A full day in the workshop. Almost none of this changes a rule of the game; it changes what you see while playing, which is sometimes the same thing.

The motherships and the station

Both mothership hulls are new, and so is the docking station. They are the largest silhouettes in the game and the first thing anyone sees after picking a side, so they had earned a proper pass.

On the Universe page each faction’s dossier used to show a fighter. Now it shows that side’s mothership beside its station, which says far more about what a fleet is like.

Cleaner launchers

Cannon, missile launcher and scatter cannon all get new models. These are the pieces that appear on screen most often — one per weapon slot on every ship, and a cruiser has eight — so any improvement there shows up everywhere: turrets read better at a distance, and the game breathes more easily in big fights.

The mining drone, and the fix of the day

The drone’s hull is new, far cleaner and down to a single texture.

But the important part is something else. The extraction vortex now stretches to the rock’s surface, whatever shape that rock happens to be.

And the shape matters: AXIOM’s asteroids aren’t balls. They’re squashed axis by axis, each with its own profile, and the funnel has to reach actual stone rather than the imaginary sphere around it. On a small rock that’s nearly forty units of difference; on the big ones, over a hundred and thirty.

Now the drone parks at the right height and the effect dies inside the asteroid, which is where it belongs. You notice it most on the flattest rocks — exactly the ones that looked worst.

The missile, and why you can now see where it came from

The three faction missiles are replaced by a single one for all three sides. Losing the distinct silhouette costs nothing: you see a missile from 100 to 1,400 units away, and at that distance there is no silhouette to speak of. What you read is the colour, and that was already tinted with the firing side’s.

What is new: a smoke trail. The puffs hang in place and draw the path the missile has travelled, so you can finally see where one coming at you from a distance started. The flame and the light told you a missile existed; not which way it had come in.

The smoke also outlives the missile: the trail stays there a moment after impact, which is exactly when you’re looking at it.