ΔV: Rings of Saturn News

• New ore graphics. Ores are now more visually distinct and look closer to their real-life counterparts.
  
• Ships you encounter in the rings, both flying and derelict, will now have more variety in the equipment installed.
  
• Improved LIDAR performance, AI collision avoidance performance and pilot adrenaline performance.
  
• Decreased memory fragmentation of Doppler LIDAR. While no memory was leaking, during longer dives your memory could get fragmented over time and exceed your CPU cache sizes, which could slowly degrade performance in multi-hour dives.
  
• On some occasions, the Enceladus background could zoom out far further than it should.
  
• Ore carried with a mining companion docked to your ship will not trigger NDCI collision warning anymore, or make your pilot freak out with adrenaline surge.
  
• You can now scroll the Pilot's tab in OMS with gamepad analogue stick, if it doesn't have focus.
  
• You can access and scroll the Pilot's tab with the gamepad even if the first contact you have has a "Hail Error" connection status.
  
• The pilot's tab will scroll automatically when you move through the contacts with your gamepad.
  
• Fixed some events trying to despwn over and over again when flagged as "essential, not despawning", which could hinder the game performance if you flew away from such an event.
  
• Updated translations.
  

• You can now refuel your THI Cargo Containers. This includes the ability to tune the propellant buffer.
  
• You can give more detailed commands to your THICCs. This allows for new playstyles, including releasing the containers to follow you in a formation while you mine and only re-docking them for processed ore transfer.
  
• The presence of some drones prevented the correct fracture of asteroids near them, resulting in worse yields with some playstyles. This affected mostly excavating asteroids with grinders and built-in excavators while having NT Mining Companions or THI Cargo Containers attached near such an excavator, but also lowered the yields from mining companions using their own grinders.
  
• Adjusted spawning routines for ore in close proximity to other entities, such as ships, cargo holds, grinders and more. This should greatly improve the odds of having good yields when mining with an excavator or grinder directly.
  
• Some drones did not power up their autopilots when released. Machines have a hard time flying when they are powered off. They will be turned on again.
  
• The ship HUD boot sequence was missing from the Enceladus launch sequence cutscene.
  
• Updated translations.
  

• OLED saving was applied to non-static HUD elements, such as autopilot targeting receptacles and ore identification markers. OLED-saving protocol introduces a slight shift of all the static elements of your HUD to prevent OLED (and CRT) displays from being damaged with burn-in from having a prolonged display of a static image. This makes sense for static elements of your HUD. This will cause all the autopilot target markers and ore identification markers to be exactly centered on the target.
  
• The Autopilot HUD overlay displaying relative velocity and distance was not placed correctly if you targeted the surface of a big entity, such as a moonlet. While the triangle marker was correctly placed on the surface of the object, the velocity overlay was placed over its centre of mass.
  
• The custom paint job, if present, will now be applied to OCP-209's habitat.
  
• LIS-Kitsune HUD will now respect brightness tuning for the microseismic scanner floating window.
  
• The Virtual Flight service in the Tuning menu required you to use the shortcut key to activate it. You will now be able to activate it using your mouse.
  
• You could take a very specific path through the spacetime that caused some of the points of interest to appear more than once.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused faction disposition for unique entities, such as certain space stations or station-like structures, not saving individual disposition towards you correctly. This could cause some entities to become hostile on your first interaction. This change is retroactive and will reset all the mistakenly set dispositions automatically.
  
• Updated translations.
  

• Made ore shiny again. A layer of dust covered most of the ore nuggets on your recon craft feed, making them quite dull, but our dedicated team of drones painstakingly cleaned them up to make them shiny again.
  
• Updated translations.
  

[h3]Latent Behavioural Imperatives Found[/h3]
Once deemed a failed project due to unexpected social behaviours among the drones, the Nakamura-Titan Mining Companions are making a comeback. These refurbished autonomous mining drones were originally sidelined when they exhibited complex social interactions that hampered operational efficiency. Recent breakthroughs in adversarial neural network manipulation now permit a small-scale reassertion of their original behavioural imperatives, potentially restoring their intended capabilities.



[h3]Mitsudaya-Starbus Grinder Recall[/h3]
Mitsudaya-Starbus has launched a recall on grinder tips of their Prospector-series ships, including the widely-used Eagle Prospector. Now coated with industrial-grade diamond, the new grinder tips are designed to endure the most extreme mining conditions. Mitsudaya promises to double the lifespan of previous models, effectively addressing the durability issues highlighted in a recent class-action lawsuit.



[h3]H.475 available for Recon Craft[/h3]
The H.475 codec, recently introduced to reconnaissance crafts, now incorporates AI-driven algorithms to enhance the compression and clarity of high-dynamic range video. This development is pivotal for missions near high-glare asteroids and moonlets, ensuring detailed and artefact-free imagery that greatly aids astrogational accuracy.



[h3]Maintenance Logs[/h3]

• Improved lighting shaders. This release features a new way to process lighting on objects in the game. It should have the same performance as before, but now it will remove some noise and shimmering artefacts when you view big, detailed entities (like moonlets) with your camera zoomed out.
  
• You can issue more orders to mining companions.
  
• You can now restock the propellant on a Nakamura-Titan Mining Companion that is in your cradle arm.
  
• A new tuning setting was added to control propellant transfer to the mining companions.
  
• When your mining companion is out of propellant in an autonomous mining mode, it will ask you for instructions instead of returning to the station immediately. You'll have an option to order it to return to your cradle for resupply instead.
  
• Increased velocity of the mining companion docking protocol.
  
• You can now order your Nakamura-Titan Mining Companions to perform a cargo transfer protocol.
  
• Your Nakamura-Titan Mining Companions will now reverse the polarity of their grinder when executing the ore transfer protocol.
  
• NT Mining Companions that you ordered to return to Enceladus will not call you immediately back, inventing an excuse for why they are leaving.
  
• When you order a drone to dock to your ship, its tactical marker will disappear immediately after the docking is complete.
  
• You cannot hail mining companions that docked with you and powered down anymore.
  
• You can attempt to hail a ship or drone again that did not reply to you. Earlier, a lack of reply would lock you out from subsequent tries, even if that specific NPC had something to say later.
  
• Attempting to hail a Mining Companion just as you release it should not cause it to ignore you for 10 seconds anymore.
  
• Asteroid grinders are now better at grabbing (smaller) rocks and doing more damage. Success in grinding larger rocks still largely depends on their shape and your ability to get a good grip on them.
  
• Picking up an entity with active transponder into your cargo bay will now immediately remove it from your pilots contact list.
  
• Racing team now has a separate conversation option when their drone is not operational, and will not schedule a race nobody can win.
  
• Additional Racing Team encounter.
  
• The bearing and distance to identified contacts will now be exposed in your Pilot tab.
  
• Fixed Virtual Flight Service access in the Tuning menu when using a gamepad or keyboard. Moving downwards with MVFS selected will now put you on the first tuning item, as expected.
  
• Fixed POI descriptions overflowing the Astrogation window if you scrolled them by dragging the scrollbar with your mouse.
  
• Fixed line-of-sight in the Space Bar being rendered wrong in one of the corners if you got close enough.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused ore to vanish if your Nakamura-Titan Mining Companion left the detailed simulation range with cargo inside and then came back near your ship. In such cases, that cargo would vanish immediately after it left its cargo bay during the Cargo Transfer Protocol.
  
• The interior of the space bar now properly blocks you from astrogating away and hides your exhaust and laser flares from the visual feed.
  
• Updated translations & credits.