Patch notes

Highlights

• Galaxy Gates: six gates, and the Chrono-Gate needs 2 parts (100). A spin costs 100 Thulium (5) and finds a gate part with a 13 % chance (10 %). The part is of one of six gates, each equally likely: the Chrono-Gate and the five solo gates Alpha Rift, Beta Breach, Gamma Foundry, Delta Siege and Omega Vault (a sixth of the 13 % each, 2.17 %). The Chrono-Gate takes about 9,100 Thulium on average to complete, every season (we aimed at about 10,000); the five solo gates need 11 / 26 / 54 / 87 / 108 parts. After 24 spins without a part the chance rises with every spin, and after 47 spins without one the next spin is certain to find a part. The Chrono-Gate's parts reset at the wipe; the parts of the solo gates stay.
• A spin that finds no part pays a prize: laser ammo of x2 or better, Tier II and III rockets, now and then a magic item or a skin case. Every spin is charged, a complete Chrono-Gate included.
• Solo gate runs have waves and no timer on a wave. You fly a gate alone, in an arena of your own, with three lives. Every wave starts after a 5-second countdown (the first and the boss's too), ends when its last alien dies, and your progress is saved after each wave. Delta (wave 18) and Omega (wave 17) have one optional N.U.K.E. wave of 250 Seekers that you may skip during its countdown (a skipped wave pays nothing); Omega's waves 22 to 24 are elite (50 % more hull, shield and damage). You can leave a run and resume it later at the saved wave; a wipe ends a run that is open and gives its parts back.
• Every solo gate ends with one boss. The bosses of Beta, Gamma and Omega change phase at set hull levels (50 %, 50 %, and 70 % and 35 %) and cannot be hurt for 3 seconds between phases. Alpha's Enhanced Phantasm shoots; Beta's Enhanced Bulwark fires four Dormant Lances in its second half; Gamma's Elite Crystalys calls ten Goombahs; Delta's Siege Construct drops meteors and fires six Lances; Omega's Guardian calls Bulwarks and Phantasms, blasts a ring and, at the end, enrages.
• A cleared solo gate pays its table, once (credits, XP, honor, Thulium, the gate's ore, plates, Power Cores and ammunition; the table is below), and the items are Marketable like a drop. The Thulium obeys the cap on the gates (half of what you spent on spins), so it is cut to what is left and the result shows the part that was cut. The parts of a gate are taken when you first Enter. A crash cannot lose a clear: the server pays a cleared run it finds unpaid.
• The aliens you kill in a solo gate pay as they do in Alpha. Every alien of a wave pays at its Alpha figures when your stint ends (a leave, a death, an abandon or a log-off; not a wipe or a server restart), and a wave pays for its aliens once for a run however often you leave and resume it; the boss's adds pay nothing. The kills count for no quest and no kill statistic; their XP counts for your rank like any XP. In the per-map statistics every solo gate counts as one entry, Solo Gates.
• Eight new achievements: one for each of the five gates, one for clearing all five, one for a clear with no death and one for a clear at or under a gate's shortest time (10 / 15 / 25 / 35 / 50 minutes). The two challenges (no death, the clock) give an achievement each and no Thulium.
• The Galaxy Gates page shows all six gates. A new Solo gates tab has a card for each solo gate: the parts you hold of the parts it takes, the chance a spin finds one, the average Thulium a part costs, the minutes a run takes, its lives and the Thulium its cap still lets it pay, with Enter, Resume and Abandon (Abandon asks first and says the parts are lost; when the server refuses, its reason shows under the button in your language). To Enter you must be flying (launch first) and out of combat; there is no launch-and-enter. The Chrono-Gate's ring has a segment for each of its parts, the spin shows the real chance of a part and your guarantee (the spins without a part against the spin where one is certain), and a 5x, 10x or 100x spin lists the parts it found gate by gate and what the spins without a part paid. The page's texts, the help cards and the Dashboard say 2 parts for the Chrono-Gate in all 13 languages, and take the number from the server.
• Inside a solo gate a Solo gate window opens by itself (right column under the system toolbar, movable and shut with its red light, with a toolbar button while you are in a run): the gate, your three hearts, "Wave 4 of 14" and the aliens left, the time in the arena against the gate's minutes (information: there is no time limit), the 5-second countdown to the next wave, the boss's name, phase, hull and shield, and a card with seconds running down for each move it telegraphs (blast ring, meteors, rockets, a rocket locked on you, reinforcements; the rings are drawn on the ground and the arena's edge is lit on the minimap). It has Skip (only for the optional N.U.K.E. wave), Leave, and Abandon, which asks first and says the parts are forfeited and what the run already paid stays yours. A cleared wave is a toast.
• When a run ends or pauses, a result sheet shows how it ended: waves cleared of N, deaths, time, the rewards (kills, completion, the Thulium the cap trimmed, credits, XP, honor, items and ammunition), the two challenges of a clear, and Resume when the run can be resumed. A result you missed (the game was closed) is shown once when you sign in.
• The Pilot Skill Tree: 18 stats that level from 1 to 100 by what you do. Fighting trains Laser tech and Grit, picking up cargo trains Instinct, collecting from your Skylab trains Extraction, and so on; nothing is spent or chosen, and nothing is capped. The levels belong to you, not to a ship, and they survive every wipe. Everybody starts at level 1 in every stat: a laser does 80 % of its damage and hits 80 % of the time, a rocket does 80 % and is a dud 20 % of the time, so a new pilot does 64 % of the numbers on the item pages (110 % damage, 90 % hits and no duds at level 100). Hunting pays less at first: a level 8 Goombah hunter nets about 147,776 Credits an hour at level 1 against 249,181 before (worked out on paper).
• What the levels do to your ship (at level 100). Heft adds 10 % hull, Thruster theory 15 % speed (an Afterburner multiplies on top) and Instinct 5 points of loot chance (on top of the Loot Luck booster); the Hangar tile, the pilot sheet and the ship in flight agree. Evasion adds up to 15 points to the 3 % chance to dodge of a pilot's ship and of a formation's. Grit takes up to 10 % off every hit (with a Diminisher 0.25 x 0.9 = 0.225), and the number a beam shows follows it. A level of Heft, Thruster theory, Instinct or Evasion reached in flight reaches the ship at once, and a full ship stays full when Heft levels up.
• What the levels do to your abilities (at level 100). Reflex makes the item and design abilities cool down 11.1 % faster (90 s is 81 s). Tactics makes them last 20 % longer (an Afterburner 18 s), and a Shield Surge, an Emergency Repair and a Venom give 20 % more over the longer time. Sabotage makes a Venom and a Toxic rocket deal up to 30 % more, a poison over up to 20 % more time. Marksmanship makes a Mine fly up to 15 % farther and faster; it changes nothing else, lasers and rockets are not affected. Reflex, Tactics, Grit and Sabotage read the level when an ability is used or a hit lands.
• Rocket tech. A rocket deals 0.80 of its damage at Rocket tech level 1, up to 1.10 at level 100, on top of the drone formation: the formation's x1.59 limit is on the formation's bonus alone. A rocket you fire can be a dud, with a chance of 20 % at level 1 falling in a straight line to nothing at level 100: it costs the rocket, the shot and the wait, flies nowhere and tells you "Your rocket misfired." with a toast (the Support Rocket and Flares never misfire). Rocket tech pays 0.15 XP for a launch and 0.30 for a hit, 130 rockets an hour at the full rate.
• Radiation tech. It takes the dose of the black hole, of the excavator's and the pulsar's circles and of the Unwakened's aura from the whole at level 1 down to 0.40 of it at level 100 (the Energetic Wall's strip is a weapon, not a radiation zone, and is not changed). It pays 1 XP per 5 seconds in a radiation zone and 1 per percent of the hull the dose takes.
• Instinct and Antimatter. Every cargo box you pick up, by hand or with a Retriever, is 2 XP of Instinct, the first time you see an item of Rare or better 25 XP and every item of a quest claim 10 XP (600 XP an hour at the full rate). Antimatter pays 1 XP for 10 Dark Matter received and adds up to +25 % to the Dark Matter you pick up (+12.4 % at level 50): it is a channel of its own, the Resource Magnet Booster still adds nothing to Dark Matter, and at level 1 five N.I.K.E.s are still ten Dark Matter. A boxed Dark Matter is rounded with a random remainder, so the bonus is exact on average even on boxes of one or two.
• The hold. The resources you pick up fill a hold (60 / 120 / 250 / 500 / 1,000 units by hull tier, full at 90 %); a full hold makes Heft pay 1.5 times the XP. Nothing is ever refused, and the Pilot window does not show the hold yet.
• Pilot skills follow you to the regional servers and through every wipe. The skill XP you earn flying on Singapore or US East is added to your skills when you come home (a stat you used for the first time there is yours at Home, and the hourly soft cap you used up there goes with you). A wipe never touches your levels, and deleting your account deletes them. The Pilot screen of a pilot who flies on a node reads the node's numbers, with the XP his ship has earned since its last save.
• Pilot skills at Home: at level 100, Skylab output +30 % (Extraction), the Resource Storage's bank +40 % (Logistics), Assembly time -35 % (Fabrication), Research Centre science +25 % (Science), Shop prices -15 %, Auction deposits -50 % and Shop buy-back +10 % (Commerce), and Orvium and Velkonite +50 % more on the collectors (Instinct). At level 1 none of these bonuses is active.
• The Pilot Skills page and the flight HUD. The Economy group has a Pilot Skills page under the Skylab: the four attributes and the five groups of skills with their levels (a dash for a skill not used yet, except Laser tech and Rocket tech, which start below full strength and always show theirs), and on the right what the one you pick does, what it grows from, its XP bar and a slider from level 1 to 100 that shows each number at that level beside level 1, your level and level 100 (laser damage x0.80 at level 1, x0.95 at 50, x1.10 at 100). In flight a few small lines over the hotbar say the XP you earned every five seconds ("+1.2 XP - Laser tech"), a banner shows a level reached with the old and the new value of each number it changed ("Laser damage: x0.806 -> x0.809"), a skill's first XP is a toast, and a level is a line in the Game Log and a (!) on the sidebar row until you open the page. The cards of the laser, the rocket, the Hangar's Damage tile, its boosted hull and speed and the Boosters window have a "Pilot skills" line. 13 languages.
• Mines: a trap you throw, in three levels (8,000 / 20,000 / 50,000 damage). Mine I is sold in the Shop for 100 Thulium. Mine II and III are made in Assembly (the table below has the recipes: a fee of 200 and 400 Thulium) after 3 and 6 hours of research (the tree has 181 technologies, and the Archivist wants 181). A Mine flies to the cursor (as far as your lasers reach), is armed 3 seconds after it lands and goes off once, with all its damage, under the first ship that flies over it: an enemy, an alien, a company mate, a groupmate or you. A ship inside its reach when it lands is spared until it has left that reach once. At most 3 per pilot, 3 minutes each, 8 seconds between throws, never where PvP is off.
• Mines and your skills. Sabotage adds up to 30 % to a Mine's damage and Marksmanship up to 15 % to its throw range and speed (Marksmanship works on Mines only). A Mine hit on an enemy or an alien pays Sabotage and Marksmanship XP and no Laser tech, and the Energetic Wall's burn counts as a Mine hit for Sabotage.
• Your Mines are on screen. They have a MIN slot in the hotbar and are drawn in space with their trigger ring (arming pips, a flash when one goes off). A game from before 0.5.4 does not show Mines in the Shop: update the game.
• The Shop shows what an order really costs, and has a Sell button. With the Pilot Skill Tree's Commerce discount an order is priced once, on the whole order (1,000 Standard Batteries at 85 % cost 4,250, not 5 x 1,000): the total, Max, the "are you sure?" sheet and the wallet check now use that number. An item the Shop sold you and you still hold loose has a buy-back block under Purchase (how many, a stepper, what the Shop pays, Sell). The Shop buys back at 25 % of its price (27.5 % at level 100, never more than you paid) the loose units you bought in it: only what the Shop sold you counts, from this update on, never what you earned, crafted, bought from other pilots or were given; in flight never. Merging stacks keeps the Shop's units. The 5 % sale tax of the Auction and the real-money prices do not change.
• Clan dungeon aliens pay and drop like the aliens they are modelled on. A Dungeon Goombah pays what a Goombah pays (15,000 Credits, 75 Thulium, 3,000 XP, 24 honor), a Dungeon Pirate what a Pirate Boss pays, a Dungeon Crystalys what a Crystalys pays and its Twin twice that, times the ratio of their hull and shield (x1.5 in stage 2, x2 in stage 3), and each kill drops the original's loot as a box at the wreck, every quantity times the same ratio. A full clear of the aliens of a stage 1 dungeon adds 13.0 million Credits and 54,150 Thulium for a party of 5 on top of the clear (+52 % Credits, +271 % Thulium); the Warlord pays the clear as before, and the Goombahs it calls pay nothing. A pilot who was paid for the stage today, or has had all his paid clears of the week, is paid nothing for its aliens either, and neither is one who left or has been inside under two minutes.
• Clan dungeon aliens come out of the cell you fly into, one pack to a cell. A pack of aliens is on the map the moment a pilot of the party is in its cell: fly into a new cell and its aliens are there at once, and the cell you fly into has one pack to meet and not the sum of several. None stands behind the walls, deep in the maze, waiting from the start (a tenth of the packs did). A pack does not wait for room under the limit of aliens alive at once, and a pack you leave behind stays where it is; the loot zones' waves still wait their turn. The rest of the dungeon is as it was: the door of the Warlord's room opens when three quarters of the Crystalys and their Twins are destroyed, and you now find them by flying through the maze. The time limits of a run stay at 95 / 130 / 165 minutes.
• Clan dungeons: rejoin as often as you like. A pilot who was destroyed (by the Warlord or by anything else), logged off or left can fly back into a dungeon that is on again and again; there is no limit any more (it was 3 times). The 20 seconds between two returns stay.
• Penetration Amps: 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 points (3 / 6 / 9 / 12). The best laser now takes 85 points off a shield (61 before), so it pierces an alien's 80 % shield whole.
• Ironclad hull 500,000 (600,000). Hull Plating I / II / III add 8,000 / 15,000 / 25,000 hull (5,000 / 10,000 / 15,000): a full set of III nearly doubles the hull of the small crafted ships (+97.7 % on a Paragon or a Wraith).
• Hybrid Generators (Adaptive Core I / II / III): speed +1.5 % / +2.5 % / +3 % (1.2 % / 1.6 % / 2 %).
• Helios Beam: base damage 155 (150).
• Engines: base speed bonus 5 / 10 / 15 (2 / 4 / 6). The fastest builds gain about 10 to 13 %: Storm 875, Ironclad 871, Wraith 859 (793, 773, 774).
• Blast rockets hurt 66 % of their centre damage at the edge of the blast (50 %). The six Ember and Scatter rockets (I to III); the N.U.K.E. keeps its 50 %.
• Shield cells hold and absorb more. Absorption cells: 2,000 / 4,000 / 6,000 / 8,000 capacity and 6 / 8 / 10 / 12 % absorption (1,500 / 3,000 / 4,500 / 6,000 and 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 %). Capacity cells: 4,000 / 8,000 / 12,000 / 16,000 and 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 % (3,000 / 6,000 / 9,000 / 12,000 and 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 %). The best shield out of the box is 91 % (85 %).
• Repair Drone I to IV repair 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 % of the hull a second (1.5 / 2.25 / 3.5 / 5 %).
• Energetic Wall: 100,000 / 250,000 hit points (30,000 / 90,000). It still lasts at most a minute.
• Cluster Chunks drop from every rock. Regular: 0.5 / 1 / 2.5 / 5 / 10 % at tiers 1 to 5 and 20 % from the Motherlode (0 / 0.4 / 0.8 / 1 / 1.2 % and 25 %). Mythical from tier 3: 0.35 / 0.5 / 1 % and 5 % (0.15 / 0.25 / 0.3 % and 8 %). Legendary from tier 4: 0.1 / 0.5 % and 3 % (0.03 / 0.1 % and 3 %).
• Facets pay what a Phantasm pays: 3,000 Credits, 12 Thulium, 300 XP and 6 honor in Alpha, and their kills count.
• The Tesseract has no top-dealer box. Every pilot its kill pays gets a private box with his share of: Reinforced Hull Plates (3 to 10), Velkonite Reinforced Plates (66 %, 7 to 12), Orvium Reinforced Plates (50 %, 3 to 5), Power Cores (66 %, 4 to 7), Ancient Control Units (1 to 4) and 10 to 20 Dark Matter, 5 at most for each pilot.
• Support Rocket: a guided heal of exactly 100,000 hull for one friend. It is no area rocket any more: select a pilot of your group or company (company pilots included) and fire; it flies to them and repairs their hull by 100,000 on contact (never above the maximum, the shield is untouched, the Repair Drone is not interrupted). It only ever flies at a friend: with nothing selected, or an enemy, an alien, an asteroid or yourself selected, the press is refused and nothing is spent (no rocket, no timer). A friend with a full hull is refused and nothing is spent.
• Gravitational N.U.K.E.: a black hole in the middle, and it pulls ships that do not move. The well now has a black disc, a turning accretion disk and a thin bright ring, drawn under the ships. A ship that is parked at its destination is dragged to the centre and its destination goes with it (until now only flying ships felt the pull); company pilots are pulled too, and in a clan dungeon the pull cannot drag a ship through a wall. In a solo gate the well also pulls the run's aliens, so a wave can be clumped for a N.U.K.E.; a clan dungeon's aliens are not pulled. Radius, pull and the 15 seconds are as before.
• The special rockets are researched behind the normal rockets. Freeze, EMP, Toxic, Marking and Cooldown behind Lancet III, Shield Breaker behind Rivet III, Support behind Scatter III (3.5 hours of Tier II and III research first, 7.5 to 11.5 hours from nothing). N.I.K.E., N.U.K.E. and the Gravitational N.U.K.E. keep their places. Pilots who already have a special keep it and can still craft it.
• The in-game windows work on a regional server, or say what to do. In flight on Singapore or US East the Ranking window shows your real ranking (read from the main server); Assembly, Auction and Clan are dimmed and say to use Return to Base; the Hangar says it is locked; the Auction no longer claims the server is "older than the Auction".
• Skylab Radar Module: the queue holds 3 cells at level 1, 5 at level 2 and 7 at level 3 (3 at every level).
• Davidski is tougher and pays 15 % more: hull 931,250, absorbance 90.85 %; 1,830,000 Credits, 4,875 Thulium, 292,500 XP and 1,275 honor a kill in Alpha (1,590,000, 4,275, 255,000, 1,110). On paper a group needs one more pilot in Gamma (9, 8 before), and a group that kept every ship before may lose one now.
• Interface size: a slider in Settings › Interface, and Ctrl and + / - / 0 (Cmd on a Mac) as before. 75 % to 200 % in steps of 5 (the keys step by 10), saved with your pilot: the size is no longer lost at every start. A window applies as much as it has room for, because the HUD is laid out for 1024 x 576 points: 125 % in a 1280 x 720 window, 185 % in a 1920 x 1080 one, 200 % from 2048 x 1152; a bigger window or fullscreen gives your size back, and the help line under the slider says how far this window goes.
• The Group window is more compact. A member who flies has a 30-point row instead of 44 (instead of up to 77 when a title and a target were shown): the name, level and distance on the first line, the thin hull and shield bars under it. A member who has docked, was destroyed or is away has one short line of 22 points. Ten members now fit without scrolling from a 1280 x 720 window. A mate's target is a small mark, its name when the window is wide enough and two thin bars at the right end of the bars, and a row is as tall and its bars as long with a target as without. The title follows the level when there is room (the card always has it).
• The rockets rework's items and the Mines have their own icons. The ten special rockets (Freeze, EMP, Shield Breaker, Toxic, Marking, Cooldown, Gravitational N.U.K.E., Support, Flares and Ricochet) and the four Rocket Launchers (II to V: a rack of two, three, four and five tubes) are pictures of their own in the Shop, Assembly, the Hangar, the hotbar and the wiki, each in the colour the rocket has in flight and with a nose of its own (an ice crystal, a copper coil, an hourglass, a target ring, a green cross, a bundle of flares ...). Each Mine has an icon in the colour of its marker (amber, orange, magenta-red): a domed armoured mine with lit seams, fuze pegs and a lit lens, the II with twelve pegs and blades round its base, the III with a cage of talons round its lens.
• Reflex pays when the work is done. A craft pays its Reflex XP when you collect the job, and a jump when the ship arrives, not when you press, so pressing and cancelling earns nothing.
• The in-game wiki has two new pages, Pilot Skills and Solo Gates, in 13 languages. Pilot Skills is the 18 stats with their level 1 and level 100 figures, the XP that pays each and what is kept at the wipe; Solo Gates is the six gates with their parts, the guarantee, the waves, the bosses, the pay and the eight achievements. The tables are written from the server's files, so they follow every later change. Combat, Abilities, Speed, Cargo, Dungeons, Wipe Timeline and Resources say what the tree and the 2-part Chrono-Gate changed.

If you already play: what changes for you

• The server and the game must update together. All the numbers above are the server's; the wiki, the Help cards, the item texts and the Hangar tips are in the game, so a game that has not been updated still shows the old numbers next to the new ones. A 0.5.3 game against the 0.5.4 server would draw the special rockets' research cards on top of each other, would let you aim the Support Rocket at enemies (the server refuses it), is refused the Galaxy Gates spin ("Update the game to spin the Galaxy Gates.", nothing is charged), has no Solo gates tab and no Pilot Skills page (it still flies with the Pilot Skill Tree's level 1 numbers, which it cannot see), and is not shown the Mines in the Shop.
• Your Chrono-Gate parts are reset. The Chrono-Gate takes 2 parts now (it took 100). At the first start the parts of the old gate are dropped: if you held 1 to 99 of them you start the new gate with none; if you had completed the old gate you keep a complete gate (2 of 2) and your Transport Cache. The parts of the five solo gates start at none.
• The Pilot Skill Tree starts you at level 1. Every pilot starts at level 1 in every stat: lasers and rockets do 0.64 of today's damage (0.80 of the damage, and 80 % of the laser shots hit; one rocket in five is a dud), so income and fights are lower on the first day. With use a laser climbs to 0.99 of today's output at level 100 (110 % damage, 90 % hits) and a rocket to 1.10 (no duds), and the levels survive every wipe.
• The update moves no Credits, Thulium or items. Every Penetration Amp, shield cell, Engine, Adaptive Core, Helios Beam, Repair Drone, Hull Plating and Energetic Wall you own keeps its id and takes the new numbers when the server starts; the buffs you forged on them are multipliers and keep working on the new values.
• Your ships keep the hull points they had. A ship's hull is saved as a number, so a ship with plates, whose maximum has just gone up, reads below full until you repair it. The Ironclad's maximum falls from 600,000 to 500,000: an Ironclad saved above that is cut to 500,000 when it launches and flies full. The Hangar and the Dashboard may show a docked Ironclad above its maximum (600,000 / 500,000) until it flies; that is read from the code, not looked at in the game.
• Your shield sets are stronger without a change from you. A Heavy Shield Core with three Absorption Shield Cell IV is 91 %; with the new Penetration Amps in the other pilots' lasers, the best x4 laser leaves it 6 points (24 before); an Antimatter laser, 95 points, leaves it none. Look at your loadout against what other pilots can fit.
• Rocks pay Cluster Chunks from the first ring on. Nothing is paid back for rocks you broke before; the chances apply to every break from the restart.
• Davidski is tougher and pays 15 % more (see the Highlights); on paper a group needs one more pilot in Gamma and up to two more to lose no ship.

The Galaxy Gates and Mines in numbers

The Chrono-Gate takes 2 parts. "Shortest time" is the clock challenge: a clear at or under it gives an achievement. The pay is the clear's; the aliens pay on top, as they do in Alpha.

The numbers, in the order of the owner's list

1. Penetration Amps ("points" are points of the target's absorbance a laser hit slips past)

• The best laser at x4 damage: Experimental Fusion Core 10 + Gemini 15 + three Penetration Amp IV 60 = 85 points (61); with an Antimatter Battery (20 points, x3 damage) in the Fusion Core's place it is 95. An all-in forged laser reaches 94 (66.4); the everyday best (Ultra Core, Gemini) 80 (56); Fusion Core with three Amp IV and no formation 70.
• Against aliens: an alien's shield absorbs 80 %, so the best laser pierces it whole; Fusion Core with three Amp IV keeps 10 points of it. Against pilots, see the known limits.
• Price: unchanged (a Penetration Amp I is 15,000 Credits; the others are made from it).

2. Hull: Ironclad and Hull Plating

• Ironclad 500,000 hull (600,000). Ironclad DUMA 600,000 (720,000) and Ironclad TITANIC 500,000 (600,000): the designs follow, as they are the hull times 1.2 and 1. Base speed, slots and everything else of the three are as before.
• Hull Plating I / II / III add 8,000 / 15,000 / 25,000 (5,000 / 10,000 / 15,000). Forged to Eternal, a Hull Plating III adds 28,750. A full set of III (every plate slot of the ship) adds 97.7 % of a bare Paragon's or Wraith's hull, 97.2 % of a Storm's and 75.0 % of the Ironclad's 500,000; on the lighter designs it more than doubles the hull (+130 % on a Paragon THUNDER, +122 % on a Storm RECON, +108 % on a Storm NOTSUM). The rule of the design was "at most 75 %".
• The Pirate Boss has half the Ironclad's hull: 250,000 in Alpha (300,000), 375,000 in Beta and 500,000 in Gamma, because the Boss is built as 50 % of the Ironclad. Its pay is unchanged, so a minute of fighting it pays 2.17 times a Goombah's (1.85). Worked out on paper, a trio of Ostirions on x2 ammo wins on x-3 now (4 % hull left at the lowest; it lost, with 3 ships, before), four win in about 204 s, and a lone level 8 Paragon wins in 3.7 minutes with 18 % of its hull left (it was destroyed). Beta needs 5 pilots and Gamma 6 (5 and 7).

3. Hybrid Generators (the in-game name is Adaptive Core)

• Speed bonus +1.5 % / +2.5 % / +3 % for Adaptive Core I / II / III (+1.2 % / +1.6 % / +2 % before). The shield bonus of the cores (4 / 6.4 / 8 %) is unchanged. On its own this lifts a ship's best build by 0.4 % (Protos) to 3.0 % (Ironclad) and puts the Ironclad's best build (796) ahead of the Wraith's (793); in 0.5.3 the Wraith was ahead, 774 against 773.

4. Helios Beam

• Base damage 155 (150); range 900, critical chance 20 % and slots as before. On paper a x1 volley of one Helios Beam with three Damage Amp IV is 314 on average (308).
• Skylab Defense Module: the magazine of level 2 holds 4,300 rounds (4,500) and level 3 16,000 (17,000), because the Helios Beam shortens the kill the magazine is sized for.

5. Engines

• Engine I / II / III base speed bonus 5 / 10 / 15 (2 / 4 / 6). The speed bonus in percent (2 / 3 / 4 %), the shield cost, the slots and the Afterburner ranks are as before; no ship's own base speed changed.
• The fastest builds (units a second; before in brackets): Storm 875 (793), Ironclad 871 (773), Wraith 859 (774), Paragon 713 (650), Ostirion 665 (605), Nomad 653 (594), Kitefin 552 (502), Protos 490 (445). The best Engine III is now three Momentum Thruster IV (63.3); Impulse was the leader before.
• The stock Storm flies 284.45 (272.90) and leaves the black hole's pull from outside 906 units (924). The wiki's table of the black hole's escape has the new figures; the Help card's "about 900 to 2,500 units" is still right.
• Skylab expeditions are faster with every Engine module: a hop with a bare Engine I takes about 31 hours (3 days 6 hours before), the middle build (three Engine II with two Impulse II each) about 24.5 hours across the field, the best kit 1.8 hours bare and 7.6 hours on a full Core 20 station. Trips already under way keep the hop they were given.

6. Blast rockets (Ember I to III and Scatter I to III: the I is sold in the Shop, the II and III are made in Assembly)

• The edge of the blast deals 66 % of the centre damage (50 %). The fall-off is a straight line from the centre to the edge, so a ship halfway out takes 83 % (75 %), and the ship whose hull sets the blast off takes 95 to 97 % of the centre damage (93 to 96 %). The centre damage, the radius and the price of every rocket are unchanged.
• The N.U.K.E. keeps 50 % (22,500 to 25,000 at its edge). The N.I.K.E. and every single-target rocket are not blasts.
• Rockets to kill an alien (Alpha, average roll): ten of the twelve cells lose rockets (the Goombah's one each, the Crystalys's one to four). Goombah: Ember I 32 (33), Ember II 21 (22), Ember III 15 (16), Scatter I 26 (27); Scatter II 17 and III 12 as before. Crystalys: Ember I 166 (170), Ember II 109 (112), Ember III 78 (80), Scatter I 134 (136), Scatter II 87 (88), Scatter III 62 (63). The wiki's table has the same rows.
• A pack: a Scatter III bursting over a pile of eight Phantasms deals 7.1 times its centre damage in all (6.7), and clearing the pile takes about a tenth fewer rockets.

7. Shield cells (the recharge of every cell is unchanged)

• The best shield out of the box is 91 % (a Heavy Shield Core, 55 %, with three Absorption Shield Cell IV, 12 % each; 85 % before). A Heavy core with Capacity Cell IV is 73 % (70 %).
• Past 100 %: either source alone now passes it. The Shield Absorbance Boost bought to its limit (100 levels, +10 points) makes the best set 101 %, and an Eternal Forge roll at the top (+13.65 points) makes it 104.65 % (95 % and 97.75 % before).
• The best laser against the best shield: the strongest laser (Fusion Core x4, Gemini, three Amp IV) takes 85 points off, so a 91 % shield keeps 6 points of every hit (24 before); a shield at 100 % keeps 15 (39) and one at 120 % keeps 35 (59). An Antimatter Battery II laser (x3 damage) takes 95 points off and pierces the 91 % shield whole; a 100 % shield keeps 5 points of it.

8. Repair Drones

• Repair Drone I / II / III / IV repair 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 % of the maximum hull a second (1.5 / 2.25 / 3.5 / 5 %). The IV is as before; prices and the "endless" use are unchanged.

9. Energetic Wall

• Hit points 100,000 (level I) and 250,000 (level II) (30,000 and 90,000). The wall still loses a sixtieth of its hit points a second and is gone after a minute, so it now fades by 1,667 a second at level I and 4,167 at level II (500 and 1,500 before). A ship inside takes 2,500 damage a second, as before; the cooldown (90 s) and the stack sizes are as before.
• What it takes: a top Wraith (13 Helios Beams, x4 ammo) breaks a level I wall in 11.2 seconds (4.0) and a level II in 21.9 seconds (10.6). Level II is only just the better buy per hit point (0.0024 Thulium a point against 0.0025).

10. Cluster Chunks (the chance that a broken rock leaves one whole, in the ore chunk of the party that dealt the most damage)

• A rock of the first ring can leave a Regular chunk, the first ingredient of a P.E.T. (a Cradle job still needs a P.E.T. Station and an Orvium Reinforced Plate). The Motherlode still gives chunks most often, but its Regular chance is lower.
• How often, on paper (at today's output; a level 1 pilot is slower, for example a Regular chunk about every 53 minutes at x-2 instead of every 41): a miner on x-1 finds a Regular chunk about every 1.3 hours; on x-2 and farther every 15 to 45 minutes; a Mythical chunk every 2.4 to 3.5 hours; a Legendary one every 16 to 18 hours on x-4 and every 5 to 6 hours in a Danger Sector. With the Motherlode in reach a Mole (the mining P.E.T.) makes 4 to 8 % fewer Regular chunks an hour and more Mythical and Legendary ones.
• The wall is the plate, not the chunk. A Cradle job takes one Orvium Reinforced Plate; see the known limits.

11. Facets

• A Facet pays what a Phantasm pays: 3,000 Credits, 12 Thulium, 300 XP and 6 honor in Alpha (6,000 / 24 / 600 / 12 in Beta, 9,000 / 36 / 900 / 18 in Gamma). The kill counts like any alien's (your kill statistics, achievements, the experience of your drones and P.E.T.s) and the kill log says "You killed Facet". Its ranking weight stays 0, so it adds no PvE points of its own (its 300 XP count like any XP, 0.3 of a point a kill), and it drops nothing. Until now a Facet paid nothing and was counted nowhere.

13. The Tesseract ("shared" means every pilot the kill pays gets a box rolled for him alone, with his own Loot Luck, and cut to his share of the damage; a group's share is split among its members by level, as the pay is)

• No box for the top dealer. Nothing lies at the wreck: every pilot the kill pays (5 % of the damage or more, as for every boss) gets a private box for 10 minutes that only he sees and takes. In a group each pilot's part of the pot is split off first, and the Dark Matter cap of 5 is each pilot's own; what is over the cap is lost.
• A kill's pot, on average: 6.5 Reinforced Hull Plates, 6.3 Velkonite and 2.0 Orvium Reinforced Plates, 3.6 Power Cores, 2.5 Ancient Control Units and 15 Dark Matter when four or more pilots are paid about equally (a lone pilot gets 5, two get 10, three about 13.6; a pilot with a big share loses what is over his 5). Before: 1.5 Reinforced Hull Plates, 2.7 Velkonite and 0.6 Orvium Reinforced Plates (already a private box for every paid pilot), and, in one box for the top dealer, 1.05 Power Cores, 0.35 Ancient Control Units and 0.025 Dark Matter.
• Dark Matter: the Tesseract comes back 30 minutes after its death, so a group that kills it the moment it is back takes about 30 Dark Matter an hour from one world, five times what the three giant excavators burn (6 an hour; it was 0.05 an hour from the Tesseract).

18. Skylab Radar queue

• The Radar Module's queue grows with its level: 3 cells at level 1, 5 at level 2, 7 at level 3 (3 at every level). An upgrade only adds room: the cells already in the queue keep their places. The module's upgrade card and the universe map show the room, and a full queue says how many cells it holds.