0.594.2 - Secret Services

New regulations for Salvage Manipulators

After a tragic accident in the Docking Ring earlier this week, Enceladus Corp issued an updated policy governing independent salvage equipment. Starting today, all ship-mounted articulated manipulators not under the direct supervision of qualified personnel must stay powered down, folded and secured on the ship’s hull.

Elon Interstellar enables new autonomy features

Following surprising Twatter poll results, the CEO of Elon Interstellar announced that he would be adhering to the ages-long tradition of his company and issued an immediate free over-the-air upgrade of all the EIAA-1337 autopilots. Changes include the implementation of often requested SanBUS protocol, introducing a compatibility between the Obonto US-GOT reconnaissance craft’s queue and the autopilot’s flight control.

New services available on Enceladus

Recent expansion of the commercial area of the Industrial Ring has caused a drop in average rent prices. Several companies have used this opportunity to establish permanent offices on the station. Residents of the station can now use the services provided by Obonto Habitats, Jameson’s Insurance Company, and the independently operated Miner’s Guild.

Maintenance logs

• Separate Fleet menu on Enceladus Prime, which displays all your owned ships, with the ability to view data on any of them
  
• New Services available on Enceladus Prime: The Miners Guild, Obonto Habitats office and Jameson’s Insurance.
  
• Autonomous autopilots will now communicate with other equipment on your ship through the ship area network bus. This allows them to coordinate with salvage manipulators and nanodrone systems.
  
• Your AR1500 Salvage Manipulator will now fold when powered down.
  
• All AI, including NPC ships, autonomous autopilots and mining companions, is now aware that turning or changing velocity is probably not the best idea if your excavator is open.
  
• EIAA-1337 autopilot can now interface with Obonto USV-GOT reconnaissance craft. If you set up an excavator order and point your autopilot to the first ore chunk, it will automatically follow the excavation queue.
  
• Reconnaissance drones category got renamed to reconnaissance craft to avoid confusion when discussing specific hardware.
  
• Renamed all the reconnaissance systems to use manufacturer models and designations instead of descriptions.
  
• Strafe controls for your autopilot can be assigned in the Settings menu.
  
• New warning siren for Antonoff-Titan AT-K225.
  
• Improved performance of the exhaust gas simulation.
  
• Improved performance of the racing autopilot path prediction overlay.
  
• Improved performance of the LIDAR systems.
  
• Improved performance of the Dealer.
  
• If you fail to recover a derelict ship and have to leave it in the rings, but it did get ore inside its cargo hold, you will not get that cargo when you return to the Enceladus Prime station.
  
• The scrolling speed of OMS windows was affected by the slowed-down time when you have your OMS open, making window movement sluggish. It was especially apparent when you used a gamepad to scroll the window.
  
• Notification animation popups were affected by the slowed-down time of an Adrenaline Surge and OMS window.
  
• Adjusted performance options for the renderer.
  
• New, more accurate normal maps and lighting setups for all the character faces.
  

Included patches

• When acquiring job locations from the pirates, new locations will not override previous ones you did not visit yet.
  
• Improved performance of exhaust plume rendering.
  
• Improved physics performance of pulsed thrust reaction control systems and torches.
  
• Limiting details of the plume simulation now correctly limits the details for pulse rockets, both the rendering and physics simulation. Turning the details down to zero will now disable the plumes completely.
  
• Fixed some character names that contained space at the end, which introduced strange formatting issues
  
• Ore exploitation is now persistent between the dives and stored in your save. If you keep strip-mining the same area, you will find it eventually barren. The random fluctuation and collisions will eventually replenish any such location, but it takes a significant amount of in-game time.
  
• Vilcy now have a local branch accessible from the Services menu, where you can pay up your bounties at a discount before being approached by patrols in the rings.
  
• Reworked the crew bio card. Crew skills are now visible for your hired crew, and there is a new icon for “this skill level is roughly the same as your current crew has”.
  
• Wingmen are now much better at keeping formation, getting out of your ship’s way and avoiding large asteroids.
  
• Re-balanced services. Certain services now have a cooldown, so going into an all-you-can-eat buffet for three days straight is no longer the optimal way to improve your crew morale.
  
• Billboards on the Enceladus station now use mipmaps, making the edges of texts and graphics displayed less jagged.
  
• Changes the locations of docking ports on a particular asteroid-based space station to accommodate bigger and heavier ships docking.
  
• Your crew could get confused on a failed EVA salvage mission if another ship approached, making them return to the wrong ship.
  
• When hiring a Vilcy member as a bodyguard, he won’t promise to share a portion of gathered ore with you, as they are not interested in mining.
  
• All Heads-Up Displays operate now in OLED-display-friendly mode, slightly switching the location of fixed elements over time to prevent burn-in damage in prolonged dives.
  
• Updated game credits.
  
• Updated translations.