The unstable 0.9.5 release is now available for anyone who has opted in to the "beta" branch. This release adds a lot of new content and features, and may contain bugs. Major changes include:

• Ship and outfit values now depreciate over time, which makes it harder to become absurdly wealthy.
• The main view's zoom can now be adjusted between 25% and 200%, independent of the UI zoom.
• Commands can now be given to groups of escorts instead of to your whole fleet.
• New Wanderer missions, doubling the length of their story line and introducing a new ship.
• New alien faction, the Coalition, with 16 new ships and about 70 systems and planets.
• Scanning now takes time, to make dodging scans more interesting and less impossible.
• Systems and planets can now specify MP3s to play as music or ambient audio.

The goal of depreciation is to lengthen the mid-game: the period of time when you are no longer flying the wimpiest possible ship, but are not yet so powerful that no battle is a challenge or a threat. Ships and outfits lose value each day until they're a year old, at which point they are worth 25% of their original value. Captured ships and plundered outfits always start out fully depreciated. The new "tactical commands" work like an RTS game: you can select groups of escorts by clicking and dragging or by shift+clicking, and assign number keys to groups with Ctrl+#. All the previous escort commands now only apply to the selected group, and you can also issue attack or move commands by right-clicking. The view can be zoomed in or out using the mouse wheel in order to see the "big picture" of what your fleet is doing. There are many other changes, as well. For a complete list, see the changelog. Special thanks to the large group of people who contributed to this release: @Amazinite, @Barthalion, @Bladewood, @CH-de, @comnom, @DingusShingleton, @doches, @Elyssaen, @gecko-locator, @Isaacssv552, @jafdy, @KiLEdEnNis, @kozbot, @LocalGod79, @MillerNerd, @PointedStick, @retrue, @TJesionowski, @warp-core, and @Wrzlprnft.

The unstable 0.9.5 release is now available for anyone who has opted in to the "beta" branch. This release adds a lot of new content and features, and may contain bugs. Major changes include:

• Ship and outfit values now depreciate over time, which makes it harder to become absurdly wealthy.
• The main view's zoom can now be adjusted between 25% and 200%, independent of the UI zoom.
• Commands can now be given to groups of escorts instead of to your whole fleet.
• New Wanderer missions, doubling the length of their story line and introducing a new ship.
• New alien faction, the Coalition, with 16 new ships and about 70 systems and planets.
• Scanning now takes time, to make dodging scans more interesting and less impossible.
• Systems and planets can now specify MP3s to play as music or ambient audio.

The goal of depreciation is to lengthen the mid-game: the period of time when you are no longer flying the wimpiest possible ship, but are not yet so powerful that no battle is a challenge or a threat. Ships and outfits lose value each day until they're a year old, at which point they are worth 25% of their original value. Captured ships and plundered outfits always start out fully depreciated. The new "tactical commands" work like an RTS game: you can select groups of escorts by clicking and dragging or by shift+clicking, and assign number keys to groups with Ctrl+#. All the previous escort commands now only apply to the selected group, and you can also issue attack or move commands by right-clicking. The view can be zoomed in or out using the mouse wheel in order to see the "big picture" of what your fleet is doing. There are many other changes, as well. For a complete list, see the changelog. Special thanks to the large group of people who contributed to this release: @Amazinite, @Barthalion, @Bladewood, @CH-de, @comnom, @DingusShingleton, @doches, @Elyssaen, @gecko-locator, @Isaacssv552, @jafdy, @KiLEdEnNis, @kozbot, @LocalGod79, @MillerNerd, @PointedStick, @retrue, @TJesionowski, @warp-core, and @Wrzlprnft.