0.278.3 - Space Cargo

Titan Heavy Industries released a semi-autonomous Cargo Container series. Your container stays attached to the ship and takes over all your processed minerals. When you are nearly full, you can release the container which will shortly power up and return to the Enceladus station on its own.

When you hire a miner wingman he will actively assist you with the dig and give you all the output he gathers on a digsite. Ships are now able to follow you through astrogation jumps, making wingmen much more useful.

Military Retrofits

Nakamura Dynamics released patch 1.06 to it’s Military-grade autopilot, unlocking the much anticipated firing solutions module. Tactical overlay now shows ranges and coverage of all compatible mining tools. Nakamura released the patch free of charge via OTA upgrade.

New Safety Protocols

Due to new safety regulations, all on-board life support systems have to be equipped with adrenal purge modules. While many pilots enjoy the benefits of on-demand stimulation there were a number of accidents related with adrenal overstimulation. Purge modules are able to clean pilots' bloodstream to immediately relieve crew from any adverse effects.

With numerous accidents reported as a result of pilots retrofitting incompatible gimbal systems with cargo containers, gimbal systems must now be mounted with a thruster safety system, limiting gimbals to safer angles while in close proximity to cargo, ships, and personnel.

To ensure safety of crew, it’s now mandatory for cargo bay monitoring software to include audible feedback when a new object enters the cargo area. Audio has to be broadcast on priority ship intercom.

Extinct Bugs

Recent patches to the universe have eliminated a number of glitches in the simulation. This time I managed to exterminate all the known bugs. If you want to have more bugfixes in future releases, someone needs to find new bugs.

List of bugs fixed and minor adjustments:

• Patched a number of memory leaks that caused the game to run slowly with time and crash when you left the title screen on for an extended period of time.
• Improved performance of background rock particles.
• When your crew goes on a leave, they will be removed from the crew immediately after you agree and will return automatically when their leave ends.
• Fixed file description and metadata of Windows executable.
• There were a number of problems with docking arms not being able to adjust to heavy ships or using too much force. They interface with your ship computer now and will release you automatically when you apply thrust or engage the autopilot, and the interface allows proper assessment of your ship mass.
• Numerous fixes to NPC AI - they won’t blow their traps now, are able to follow you more closely, are better at mining and fighting.
• Excavators and grinders are drawing power now, and using that power to be much stronger than before, being able to hold your cargo with ease.
• Improved all autopilots memory, allowing them to process not only current thruster load, but also past one. This allows much more precise maneuvering and prevents thruster flutter.
• Fixed a bug that caused parts of Enceladus station menus to be unclickable on small screens.
• The rocket equation computing the amount of propellant you need to reserve for fast burn to Enceladus had an error, showing roughly twice as much as was really needed.
• AI is now able to avoid big objects, like space habitats or phage stations.
• Sparks caused by microwave discharge are darker now and will not throw the auto-exposure of your reconnaissance drone camera off so badly.
• All mineral processing units were re-balanced. Most units will process ore faster, but also require much more energy to do so.
• Added verbose warning when you are near the rim of the rings to prevent accidental returns to Enceladus station.
• Fixed a graphical glitch of ion drives which was causing a spike of light to shine backwadrs from the plume.
• Nuggets that contain 100% of water will be processed by MPU now.
• If you sold your output to a habitat in the rings, a dive summary would still pop up upon return, prompting you to store or sell nothing.
• Fixed a race condition that caused the game to freeze for up to a couple of minutes sometimes.
• Discovered points of interests in the dive map were disappearing in some circumstances.
• Increased your chance to find and trade with space habitats.
• Fixed all head-up-displays that were displaced by a couple of pixels, causing all the data following physical objects to bit off-center.
• Point Defence will not try to mine habitats and space stations anymore. Unless hostile.
• There were a number of issues if you leveled your crew to level cap, including rare crashes, ability to repair fully repaired hardware and other weird effects.
• Adjusted all the ship physical models to not be so bouncy and absorb part of the impact energy.
• Propellant won’t leak out from cold and docked ships anymore, including your ship at Enceladus station.
• Cargo area of K37 was bit off, which caused some ore that was touching outside of the excavator being treated as captured, which disengaged autopilot tracking.
• Removed obsolete [pay xxx E$] tags that were left in some dialogue files. All choices that affect you in any way are now clearly decorated.
• Changed the way Ganymedian Anarchy views the player to make sure that they always hail you when you get near. Their defences were re-balanced to not be so accurate and deadly.
• It was possible to open two menu screens on Enceladus if you clicked fast enough.
• You could get the same conversation from the ring-racing crew if they were curious at first, but you spooked them after they talked to you.
• Hitting a habitat with a microwave now produces the correct visual effect.
• Fixed a dialogue loophole that could lock you out from all interactions with miners if you were just a little nice to them.