1.62.6 - Ring Commander

Corruption Allegations Shake the Mining Guild

Allegations of corruption within the Mining Guild have sparked outrage among independent miners, leading to the formation of ad-hoc unions while operating within the Rings. Leaked reports suggest Guild officials have engaged in bribery and favoritism, granting lucrative asteroid claims to miners backed by major corporations while sidelining smaller operators. In response, independent miners are looking into forming a meta-union combining excavation agreements made on premise, which would grant them similar leverages to those offered by the Guild, but with distributed leadership.

Processor Fine-Tuning Access Mandated for Shops

New emission regulations from the Interplanetary Trade Commission now require all Mineral Processing Unit manufacturers to provide access to fine-tuning controls for third-party repair shops. While this regulation is welcomed by independent operators, a consortium of processor manufacturers issued a joint statement urging consumers not to deviate from stock processing settings, citing potential environmental impacts as well as possible damage not covered by warranty.

Unexpected MLF Protocol Update

Recent protocol changes introduced by Minding LF in their nanodrone systems have once again pushed the limits of system performance but sparked a harsh response from peers. While the rapid prototyping approach taken by MLF secured their dominant position in the semi-autonomous mining market, frequent changes require manufacturers of supporting equipment to adapt at a similar pace or face imminent incompatibilities. Obonto Microengineering, the manufacturer of industry-leading interface hardware, issued an over-the-void update to their USV-GOT unmanned survey vehicle series to accommodate protocol changes. However, they also amended their terms of service to reflect that they take no responsibility for changes made by third parties and will not be liable for any damage caused by subsequent updates, effectively shifting the responsibility for selecting compatible software to end-users.

Maintenance Logs

• You can now tune the processing speed of your Mineral Processing Unit. This affects not only the processing speed itself, but also mineral and remass processing efficiencies, as well as power draw.
• When tuning your ship, the simulation window will now display secondary parameters affected by the tuning option you are changing. This applies for parameters that have difficult to predict consequences.
• Additional dialogues you can have with fellow miners.
• Additional options to hire wingmen.
• You can now give commands to wingmen you hire. They might even listen to you.
• Ganymedean establishment will now serve refreshments at the same conditions as other Space Bars.
• Adjusted some dialogue to make clear when your crew manages to escape from a damaged derelict during a failed recovery attempt.
• Files clean-up: then you had the OST DLC purchased, game used to download some of the mp3 tracks twice. It will now only download them once.
• Your crew is now much less likely to be distracted by the environment when you approach a derelict ship. Previously, they could not notice it if there were exciting things happening around them.
• Fixed number formatting functions. In some circumstances, some fractional numbers were rounded wrong and produced off-by-one errors, for example 3.97 would be rounded to 3.0 instead of 4.0.
• Dynamic backgrounds on the title screen, credits screen, and the screensaver mode now have more asteroids.
• Improved compatibility of USV-GOT reconnaissance craft with both MLF Haul Drone and MPI Tug Drone systems. The commands imposed from the craft will now interface properly with the ship-area-network bus, allowing the systems to coordinate efforts when directed manually and preventing two opposite systems from fighting over the same ore chunk.
• When fixing weapon or thruster misalignment with OMS drones, your mechanic will not have to adjust the jury-rigging options in order for repair to take effect.
• Grinders of mining companions attached to AT-K225 are now detached from your main excavator. The placement of the docking bays made that feature useless, and they tended to damage your ship if you tried to open them up.
• AI now understands that when you are astrogating away you will end up far away, and that if they want to stay close to you they should follow. This fixes a problem with wingmen who would sometimes stay behind if they were at a comfortable distance from you when you performed a jump and were distracted with something else.
• Fixed THI Cargo Containers not unloading completely when asked to unload on ships with big processed cargo capacity.
• The IFF display only updates when visible now, improving performance slightly.
• When you hire a wingman, your IFF display will now update immediately.
• Hiring civilian wingmen and paying them well now nets you a good reputation amongst miners.
• Fixed part of the simulation chart label which was visible at the edge of the screen when the simulation initialized.
• Unified spelling and fixed typos.
• Obonto Microengineering unified its branding.
• Updated translations.