Engine migration begins: Rust + SDL3: The engine now uses SDL3 and the port to the Rust programming language has started, improving stability and paving the way for major future upgrades.

Integrated Plugin Manager: Naev now includes a native plugin browser, installer, and updater, all with access to the online plugin repository built right in.

Major content additions:

• 28 new missions and events

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• New intertwined Imperial minor houses

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• New systems, anomalies, portraits, objects, and more

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• 20+ new songs

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• New and reworked outfits

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• 11 new ship variants

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Significant gameplay tweaks: Heat mechanism removed, pirates are less dangerous to new players, camera is truly isometric, improved forward weapon aiming for the player, and core outfits have been reworked to use a 1 or 2-slot system.

Lots of fixes, balance work, and internal cleanup: From physics touch-ups to mission fixes, weapon tweaks, save robustness, and API consistency, a lot has been improved in this release.

As usual, the beta may contain bugs, weirdness, or things that go pop in the darkness of space. Please try it out, break things, and tell us what happened so we can fix it before the 0.13.0 final release.\n

Full Changelog

Gameplay

• Removed heat mechanic (to be readded as a new mechanic in the future)

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• Made pirates less dangerous to new players

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• Marauders are now intrinsically weaker than other pirates, especially with low pirate presence

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• Made pirates less aggressive

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• Change pirate spawning to be mainly marauders in low presence areas

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Fuel from outfits has been tweaked a bit

NPCs now have skill levels that can affect their targeting and fighting ability

Bioships have had their skills and modifiers slightly reworked to be better balanced

Light, medium-heavy and ultraheavy ship now have two core hull/systems/engine slots, one main and one secondary

• Effects of heavier cores can be obtained by stacking smaller ones

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Engines have been reworked to be more coherent and consistent

• Tricon engines have much higher acceleration to max speed ratio

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• Melendez engines have higher speed, but low acceleration and turn

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• More consistency across lines

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Gauntlet intrinsics are stronger and now mutually exclusive

Intrinsics from a certain trader are now stronger

Ships now disabled below a certain armour threshold regardless of stress

AI is less susceptible to stealth bomber cheese

Point defence now shoots at all ships prioritizing smaller ones after missiles

Cargo delivery missions have increased cargo amounts

Minimum stealth range also affects detection and signature

Ships can have a minimum cargo-less mass of 50% of the ship base mass

Damage over time effects now can cause faction loss and other effects

New harder difficulty

Gauntlet negative bonuses are now multiplicative

Stealthing will temporarily jam locked on munitions

Changed forward weapon aiming algorithm for the player so it is easier to shoot small ships with skill

Reflective shell now shoots thorns

Autonav improvements

• Can automatically land when following a ship

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• Improved autonav behaviour when losing a followed ship

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• Disables afterburner when getting ready to land or jump

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• Shooting non-point defence weapons resets autonav speed up

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Combat and ambient music tries to play from where it was last stopped when applicable

Gave small untargetable time to player when using hypergates and wormholes

Ships that are scanning you use a different colour hilight

Landable but uninhabited space objects use a different icon

Deployed fighter equipment is no longer random

Added support for multiple automatic backups with 5 by default

Game will prompt if exiting the game when save data loss can occur

Escort mission revamp

• Escorts now follow the player

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• Autonav will warn the player if jumping or landing will fail the mission

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• Autonav will wait for escorts when landing or taking off

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Radar now has a linear area and a logarithmic area (outside the circle) to show more regional information

Support for automatically restarting Naev when changing options that require it

27 new outfits and reworked cores

• Outfit sets that gain bonuses as more elements of the set are equipped

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11 new ship variants

New sensor anomalies

Two new intertwined minor houses of the Empire with new systems and lore

More space objects with new things to explore

New portraits

Over 20 new songs

• More variation in landing and situational music

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Significant changes in jumps (hidden and otherwise)

Reworked the visuals for some weapons using shaders

Start to more strictly enforce Oxford spelling

Racing reward system reworked

Reworked escort missions so that escorts follow the player and improved how it interacts with autonav

Intro text is no longer hardcoded and is handled via Lua

SVG image support

WGSL shader support

trigger library to handle commonly mission code

Game will automatically try to detect extensions for image files