Tetsuo HMX-2000I low-stress approval

Tetsuo Engineering has announced the approval of their HMX-2000I iron delivery mass driver for installation on low-stress hardpoints. This approval allows the HMX-2000I to be integrated into a wider variety of spacecraft, significantly enhancing the versatility and efficiency of iron ore transport and delivery in mining operations. While this powerful mass driver boosts throughput and streamlines the iron delivery process, it is important to note that the high rate of iron delivery could cause flight instability on non-spinal mountings.

Coherent Light releases new lens

Coherent Light, a titan in the laser technology industry, is expanding its horizons with the launch of their premium L-50F high-fidelity lens, designed specifically for high-end photography and reconnaissance applications. While the company has built its reputation on pioneering laser systems, this latest innovation showcases expertise in optics. Reconnaissance craft equipped with the L-50F lens will now be able to deliver both better resolution and a wider field of view. This advancement is crucial for detailed surveillance and mapping, enabling more comprehensive and accurate identification of ore deposits and spotting of asteroids.

Armstrong loses planned obsolescence lawsuit

Triskelion-Armstrong has been found guilty of deliberately using software to simulate damage in their AR1500-M salvage manipulators. This practice misled operators into believing their equipment required costly repairs or replacements when no real damage was present. The court's ruling mandates Triskelion-Armstrong to compensate affected users and revise their software to eliminate fraudulent damage indications. This verdict represents a significant win for miners and salvage operators, who can now expect more transparent and reliable performance from their equipment.

Maintenance Logs

• Reversed the polarity of debris spawning. It's now much more likely for a big rock to shatter into multiple smaller fragments when force is applied, but it should preserve the desired tight spawning radius when mining with the excavator or grinder.
• Tetsuo Engineering managed to obtain approval for the installation of Tetsuo HMX-2000I on low-stress hardpoints.
• Adjusted dynamic physics simulation range settings to be less aggressive. Previously, the game could attempt to limit the simulation space in response to new objects being introduced too quickly, which, while it preserved good performance, could make the ice only appear in a narrow band around your ship. This could also lead to some weird ice formations as the simulation range was adjusted back and forth to find the optimal spot. The new settings are much more gentle and make the spawning seem much more natural while preserving the performance benefits.
• Updated ore graphics.
• Improved performance of encounter detection. Previously, when you made a lot of deals with shady entities, the performance of your game could degrade as it attempted to trace each deal you made. The shady activity ledger is much faster now.
• If you went straight from one established deal to a location of another deal of the same type, without visiting any other location between them, you could find nothing.
• Fixed refuelling speed for crafts you attach to your ship. Previously, it used ore transfer pump capacities, which are slower for most crafts.
• Saved games will not contain events that can not happen anymore. This improves loading speed. Old saves will be cleaned up automatically.
• Fixed the title menu being misaligned if you had a save with a long ship name.
• Fixed some of the big, complex moonlets experiencing runaway kinematic reactions, leading them to spin uncontrollably and break game physics.
• New asteroids will not spawn in close proximity to your ship anymore.
• You can now ask BBW to join their cause multiple times in one encounter. Beware that they might get annoyed by this.
• While you can still bind multiple keys for an action in the game, the HUD will only show the first key bound. This prevents the interface overflowing if you manage to bind keys that have long representations, like keypad keys.
• Improved physics performance for certain big, complex moonlets by over 1000%.
• General physics engine collision detection optimisation. Due to how our physics throttling system works, the most immediate effect for you will be the ability for the game to simulate objects further away from your ship. If you desire a better performance instead, make sure to lower the "physics simulation range" slider in the game settings.
• Certain ship and stations that denied you docking for some reason will allow you to dock again when you manage to convince them that they should. That makes certain illegal cargo exchanges, and bounty hunting, flow more naturally when you are performing the operations in close proximity of recipients.
• Having a rogue cargo container attached to your ship prevented other such containers from appearing.
• THI Cargo Containers will now follow you through an astrogation jump when executing the "keep formation" command.
• Fixed tooltips for some buttons on OMS that were not showing when using a gamepad and flickering when showing up.
• Fixed a tooltip on the astrogator tab.
• Sometimes, cargo containers and similar craft attached to your ship would boot up and attempt to escape on Enceladus. This included both the main menu as well as the "examine ship" sections of the Dealer and Fleet menus.
• Added AI inhibitors to racing drones and their illegal modifications. The drone will now shut down in direct proximity to any ship, just like any other autonomous craft. This can make certain events and encounters easier and will prevent such drones from attempting to escape when already caught with docking equipment. Previously, such a drone would only shut down after entering a cargo bay.
• Fixed phantom manipulator damage. If you had a damaged ship in a save at the time when the damage model of the manipulator changed in an upgrade, the manipulator misalignment damage could been transferred past the upgrade, but you were not able to fix it without replacing the whole ship.
• Jury-rigging misaligned Salvage Manipulator will now apply the fixes immediately and you won't need to bash the arm on another rock in order for the fixes to kick in.
• Updated translations.