ΔV: Rings of Saturn News

[h3]Articulated Recovery Manipulator[/h3]

In a surprising move, Triskelion-Armstrong released the AR-1500 series manipulator for the general public today. The sale of recovery manipulators is restricted to licenced Search and Recovery crew, so in order to obtain a sale permit the AR-1500M version has a stripped-down ship interface. Marketed as “Salvage Recovery” the AR-1500M is incapable of interfacing with ships, but shares a robust design with his older brother and is more than capable of securing and towing a derelict rivaling it’s base ship with mass.



[h3]Microseismic Jamming Exposed[/h3]

Independent investigative journalists revealed that several excavation companies housed on Enceladus were abusing the tightbeam array to jam competitors' microseismic drone systems. With offenders arrested and jamming signals gone, captains report vast increases in accuracy of their survey equipment, revealing new rich veins of minerals though the rings. Obonto Micro Engineering filed a civil suit against offenders for brand damage.

[h3]Excavators Life[/h3]

Seventh episode of “Excavators Life” is to premiere on Enceladus Entertainment Network. “A Cure” tells a story of neglect that caused permanent health damage, and a fight to overcome it.

[h3]Pest Extermination In Progress[/h3]

Enceladus Corp issued a statement warning all citizens of ongoing pest extermination procedures. Please remain in your habitats and wear softsuits at all times. List of species under extermination order:

• AR-1500 Salvage Arm now available as a high-stress mount.
  
• Introduced ore density patterns to ore across rings.
  
• Microseismic scanner now able to show ore inside large rocks.
  
• New crew agenda implemented.
  
• Maintenance drones rebalanced.
  
• New tuning options for autopilots.
  
• Fixed THICC and B8 being launched out when doing maneuvers.
  
• Crew now can ask for leave time that starts after you get back to base.
  
• Fixed a number of bugs in the conversation system.
  
• Big ships now fly more carefully and try to avoid getting close to you.
  
• High and low prices are no-longer visible on market prediction graphs.
  
• Cargo containers and B8 beacons now return with you to Enceladus.
  
• Fixed adrenaline triggering constantly for high-level pilots.
  
• Dialogue options for raising and lowering salary now list exact change.
  
• Ship thumbnails now reflect actual damage the ship has.
  
• New ships and highly damaged ships are marked on the list.
  
• Point defence will no-longer shoot at the cargo inside.
  
• Fixed SMES capacity to match values listed.
  
• Crew and crew bodies outside the ship now show up as shiny on lidar.
  
• Updated equipment descriptions.
  
• Fixed a glitch that allows unlimited money with creative equipment trades.
  

Rusatom-Antonoff issued a recall on autopilot software released in January of 2273 with popular RA-K37-TNTRL excavation craft. A miss-calibrated comfort setting could lead to excessive deceleration and power failures during initial ring insertion. If you believe your craft is affected, visit Rusatom-Antonoff dealer today.

[h3]Claim Beacons[/h3]
Triskelion-Armstrong released a new series of B8 claim beacons earlier this week. These fully autonomous drones are able to oversee the area of the rings and provide a stable and secure waypoint for the excavation industry. Beacons are equipped with class-1 artificial intelligence that handles cryptographic protocols, secure broadcasts and beacon security itself. In event of beacon failure Triskelion-Amstrong guarantees replacement on-site.



[h3]Astrogation Charts Update[/h3]
Recent ringwide scans revealed new residential and excavations stations established in the A-ring. Due to inaccuracy of telescopic surveys captains that encounter the stations are encouraged to disclose exact positions upon encounter.

[h3]Excavators Life[/h3]
Sixth episode of “Excavators Life” is to premiere on Enceladus Entertainment Network. “The Research” tells a story of a young astrogeologist on a quest to uncover why her mundane research is attracting so much unusual attention.

[h3]Autopilot OTA updates[/h3]
New OTA upgrade for autopilot software is distributed station-wide. Improved spatial awareness highly improves rotational accuracy of all ships, from small mining ships to cargo freighters. The upgrade is free of charge, and captains that took the liberty to tune their autopilot settings to overcome previous shortcomings are encouraged to revert to defaults.



[h3]New Stock[/h3]
This quarter the resupply run from Earth brought in extra hardware available for sale at your local upgrade shop. There are a total of three new torches available for retrofit at very reasonable prices. Reserve yours today!

[h3]Pest Extermination Warning[/h3]
Outside of new stock, recent resupply runs brought in new species of bugs. Following were exterminated by pest control:

• Tuning options for thrusters and torches were not respected outside of the tuning shop.
  
• Number of fixes to the conversation subsystem, including conversations not starting, conversations ending abruptly when other ships were in the area, crashes caused by talking to dead people and missing dialogue options.
  
• You could encounter a ship that you own and keep in the garage flying in the rings.
  
• Search and Rescue ships tried to pick up all ships they were friendly towards with no regard if they needed help. This led the S & R team to try and pick up your ship when you were helping them.
  
• Fixed a graphical glitch that caused the gamma slider to show psychedelic colors on Intel GPU cards.
• Gamma slider helper image was adjusted to be more useful on the bright side of the spectrum.
  
• Fixed thruster parameters for number of ships.
  
• Swapping in and out certain reaction control systems could make you lose money.
  
• Fixed display glitch of the mineral market that caused charts to cover the values.
  
• Fixed cutscene bug that could cause cargo pods and claim beacons to be shot away at sub-orbital velocities if you fast-forward through the initial animation.
  
• Actions applied by excavators now have an equal and opposite reaction.
  
• Patched microseismic scanner software won’t show minerals that are not present in ore chunks anymore.
  
• New audio system for the thrusters, removing number of audio glitches and improving overall audio of your thrusters firing.
  
• Number of math fixes to bugs that caused the game to behave slightly differently on lower framerates.
  
• Fixes to physics engine that could cause a small, fast moving object to embed inside a ship or station.
  
• New achievements to unlock.
  

[h3]Flight School[/h3]
Most prominent feature of this release is an improved tutorial. I gathered first-impression feedback and changed the tutorial based on them, to make your initial spaceflight experience smoother.

If you would like to try out the tutorial again, remember to enable it in the settings menu - and start a new game.

[h3]Constant Improvement[/h3]

• Optimized save game format. Saves are now smaller and load faster, even when they contain the same information.
  
• Changed the way mineral market loads and displays data - instead of creating entire market data when you enter Enceladus station, it loads it as needed - when you are browsing the market.
  
• Gamma correction slider will allow you to brighten or darken the screen based on your individual preference and lighting conditions.
  
• Added a separate graphics settings tab.
  
• Fixed a bug in gamepad controls that caused autopilot to go nuts - or even crash - when you touched the right control stick just the right way.
  
• Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage systems will now report their stored energy to the ship's computer.
  
• Additional dialogue options for ring-racing crew.
  

Titan Heavy Industries released a semi-autonomous Cargo Container series. Your container stays attached to the ship and takes over all your processed minerals. When you are nearly full, you can release the container which will shortly power up and return to the Enceladus station on its own.

When you hire a miner wingman he will actively assist you with the dig and give you all the output he gathers on a digsite. Ships are now able to follow you through astrogation jumps, making wingmen much more useful.



[h3]Military Retrofits[/h3]

Nakamura Dynamics released patch 1.06 to it’s Military-grade autopilot, unlocking the much anticipated firing solutions module. Tactical overlay now shows ranges and coverage of all compatible mining tools. Nakamura released the patch free of charge via OTA upgrade.



[h3]New Safety Protocols[/h3]

Due to new safety regulations, all on-board life support systems have to be equipped with adrenal purge modules. While many pilots enjoy the benefits of on-demand stimulation there were a number of accidents related with adrenal overstimulation. Purge modules are able to clean pilots' bloodstream to immediately relieve crew from any adverse effects.

With numerous accidents reported as a result of pilots retrofitting incompatible gimbal systems with cargo containers, gimbal systems must now be mounted with a thruster safety system, limiting gimbals to safer angles while in close proximity to cargo, ships, and personnel.

To ensure safety of crew, it’s now mandatory for cargo bay monitoring software to include audible feedback when a new object enters the cargo area. Audio has to be broadcast on priority ship intercom.



[h3]Extinct Bugs[/h3]

Recent patches to the universe have eliminated a number of glitches in the simulation. This time I managed to exterminate all the known bugs. If you want to have more bugfixes in future releases, someone needs to find new bugs.

List of bugs fixed and minor adjustments:

• Patched a number of memory leaks that caused the game to run slowly with time and crash when you left the title screen on for an extended period of time.
  
• Improved performance of background rock particles.
  
• When your crew goes on a leave, they will be removed from the crew immediately after you agree and will return automatically when their leave ends.
  
• Fixed file description and metadata of Windows executable.
  
• There were a number of problems with docking arms not being able to adjust to heavy ships or using too much force. They interface with your ship computer now and will release you automatically when you apply thrust or engage the autopilot, and the interface allows proper assessment of your ship mass.
  
• Numerous fixes to NPC AI - they won’t blow their traps now, are able to follow you more closely, are better at mining and fighting.
  
• Excavators and grinders are drawing power now, and using that power to be much stronger than before, being able to hold your cargo with ease.
  
• Improved all autopilots memory, allowing them to process not only current thruster load, but also past one. This allows much more precise maneuvering and prevents thruster flutter.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused parts of Enceladus station menus to be unclickable on small screens.
  
• The rocket equation computing the amount of propellant you need to reserve for fast burn to Enceladus had an error, showing roughly twice as much as was really needed.
  
• AI is now able to avoid big objects, like space habitats or phage stations.
  
• Sparks caused by microwave discharge are darker now and will not throw the auto-exposure of your reconnaissance drone camera off so badly.
  
• All mineral processing units were re-balanced. Most units will process ore faster, but also require much more energy to do so.
  
• Added verbose warning when you are near the rim of the rings to prevent accidental returns to Enceladus station.
  
• Fixed a graphical glitch of ion drives which was causing a spike of light to shine backwadrs from the plume.
  
• Nuggets that contain 100% of water will be processed by MPU now.
  
• If you sold your output to a habitat in the rings, a dive summary would still pop up upon return, prompting you to store or sell nothing.
  
• Fixed a race condition that caused the game to freeze for up to a couple of minutes sometimes.
  
• Discovered points of interests in the dive map were disappearing in some circumstances.
  
• Increased your chance to find and trade with space habitats.
  
• Fixed all head-up-displays that were displaced by a couple of pixels, causing all the data following physical objects to bit off-center.
  
• Point Defence will not try to mine habitats and space stations anymore. Unless hostile.
  
• There were a number of issues if you leveled your crew to level cap, including rare crashes, ability to repair fully repaired hardware and other weird effects.
  
• Adjusted all the ship physical models to not be so bouncy and absorb part of the impact energy.
  
• Propellant won’t leak out from cold and docked ships anymore, including your ship at Enceladus station.
  
• Cargo area of K37 was bit off, which caused some ore that was touching outside of the excavator being treated as captured, which disengaged autopilot tracking.
  
• Removed obsolete [pay xxx E$] tags that were left in some dialogue files. All choices that affect you in any way are now clearly decorated.
  
• Changed the way Ganymedian Anarchy views the player to make sure that they always hail you when you get near. Their defences were re-balanced to not be so accurate and deadly.
  
• It was possible to open two menu screens on Enceladus if you clicked fast enough.
  
• You could get the same conversation from the ring-racing crew if they were curious at first, but you spooked them after they talked to you.
  
• Hitting a habitat with a microwave now produces the correct visual effect.
  
• Fixed a dialogue loophole that could lock you out from all interactions with miners if you were just a little nice to them.