ΔV: Rings of Saturn News

[h3]New regulations for Salvage Manipulators[/h3]
After a tragic accident in the Docking Ring earlier this week, Enceladus Corp issued an updated policy governing independent salvage equipment. Starting today, all ship-mounted articulated manipulators not under the direct supervision of qualified personnel must stay powered down, folded and secured on the ship’s hull.


[h3]Elon Interstellar enables new autonomy features[/h3]
Following surprising Twatter poll results, the CEO of Elon Interstellar announced that he would be adhering to the ages-long tradition of his company and issued an immediate free over-the-air upgrade of all the EIAA-1337 autopilots. Changes include the implementation of often requested SanBUS protocol, introducing a compatibility between the Obonto US-GOT reconnaissance craft’s queue and the autopilot’s flight control.


[h3]New services available on Enceladus[/h3]
Recent expansion of the commercial area of the Industrial Ring has caused a drop in average rent prices. Several companies have used this opportunity to establish permanent offices on the station. Residents of the station can now use the services provided by Obonto Habitats, Jameson’s Insurance Company, and the independently operated Miner’s Guild.


[h3]Maintenance logs[/h3]

• Separate Fleet menu on Enceladus Prime, which displays all your owned ships, with the ability to view data on any of them
  
• New Services available on Enceladus Prime: The Miners Guild, Obonto Habitats office and Jameson’s Insurance.
  
• Autonomous autopilots will now communicate with other equipment on your ship through the ship area network bus. This allows them to coordinate with salvage manipulators and nanodrone systems.
  
• Your AR1500 Salvage Manipulator will now fold when powered down.
  
• All AI, including NPC ships, autonomous autopilots and mining companions, is now aware that turning or changing velocity is probably not the best idea if your excavator is open.
  
• EIAA-1337 autopilot can now interface with Obonto USV-GOT reconnaissance craft. If you set up an excavator order and point your autopilot to the first ore chunk, it will automatically follow the excavation queue.
  
• Reconnaissance drones category got renamed to reconnaissance craft to avoid confusion when discussing specific hardware.
  
• Renamed all the reconnaissance systems to use manufacturer models and designations instead of descriptions.
  
• Strafe controls for your autopilot can be assigned in the Settings menu.
  
• New warning siren for Antonoff-Titan AT-K225.
  
• Improved performance of the exhaust gas simulation.
  
• Improved performance of the racing autopilot path prediction overlay.
  
• Improved performance of the LIDAR systems.
  
• Improved performance of the Dealer.
  
• If you fail to recover a derelict ship and have to leave it in the rings, but it did get ore inside its cargo hold, you will not get that cargo when you return to the Enceladus Prime station.
  
• The scrolling speed of OMS windows was affected by the slowed-down time when you have your OMS open, making window movement sluggish. It was especially apparent when you used a gamepad to scroll the window.
  
• Notification animation popups were affected by the slowed-down time of an Adrenaline Surge and OMS window.
  
• Adjusted performance options for the renderer.
  
• New, more accurate normal maps and lighting setups for all the character faces.
  

[h3]Included patches[/h3]

• When acquiring job locations from the pirates, new locations will not override previous ones you did not visit yet.
  
• Improved performance of exhaust plume rendering.
  
• Improved physics performance of pulsed thrust reaction control systems and torches.
  
• Limiting details of the plume simulation now correctly limits the details for pulse rockets, both the rendering and physics simulation. Turning the details down to zero will now disable the plumes completely.
  
• Fixed some character names that contained space at the end, which introduced strange formatting issues
  
• Ore exploitation is now persistent between the dives and stored in your save. If you keep strip-mining the same area, you will find it eventually barren. The random fluctuation and collisions will eventually replenish any such location, but it takes a significant amount of in-game time.
  
• Vilcy now have a local branch accessible from the Services menu, where you can pay up your bounties at a discount before being approached by patrols in the rings.
  
• Reworked the crew bio card. Crew skills are now visible for your hired crew, and there is a new icon for “this skill level is roughly the same as your current crew has”.
  
• Wingmen are now much better at keeping formation, getting out of your ship’s way and avoiding large asteroids.
  
• Re-balanced services. Certain services now have a cooldown, so going into an all-you-can-eat buffet for three days straight is no longer the optimal way to improve your crew morale.
  
• Billboards on the Enceladus station now use mipmaps, making the edges of texts and graphics displayed less jagged.
  
• Changes the locations of docking ports on a particular asteroid-based space station to accommodate bigger and heavier ships docking.
  
• Your crew could get confused on a failed EVA salvage mission if another ship approached, making them return to the wrong ship.
  
• When hiring a Vilcy member as a bodyguard, he won’t promise to share a portion of gathered ore with you, as they are not interested in mining.
  
• All Heads-Up Displays operate now in OLED-display-friendly mode, slightly switching the location of fixed elements over time to prevent burn-in damage in prolonged dives.
  
• Updated game credits.
  
• Updated translations.
  

• Ore exploitation is now persistent between the dives and stored in your save. If you keep strip-mining the same area, you will find it eventually barren. The random fluctuation and collisions will eventually replenish any such location, but it takes a significant amount of in-game time.
  
• Vilcy now have a local branch accessible from the Services menu, where you can pay up your bounties at a discount before being approached by patrols in the rings.
  
• Reworked the crew bio card. Crew skills are now visible for your hired crew, and there is a new icon for “this skill level is roughly the same as your current crew has”.
  
• Wingmen are now much better at keeping formation, getting out of your ship’s way and avoiding large asteroids.
  
• Re-balanced services. Certain services now have a cooldown, so going into an all-you-can-eat buffet for three days straight is no longer the optimal way to improve your crew morale.
  
• Billboards on the Enceladus station now use mipmaps, making the edges of texts and graphics displayed less jagged.
  
• Changes the locations of docking ports on a particular asteroid-based space station to accommodate bigger and heavier ships docking.
  
• Your crew could get confused on a failed EVA salvage mission if another ship approached, making them return to the wrong ship.
  
• When hiring a Vilcy member as a bodyguard, he won’t promise to share a portion of gathered ore with you, as they are not interested in mining.
  
• All Heads-Up Displays operate now in OLED-display-friendly mode, slightly switching the location of fixed elements over time to prevent burn-in damage in prolonged dives.
  
• Updated game credits.
  
• Updated translations.
  

• When acquiring job locations from the pirates, new locations will not override previous ones you did not visit yet.
  
• Improved performance of exhaust plume rendering.
  
• Improved physics performance of pulsed thrust reaction control systems and torches.
  
• Limiting details of the plume simulation now correctly limits the details for pulse rockets, both the rendering and physics simulation. Turning the details down to zero will now disable the plumes completely.
  
• Fixed some character names that contained space at the end, which introduced strange formatting issues
  

[h3]Kessler syndrome accelerating[/h3]
A runaway Kessler syndrome triggered by a rogue asteroid impact earlier this year is accelerating. While cascading collisions produce more fine-grained ring particles each day, covering the upper and lower areas around the A-ring, scientists believe that proximity of the ring plane will eventually cause the cascade to slow down and diminish - but provide no estimation on when that will happen. Crews excavating in affected areas are urged to exercise caution.


[h3]Labor law expanded[/h3]
The Mining Guild of Enceladus managed to win a class lawsuit against Enceladus Corp. Effective today, downtime during interlunar transits, as long as it is fully controlled by the autopilot, is classified as paid vacation. While this forbids employers from requiring crews to perform tasks not mandated by their job duties, some station citizens vote concerns that interlunar transits could be subtracted from mandatory vacation quotas.


[h3]Shadow dives available[/h3]
With a new navigational array being available on polar orbit around Saturn, greatly enhancing the resolution and light sensitivity of Enceladus Corp systems, the station will now allow launches of private spacecraft into the shadow-covered regions of the rings. While lack of solar lighting can prove to be a challenge for inexperienced crews, many captains are excited about lower traffic volume and prospects of higher yields.


[h3]Maintenance Logs[/h3]

• Fine-tuned in-game physics options to allow better performance of the physics engine based on real-world data supplied by players.
  
• Shifted computing majority of the ring background particle system from CPU to GPU, which improves average framerate on all systems with modern graphics cards. Older and integrated GPUs will not be affected.
  
• Improved performance of ore chunk physics simulation. Immobile chunks can now free up computing power, lowering the processing requirements for strip-mining ship builds depending on cleaning up a large area of the rings and capturing ore with nanodrone systems.
  
• Adjusted parameters of simulation throttling system. While previous values were effective at keeping the framerate consistent on tested systems, extreme builds could lock the system in a state where no new iceroids were generated. New changes ensure that even with a limited simulation range, iceroids can still appear around you.
  
• The physics throttling now adjusts the area of detailed simulation, not its radius, giving it much finer control over changes introduced in the game physics.
  
• Nakamura-Titan Mining Companions now have a slightly reduced iceroid detection range. While it makes them a bit less effective at mining, it reduces the CPU load of their onboard AI by over 400%, which allows ship builds sporting multiple companions to work with much better performance.
  
• When many in-game days pass in an instant - during interlunar transit, repairs or extended vacations on the station - your crew used to gain education experience for the first day only. Now you will get the full benefit of the entire time period. For most playstyles, this will increase the rate your crew educates itself downtime by up to 500%.
  
• When your processed mineral storage becomes full, your ship will now sound a brief alert.
  
• Adjusted the physical cargo bay shape of the Pelican Prospector so the cargo baffles installed inside work as expected.
  
• You can now turn off all the dynamic lights, including the sun, with the lowest lights detail setting, which improves performance on low-end systems. For roleplaying purposes, you can assume you are diving into the shadow of Saturn.
  
• The in-game profiler overlay available with the F11 key will display a version string for easier comparison of changes introduced in different releases.
  
• The Equipment menu “Simulation” and “User Manual” tabs now have icons, making them easier to spot by novice players.
  
• Elon Interstellar Model E cargo door dampeners are not as stiff now, making the ship open and close its excavator much quicker.
  
• New cargo acquisition protocol ensures that ore deflected from an area that the ship considers a cargo bay will not be accounted as on-board cargo briefly.
  
• Adjusted the physical shape of AT-K225 to better match the displayed sprite.
  
• If you created a custom player-created ads directory but did not put any custom ads inside it, the game would crash when loading the Enceladus station.
  
• When a ship appeared on your lidar, your astrogator assigned it a tactical marker - but if it moved into a shadow for over 60 seconds, its name would disappear from the list on the Pilot tab.
  
• Adjusted the default game settings for a new game to offer better default performance and experience over a variety of systems. You can still adjust the settings to your liking.
  
• Some events were despawning much quicker than they should have, which made locating them challenging.
  
• Updated game engine version for Linux and Steam Deck to Godot Engine 3.5.1, bringing all the new performance and stability enhancements to these platforms.
  
• Updated translations.