✨ Improvement
A change of heart on the field stations. When we launched them we said the stations’ own kills leave nothing behind worth salvaging. Having watched them at work, we have changed our minds. A pirate shot down by a repaired station now leaves an ordinary wreck, with the same salvage it would have left if you had shot it down yourself.
Send your salvage drones over and help yourself. The station still does not pay anyone for the kill itself, so there is no bounty and no assist, but whatever is in the wreck is yours if you get there first. The wrecks do not hang around forever, though. One that nobody strips will break apart on its own after a period of time, so if you see one drifting near the station, do not leave it too long.
Combat Drone Panel Change
A tidier combat screen for drone captains. Until now, every type of drone you launched added its own panel to the strip along the bottom of the combat screen. With combat drones, defence drones, repair drones and salvage drones all out at once, that strip stretched almost the full width of the screen. Captains playing at 1920 x 1080, the smallest screen we support, were finding the bottom of the screen rather cramped, and even on bigger screens it meant a lot of back and forth with the mouse to keep an eye on everything.
Your drones are now gathered together in a single panel with a tab for each type you have out, each showing how many are deployed. Combat drones and turrets come first, since those are the ones in the line of fire. Pick a tab and it stays picked, and launching another type of drone will not pull you away from the one you are watching. If drones on a tab you are not looking at start taking damage, their tab flashes red so you know to check on them.
Prefer the old wide layout with every drone type laid outside by side? You can have it back. Open your Account, go to Preferences, and under Combat Preferences switch off Tabbed Drone Panels.