A recap of the last month of updates:

VO 1.8.698/.1
- Reduced touch input latency for ship rotation on Android.
- Fixed crash on startup for non-English localizations on Android.

VO 1.8.697
- Fixed Linux video drivers failing to use X randr to detect video modes in window mode.
- Fixed issues with resetting Controls to defaults in Android not properly resetting all settings.
- Fixed issue with frozen app on Android when quitting after resuming from the background.

VO 1.8.696.1
- Fixed incorrect Play Store In-App purchase price for 3 month Lite membership.

VO 1.8.696
- Fixed issue with the screen size changing on Android TV devices.

VO 1.8.695
- Fixed issue with navmap disappearing when clicking on it and pressing Escape.
- Fixes for several crashes and other problems on Android.
- Improved error reporting for future Android crashes.

We addressed a variety of crashes and stalls on Android, and have also increased our Android system requirements for the Play Store:

Vendetta Online now requires Android 8.0 or newer, with OpenGL ES 3.1 hardware that fully supports the Android Extension Pack. The concept of the AEP goes back to 2014, and all 8.0-or-later devices should have support. This also effectively lays the groundwork for us to roll out Vulkan support universally, at some point in the future, as that has the same hardware requirements.

Existing Android installs of Vendetta Online, using older devices, should still continue to function the same they have for some time to come. At a later point in the future the game may cease to function on older devices, but for the moment we're just limiting new installations on the Play Store, to better support our upcoming goals around game-engine improvements.

VO 1.8.694 included:
- Fixed crash when giving or revoking Access Keys.
- Fixed client lua error when using the Jettison menu.

VO 1.8.693 included (last week):
- Four new custom-made missions available in various trees.
- Fixed lua error with auto-repair/reload when the interface is reloaded.
- Prototype improvements to the Mission Editor to allow new unrat-style "Persistent Event" missions to automatically spawn around the galaxy. More detail on this will appear once the system is stabilized and proven out.

VO 1.8.692.1
- Fixed lua error when turning on/off Condensed UI mode on mobile devices.

A lot of other server-side changes and fixes to the new "Persistent Event" missions have been released over the past week. For those who are members of the Vendetta Online PCC or "Player Contribution Corps", more information on the changes to the editor will become available on the Suggestions Forum in the near future.

Further releases have been deferred for the long-weekend, to preserve game stability and give people some sanity during time-off. A bunch of technical changes are intended to ship next week.

VO 1.8.692 includes:

- Seven new custom-made missions available in various trees.
- Fixed issue with keychain access info menu being too large on mobile devices.
- Fixed Lua error when ReloadInterface() is called during a pending purchase.
- Fixed issue with server-side collision detection problem causing the sector to lag.
- Removed the string.dump() Lua function from the metatable of string objects.
- Improvements to server-side prioritization and processor usage.
- Fixed issue with player-owned capships not recording damage when attacked by a strikeforce in non-running sectors.

Mainly a bugfix release, but there may be some different content updates in the near future. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Recent Server-Side Updates:
- Further improvements in game synchronization and timing stability.
- Enhanced monitoring of network related issues.

VO 1.8.691 included:
- Added options to enable Auto-Repair and Auto-Reload on docking with stations or capships, with options for only capships. The options are located in Options -> Advanced -> Interface "Auto-repair on docking" and "Auto-reload on docking". The options are disabled by default.
- Added analytics to help improve network performance and timing synchronization.
- Added other analytics to further flag help monitor data processing and throughput capacity across multiple threads.
- Adjusted how timing is processed by the phase locked loop, server-side on the sector, to improve accuracy.

VO 1.8.690 included:
- Network changes to further improve compatibility and stability for players.
- Experimental improvements to networking within the server processes.
- Game client is now more reactive to player synchronization problems.
- Additional analytics to monitor specific network synchronization issues.

A lot of recent development has been "player-invisible", so you'll have to take our word for it that it's been quite helpful to the game. We've uncovered and addressed a lot of "transient" issues that only impact certain players under certain circumstances, or combinations of conditions. These are difficult problems to solve, they require a lot of examination to figure out what is happening, and then careful algorithm design to be adaptive to changing conditions (like, say, player packet-loss or service-provider challenges).

All of this makes the game work better for everyone, and also makes server-side validation systems more accurate.

The issues we found were unexpected (less of "problems with VO" and more like "problems with modern networks"), and delayed our plans, but the game impact has definitely been worth the development effort. We expect to get back to more visible game changes after this is wrapped up.

A bug impacted some Reports from earlier in the year, up until the end of March. This led to a backlog of responses going out to players, which were then manually pushed through all at once, around early April, resulting in some player confusion.

This was a specific bug in the system, and not any kind of "human" lapse in administrative monitoring.

The bug was player-reported via the Bugs forum. After fixing the bug, further mechanisms were added to trigger internal alarms if anything like this should happen again, so we'll become aware more quickly.

VO 1.8.689 included:
- Eight new custom-made missions available in various trees.
- Adjustments to User access key history, available to Owner Key holders.
- Fixed client lua errors.
- Additional telemetry to improve player network connection quality.

VO 1.8.688 included:
- Further improvements to player network synchronization.

We've been doing a lot of really complex debugging lately, but things seem to be working pretty well, and we're likely to get back to making forward changes next week. Have a great weekend, everyone!

VO 1.8.687 includes:
- Unoccupied capship homing missile turrets now fire in a best-angle at the target if it is not in front of the turret.

The above is an improvement sourced from the Suggestions Forum. We also have some more substantial development going on in the background. Have a great weekend, everyone!

VO 1.8.686 includes:

- Additional system to further enhance game clock synchronization, specifically to benefit any player experiencing intermittent periods of high pings or packet loss.
- More anonymous analytics to measure the results of our game-timing improvements on the active player-base.

VO 1.8.685 includes:
- Three new custom-made missions available in various trees.
- Further improvements to player network synchronization, especially beneficial to people on less-than-ideal network connections.

This line of "network improvement" development might not seem that exciting, but we anticipate it should be really helpful to a lot of people over the long run, and especially make PvP run more smoothly for everyone, even for those in far-away locations.

Hopefully we'll be able to wrap up this line of development next week, and get back on board with work that may immediately relate to content drops. Have a great weekend, everyone!

VO 1.8.684 includes:
- Improvements to game network protocol to specifically improve PvP combat for players on lossy and chaotic network connections, although the changes should be helpful to all players.
- Further refined the new game-clock synchronization system added last week, based on data accumulated over the weekend, to further improve player experience on troublesome connections or devices.
- Added more anonymous analytics to help monitor game-clock synchronization challenges across all active players.

VO 1.8.683 includes:

- Two new custom-made missions, available in various trees.
- New mechanism to improve client-server clock synchronization in cases where the player has unusual latency or a device with poor clock consistency.

We're continuing to make some fundamental changes to the network protocol over the coming week, which should improve performance for players on relatively bad network connections. Stay tuned!

VO 1.8.682 includes (yesterday):
- Three new custom-made missions, available in various trees.
- Fixed issue with players showing up multiple times in the PvP menu.
- Fixed lua error with mutually-exclusive faction standing chooser if the UI was reloaded.

VO 1.8.681 included (earlier this week):
- Fixed lua error on iOS when logging in.
- Added internal analytics to detect game-time synchronization issues.

Larger gameplay changes are coming, but we're working through some significant game-engine and protocol improvements that need to be shipped first.

VO 1.8.680 includes:
- Four new custom-made missions, available in various trees.
- Capship turrets can now be added to weapon groups and fired with other weapons. The turret will not fire if it is disabled with the /disableturret command.
- Fixed issue with joystick calibration curve setting getting changed when the Calibration Settings menu is cancelled or the axis is reset on Linux.
- Fixed rare periodic sector-stability issue that recently impacted Edras G-11, and previously some other sectors.

VO 1.8.679 includes:

- Six new custom-made missions, available in various trees.
- Fixed obscure network protocol bug, occasionally impacting ship velocity jitter at very specific speeds.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

VO 1.8.678 included (last night):

- Four new custom-made missions available in various trees.
- Shared Group Radar Extender can now be used to drop up to 10 nav beacons that expire after one hour and persist between logins. The nav beacons are shared with all group members.
- Fixed an issue where forces from explosions are not always applied to other ships.

We're hopefully reaching the end of a major project soon here, with more announced around that progress in the near future.