Rendwar 0.1.7: Raids, real squads and a fair season

The Rend now raid far behind the front, a stake in the Concord's fleet buys real warships, and the season's score can no longer be farmed. You need this update to keep playing: docking under fire, the bank, trading between pilots and fleet stakes now work in ways an older version of the game doesn't understand, and docking in the middle of a fight with it could leave your ship stuck in the fight without you.

New

• Rend raids. Two or three ships from a hive's garrison strike a system up to six jumps away; the races' home systems and the newcomers' space around them are never raided. The galaxy map marks a raid with crossed swords and has a Raids filter, and the system's card says whose raid it is, how many ships it has and how long it has left. Pilots in the target are warned which gate the raiders will come out of. Patrols, militia, bounty hunters, your squads and the Concord's garrisons go after the raiders, and traders and liners wait it out at the nearest dock.
• A stake in the Concord's fleet buys a real squad. At a business center you buy up to five warships at today's tech and send them to a front within four jumps. They fight there whether you're watching or not, move on when their front goes quiet, and stand down after six hours with no front in reach. Each Rend ship they help bring down gives you a fifth of its XP and season points. You can keep two squads; the business center and the galaxy map show where they are and what they've shot down.
• Break a Rend siege and the Concord builds a garrison. Closing a siege crisis in time now gives its system two to five warships that hold it for the rest of the season and help the fronts next door. Garrisons are shown on the map.
• Station donations. Money you give to a station project builds the station and doesn't come back. Once your donations in a season reach an hour of your income, your account earns a donor bonus of 30 season points.
• The game opens with Stingtail Games' animated intro. A key or a click skips it.

Changed

• No leaving a fight. While an enemy you've exchanged fire with keeps you in its sights within its guns' reach (and a little beyond), and for a few seconds after, you can't dock, jump or log out; a ship left in the middle of a fight stays in it for 45 seconds. The game asks before docking and keeps you at the helm if docking is refused. Duels, falling rocks and mining don't hold you in a fight.
• A robbery demand is a crime the moment it's made (−1 standing) and counts as the demander's first hostile act, so the target may fire back lawfully. While a demand is on, neither ship can dock, jump or leave, and the demand's options say what it costs.
• Loans can't be stacked. Money paid in while you owe repays the loan first, the part of your deposit that backs a loan can't be withdrawn, and the bank lends no more than you're worth, and nothing before level 5 and two hours in space. When a loan is in default, the bank keeps 30% of everything you earn until the debt is paid, and you lose standing once.
• Insurance pays the real repair bill at the yard where you wake up, out of the cover it has left, and stays in force for its whole term (one claim per real day).
• The black market deals only with wanted pilots and pilots at criminal standing with the local people (with any race at a station), at colonies, trade stations and pirate bases. Contraband costs more the farther you are from the pirate bases that make it, the bases stock far more of it, and smuggling pays its way again.
• Trading between pilots: your own pilots can't trade with each other, a new pilot can't trade on its first day, goods and gear have a daily limit of their own, and a listing must ask at least half the item's worth. A container you jettison can't be picked up by your other pilots.
• Science-station upgrades add up instead of multiplying, no longer extend a gun's range, and in a fight count toward the same caps as skills and modules. Gear upgraded earlier has been adjusted to the new rule.
• Public contracts: a Bastion offers the ones whose quarry is within one contract level of you; only pilots who took a real part in the kill can claim the token, each paid at their own rate for their share; and a contract takes up a mission slot only once you've fought its quarry.
• Crises: any delivery earns the medal, and each day you deliver earns standing and a micromodule. A crisis card at the stricken place itself is now a supply run: load up at the nearest other colony and bring the goods back.
• A fairer season score: shooting down your own account's or wing's pilots, or the same pilot twice within a day, earns nothing; a bounty is paid only from the outlaw's own money; a freed system's points are split by the Rend hulls each pilot destroyed there, once a season; war contribution counts for up to 150 points and wealth is your money minus your loan; destroying peaceful ships or stations costs points.
• All pilots of one account together can place no more probes on a planet than one pilot can, and a text quest pays an account its rewards once a season.
• A port under a Rend blockade now offers nothing but evacuation, and a lawful port offers a wanted pilot only the amnesty and the black market.
• The Rend's garrisons now get on with their systems: ambushes off the gates, patrols, circling their nests, hunts and drifting swarms, and a battered squad goes back to its nest to mend.
• Ships no longer sit inside one another: hulls keep clear, and wingmen and escorts keep their own places in formation.
• A hull sold to a yard also pays 65% of the value of the micromodules in its sockets.
• If a mission's terms change while you're reading its card, taking it is refused and the board shows the new terms.
• Concord-fleet and station stakes made under the old rules have been paid back into your bank account once, with a notice (an open loan is repaid from it first).

Fixed

• A server restart no longer runs down your timers: missions, deliveries and their deposits, crises, evacuations, money held for escorts, public contracts, hired captains, and the Rend's offensives, raids and port closures all wait out the downtime (up to a day).
• A server crash no longer loses or doubles what you're owed: rewards, scooped loot, bounties, and trades and deliveries between pilots are saved together, and a jump that can't be saved is called off with your ship and fuel kept.
• If the game reloads, it takes your ship back at once instead of making you wait a minute.
• Traders across the galaxy no longer go broke and sit idle.
• Launching from a station that has moved to another system now starts where the station is.

---

Stingtail Play brings the update in by itself the next time it starts. New to the galaxy? Download Rendwar.

This update is required: earlier versions can no longer join the galaxy.