The Rogue Mining Op: There have been quite a few requests to get some SPAZ 1 style rock picking into SPAZ 2. We spent some time and think we have come up with a good way to handle this. We now have Rogue Mining Ops. They appear over time on the Starmap and will also expire. This expiry and limited nature is meant to make them feel special when you find one, since it is a free source of a limited supply of Rez. You also cannot grind them endlessly, which was a big problem in SPAZ 1. We want people to use all of the tools we created to survive in the Galaxy, and not to grind one event, so Mining Ops will expire over time. So here's how they work. You will find a pretty dense asteroid field filled with a new asteroid type. They are purplish and veiny and have little bits of Rez inside them. Blow them up, and you can go collect the Rez. You are free to do this and none of the miners in the level will care. But... There are also crates littered around the asteroid field (they are hard to find on purpose) These crates have large amounts of Rez inside them. If you steal from these crates, then the miners will get very angry. They will then call their friends and maintain a certain population that will pummel your ship until all their reinforcements are used up. If you survive, you can simply warp out as normal (if things get too tense, there is a warp gate too) If you decide to keep pushing it, stealing from more crates, the alert level will rise and a larger fleet will warp in. If you survive that, then you can warp out. If you are really nuts, you can go for the last few crates and an even larger fleet will warp in. It is up to you to only steal as much as you feel comfortable with and pay the price if you are too greedy. Side Objectives (Little Blue Missions) We have added a side objective system to help teach players the intricacies of the game. Each objective has a little brain that runs and evaluates if it is a good time to teach a certain game mechanic. Some preconditions are simple, like being level 12 or having zombies in the galaxy, while others are more unusual like having 3 loose junk parts triggering a quest to get rid of the garbage weighing you down. The real goal here is to provide the kind of advice that you would get if one of us was standing next to you providing hints on different ways to tackle problems and pointing out less used systems. Some objectives will come and go as the brain detects and then undetects good situations for completing that objective. Objectives can also be postponed if you don't want to complete them right now and want to free up another slot for a different objective to become active. Not to worry, postponed objectives will come back after a while. Here is a list of the objectives we have now: Bounty a Captain Bounty a Starbase Bounty a Zombie Starbase Collect your Stockpile Extort a Captain Fund a Starbase Expansion Hire a Wingman Attack a Captain Destroy a Starbase Attack a Zombie Do a Mining Op Pay a Tribute Start a Raid Try the Arena Pay Reparations Duel a captain Recruit a Captain to your Faction Use a build Incentive Join a Fight Jettison unused Junk We are hoping the objectives help to get people to try all of these things at least once to see how they poke the simulation in new ways. Additionally: (Better building tutorials) We have revised the intro building tutorial to make it hopefully more bullet proof when it comes to learning how to add and remove parts on ships. We still teach the old tractor beam method here since you need to know how to use this if you are ever in battle. The tractor beam method is the basic fallback construction method. We also added a tutorial for the new method that will trigger the first time that you enter the inventory level from the Starmap on your own. So this update was mainly about getting people playing the game a little better/deeper with a little extra ambient mining op flavor for those who already know how to play :) We hope you enjoy! Andrew(Blorf) and Richard(Narlak)