0.349.25 - Manned Lithobraking

SAN-BUS patent expired

The Ship Area Network patent expired this week, exposing the bus protocol details to the general public, followed by torrent of firmware updates for popular hardware. Experts claim that the opening of the protocol will enable autonomous and semi-autonomous systems to coordinate efforts without human intervention.

AR1500 features unlocked

Soft-locked features in the AR1500 Salvage Manipulator were exposed by the exposure of the SAN-BUS protocols. The leaked command codes enable all existing manipulators to interface with ship sensors and function as ore and asteroid retrieval units in addition to their normal function. Triskelion-Armstrong claims that the ore retrieval function is not covered by the limited warranty of the product.

New mooring regulations

Following recent drone-related accidents, all ships mooring in the docking ring of Enceladus are now required to completely power down all on-board systems. In response to the new regulations Enceladus Corp provides shore power to all interested parties at a reduced rate.

Maintenance Records

• Fixed a bug that caused the initial position of the resupply sliders to be inaccurate in some cases.
• Adjusted crew dialogues so they are less likely to ask for a raise twice in a row.
• Enabled AR1500 Manipulator to grab ice, grab ore and load up your ship when you open your excavator.
• Fixed a number of glitches related with AR1500, such as reaching out for targets even if powered off, trying to catch moonlets and grabbing things from your own cargo hold, and arm physics applying force in the centre of mass of your ship instead of it’s mounting point, ARM acting upon targets that it didn’t firmly grab and arm moving much faster than it should be possible.
• AR1500 will now slow rotation and align small objects, making it easier to capture lifepods and similarly shaped items.
• Changed AR1500 Manipulator upgrade simulation to show what it is doing.
• Ships you salvage will not explode during non-interactive cutscenes even if critically damaged.
• Fixed a bug that caused moonlets and habitats to repopulate in some cases.
• Habitats will now hail you even if they are not curious about you.
• Fixed a bug that prevented you from launching from Enceladus when you were in debt. You can always launch to the edge of the ring.
• Added a system that allows your upgrades to communicate and exchange targets. This allows drone systems to coordinate efforts even when their target ranges intersect.
• Drone system was scanning for targets even when it was powered off.
• Fixed a glitch on Eagle Prospector HUD that caused doppler lidar to display mostly white dots when bloom setting was disabled.
• Enceladus docking arm will now actively assist undocking of heavy ships.
• Shortcuts that disable weapons won’t disable the same weapons on enemy ships anymore.
• Time rate changes are now continuous to prevent physics errors on abrupt time changes.
• Stability improvements.