This is an unstable release, containing big changes that may introduce new bugs. Major new changes include the following:

New features and changes to game mechanics:

• Gamerules are now specific to individual save files and can be modified from within the game through a new button on the main menu. Old save files will automatically have this button available to them, while new save files will have to edit their gamerules to set the "Lock gamerules" value to false from the start scenario menu. This can also be used to disable the button on old save files, if you don't want to be able to change the gamerules for your existing saves.
• Save files that belong to the same pilot will now have shared information stored in a pilot file. Pilot files are located in a "pilots" folder next to the "saves" folder in the game's appdata.
• Homing weapon projectiles can now target minables asteroids.
• NPCs will deprioritize hostile ships that are already targeted by overwhelming firepower.
• The player can now receive information from scanners on escorts, instead of only the flagship.

Changes and additions to content:

• A continuation of the Patir Mystery mission chain.
• Various balance changes to missile tracking and alien secondary weapons.
• Added more Quarg ships as reinforcements in "Wanderers: Kor Efret 3" to account for reduced capabilities of individual Quarg ships following the Quarg ship and outfit rework.
• Removed various missions with LLM generated content, which violated our strict no-AI usage policy.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed various crashes, including ones that could occur when capturing mission NPCs, by encountering message buoys while having no active missions, or when using a gridfire to mine asteroids.
• Message buoys referring to the bombings of Geminus and Martini will now only appear after those events occur.
• Fixed an infinite money glitch, and various other fixes to the outfitter and shipyard caused by the recent shop UI improvements.

For a complete list of changes, as well as further detail about the summarized changes, see the changelog. Special thanks to everyone who contributed to this release: @acolden-IAS, @Amazinite, @Anarchist2, @Azure3141, @beccabunny, @bene-dictator, @carlo-bramini, @Daeridanii1, @Eatswind, @GefullteTaubenbrust2, @Jan-Braaksma, @kaiboyjiang, @NellyDevo, @nickshanks, @Nova1422, @RedTechGamer236, @solardawning, @Saugia, @Terin, @TheGiraffe3, @ThrawnCA, @tibetiroka, @TomGoodIdea, @UnorderedSigh, @warp-core, and @xobes.

We also have a Google form where we're looking for feedback on this release. Head over there to tell us your thoughts!

As well as the forums here, you can also talk about the release on the GitHub Discussion for this release.