0.40.0-experimental.1 — Ship roles, dangerous realities and live pirate lanes

At a glance

Version

0.40.0-experimental.1

Published

2026-09-10T00:55:38Z

Added

• Pirate lane raids now have a saved system state. Verified radio reports describe an active raid or a real quiet interval, and defeating the raid opens the routes for everyone in Persistent.
• During a raid, some station-to-station routes pull ships into the same pirate encounter. Destroy the officer or boost more than 26 units away from it to regain warp. Low-tier ships should use escorts or avoid threatened routes.
• A complete hull, module and NPC balance catalog and a fleet-role expansion plan are included with this release. New fleet hulls in the plan are proposals, not unlocked ships.

Changed

• Combat hulls have stronger defenses and faction weapon affinities. Mining hulls gain working cargo space, haulers gain larger holds, and specialist hull bonuses distinguish their intended jobs.
• Weapon sizes and reality tiers now produce substantial output gains. Fitting power still limits combinations, and larger weapons still depend on projectile range, flight time and aiming.
• Defense, engine and scanner modules scale by size and tier. Even the basic 100-quality shield, armor and engine modules now provide a real benefit.
• Higher realities use explicit NPC health and damage budgets. Escalation bosses demand strong fittings and favorable, obtainable mutations; staying still under fire can strip a ship through armor into hull.
• Bosses engage at longer range and lead predictable movement. Changing course and controlling range matter. NPC damage is tied to its actual firing cadence, including split volleys.
• Persistent remains one shared universe. The server accepts existing releases alongside Experimental; Steam and itch client packages are not changed by this release.

Fixed

• The first system in a further reality no longer inherits the original Sol tutorial enemy strength. Original-reality tutorial protection remains.
• Mining beams start at the visible fitted mining emitter, or the rookie cannon muzzle. They follow hull position and rotation instead of drawing from its center.
• Persistent weapon cadence, ammunition effects and size scaling match Solo. Experimental also sends bounded mutation damage and projectile-speed effects without changing legacy player snapshots.
• Simultaneous hits are no longer discarded by a per-hit grace timer. Layer spill applies each resistance once; collision and respawn protection remain.
• A combat site cannot require more NPC kills than it can spawn. Named hunters use their own budget instead of accidentally receiving escalation-boss health.
• Leaving a lane encounter does not resurrect defeated pirates or reroll the route. Replayed transit receipts retain the same arrival.