🔧 Bug Fix
Ore hold stuck one cycle short of full. Snorrsen reported his lasers going quiet with the hold reading 993 of 1000 and the log insisting it was full, and Rioriel had the same in the Rat at 1992 of 2000, with the trick of re-targeting a rock to squeeze out one last cycle.
The cause was two mining lasers finishing their cycles in the same instant. Both deposits were banked correctly, but the two replies could come back in the wrong order, so the earlier, lower figure overwrote the one that had actually topped the hold out.
Your ship then thought there was still room, the lasers had already stopped, and nothing restarted them. The hold figure can no longer step backwards mid-session, so when it fills it reads full, stays full, and you know it is time to unload. Thanks to Snorrsen and Rioriel for the clear reports.
✨ Improvement
Getting the galaxy ready for a bigger crowd
Over the last couple of weeks a lot of the work has been under the hood rather than in front of you, so here is what it was all for.
Forged Space is heading for Steam, and a Steam launch means a very different kind of day: hundreds of new captains arriving in the same hour rather than a handful a day. So we spent time finding out exactly how many captains the server can carry comfortably before anyone feels it. The answer, with room to spare, is about 300 at once.
Everything since has been about making sure that when we hit that mark the game stays smooth for the people already flying rather than slowing down for everyone. Some of it you have already noticed. Your login now survives a server restart, so a deploy no longer throws you out mid trade (though a planned update will still ask you to log back in, so you are always on the newest version).
Other captains’ ships glide across the belt instead of hopping. A big pile of old code from before the unified combat arena has been retired, which makes the whole thing lighter and easier to keep healthy.
The piece we finished this week is a queue. If the galaxy ever fills up, a correct login will not be refused, you will simply be told where you are in the line and let in automatically as captains log off. It is switched off for now, because we are nowhere near the limit, but it is built and tested and ready for launch day.
Beyond that, the plan is to run more than one copy of the galaxy on the same universe, so that when one fills up the next takes the overflow, with everyone still trading on the same Exchange, chatting in the same channels and sharing the same systems.
That is the bigger job and it is next on the list. None of this changes how you play. It just means that when the crowd turns up, the door is wide enough.