Hey folks! Big one this time. I've been heads-down on making your first hours smoother and giving you actual reasons to fly around the galaxy. Here's the rundown.
Escort missions are a real thing now
This was the headliner. When you take an escort contract, you're now protecting an actual ship that flies with you, warps with you, and can absolutely get blown up if you slack off. Pirates will ambush your convoy mid-jump (with a sane cap, I'm not a monster :D), prioritize the ship you're guarding, and warp out gracefully instead of magically vanishing. Lose the escort and the mission fails - you'll know about it. Get it home safe and you get paid.
Missions & contracts overhaul
- New Contracts panel with clearer requirements and decision hooks, so you actually understand what you're signing up for.
- Mission deadlines now scale with distance. Long-haul delivery across multiple warp jumps? You get the time you deserve. No more impossible runs.
- Mission route preview now shows you exactly where you're going with a click-to-locate affordance.
- You get a notification on every mission completion path now, properly localized.
First-session clarity (a.k.a. "wait, what do I do?")
- When onboarding wraps up, the mission board lights up with a smoke signal so you've got an obvious next step.
- New game setup, resource tooltips, and decision feedback copy all got a clarity pass. Less guessing, more playing.
- Surface actions now show progress feedback so you're not staring at a colonist wondering if anything's happening.
Miscellanous
- Fade-to-black transitions for "go to" jumps instead of the camera flying you across the system. Snappier and less nauseating.
- A pile of mini-map and system map fixes during warp and in planet/sub-hex views.
- 100 new flavour lore notes scattered around the galaxy, plus new message-themed points of interest to find them at.
- Dead Drops now carry thematic loot - cash, intel, contraband. Worth the detour.
- Fixed a bunch (22+) of POI and event outcomes that didn't match their descriptions. What it says is now what you get.
Relationships & family
- Family members will never weirdly show up as "Married" to each other anymore.
- Relationship tiers for blood relatives now follow the actual score instead of a hardcoded ceiling, and legacy bad data gets cleaned up.
- Fixed diary spam and some badge overflow in the character panel.
Under the hood
- Hardened combat cleanup so orphaned fights actually end instead of lingering.
As always - thanks for playing the demo and sending feedback. A lot of this came straight from you. Keep it coming. o7