The Senate is a great way to make your corporation stand out as one of the most powerful in the Aquila system. The Senate is made up of all corporations that control at least 1 sector. Each region has its own member list made of all the corporations in that region.
The future features of the senate will include voting on system wide policies that will have positive and negative impacts on things like trade, security, and resource availability.


Dynamic market pricing has been added and is now enabled, you will see prices rise and fall based on real player trades. Sectors that have an increased supply of resources will see their prices drop, while sectors that have a lower supply will increase their prices. Prices are updated every few minutes, any time a price is updated while you're viewing the market, there will be a notification. This new system means that delivering ore or other resources to less supplied sectors will increase your trade profits.


Combat is currently the only way to find research fragments and improve your tech, which doesn't work so well for traders and miners, so I've added new Lockboxes to the game; these spawn around space and contain tech, ore, and sometimes equipment that can be looted. Lockboxes spawn all over the Aquila system, mostly hidden inside asteroid fields, although you can find them in other areas of space.


Up until now I've tried to focus the beta on certain parts of the game so I can focus on bugs and improvements in a single area, this hasn't been working very well, and feedback has been coming in from all parts of the game. So I'm just going to scrap this way of doing it and just work through every bug report and feature feedback/request as they come in.

With the beta structure change, I'm going to do more frequent, smaller updates as soon as bugs are fixed or features are ready to turn on.

The Corporation building and trade systems have undergone a lot of changes since the last development blog. The trading system now uses your Corporation bank account and will freely use any funds to purchase required products and deposit any profits back. It will also take sector wages, so making sure you have a decent flow of trade setup is key.
The trade system will prioritize trade with your own sectors before trading with anyone else, making sure that any required resources are shipped around before selling any. After trade between your owned sectors is complete, allied sectors are traded with, ensuring you ship any required products to allies before anyone else. The final step of the trade system will be to export any resources left over to other sectors, as long as you are not at war with their owners.

I've added over 300 new weapon modifications to the game, allowing you to customize the stats of your turrets. I will be putting out new ammo and modifications for the other turrets in a couple of weeks.
The new modification allows you to change most turret stats; they come with benefits and drawbacks, such as increasing damage at the expense of much greater energy use. Or increasing range but decreasing damage.

I've recently enabled two new global mission types that you can find at any station that advertises mission services.
Ore Mining: These missions require you to head to a nearby asteroid field and collect a specific type of Ore, You then need to deliver the Ore to the mission contact. If your ship doesn't have enough cargo space, you can always deliver it in batches.
Delivery: These missions require you to deliver the requested items directly to the contact; they can be trade goods or items looted from shipwrecks.
I will be adding more variations to these missions as well as new mission types as the beta progresses.

Raids are instanced areas that everyone in the same wing can enter; they are designed for groups of players to complete together. The first raid I am testing is the Orion Raid. [RDSUN] have set up a warp gate and several defense platforms, and it's your job to destroy them. To help you, [AQSEC] have warped in beacons that allow you to call in reinforcements.
The Orion raid contains a few unique mechanics, and it's looking really good. I'm hoping to have quite a few raids in the future that are even more expansive.

I've completed the line of sight system; now you can use buildings and asteroids as cover. If you don't have a line of sight to your target, then your weapons will pause until they do. This makes fighting in asteroid fields much harder as smaller ships can easily use asteroids as cover while attacking miners, although this also works in the miners favor as well, allowing them to escape incoming attacks by moving into the asteroid field

There is a new launcher for the Windows version of the game, this launcher will download and patch the game automatically, meaning you don't have to go to the website to download a new version each time I release a patch. Many of you already have this version, and it's been working well, so I will be removing the standard download soon and exclusively using the launcher going forward.
You can find the launcher download link on your account page.