← News // 2026-11-09 // v0.17.0

v0.17.0 - The world comes to you

v0.16.0 was the release where the world keeps score. Civilizations built stations, stations posted jobs, and every hand-in or kill moved what a civilization thought of you. But the stations sat and waited. The ships around them flew patrols and escorts; nobody came to a station to do business, and nothing on a board was there because somebody else had been.

v0.17.0 puts traffic in the world. Generated traders now fly to a station, dock, trade real cargo for real credits, post jobs and leave. GOTO flies around the rocks in its way, Q and E roll the ship, and Shift + X matches a moving target. A fresh world tells you what to do first. And the Sandbox is now a mod editor: a hub of your mods, the whole mod as tiles, an Events canvas of blocks, forms for every content kind, a colour picker for themes, and a Package window that writes the zip.

Image assets/news-0170-trader-docked.png The pinned seed of the station visits walk: a generated ore hauler docked at a living station of its own civilization, after it picked the station and flew in on its own.

Nobody ordered this ship in. It picked the station, flew there and docked. The walk only lets play time run and points the camera; the player does not fly.

A living world

Traders visit stations

Every living station now has two generated ships of its own civilization 2 to 4 km from it, so most new worlds have a trader in visit range of the start station. A trader with a trade profile picks a station within 20 km, flies there and docks. Docked, it trades: goods and credits move between its hold and the station by the lines of one receipt, so nothing is made or lost. It posts its jobs, waits 60 s, undocks and flies 1 km clear.

A station takes one visitor at a time. A visitor also docks at a station that orbits a planet or spins, and waits up to five minutes for a clear approach before it gives up. What a trader buys and sells comes from a new TradeProfile content kind: weighted buy and sell lists with a quantity and a per-unit price limit.

Jobs from the traffic

A visitor posts up to three jobs beside the station's own three slots. They are Procure jobs: bring the station what the trader wanted. An open one goes at the next slot expiry or after 20 minutes; one you accepted stays until you finish or lose it. The world save carries the visits and their jobs, so a docked visitor stays docked across a Load and never trades twice.

Image assets/news-0170-visitor-jobs.png The job board of the Jobs pane, docked at Maris station: the three rows with a refresh button are the station's own slots; the three Bring rows below them have no refresh button and came with visitors.

Six offers on a board with three slots. The walk docks the player and opens the Jobs pane; it accepts nothing.

A first thing to do

A fresh New Game world now posts a Take a job objective, with the interface key under it. The chip stays up until your first accepted job, also across a Load. When a slot on your starting board renews, the board keeps one job your hull can do, so an unarmed start no longer runs out of work.

Image assets/news-0170-first-job.png Seed 2, military role, the first frame of play: the patrol picket docked at its starting station under the amber TAKE A JOB chip, with Tab INTERFACE under it and STATION HELM at 0.0 m/s beside the hull.

The first thing a new world says to you. The capture starts New Game the way the Create World window does, then waits for the dock.

GOTO goes around

GOTO now flies around rocks and planetoids on its leg, 200 m off your hull by default. The player, AI patrols and scripted orders all use it. The predicted path and the map route show the bend before you commit.

Video assets/loops/news-0170-goto-detour.webm A GOTO to a beacon behind an asteroid, from a fixed camera abeam of the lane: the predicted path bends over the rock, the ship turns, burns, flips and brakes along the bend while the DETOUR range counts down.

The straight line runs through the rock, so the leg does not. The autopilot flies a GOTO the walk engages; the clip plays the first 16 seconds at twice speed.

Roll and match

Q and E roll your ship about its nose. The controller section turns the view and the hull together, and a roll costs no RCS. Shift + X is now MATCH: it matches your travel lock's velocity on RCS alone, keeps the hull's attitude and never docks. With no target, no RCS or an empty magazine it says why. Hold the RCS key and the dock row's STOP chip turns into MATCH, and goes dark when MATCH would refuse.

Video assets/loops/news-0170-match-roll.webm A line warship beside a hauler on a circular orbit, with the hauler as the travel lock: E held rolls the hull about 30 degrees, Q held rolls it about 40 degrees back the other way, then Shift + X engages AP MATCH and the RCS puffs bring the warship onto the hauler's velocity.

E, then Q, then Shift + X. The walk presses the bound actions through the input layer, as keys would; the MATCH reports complete inside the clip.

The autopilot also waits for a refilling RCS magazine to reach half before it uses RCS again, so a hold against a steady pull no longer swaps between drive and RCS each tick.

Torpedoes you can read

A launch throws a cold light from the bay, and the drive lights with its own ignition sound and a short flare. A lit torpedo leaves a faint cold trail: 1.5 s of path on High, 0.75 s on Medium, none on Low. A warhead blast opens with a faint shell that expands to its blast radius, and a hull your blast defeats confirms with a cockpit stinger and a camera jolt. A torpedo that dies unfired now says how: a grey puff and a clank on contact, a pop when shot down.

Video assets/loops/news-0170-torpedo-blast.webm A lit torpedo with its cold trail runs in on a Serpent among asteroids; the warhead's shell flashes out to the blast radius, sparks fly and the hull comes apart into sections.

Trail, shell, kill. A scripted scene fires the torpedo at a parked Serpent; nobody flies.

The lock readout shows TTI, the seconds until your soonest lit torpedo reaches the locked hull, and the cockpit ticks from 8 s out, faster as it closes. Each batch a reload lands in a bay plays a rack clunk.

Wrecks, canisters and stopped ships

Cargo canisters now hold up to 1,000 kg. A wreck packs its drop into mixed canisters, and an intake takes the whole items that fit your hold and leaves the rest in the canister. A neutralized ship now drops its patrol, escort slot or order and brakes to a stop on its own RCS; with no flight computer, no RCS, an empty magazine, a dock or a strong well, it drifts on.

The mod editor

The Sandbox opens a Mod Hub now: a recent-first list of your mods with New, Import, Duplicate and Delete. Open a mod and the editor works on all of it at once.

Image assets/news-0170-mod-hub.png New on the Mod Hub: the name field reads Red Run, the line under it gives the save and publish ids, and three starters - Free-Flight Range, Duelling Arena, Empty Scenario - wait for Create.

A name and a starter make a mod. A scripted editor walk types the name and presses the buttons, in a sandboxed profile.

The whole mod as tiles

The Assets strip shows the mod's content and its folder files as tiles, with a kind filter and a + to add one. A scenario switch keeps your edits, one Ctrl+Z history covers the whole mod, and Play tests a scenario. New Asset offers only the kinds it can make, as a blank with a new id; Save, Play and Package wait until the blank is filled.

Image assets/news-0170-asset-tiles.png A new hull section open on Section, over the Assets strip: the kind filter on the left (Scenarios, Saved Range, Sections), then the scenario, eight ship tiles and the new_hull section tile with a Problems mark.

The scenario, its ships and a new section side by side, each one double click from its own view. Captured by a scripted editor walk.

Every asset opens alone

A scenario opens on Scene and Events, any ship opens in the Ship editor, a section opens on Section, and the rest open on Form. Esc or Back returns to where you were. Styles, start roles, items, price tables, trade profiles, UI themes and campaigns all open as undoable forms: ids are picked from lists, numbers keep to their lint ranges, and Problems shows the merge rules.

Image assets/news-0170-ship-back.png The Picket Warden opened alone in the Ship view from its tile: its five parts in the tree, and Back to Saved Range in the top bar.

A ship on its own, one press from the scenario you left. Captured by a scripted editor walk.

Events as blocks

Events is a block canvas beside a palette grouped by role, with a rail that filters the palette to one group. Drag a block into a slot that fits and fill its values on the block. Each drop is one undo step. An unfinished condition shows as a Problem that blocks Save, Play and Package instead of vanishing on save.

Image assets/news-0170-events-drag.png The palette filtered to Debug Message; the block is mid-drag over the wait-for slot of a Sequence step under an OnStart event, with the role rail (Events, Conditions, Actions, Flow, Values) on the left.

Drag, drop, fill in. The walk drives the pointer through the harness.

The editor has one top bar, a Hierarchy tree, an Inspector with folding groups, and a strip of Assets, Problems, Ship and Log. Undo and redo cover every edit, with Edit rows that name the step, and an UNSAVED mark that asks before you leave. The Add menu groups what the document takes in submenus, with a search; Shift + A opens it on the stage. Right-click menus on the stage, the canvas and the Assets strip carry the rest.

Image assets/news-0170-add-search.png The Add menu opened on the stage over a planet, with "beac" typed into its search: one row left, Beacon under Markers.

Type to find what goes on the stage. Captured by a scripted editor walk.

The viewport has its own camera: RMB looks about, MMB or Alt + LMB orbits, Alt + RMB or the wheel dollies, Shift + MMB pans. Q, W, E and R select, move, turn and scale; X swaps world and local axes. Ctrl or Shift click, a box drag or Ctrl + A select many nodes, and a group moves, turns, deletes and copies as one step.

Themes with a picker

A UI theme palette is now one fixed set of job-named colours, such as text, surface and accent, and every theme shows the same swatch rows. Click a swatch for a picker: a square, a hue strip and a hex field. The pick shows live, is one undo step, and Esc takes it back.

Image assets/news-0170-theme-picker.png A new UI theme that inherits base/phosphor, open on Form: the picker on the text swatch (square, hue strip, hex #36ff79) beside the palette grid, text to highlight.

Same rows in every theme. Captured by a scripted editor walk.

Settings, sections and the package

Mod Settings edits the manifest and its dependencies. It refuses to remove a dependency that content still needs, refuses a cycle, and picking from an undeclared mod adds the dependency in the same undo step. New Asset > Section builds a section in the mod: sockets on the gizmo, a .glb import and live Problems. Ships can carry it, and Play flies it.

File > Package opens a window: version bump, lint check, the file list and the name. It writes <id>-<version>.zip and shows its path and size. Hub Import refuses unsafe paths. Packaging is desktop only.

Image assets/news-0170-package.png Package Mod for Red Run: version 0.1.0 with Patch, Minor and Major bumps, the output folder, red-run-0.1.0.zip, a check that passes with 0 errors and 0 warnings, and two packaged files with a loose note left out.

From a mod to a zip you can share. Captured by a scripted editor walk; the run's data folder was mounted at /mnt/nova-protocol, so the Output line shows that path.

Engine

The game now runs on Bevy 0.20, avian3d 0.8 and bevy_hanabi 0.20. The built-in shaders moved from WGSL to WESL (assets/shaders/*.wesl). Mods cannot ship shaders, so nothing changes for them.

For modders

Run content lint on every bundle before you publish for v0.17.0.

UiTheme palettes are one fixed set of job-named colours in every theme. A root theme sets all of them; an unknown colour name fails to parse. See UI themes.
Item requires price_lot, the item count one ask_cr or bid_cr prices: 100 for a PDC round, 1 for the other base items. An item without it fails lint, then load.
A section with health 0 or less fails lint, and so does a mining section or cargo intake whose sound or mesh ref names no file.
ObjectiveComplete must name a posted objective. An id that no Objective in the same scenario posts fails lint and load; it was a warning.
New content and actions. A TradeProfile kind; the OnJobAccepted event; the ObjectiveChipHold and SetTradeProfile actions; optional torpedo and kill sounds. ObjectiveChipHold is not saved: run it from OnResume too.
Editor ship saves carry the mod's namespace. An older editor_ save opens and converts on its next save.

Fix themes and items, and start a new world

A theme with an old colour name, an item without price_lot, a section with no health or an ObjectiveComplete nothing posts fails lint in v0.17.0. World saves now carry station visits, visitor jobs and RCS magazines, so a v0.16.0 world save is refused: start a new world.

Point releases

No point releases yet.