Release Notes - Atlas

[molp]

Release: Atlas

Release date

The APEX update will be released on Thursday February 10th

General Notes

If your APEX console is stuck in a loading state after the update, please make sure to refresh it once after the update to ensure you got the latest version.

New features

New maps

The improved maps offer a new filter mechanism that allows filtering for resource deposits and populations.
The highlight section in the settings allows to select from a range of items (like fleet, bases, but also public infrastructure) that are then being displayed as icons on the map.
The maps have been integrated into the mobile UI.

Local Market Blocklist

You can now block specific players (via their USR command) from accepting your Local Market ads. If you want to unblock them again, you can do so via the new LMBL command.

Taxation changes

Instead of having a single production tax rate for each expertise category (such as agriculture, resource extraction, …) it is now possible to define the tax rate for expertise category and workforce!
This change will allow the governors to fine tune the tax rates for various situations. Higher workforce tiers also have higher maximum fees now.

Government programs

A governor will be able to select programs, which run for a week, from four categories. Immigration programs attract a certain workforce. Family support programs increase the growth of pioneer, settler and technician workforces. Education programs increase the level-up rate of all workforces and therefore, their chance to move to the next higher workforce level. Finally, festivity programs increase the happiness of all workforce tiers across the board.

All programs, except the immigration ones, will have three different versions with increasingly strong effects. Programs do not require any materials, only cash. The costs depend on a basis factor and population factor that scales linearly.

Changes

• Implemented a new color scheme for material categories
• Inventories can now be sorted by material category (CAT)
• Added the ability to copy screens in the screen drop-down
• The orchard (ORC) now benefits from the soil fertility
• Re-positioned the buttons to move orders in the production queue to the left of the list, so that they’re not as close to the cancel button
• Your balance in your faction’s currency will now be shown in the header of the mobile version
• The “post ad” button now show you the type of the ad to reduce the risk of accidentally posting the wrong kind of ad
• Increased need fulfillment values of high-tier and hybrid population infrastructure
• Increased level-up rates and level-up bonus provided by educational population infrastructure
• Reduced stop-gap factor in the decline of workforces due to unhappiness (now up to 40% decline if happiness is 0%)
• Reduced N market maker from 49 to 33 (it was too high with gas giant N output)
• Added alternative recipes for EXO & PT in BMP / GL & RG in GF / PIB, HOP, GRA in ORC that use higher-tier materials as input for more efficiency (shoutout to @Ficks_Dinkum for the suggestions)
• Reworked HQ upgrade costs to include a wider variety of materials (besides prefabs), such as OFF, SUN, MFK, UTS, POW, SOL, SP, AAR, BWS, BMF, LOG, COM, and ADS. (Note: The costs won’t change for the current level. You’ll get the new costs starting with the next level.)

Fixes

• We fixed a multitude of smaller UI and UX issues in the mobile version. Here are some examples:
  • The inventory transfer screen has been improved and shows the respective material amounts in the source and target inventory.
  • It is now possible to transfer shipments
  • The slider to select the amount of materials to be transferred now works better if space in the target inventory is limited
• We fixed the bug that prevented inventories, especially the fuel tanks, to be filled to the maximum in some cases.
• We fixed an issue with the URL in the desktop version that would accumulate %2F characters. Visiting https://apex.prosperousuniverse.com/ (without any URL parameters) once should fix it.
• Fixed a bug that prevents to run for governor when the election phase of a previous, failed attempt somewhere else overlaps with the current run.

[parafort]

Are there any more details on the newly added recipes?

[Counterpoint]

Yes!

[Aufricer]

Did you also made it possible to lower warehouse fees on non faction planets to 0 ?
→ you said minor chsnges
And to change the currency of taxation (on non faction planets).
→ maybe political update (is it this one)

[molp]

@Aufricer

Did you also made it possible to lower warehouse fees on non faction planets to 0 ?

Yes, governors can reduce the fees to zero on non-faction planets from now on.

@Aufricer

is it this one

No, this is not the Politics update.

[Fuyutsuki]

I don’t see that Tungsten recipe getting much use. The AML cost of producing W is so very steep. With the current break-even of W in Moria (at 100% efficiency mind you) is 4.64k per unit. If you value the AML profit (as you should), a more conservative price for W would be between 8 and 9.2k. PT being ~ 325 means that the BMP recipe to produce PT is inherently a huge loss.

Suggestion: make the STL + W recipe produce 25 pt at 16.8 hours base time.

[lowstrife]

This is a lot more than I expected a while ago - happy to see a lot of things got included as part of this update. Progress!

SUPER happy about being able to sort inventories by CAT.

Would love to see the ability for CX order sorting.

[Tyo]

The new color scheme looks fancy but I have a slight color deficiency and the previous scheme was more recognizable.

[lowstrife]

Some thoughts on the new map & features.

1. It can be difficult to read the filters menu if there is stuff behind it.

Proposal: decrease the transparency of the element

2a) Toggling of Fleet does not remove my ships from the map

2b) These ship icons override the population graph if you have a ship in that system. My ship is in the Moria system, which should have an enormous graph. It’s hidden. This applies to all filters you can apply (resources, population, etc).

2c) These ship icons also disable the “hover to quick view” functionality of viewing a system.

2d) You can no longer remove other people’s ships (system traffic) from the local system map. I love the new aesthetic of the local map though. It looks great!

3. The circles that denote a star system are a bit too big. It makes the map cluttered and difficult to discern information from it.

Proposal: Make the icons smaller, disable scaling with star size.

4. The icons for CX and LM are too similar. Impossible to discern without enabling\disabling the filters which is which.

5. Category sorting is awesome - will be using this all the time. But it still defaults to the default ABC sorting every time. Would be nice if I could set a default across all my inventories. Either a setting toggle globally, or once you switch an inventory to a certain sorting, it “remembers”.

6. The color scheme of the new items. Apart from the color blindness\sensitivity the gentleman above also mentioned - it’s a little heavy on the reds for the commonly used items. 60% of my items are some shade of red.

[OddPotato]

Adding to the above issues,

VH-331 (Hortus) system doesn’t have population bar (the semi circle) when pop indicators are selected

[aceBaron]

LOVE the new color scheme! I was getting ready to complain about the ‘too many shades of grey’ which almost seemed unfinished.

Thank you!

[Talmar]

" * The slider to select the amount of materials to be transferred now works better if space in the target inventory is limited"

Why is it that us PC guys and gals don’t get this slider option? Moving mats in this game is a REAL pain in the butt. A slider feature would make this a whole lot easier. But for some reason you think that the phone version needs it, but not the PC version?

[Talmar]

oh, can we get a Move All button? If I have 20 different things on my ship, I need to move each one individually, when I should just have an “Unload All” button. Ease of life options are a real thing

[molp]

Thank you all for your bug reports, feedback and suggestions.

We are currently looking into these issues!

We have been able to fix a few things already:

• Ships on the system and universe maps are now hidden if the corresponding setting is disabled
• We decreased the transparency for the maps’ settings, so it is easier to read the settings
• We fixed the issue that made it impossible to open shipping ads on station LMs

[Tungsten]

+1 on the color issues. I am only mildly red/green color blind and I can barely tell the difference between a lot of these. Anyone with a more severe case is likely struggling

[Corlis]

Fully agreed, Same color deficiancy here

[robotmasterpig]

No idea if this has been mentioned in a previous patch or somewhere else, but has there been thought to making electrolysis a thing? Oxygen and hydrogen both have a lot of uses so if there was a way to harvest them from water that cool be interesting. I don’t know if that messes with balance but I am curious if it is being considered.

[Calibrate]

I love the aesthetics of the new system map, but when my mouse hovers over an icon, or the name of a planet on the system map, scrolling up or down on my trackpad doesn’t change the zoom level. This can make it a little bit hard to zoom in and out at times. Could this be fixed?

[lowstrife]

In the current game state it’s unlikely. And yes it’s been mentioned

It’s probably best implemented if an electricity mechanic were introduced into the game. The idea of which has been toyed with, but as of now it’s in the “conceptual” phase far down the road AFAIK.

[Calibrate]

Sorry for posting again, but I also noticed that on system maps, local market icons show up on uninhabited planets in systems that have at least one local market. Clicking on the icon shows a buffer that states, “This planet has no local market.” Could this be fixed by not showing local market icons for planets without them?