ΔV: Rings of Saturn News

• The game now can run the display engine at a separate speed than your physics engine. If you are able to display more frames than your CPU can compute the movement will be interpolated to make it appear smooth. This allows you to achieve a higher framerate even if your CPU is not able to keep up with the physics simulation, but your GPU is capable enough to render the results.
  
• DTSS can now simplify the simulation further if your framerate was about to drop. With the new physics interpolation feature, this should result in smoother performance.
  
• Miners you encounter at the very rim of the rings are now much less curious and more likely to go about their business without pestering you constantly.
  
• The personal disposition of the NPC you meet for the first time will now have some variation over the faction default. This makes encounters more varied.
  
• AI can now get impatient.
  
• A new tuning option for EIAA-1337 autopilot allows you to ignore low-velocity impacts. This allows the autopilot to push against lighter rocks at safe velocities and not dodge ores that haul drones throw at it.
  
• Reworked the ringraces. You will now receive a race reward without leaving the rings, and the racing team is able to recognize failed starts.
  
• HUD previews in the Equipment menu will now show the entire HUD preview in all screen resolutions.
  
• Enceladus's main menu will not cover up the in-game time indicator on a small monitor.
  
• Kinetic damage of pulse lasers could vary when the framerate was changed during the game.
  
• Improved performance of encounters with multiple drones.
  
• Further improved burnfinding performance of the AI - both NPC ships and EIAA-1337 autopilot.
  
• Improved performance of the background particle system.
  
• Updated translations.
  

[h3]Mandatory IFF Pilot training[/h3]
Following a number of accidents involving the misuse of autonomous weapons, all the licenced pilots operating in the Enceladus space are required to undergo annual training on the operation of autonomous targeting systems. While the Enceladus Corp spokesman claims that the sole purpose of the training is to increase the safety of the station occupants, a number of mining guilds protest this mandatory activity as an additional thinly veiled tax imposed by the station.



[h3]New community patch for EIAA-1337 autopilot[/h3]
A new community patch to the infamous autonomous EIAA-1337 autopilot reached a release candidate stage today. Taking advantage of the MIT licence of the software, a group of developers introduced an overhaul to the notoriously sparse visual interface of the device in order to expose its internal decision process. The merge request quotes a capability to “finally understand what the damaged thing is trying to do and perhaps not fly with your finger on the power switch all the time”. Elon Interstellar already integrated the changes into their next OTA update.



[h3]New simulation theory breakthrough[/h3]
Researchers led by Dr Bostrom announced today a new breakthrough in the field of simulation theory; the idea that we live in a universe run as an immensely complex simulation. New experiments seem to bind well-known quantum phenomena with the simulation theory, suggesting that the universe seems to be approximating the quantum results when no one is observing them. Dr Bostrom suggests that we could abuse observed phenomenons to introduce additional shortcuts in quantum reasoning algorithms, significantly increasing the computing capacity of modern devices.



[h3]Maintenance Logs[/h3]

• Added the Pilot tab, with a full-screen LIDAR, the ability to hail ships and configure the Identify Friend and Foe settings for your ship.
  
• New Tactical Awareness markers for friendly and hostile ships, as identified by your onboard IFF, make it easy to spot hostiles on screen and estimate the damage inflicted.
  
• EIAA-1337 autonomic autopilot is now equipped with visual feedback exposing the internal decision processes of the system.
  
• Extended Point Defence targeting protocol, with tuneable targeting criteria, ability to ignore obscured targets and optimize the turret turn ratio.
  
• Enhanced the Geologist Mineral Markers. Your ship can now display 400% more and when they overflow, the marker with the least value is expired first, making the marker display more consistent and useful when mining overzealously.
  
• Performance improvements for both the Enceladus station and the Rings.
  
• A number of stability upgrades.
  
• Radiators of Antonoff-Titan K225 will not remain on screen when the ship is exploding.
  
• After an astrogation jump, ships and stations could ignore you if you arrived in their comms range.
  
• Adjusted the hearing-impaired visual aid on the edges of the screen to be more subtle - in line with the music shifts that they are representing.
  
• Improved AI collision prediction. Both NPC ships and autonomic autopilots are now better at detecting collisions and can navigate better around large objects. Your pilot's adrenaline boost will also not trigger so often when you navigate around large objects.
  
• HUD size slider can make the HUD even bigger now, which is useful on vertical displays.
  
• A side-mounted Cargo Container or Mining Companion would appear to be above an SPC Gungnir assembly.
  
• Game engine updated to Godot 3.5, bringing new performance features, asynchronous shader compilation and the latest stability enhancements.
  
• Using the kinetic point defence turrets now counts towards the achievement. This change is retroactive.
  
• Improved the error reporting handler.
  
• Fixed a display glitch on the cargo bays mineral scanner display.