0.175.3 - Xenon Burn

This is an enhancement release, expanding game mechanics, ships and story interactions. We had a community vote over our discord.gg/dv where we asked you about the direction of development - and you decided I should split my time equally between adding game elements and expanding the story. This is the first release that does so.

By popular demand, we took a close look at pirates and added ways you can interact with them peacefully. There are now options for intimidation and bribery.

We fine-tuned some core game mechanics:

• Processed cargo storage is no longer a part of the mineral processing unit, but depends on the ship hull you are using.
• Ships have now new interplanetary Xenon drives that they use for transit to and from the rings with minimal propellant usage. You can choose to use your main nuclear drive for the job, cutting the travel time significantly but arriving with less propellant. Ships will now track how much reactive mass is required for a quick return burn and how long will it take to reach Enceladus if you depart now. The interlunar travel times - between Enceladus Prime and the Rings - were revised with new engines available. A quick burn with a nuclear rocket will take roughly 12 hours, while a xenon drive will need up to 4 days for the same travel. You can opt into faster travel times using your tuning menu back on Enceladus. This rebalances crew employment costs, as with fewer dives per month they are no longer negligible.

We got additional ship upgrades:

• Eagle Prospector got an overhaul. There are two additional drone-only slots you can use, the grinder was tuned to better process ice and HUD was expanded with some additional information.
• Geologists now will use your microseismic recon drone, if installed. Targetting or hovering over an ore chunk will focus your crew’s attention on a specific nugget. Analysis data is now displayed progressively, as geologist first estimates ringroids composition and price.

As with every release, this patch also comes with performance and stability improvements and various minor bugfixes. Full list of minor changes:

• Improved AI performance.
• Improved particle effect performance, especially laser ablation debris.
• Fixed mass/weight unit conversions for Eagle Prospector HUD.
• AI now better aware of thruster range and its danger to nearby ships.
• Fixed a bug that caused crashes if you attempted to disable a system that was not installed.
• Tutorial was reworded to make it clearer in autopilot match velocity sections.