Passenger transport
Trade nodes represent a commodity market, these are present in cities and space stations. They work with a fully simulated supply/demand system with stocks and trade orders.
I have extended the behavior to passengers, meaning that tourists, migrants, and soldiers are now part of the trade node simulation. Of course, it works very differently to the commodity market, and instead of "orders", transporting passengers behave as transportation contracts, each of these contracts being created when taking a group of passengers with a common source, destination, and timeframe.
Passengers are not generated randomly, they appear to fulfill actual migrations (tourism and ground combat is implemented yet, but will rely on this system).
A ship needs to use its cargo space to fit passenger modules, and due to how contracts work it is best to have a fast ship for passenger transport.
For this occasion, I have added a new ship.
This ship hasn't found any transportation contract and is returning to her anchorage.
Scavenging, looting, and "rescuing"
It is now possible to dock to a wreck and begin scavenging operations. Scavenging used to be limited to looting the intact components and inventory of a wreck, but now wrecks can be entirely dismantled. These heavy dismantling operations need adequate modules and crew and take time. It is similar to mining, but more lucrative, and with potentially more risks.
Escape pod rescuing is a bit more polished now, with proper distress calls and more interactions and consequences when selling/ransoming/liberating someone.
Last but not least, a lot of work was done on the AI which now is able to perform these actions proactively. Any captain will consider the opportunity to scavenge a wreck, recover cargo, or rescue someone, depending on his ship, his traits, and his current mission (a very large and expensive cargo will avoid doing small and risky scavenging...).
The AI behind the recovery (and delivery) of escape pods is also part of the "police" system being developed.
Happiness and migrations
Cities, regions, and industries are being overhauled since a few weeks, this is a huge work in progress, but I can already give you details on the related migration system :
Happiness relies mainly on the population's capacity to fulfill its needs, especially the vital and basic ones.
All vital goods are available and the population has enough income to buy them from the local market.
The political "friction", resulting from the difference in ethics between the population and the current regimes also plays a major role.
Happiness, distance and faction's relationships then determine the attractiveness of each city (and its regions), creating migration demand in the trade nodes.
Of course, for interplanetary migrations, this demand needs to be fulfilled by passenger transports.
Migrations also happen internally, between regions of the same city, and work similarly to intercity migrations, but the population is virtually transported instead.
Cultural clash
Immigration can be a quick way of increasing a colony's population, but all migrants will arrive in the capital's region, which can be a burden beyond this region's capacity. The city's attractivity is indeed determined by the mean happiness of all its territory, not the capital. An out-of-control immigration will probably turn the capital and its surrounding regions into a turmoiled giant slum.
This immigration can also have a negative impact on stability. Migrants bring their ethical views and customs with them, which can be incompatible with the ideology of the natives, this creates temporary cultural friction, lowering happiness, especially with a highly xenophobic ethic. Additionally, this can be a terrible thing if their ideology contradicts with the one promoted by the local regime. Any regime tries to educate a population to its ideology, a significant flow of radical immigrants can suppress this effort, by shifting the population's ethics to the opposite spectrum.
Each ethic difference creates friction (here an example of a perfectly balanced regime with no policy)
Better ore generation
I have overhauled how ore deposits are generated on planets, ore availability is less spread out. Some "ore" follow specific rules, such as coal or petrol that only appear with a historical biosphere, chondrite on asteroids and water which can be generated despite a dry climate, to simulate aquifers and oasis.
