✨ Improvement
The NPC Missions and Pirate Intelligence panels on the right of your screen have had a slight makeover. Both are now made of tinted glass, amber for your missions and red for the pirates, so the stars drift by behind them instead of being blocked out by a flat black box. Each mission and each hideout now sits on its own soft card, which makes a busy list much easier to scan at a glance. The missions panel is also a little slimmer, and Pirate Intelligence has a neater header now that the hideout count has gone. The hideouts are listed right below it, after all.
Blue Print Cap Level Removed
Good news for planners. You no longer need to reach a particular captain level before you can buy a blueprint. If you can afford it, it is yours, in every blueprint store across the galaxy. That means you can pick up the designs you are working towards early, put together the materials at your own pace, and be ready to build the moment you are able. What still decides whether you can actually build something is your skill, so keep training your manufacturing and the other crafting skills, and the store will still show you what each blueprint needs.
🌍 New Content – Asteroid Stations Come to Life!
Those orbital structures you keep flying past in asteroid fields and private fights are no longer just scenery. Each one now belongs to a real group from the system’s own power, has a crew living aboard, and will tell you exactly how it is doing if you point at it. Hover over a station to see its name, faction, population and status, and give it a click to hail it. Someone on duty will answer. Check out the mouse hover and hail then to get the status of repair.
The stations in the asteroid fields will start out under repair or in needs of a refit, and now you can fix them. Hail any field station and its duty officer will show you a repair manifest: the parts and materials the crew needs to get back on their feet.
Out on the frontier that means the kind of salvage you only pry out of pirate wrecks, things like Hull Frames, Power Coils and Station Equipment. In the quieter fields closer to home it is simpler fare, wire and water and a good deal of ore from the belt around you, so even captains in small ships can pitch in.
The station pays well for every delivery, and every captain’s contribution counts towards the same shared total, so a busy field can bring its station back online far faster than anyone could alone. Once the manifest is full, the station comes back to life, and it can look after itself.
Defence Systems
Its four defence batteries come online and will open fire on any pirate that strays too close, drawing their attention away from you. Park alongside a repaired station and you can go about your business in peace.
A repaired station also has work for you. Every department aboard posts contracts, and each captain gets their own board: ore runs for something that can only be found in local Asteroid field systems, salvage runs for parts from combat, drone orders, and passengers looking for a ride to somewhere in the system. Accept the ones you fancy, and they join your Active Missions and your mission tracker, and any ore you are hunting shows up in your mission ore picker in the field.
Hand them in back at the station for credits, Captain XP and Trade Experience, and a fresh contract takes its place fifteen minutes later. Passengers pay when they board and again when you drop them off because they did ask a favour. The further you are from the safety of the core systems, the bigger the jobs and the better the pay. Happy hunting, Captains.
🔧 Bug Fix
The Shield Slot Limits counter in your Ship Loadout now counts properly. It had been missing your first shield module entirely, so a ship with its only shield slot filled would proudly report Shields 0/1. It now shows the shields you actually have fitted. Thanks to Snorrsen for spotting it, and for remembering it all the way back from his Marauder days.
Reminder – Guides Site
Whether you have just climbed out of your first Marauder or you have been flying the frontier for months, guides.forgedspace.com is the place to go when you want to know more. There are over 130 guides covering every corner of the galaxy, from your first mining run and fitting your ship to crafting, trading and taking on pirate hideouts. Every patch note we have ever published is there too, so you can catch up on anything you missed or look back at how the game has grown. The best part is the search. It is the quickest answer to “where do I find that?” in known space. We are still looking for captains to help us fill out the mission guides. If you know a storyline inside out, or have a trick that saved you a lot of trouble, we would love you to share it. Get in touch with the team and help the next wave of captains find their way. guides.forgedspace.com