StarFrame Update — July 26, 2026

🚀 Flight

• Warp actually accelerates now. Every hull in the game accelerated at the same slow rate, so no ship ever reached the warp speed printed on its own info panel. Warp acceleration is 4× higher: a 300 km crossing drops from about 3 minutes to about 1 minute 45, and the faster hulls finally reach their top speed instead of never getting there.
• Your ship no longer surges while cruising at warp. The flight assist and the travel autopilot were fighting each other every tick, nudging your speed up and down the whole way. They no longer overlap.
• Ship info shows your real warp speed. It was printing the pre-warp figure — six times lower than the truth.

⚔️ Combat

• Lock progress now shows on the target panel at the top of the screen. It used to be drawn on the target itself, which at close range put it inside the target's own wireframe — exactly when you needed it most.
• The crosshair and aim indicator are readable against bright geometry. Both now carry a dark halo so they stop vanishing into a wireframe mid-dogfight.

🖥️ UI & Quality of Life

• VSync, locked to your monitor's refresh rate, on by default. Fixes the tearing when you turn quickly. If you would rather run uncapped, switch it off in SETTINGS → VIDEO.
• Chat: hold backspace to delete, and Escape cancels the chat box instead of opening the main menu.
• Alt+Tab no longer leaves you facing the wrong way when you come back to the game.
• Stars are smaller and dimmer. They were nearly twice the apparent size of the moon, which made deep space feel close.
• Warp has its own look. Dust now stretches into streaks and stops flying past at a distracting rate, so speed reads as streak length rather than a blur.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Fixed mining laser running on a mined-out asteroid. When a rock was depleted it vanished from your screen but the server kept your lock, so the laser kept draining capacitor and producing nothing for the whole ten-minute regeneration. The lock now drops the moment the rock is spent.
• Fixed "PRESS F TO LOOT" appearing on wrecks with nothing to take. Almost every kill produced that prompt and then an empty window. The prompt now tells the truth — lock the wreck to see what it holds, and run your salvager if the contents are still sealed.
• Fixed other players' job errors appearing on your screen. A refused refine or build toasted everyone docked at that station, not just the pilot who tried it.
• Fixed the hull bar rendering yellow instead of station-orange.

🔩 Misc

• Tutorial: the longest lessons are split into shorter pages instead of one wall of text.
• Job-slot messages no longer tell you to research more slots — extra slots come from the premium Parallel skills.
• Decorative belt debris can no longer be targeted. It was never mineable; locking it just idled your laser.

Restart Steam to pick up the update. This release updates the game client and the servers together — flight will feel wrong until your client updates, so restart Steam before flying.