It is possible that after the update, many pilots who already have the required amount of synergy will be able to improve upgrade their ships to elite status and increase their fleet strength!

The next innovation is the long-awaited opportunity to... sell ships! You can finally sell your ships for 25% of the purchase price. This feature should also help the pilots accelerate their development. When you reach the level of synergy giving access to a new ship, you can always sell the old one and use what's left from the sale to buy a new vessel!

With the introduction of this option, we would like to inform our pilots of a few important points:

• Selling an elite ship that provides the "Fleet strength" bonus removes this bonus;
• All modules installed on your ship will be removed and placed into storage;
• If you sell a ship that unlocks access to the purchase of the next one (required level of synergy), you will retain the ability to purchase it;
• If you need to re-purchase a sold ship, you will keep all the accumulated synergy levels;
• You can re-purchase a previously sold ship by paying only 80 % of its original value, as the ship is bought without the modules that are installed on your first purchase.

Thus, all of our players will have more opportunities to choose their preferred path of development: those who are interested in rapid advancement to the highest tech levels will be able to recover some of the money spent on new ships. At the same time, those players who are interested in development in all directions will also receive an additional bonus for each of their elite ships.

In addition to these features, we have carried out work on balancing the two frigate roles. The"Guard frigate " role is currently slightly unbalanced and in order to resolve the situation, we have introduced a number of changes: shield resistances to all types of damage will be reduced by 30 pts., but to compensate for this and introduce a greater element of "skill" in piloting the ships of this role, we have increased the special "Phase shield" module's effectiveness by 50 pts. In addition, the "Mass Propulsion Inhibitor" module has also been tweaked - it now works for certain amount of time after activation (12 seconds active time, 30 seconds cooldown), not indefinitely as it used to - this change should have a positive impact on the general the balance.

We have also improved the mechanics of "Attack Drones" - missile equipment for "Engineering" frigates. Now this drone will be much more interesting to use with its improved behaviour and movement physics. In addition, its model is also slightly changed, now it looks like this:

Along with the work on game balance, we have added new colors for the main sights and lead markers:

• purple
• blue
• yellow
• green

Beacon display on the map has also been improved.

And in conclusion we would like to tell you about the changes in the game's tutorial: the final part of the tutorial now asks you to destroy guard drones and capture a beacon instead of destroying enemy ships - it helps newcomers understand combat objectives more clearly.

Sincerely,
Star Conflict team