✨ Improvement
Mission Counters
Elkhorn asked why the arena’s mission readout told him his Pirate Dog Tags were “not in this field” while he was busy collecting them from the pirates in it. Fair point. The readout was only ever looking at the rocks, and dog tags do not come out of rocks. Loot missions are now tracked the same way ore missions are.
Take a dog tag contract, fly into any field or hideout, and the Mission line in the top bar shows how many you need and how many you are holding, climbing with every kill and turning green the moment you have enough to go home. While we were in there, the readout has been switched on in pirate hideouts as well.
Hideouts get them now
Hideouts have always had ore in their rocks, and they are where most dog tags get earned, but until tonight the Mission line only existed in asteroid belts. Now it works in both, and if you are carrying several missions the dropdown lets you choose which one to watch.
Trade Chat
The Exchange’s announcements in Trade chat have gone on a diet. “WANTED: 500 Fuel Cells at 75 CR each, see the Exchange’s Wanted board” is now “WANTED: 500 Fuel Cells @ 75 CR”, which fits on one line in the chat panel instead of three. You all know where the Wanted board is by now. The Gate Authority’s contracts keep the name of the gate they are for.
🔧 Bug Fix
The Galactic Exchange was opening underneath the NPC mission tracker, so anyone with the tracker expanded had its right-hand side covered. The Exchange now sits above it, as Navigation already did.
⚖️ Balance Change
Feris is the player nursery, and from today it is kept for the players it was built for. This one is on me. When the unified combat arena launched, the rule that stops a big hull farming easy pirates in safe space was meant to come with it. It did not.
I have only just noticed, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. So here is the rule, and for now it applies to one system only. In Feris, the four asteroid fields and the three pirate hideouts admit frigates, corvettes and mining vessels.
Cruisers and destroyers do not get in. Everything else in Feris is exactly as it was: dock, trade, manage your outpost, take missions, fly through. Every other system in the galaxy is untouched, and a cruiser can hunt any belt or base it could hunt yesterday, anywhere but here.
Why Feris. Every captain starts there, and the pirates in its belts are training fodder for a Marauder learning to shoot. A cruiser sitting in one end of Asteroid Field Delta all afternoon turns that nursery into a farm, and takes the fights the new players need. Sixty three other systems are open to a big hull. This one asks. If you try to enter in a ship Feris will not take, the game tells you so and lists what will. Staff are under the same rule as everyone else.
I will keep reviewing the logs (as I have been) and may filter the Mining class further but I think this initial Nursery type approach will work for now.