0.306.1 - Artificial Company

Mining Companions

Investigation into recently released “new” Nakamura-Titan Mining Companions revealed that the Companions are in fact refurbished autonomous mining drones from a failed early 23th century Autonomous Ring Excavation project. While no record of undesired companion behaviour exists at this time, captains that choose to purchase these devices should remember that the ARE project was cancelled due to emergent social behaviour of the drones involved.

The Hunt Is On

In response to accusations of misconduct, a spokesman of the Vilcy independent bounty-hunter organisation released a statement today claiming that it will now be mandatory for all members to log all communications, with the records available to independent investigators.

Counseling for Habitat Operators

Obonto Habitats are making counseling free of charge for all the employees of their habitats. While there is no official statement from the company, our reporter reached following recording, allegedly from SRA-01 station:

“Governor? I'm concerned about O'Reilly. Don't you think he needs some time off?"
"How much time off does a guy need? I gave him last Sunday. What's so hard about answering the phone?"
"Well, he's all alone up there, sir. All the time."
"And?"
"I found this transcript..."

Comm operator TK421:It's okay. My sister was the quiet type, too.
Unidentified contact: (Silent 24 seconds.)
Comm operator TK421: Look, we all have things, people in our lives that are hard to deal with. But you can't give up on them.
Unidentified contact: (Silent 12 seconds)
Comm operator TK421: It'll be okay. Why don't you tell me why . . . uh, hold there for a moment, Dorothy, might want to correct your vector, you're close to our microwave defense range. Wouldn't want anything to happen.
Unidentified contact: (Silent 13 seconds)
Comm operator TK421: Dorothy, you really might want to back up a little . . . please, Dorothy, it isn't sa--NOOOOOOOOO!
Unidentified contact: Lost contact at 12.28.12:35.0477

"...and?"
"Sir, visual logs indicating that he was talking to six metric tons of ice."
"..."
"SIR."
"Fine. Fine, weekends, whatever. You deal with finding the shift to replace his weekends."

Maintenance Records

• Added more replies to Vilcy dialogue trees.
• NPC ships will now estimate their combat capability better
• New Mining Companion equipment available
• Removed faces from comms of artificial intelligences.
• NPC ships that have no offensive capability will now dig using their excavators and grinders alone.
• Improved visuals of the microwave beam which looked strange when the beam hit something closeby.
• Autonomous drones that you lease on Enceladus will now have consistent names.
• Memory management and performance improvements, especially if multiple NPC ships are around and when mining extensively.
• Initial dive fuel costs were computed incorrectly if you tuned your Xenon drive usage.
• Adjusted display of Dealer screen to work better in lower resolutions. This fixes a bug that caused the dealer interface to stretch beyond screen size.
• Salvage Manipulator was visible through clouds of ringdust and explosions.
• NPC ships can now be aware of multiple pending collisions simultaneously, which will prevent them from crashing into one object when avoiding another one.
• Increased search-and-rescue ship side thrust to be more useful when maneuvering.
• Habitats will now prompt you again if you don’t respond for a while.
• Fixed a bug in the conversation system that caused entities, especially habitats, to attempt to start conversation with floating rocks. It caused worse performance and some of the conversations being cut short.
• Ship Dealer will now show which systems are damaged on ships you browse.
• Onboard Maintenance System and in-flight equipment lists will now show correct activation keys for unusual systems, like nanodrones and mining companions.
• You can now command some of the NPC ships via dialogue options.
• When you bring a pirate lifepod from the rings, you will get a bounty paid for him.