Drydocks now available for lease
Independently owned ships requiring repairs can now lease the dedicated drydock infrastructure of the Enceladus Prime station, freeing up the docking ring area. The station has a dedicated drydock bay with two large drydocks that can accommodate ships of up to three thousand tons of mass. There is an additional four thousand cubic meters of repair and maintenance space and various specialised tools and equipment to assist with repairs, refits, and upgrades. The lease rates are quite reasonable, and the station staff are happy to help with any necessary paperwork. For more information on drydock leasing services, please contact your local dock manager.
Lawsuits over obfuscated diagnostic protocol
A leading producer of laser mining equipment, Coherent Light, was sued last week over obfuscation of the diagnostic protocols of their hardware. While all their CL-series lasers conformed to regulations requiring mandatory universal diagnostic interface, most lasers' firmware used a proprietary protocol extension, which hid crucial diagnostic information from end-users and independent repair shops. In a motion to settle the dispute, Coherent Light released today the full specification of their protocol extension, third parties to perform allowing detailed hardware diagnostics.
Obonto USV-R recalls
Obonto Microengineering issued a recall of a popular, entry-level reconnaissance craft, USR-V. Their camera lens was prone to excessive wear from micrometeorite impacts. In a surprising move, Obonto is replacing the faulty lens with their brand new series-W product, which is not only said to be much more resistant to impacts but also features an extended field of view. While most independent contractors welcome this development, some tech bloggers claim that this move is a thinly veiled attempt to run extensive field trials of unproven optic technology.
Maintenance Logs
- Changed how repairs and replacement work. Instead of automatically skipping time ahead, any ship you perform maintenance upon will have work performed by the Enceladus repair crew while you can peruse other activities. You can wait for the ship repairs in one of many station’s hotels or take another ship for a dive.
- Replacing your ship's hardware in the Equipment menu, which would result in changing used or damaged items for brand new ones, will now incur identical maintenance downtime for your ship as replacing these items in the Repair menu.
- Time required for ship maintenance is now listed in the Repair menu and on the dock information billboard.
- Maintenance crews fixing your ship are now visible on the Enceladus Prime main menu screen.
- Having damaged weapons or manipulators will no longer stop you from launching from Enceladus.
- When your ship fails pre-flight inspection due to pending maintenance, you will now have the option to book that time at the most affordable capsule hotel on the station from the inspection menu directly.
- Obonto USV-R reconnaissance craft now has a wide-angle lens capable of zooming out 20% further.
- Lasers and microwaves can be damaged and wear out. While all brand-new equipment will perform the same way as it used to, ship captains relying on high-performance hardware tuned to its absolute limit will now experience hardware failures.
- Old used ships can now have damaged or worn weapons installed. This also reduces the purchase price accordingly.
- Re-balanced AR1500 damage and repair cost. It is now cheaper to repair and more resistant to kinetic impacts, but it will wear out quicker and is easier to overheat.
- Ship logs will not show how much time has passed on instant events. They used to show one or two seconds per event, which was confusing.
- The dive target selection screen will always show Hohmann transfer when you enter that menu.
- Expanded description for laser tuning.
- New dialogue options when approaching a derelict ship that is about to be salvaged by a licenced S&R craft.
- All side cradles will behave the same way when being powered down. Left cradles used to fold into another spot than the right ones.
- AR1500 Salvage Manipulator will load up your ship more reliably when it catches an item next to your excavator opening.
- You can now toggle the automatic autopilot configuration when plotting the astrogation course.
- Excavator will not get displaced on ship builds with powerful thrust during hot burns.
- Improved thread safety for the background loader. This makes loading assets faster and prevents crashes experienced on some systems if you try to skip a cutscene that eagerly hides the loading screen.
- Fixed missing fonts on HAL HUD - it will now use the correct font and display information in all the supported languages.
- Fixed scaling of some displays on OCP-209 HUD - they will now show complete information in all supported languages.
- Updated translations.