ΔV: Rings of Saturn News

• Additional interactions with bounty hunters.
  
• Adjusted point defence safety protocol sensitivity on certain weapons. It is now more diligent in detecting your ship, and should prevent some possible accidents - when it’s not damaged too heavily.
  
• Fixed a bug in the dialogue system that caused some dialogue options to not appear for you.
  
• Adjusted claim beacon mounting spot on the Vulture Prospector to prevent the drone from bashing into your ship hull during manoeuvres.
  
• Your singer will now perform a tour in 7 days, not 168.
  
• You can’t perform over and over at the station by undocking and docking again.
  
• Classic mode easter egg will now work on Enceladus station.
  
• Actuator noise your point defence weapons make will now pitch down correctly when you are under the effect of an adrenal boost.
  
• Swapped orientation of docking arms on some stations you can encounter to make them more (or less) symmetrical.
  
• Updated translations and translation credits.
  

• Conclusion to the first act of the "find the sister" crew quest, including two new story events and a quest-unique pilotable ship variant.
  
• Additional interactions with the Ganymedean base.
  
• When performing actions on your crew using the dialogue system, crew occupation will be listed next to their name.
  
• Improved performance of HUD rendering.
  
• Updated translations.
  

Starting today, ΔV: Rings of Saturn is entering the feature freeze stage of the development process. What does that mean for you?

In the past year, you experienced a steady torrent of releases, all of them including new, exciting features, most often ones that were not really planned. While this kind of development process is really enjoyable both for me, getting excited to add the next shiny thing, and you, getting to play with new toys, it did push away the planned 1.0 release date by months. Feature freeze is a protocol designed to bring order to that process. It means that new features will not be considered for the 1.0 release anymore. In feature freeze, I focus solely on adding things that are already planned and fixing any bugs that come out.

1.0 is an important milestone in any software development, but it doesn’t mark the end of progress. It’s only meant to signify a version that we feel is complete enough for the general audience - and we feel we are really close to that point.

Here is what is going to happen next:

• I will focus on finishing up all the features listed on our roadmap and cleaning up any bugs that come out.
  
• Any new features will go to the 2.0 list.
  
• The game will enter the 1.0 stage while still being technically in Early Access. This will last for about two weeks to a month. This way, all of you who supported my development in EA will be able to play the complete product first, and I will have time to finish any formalities required for the release.
  
• We go to a full release.
  
• After about two weeks of anticipated post-release frenzy, enhancements and new features will resume; you will still get regular experimental and stable releases, just with numbers starting with 1.
  

We are entering the feature freeze stage today. If you feel that our current roadmap misses something absolutely essential for 1.0, this is a good time to advocate that, either on forums or on the game Discord.

[h3]Dangerous MPI railgun retrofit kits[/h3]
Mars Power Industries' railgun kits, known for being cheap but inaccurate, are now available on the second-hand market. The kits were originally intended for use on Mars, where affordable weapons were needed. However, their low accuracy and short lifespan have raised concerns about their effectiveness. Unscrupulous dealers are selling the retrofit kits without proper testing and certification, potentially endangering buyers.



[h3]Pilots Urgently Needed to Collect Debris[/h3]
Enceladus Corp is urgently seeking experienced pilots to collect debris in Saturn's Rings, where mass driver fire has increased debris density to a critical level. Failure to act may cause catastrophic collisions in the region. Skilled pilots with experience in space debris collection are needed for this high-risk mission, which requires careful navigation and hazard awareness. Time is of the essence to prevent the escalation of the Kessler Syndrome.



[h3]Triskelion-Armstrong Settles Planned Obsolescence[/h3]
Triskelion-Armstrong settles lawsuit over planned obsolescence of AR-1500 Salvage Manipulator, releases upgrades increasing durability by over 400%. The company was accused of designing the product to have a limited lifespan, forcing customers to replace it regularly. Upgrades include reinforced parts, improved power systems, and enhanced software. Customers and experts praise the move as a demonstration of the company's commitment to responsible manufacturing practices.



[h3]Maintenance logs[/h3]

• You can install railguns on low-stress hardpoints.
  
• All massdrivers, including railguns and coilguns, can be damaged now. This shifts combat balance significantly, as hitting hostile craft can now make their weapons less accurate or outright useless.
  
• Your ships now remember the crew you assigned to them and will switch to your preferred crew when you pick them, if available.
  
• When two stations were less than 10km from each other, one could message you about relocating, but the other would move away.
  
• Re-balanced some weapon repair costs and times. Weapons that are, according to the game lore, established on the market and have easy access to replacement parts will now be much cheaper to repair - but the repairs will take longer to represent the time required to adjust to subtle differences in available aftermarket replacement parts.
  
• Railgun based massdrivers are now less accurate than coilgun-based ones.
  
• Decreased the wear of salvage manipulators.
  
• NDCI firing solution projection will now take into account the projectile spread of damaged massdrivers.
  
• Improved performance of projectile rendering.
  
• Fixed a leak that caused projectiles that don't hit anything to be simulated indefinitely, possibly degrading performance over time if your playstyle included missing a lot.
  
• Equipment which is not part of the pre-flight inspection will not be marked as "failing" or "passing" inspection on the repair screen.
  
• Texts displayed on the information billboard in your docks will no longer jump around when preparing to play video.
  
• Enceladian information billboard in docks will avoid displaying the same program too often.
  
• Eagle Prospector HUD (both imperial and metric) will not hide part of the last equipment line outside the screen when OLED screen saving is active.
  
• New in-universe advertisement available on the Enceladus docking information billboard.
  
• Updated translations and unified unit presentation in ship and equipment specification tabs.