First up we've completely revised the Research Menu with a fresh coat of paint. You'll now find roughly 30 new techs to research and a much simpler UI to navigate it.
As part of the research you'll notice a new tech for comms relays. This enables you to communicate with your neighbouring factions. This includes pirates! (And if you can get on their good side they will even begin trading with you).
Along with many other fixes and features we've added, you'll now be able to send raiding parties to steal resources from other factions, but they can also do the same to you! So try not to punch above your weight! Not only that, you can now send out mining ships fitted with a crew of miners and a pilot to remotely mine and gather resources from other locations in your 'Star System' (Yeah I learned my lesson, I know they're not called solar systems). This will especially come in handy for those of you who have strip mined your local asteroids to dust.
Not to mention we've brought back the infamous pirate incursions and bombers. After months of re-balancing and new features we've finally implemented them back in their full force, watch out! Anti-ship turrets and shield generators will have a very serious role now in the later game. As always, we're super appreciative of everyone helping out and giving us feedback through our discord community, and welcome everyone to stop by and say hi! for those of you who are curious here are the patch notes on the title screen :) the tutorial actually tutorialises again can now send scout ships to salvage and explore nearby bodies can now send mining ships to gather resources from other places can now send raiding parties to steal resources and murder pirates are now an actual faction and can be appeased and traded with faction colors are now more random fixed a loading issue when saving a game with crew aboard a ship re-introduced pirate raids/incursions/bombers factions can now raid you if you upset them pirates will also lose morale and run away when losing a fight can now dismantle unwanted ships meeple sleep cycle is slightly longer completely revised and changed the research menu added comms relays to communicate with factions fixed lime, purple and tinted glass tiles from not allowing turrets and ejectors to be built fixed lagging issues when using the trade menu outside asteroids will no longer block docking lane ways removed the hierarchy (Officers are now gone! Oh noes!) greatly improved loading times performance improvements (especially for larger stations) autosaves are now written asynchronously and wont hang gameplay fuel utility lines now cost steel fuel processor no longer requires advanced power changed multiple recipes changed spritesheet for fuel processors hull tiles now add to room value every system now spawns with at least one source of monazite and ilmenite can now manually autosave with CTRL + S (even with autosaving disabled in options) mining is now more hazardous for meeple (muahahaha!) meeple can now run when it's urgent (like when they really really need to use the bathroom or get shot at)