This new experimental update brings with it a much needed overhaul of the ship flight model and a re-balance of ship systems.
Thrusters are now balanced based on ship weight. So heavy ships now need a lot of thrusters in order to turn while small ships need fewer. We've also taken a long hard look and changed the power consumption rates of a lot of devices in the game as well as their build costs and weight. This has the possibility that many of your ships will no longer function like you expect. And some ships such as purely solar powered ships will have trouble warping.
We’ve balanced ship flight more towards warp rather than regular flight so during normal flight your fuel is consumed at a lower rate than when you are warping. Warp is now much more costly in terms of power and increases based on your ship's weight.
In addition we are also adding a new loot mechanic which is tied in with the steam inventory. You can find new data cartridges in the world or you can receive them as mission rewards. On the starter stations you will find a new decoder terminal. Once you insert the data cartridge the decoder will analyse it and give you a random number of rewards. With a chance to receive a new armor piece skin.
These skins will be tied to your steam account and placed in your inventory they can be traded and sold in the steam marketplace just like any other steam item.
The new armor skins can be applied to your character through the character customizations tab in the menu. Do note that you still need to build an armor set ingame and equip it before the new item shows on your character.
Note that these are not all of the changes we are making for the upcoming patch, in the coming days we will be looking at your feedback and making changes based on that as well as adding more balancing tweaks.
For full patch notes, and to leave feedback, see here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/363360/discussions/4/1473095331510658047/
Instructions on how to join the experimental branch can be found here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/363360/discussions/4/350542145693906320/
Thank you all for playing and see you starside!
-The Split Polygon Team