V2.1

[space-admiral]

Gameplay Updates

• the asteroid field waypoint has been replaced with individual asteroids, and each asteroid now has an extraction rate limit before it becomes unstable. That means you can't just mine the same asteroid over and over again. Eventually we'll add some way of ballparking the rate limit, but for now you can assume about 10 extractions per minute before you risk the asteroid becoming unstable.
• starting system markets now start begin low trade volume, and will increase over time as players trade with the market. This means you'll want to trade consistently with the market to promote growth. A new enum for ActivityLevel has been added to each trade good in the market, which will tell you how healthy the trade good is at that market.
• fuel is being tweaked to become more of a focus to maintain your fleet. We've made fuel a bit more scarce and decreased the fuel capacity of smaller ships. Players will want to make regular runs to gas giants to siphon fuel, or buy hydrocarbons and supply them to the local refinery to promote fuel exports.
• players can now siphon hydrocarbons from gas giants using the new siphon ship and gas processor module. Use the new siphon endpoint to siphon gases from a gas giant. Surveys are not part of this mechanic, so siphoning is fairly straight forward.
• optimized cargo modules have been added so that your ships can carry more cargo with the new modules, with the intention to make freighters and haulers more useful.
• the systems seeder has been completely rewritten and the code cleaned up. Many of the systems have a focus (mining, refining, manufacturing, etc) and we'll be able to continue to make systems more interesting over time. This release focused mostly on making the starting systems a little more interesting.
• jump gates have been reworked to have direct connections to other jump gates. This means you can't jump to a system that doesn't have a jump gate (use a warp drive if you want to explore systems without jump gates). Ships will still enter a cooldown after a jump based on distance, to prevent players from jumping too far too quickly. We might add multiple jump gates per system with unique connections in the future.
• waypoints now have modifiers, which are temporary conditions that affect the waypoint. For example, an asteroid can become "unstable" which makes extracting from it more difficult. We'll be adding more modifiers in the future.
• jumping from a jump gate now requires a unit of antimatter purchased from the market. Players will have to keep these markets supplied or the price of jumping will increase over time.
• we've added websockets to the API but have not documented these yet. The Playground uses these websockets to subscribe to departures in the system, showing your ships and others as they travel around. We'll be adding more events to the websockets in the future and documenting them. Right now the websockets are experimental and may be unstable.
• waypoints can now be under construction and players can supply the construction with materials using the new endpoint. Right now only jump gates are under construction, and we'll expand on this mechanic in the future.
• ship endpoints were previously "locked" on all requests, but will now only be locked on non-GET requests.
• we've added some query filters to the system waypoints endpoint so you can filter by waypoint type and traits. There are now far more waypoints per system than before, so you may need to use these filters or get comfortable with pagination to find what you're looking for.
• a new survey ship has been added to the game, with no new changes to how surveying works.

API Updates

• added new endpoints for /construction and /construction/supply to help complete waypoints that are under construction
• added new endpoints for /my/ships/{shipSymbol}/siphon to siphon gases from gas giants
• added some new enum values to WaypointTrait, ShipType, ShipModule, ActivityLevel, SupplyLevel
• added supply and activity enums to ShipyardShip and MarketTradeGood
• added new query filters to /systems/{symbol}/waypoints to filter by type and traits
• added cooldown to the /my/ships/{shipSymbol}/jump response

Breaking Changes - Game Mechanics

• asteroids are now individual waypoints, and asteroids have a rate limit before they become unstable. We'll be tweaking this new mechanic with playtesting, but for now you can assume about 10 extractions per minute before the asteroid becomes unstable. You can check waypoint modifiers to determine when you are exceeding a stable extraction rate, where you will first see "CRITICAL_LIMIT" warning you to reduce your extraction rate, and then "UNSTABLE" when you have exceeded the extraction rate and the asteroid is unstable.
• previously asteroids had consistent yields based on the waypoint traits, but now some yields are more likely than others (still based on the traits). That means each asteroid will have a unique composition of yields, which will make it more interesting to find the best asteroids to mine. We plan to also exhaust asteroids in the future.
• agents now start in a random starting system when they join a faction, and each starting system is roughly the same. You will need to complete the jump gate in your system if you want to travel to other systems, including the connected home system for your faction. Each starting system has some unique imports and exports, and the faction home system has better ships and mountsq available for purchase.

Breaking Changes - API

• the following modules have been removed: JUMP_DRIVE_I, JUMP_DRIVE_II, JUMP_DRIVE_III
• the following waypoint type is now deprecated: ASTEROID_FIELD
• jump gates now have direct connections to other jump gates