The update of calendar week 46 brings you the first part of the avatars; you can now choose how your citizen looks! A new PvP protection is in place while playing missions, doing side jobs or doing discreet work. The level requirement for a syndicate foundation has been reduced down to level 14. The narrative team was also busy, and present another 2 new missions in the Barnard’s Star system. On top of that, there are several UI improvements, textual corrections as usual, and please have a look at the list of supported browsers.

2 New Missions in Barnard’s Star system

‘Send in the Clones’ (level 13) on Caen Stronghold; no further preconditions.

‘Stormbringer’ (level 13) on Estación de Amazon, requires ‘Education’ mission.

Avatars!

The first part of the avatar feature made it into the game! All citizens can now select how they want to look; just open your preferences page. As announced in a recent blog post, there will be several iterations to fully implement the feature to the game. Later on, your picture will be shown on many interfaces, such as improved profile pages and syndicate member list.

The upper left now shows an avatar.

Select how you want to look on the preferences page.

Please note: there is no confirmation at the moment, “select” locks in your chosen picture. It will be part of next week’s version.

Premium versions remain; if you switch to another picture, you can go back to a formerly purchased premium avatar for free again.

Important game play changes

Temporary PvP protection – While playing a mission, doing a side-job or some discreet work, other citizens won’t be able to attack you for a certain amount of time. This shall help you to enjoy these activities more, but be aware the protection is time limited, the duration depends on the type of mission.

Syndicate (Foundation) – The minimum level required to start a syndicate has been reduced from level 16 to level 14.

Further UI Improvements

Besides the new avatars, several additional UI changes have been applied:

Icons: The icon bar for mails, events, etc. moved right next to your new avatar.

Credits: Both balances of wallet and bank are now displayed in one row.

Credits: Big numbers > 999.99 are now abbreviated; e.g. 181,231.17 turns into 181.2K, and the precise amount is displayed via hover info in the desktop version. In addition, a short credit log will list the recent credit changes in detail later.

Preferences: Updated layout that now shows your avatar and the option to select another one.

Supported Browsers

Supporting various web browsers is connected to high efforts; time which not invested into new features. We checked the distribution of browsers used and decided to stop supporting the Internet Explorer 11, because we spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to fix CSS and JS bugs for it. For all of you, using IE11, here’s a list of up-to-date browsers, supported by Tau Station. Please keep your browser updated, because we always focus on developing for the most recent versions:

Google Chrome (desktop & mobile)

Apple Safari (desktop & mobile)

Mozilla Firefox (desktop)

Microsoft Edge (desktop)

Text Changes