Contested sectors get a new combat structure: one Custody Network base per sector, with layered assault and shared rewards.

How the assault works

Eight towers hover in a ring around a core, and the core is immune while any tower still lives. There is no shortcut: bring the towers down one by one, then open up the centre. When you hit the protected core, a floating “IMMUNE” and a violet ring appear, so nobody wastes ten minutes shooting something that cannot take damage.

The towers spread their fire across the pilots present instead of focusing one down: each tower picks a different candidate by proximity. It’s group pressure, not instant execution. The core fires its siege missile vertically from the upper muzzle and the guidance curves it toward the target.

It is built for groups of two to five ships, and soloable with patience.

Rewards for what you contribute

Each player’s real damage, excluding overkill on the final blow, is recorded. XP and Nexite are split proportionally, and anyone who contributed at least 10% also receives Elisium: the first source of premium currency in the game, which until now deliberately had none.

Mission credit, by contrast, goes to everyone who took part.

Rebuilding

A downed tower rebuilds itself after two minutes, but only if the base is left in peace: every hit on the group resets the timer. If the core falls, the entire base returns together fifteen minutes later.

Three combat bugs along the way

  • The tracer that lied. The tracking cannon decides damage as it fires, but its tracer flew the full range regardless. Now the tracer tells the same story as the roll: on a hit it dies against the hull with a flash; on a miss it strikes and glances off with a dry spark.
  • Colliders. A fixed 6-unit hit radius was used for everything. Now each impact uses the victim’s real radius, and structures — tall, thin spires — became vertical capsules instead of spheres. Side shots used to “hit” empty air.
  • Invisible missiles. They were filtered by area of interest and reached the client without ever having spawned. Missile spawns are now broadcast to the whole sector: there are few of them and they are the stars of the show.

And some polish

Missiles now have their own silhouette per faction — Coalition, Axios and Guardian — with trail, flame and light in the colour of whoever fired: you can read who is aiming at you at a glance. Each thruster also leaves a plume of smoke hanging behind it in space.

Lighting was rebuilt from scratch to kill the flicker between blown-out white and black as the camera moved. It wasn’t the metallic material: it was a headlight pinned to the camera with far too much energy, and ambient light sampled from the sky itself — a blinding galaxy on one side and black on the other.