DISPATCH is on the line
Mission Control has a voice now. DISPATCH, the Company's remote handler, speaks up on the missions that matter: your first day stranded in orbit, your first kill, every new sector, every boss and the moment the Singularity opens. Every boss and every enemy of the opening sectors also has its own Atlas entry.
- A slow starfield sits behind every page, with a nebula tinted by the sector you are deployed to.
- New setting: Settings, Interface, Motion Effects (Full, Reduced or Off).
- Pages you are not looking at no longer rebuild every frame, which is lighter on laptops.
- The main menu shows the build number, so a bug report can name it.
Research is one tree
The research tabs are gone. Research is a single tree that reads left to right: every sector has its own cluster, and a gate between two clusters opens the next sector.
- Past the next gate, the tree stays under an UNREVEALED cover until you reach that sector. A Warp locks research again, but the sectors you have reached stay on your map.
- Each sector's research is paid for with that sector's own materials: Sector 1 with iron, silicon, copper and the like, Mars Debris with Wreckforged Alloy, the Glacier Belt with Rime Alloy, and so on. The three starter nodes still cost Liras only.
- Every node hangs off what comes before it, and a card tells you when it also needs something from another branch.
- Sector Delta gear can now be crafted in Sector Delta.
- Research opens on your current mission's node, and the mouse wheel scrolls the tree sideways.
Mine and Engineering grow with you
- Operations, recipes and buildings appear once you can actually use them, instead of a wall of locks. Operations above your skill level still show, as your next goals.
- New arrivals wear a NEW tag, and the Mine and Engineering buttons count them until you look.
- A card now names the plant that can run it for you, with a link to its research, as soon as that plant's sector is on your map.
Orders is now the Market
- New BUY tab: anything you have held that can be made is for sale, at three times its price, from a station stock that refills every hour. Materials that only drop in combat, boss cores and cards are never for sale.
- Every material has one price, everywhere: raw materials by how long they take to gather, crafted goods by their ingredients plus crafting time. Hand gathering is the best income, and processed goods sell for less than the old Orders prices.
- Combat loot still sells, but a kill's loot is never worth more than half the Liras that kill pays.
- Exotic Shards can be bought with Liras once your run is worth a shard. The first costs 500,000 Liras (more as your Warp bonuses grow), each one after that costs double the last, up to half the shards your run is worth and never more than 5 per Warp. They arrive with your next Warp.
- Feed the Core is gone. Banked Resonance has been converted into shards, and Resonance Tuning is now Shard Broker.
- Materials you bought never count toward your next Warp's shards.
- The Silicon Furnace now makes 12 Silicon per cycle. The Matter De-constructor and its research are gone: if you had them, everything they cost is refunded when you load.
Your stock comes through the Warp
A Cargo Hold now carries what your mines, rigs and plants built up into the next run: up to 25,000 of each made material on your first Warp, 25,000 more with every Warp after that, up to 200,000. Combat drops, boss cores and cards stay behind, and six cargo slots are always left free. Carried cargo sells for Liras but never counts toward shards.
Shipyard
- The Weapons tab is split into Kinetic, Energy, Explosive and Special.
- The Shipyard no longer spoils what is ahead: it shows the gear of the sectors you have reached, plus what the next sector's gate unlocks, the same as the research tree.
Fixes
- With a side goal and a story mission both asking for research, opening Research now centres the story mission.
- Research cards no longer carry an empty band under their cost list.
- Five recipe names in German, French and Turkish are no longer cut off on their Engineering cards.
- Sectors 12 to 15: the first two enemies of each sector no longer overwhelm gear of that sector's tier.
- Sectors 4, 5, 7 and 9: the first enemies you meet on arrival hit softer, so the ship you arrive in can farm them safely.
- Sector 15's Blight Titan has less hull, in line with the rest of the sector.
- Engineering no longer shows HE Missiles or the Missile and Cell ammo plants before you have a weapon that fires them.
- German: the Ship Designer title fits long hull names.
- Warp page: the Salvage Vault panel no longer runs off the screen before your first Warp, in any language.
- Engineering: a recipe with five or more ingredients no longer splits an amount from its name.
- French: two Mine operation names are no longer cut off.
Existing saves
Anything you have already researched stays researched.