Greetings Pilots! A brand new batch of gameplay features have been added and by extention a new avenue for making additional credits out in the cosmos is now available. For this update I would like to point out that due to the way these functions were newly developed, most of them are functional as a base, but are not perfect and are still missing a few things. Without further ado, let's get to it!

All ships now have functional cargo bays - Mind you, for most small ships (that you can fly) you will more likely have to deal with miniscule amounts of free space, which means holding one or two units of cargo and everything else needing to be placed in your wingmen's holds (which isn't an available option just yet). Ultimately freighters will be the primary transports and traders, so expect further additions and polish on that front.

Ships can now drop their loot upon death - When you see a box flying out of a dying craft, you can fly into it to automatically load it into your cargo hold. Careful not to do this if your holds are full, as that will just needlessly punt the crate away from you (and will deal damage to you once collisions get implemented).

You can now dock to other ships and cargo containers - For those who prefer non-lethal options, you can dock to any disabled fighter with the CTRL+D key combo (which will activate an autopilot mode that will do the dirty work for you) and steal all their goodies right from under their noses. Taking stuff from cargo depots is also possible, but expect these to be defended in later versions, so don't get too comfortable with them.

Commodity trading has open its doors - Now that all ships can carry a specific amount of cargo, a basic economy has been implemented which allows you to easily buy and sell up to 12 types of commodities with the new menu found inside station(s). As with other shiny new features, further additions will come in later updates.

And as bit of extra eye-candy, new engine effects have been implemented to replace the older, particle-based ones - Not much more for me to say here other than "They are quite the improvement!".

And that's it for now. Most of the fixes were released in 0.1.7a, so the current changelog is not much more other than a recap, but as always, everything is included in the game folder for your perusal.

Coming up next we will see a promised feature get implemented which will heavily utilize the cargo system. I can't get into details just yet, but let's just say that it will present some interesting choices for players.
Thanks for reading, see you next time!