✨ Improvement
📦 Tidier Cargo Holds
Your General Cargo, Ore Hold and Salvage Hold now keep things in order. Everything is grouped by type, so resources sit together, then planetary goods, refined materials and commodities, and each group runs alphabetically. Until now the list came out in whatever order the stores happened to hand it over, which left the odd resource stranded among the commodities. Thanks to Orge Snorrsen for spotting it.
♻️ Recycle Your Consumables
The Stellar Recycling Division now takes consumables. Drones, missiles, kits and turrets made in a Molecular Assembler can be broken back down into their recipe’s ingredients at your crafted recycling rate. Choose an amount or hit Recycle all, and the panel shows exactly what you will get back before you commit. Returns are rounded down per ingredient, so a single small drone may come to nothing; recycling by the stack is the way to go. Shield boosters and Registry Permits cannot be recycled.
The list of things to recycle is now split into tabs for Weapons, Mining and Salvage, Ship Systems, Outpost and Corp, and Consumables, with the search box still looking across all of them. The How Recycling Works guide also had the skill bonus wrong: each Recycling level adds 0.2% to your return, not 0.02%.
⚡ Your Outpost Core Now Shows on the Power Tab
Every outpost has a core that keeps the lights on and its sub systems running, even before a reactor is fitted. It produces 5,000 power and uses all of it itself, so it has always been counted on both sides of your power total, but it never appeared anywhere you could see it. The Power tab now shows it as its own line, so your reactors plus the core add up to your maximum, and your buildings plus the core add up to what is in use. Thanks to Porrima for doing the sums.
⌨️ Fly Your Ship with the Keyboard
You can now pilot your ship around a system with the keyboard, just like in the combat arena. Use W, A, S and D or the arrow keys to fly up, left, down and right, and hold two together to fly on a diagonal. Let go and your ship comes to a stop right where it is. Your mouse works exactly as before, so use whichever feels best, or swap between them as you fly.
The keys only steer your ship when you are flying the map, so typing in chat or working in an open panel never sends you drifting off across the system.
🔧 Bug Fix
🛡️ Mining Defence Drones Now Need the Drone Skill Shown on Their Card
Heads up, captains: if you fly Mining Defence Drones, this one affects you. The launcher had been checking a much lower Drone skill than the item cards show, so higher tier defence drones could be launched well before you met their requirement. That is now fixed, and the card is the rule: Mk2 needs Drone 15, Mk3 needs Drone 25 and Mk4 needs Drone 35, the same ladder as combat drones.
Nothing has been taken away. Any defence drones you cannot launch yet stay safely in your hold until your Drone skill catches up, and your launcher will use the best tier you can fly in the meantime. If you would rather turn them into materials, the Recycling office now takes consumables too: choose an amount or hit Recycle all.
Thanks to Eridan Farnray for spotting it.