This has absolutely nothing to do with Hazeron. I felt like telling a story about my airplane. I fly a 1968 Piper Cherokee Six that I have owned since 2000. 

I was flying to Sioux City Iowa last July to get a routine semiannual avionics inspection done. I just got up to my cruising altitude of 5500ft MSL when there was a never-heard-before clunk from the engine. Engine RPMs spun way up past the red line. Propeller pitch control stopped responding, had no effect. It took some adjustments to get the engine RPMs under control enough to return to the airfield, which was about fifteen miles away.

I told the Sioux City approach controllers what was going on. There was an airport just a mile away but the airplane was holding altitude. Weather was great. If the airplane was going to be grounded, I wanted it to be at home with my own mechanic.

After landing I taxied straight over to the shop. What I thought was a propeller hub failure turned out to be much worse. The mechanics at the shop could not imagine what guardian angel kept my propeller spinning. The engine RPMs went up because the propeller drive shaft had sheared clean off, relieving the engine of its load.

The loud clunk turned out to be an oh shit moment. That was the sound of the sheared-off drive shaft smacking against the engine case hard enough to crack it in a high-stress place that could not be repaired.

The airplane has a 540 cubic inch six cylinder aircraft engine. This is an air cooled engine so the cylinder jugs are bolted onto the sides of it, kind of like a Harley Davidson engine. A new engine case from the factory is over $30k and there is a two year lead time to buy one. 

By some miracle, the engine shop had a used one that was serviceable that they sold me for a fraction of the price of a new engine case. They cleaned it down to shiny metal, scanned it, painted it, rebuilt the entire engine with new cylinders (another miracle as they are getting hard to find) and other parts, ran it on their test stand for hours, and gave it their blessing.

It was time for the annual inspection so the local mechanics did that while the engine was in the shop. The propeller was getting pretty long in the tooth and it was due for an overhaul. More bad news. The propeller hub was shot. It was a standard two blade propeller and nobody wants them anymore so nobody makes parts for them anymore. It was less expensive to buy a new three blade prop than a new two blade prop. I had misgivings about this because Hartzell's own web site says three blades isn't any better than two; they're just heavier.

A few weeks ago they finally finished working on the airplane. It had to wait its turn and winter is super crunch time for the local airplane mechanics. The shop on our field is inundated all winter long with spray planes getting their annual inspections done; they work on spray planes from all the surrounding states, not just Nebraska.

My wife thought the new prop and chrome spinner looked hot. The old straight two blades were replaced by three modern curved scimitar blades.

The first thing I noticed was the old familiar whup whup whup of the prop at low idle and when taxiing is gone. It sounds more like a lawn mower now, one continuous growl.

The power while taxiing felt ridiculous. I couldn't help but laugh. I'm quite accustomed to that airplane after twenty four years and I could tell this was no small change.

The takeoff roll smashed me back into my seat. This airplane has never smashed me back into my seat. Ever.

I was off the ground in probably the shortest takeoff distance ever. The airplane didn't stop there either; it just kept on climbing vigorously. As I climbed away from the runway I called the shop on the radio but all I could do was laugh maniacally.

I kept that test flight short and close to the field.

Now I am planning that trip to Sioux City once again. Will probably do it within the next week or so, whenever they can get me in. They are the only avionics shop in a wide area so they stay pretty busy.

Then I have to break in the new engine. That requires a good 12 hours of run time, preferably flying at altitude and at a good operating temperature, not frozen winter air. I am planning a flight to Florida and back to get that done. I have some personal business to attend to there so this would be an opportunity to do that. It's that or dinner in New Orleans. The runway at their general aviation airport sticks out into Lake Pontchartrain like a boat dock; I thought the landing was fun but my wife didn't agree.

People speculate that it must be cheap to travel when you own your own airplane. I always tell them it would be cheaper to fly first class everywhere you go for the rest of your life than it is to own an airplane. Buses are cheaper than cars to ride but I don't tend to ride them; I like the freedom that comes with owning a car, and an airplane.

Gulliver
I wanted a relatively low tech spacecraft design to adventure with, one that was more interesting than the Basic Design or the Particle Harvester.

Gulliver design was added to fill this role.

Design Checklist
As I started designing Gulliver I couldn't remember exactly how to make a turbo lift or a turret. Some little memory jogger would be handy.

Design checklist added. It contains useful tips and it provides a general overview of how to create a design. This was added to the Blueprint menu.

Designer Breaks Vertex Normals

Various operations caused the vertex normals on faces to get broken. I constantly found myself flattening vertex normals after doing something like a symmetrical copy. That is a nuisance if you worked hard to smooth just the right ones. 

Fixed.

Designer Microscope
It is impossible to work on tiny things in the designer because of the near clip plane. You can't get close enough to see tiny things.

Microscope mode added to designer to allow for a super close near clip plane. You can effectively use the millimeter grid now, instead of it just looking like a white shaded square in the distance.

You may wonder why this view transformation cannot be used in the game. It is because distant objects would collide with each other far worse than they do now. The game scenes already push the limits of the view matrix. That is why you see polygon collisions at certain scene distance transitions when approaching a planet or ringworld.

Designer Snap/Select Close Bug
Designer won't snap or select things that are close to the eye. I can see them but they won't snap or select. I have to back away. Grrr. 

Fixed.

Designer Group Names
It would be helpful if the group naming window would explain how group names are used by the various parts.

Done. Checklist gives good info about this. 

Designer Berth Orientation
When placing a berth, it would be nice to have an indicator of which end is the head end.

Done.

Designer Turbo Lift Lighting
Turbo lift initial lighting state and sunlight exposure cannot be set in the designer.

Fixed.

Designer Vehicle Parking Spots
The generic vehicle parking spots have a role on a carrier but what if I just want to have a motor bike aboard?

Designer now allows placement of specific vehicle parking spots. When placing these, you see a 3D model of the vehicle and that model appears on its spot in the design, for reference. 

These vehicle spots are filled from accessible factories when a spacecraft is manufactured. After that they are filled just like any other parking spot, whenever you are in trade range of a city that has the vehicles needed. 

Drop pod parking spot and space rocket parking spot were removed as they became redundant. They can no longer be placed in a design but they will continue to exist and function in existing designs that have them.

I started working on a drop pod vehicle model. That is what led me to make this change. When it is completed I will just add it as a vehicle.

Designer Equipment in Designs
While working on a drop pod design, I thought it would be nice to place items in the design like a medical kit and a rifle.

Designer now enables commodity items to be placed in a design.

When a design is manufactured/constructed commodity items in the design are populated from the city inventory that is accessible to the factory.

After manufacture, those equipment items can be grabbed by any player. In design preview, equipment items cannot be taken.

Spacecraft restock their equipment items from the hold, about one item per minute.

Buildings restock their equipment items from their hold, about one item every six minutes. Buildings also maintain their supply of this equipment by importing one of each item from other buildings it can access.

Firearms are not loaded with ammo. Place ammo nearby if you want it to be available.

Initial on/off state of items can be specified so you can place things like burning candles and torches in your design.

Equipment items are listed on the design analysis report in an EQUIPMENT section.

Designer Show Ground Error
The plane shown to depict the ground level under a design does not change when landing gear is deployed.

Fixed. Ground plane now adjusts to landing gear. It also moves to the appropriate side of the model depending on the landing orientation specified in the properties.

Designer Input Focus
When I select parts I should be able to enter a vector and press Enter to move them or Ctrl+Enter to copy them. Instead I have to click in the input box which can be clunky, especially when that gigantic tool tip appears and covers half my screen.

Fixed redirect of characters entered in the design view so this works as expected.

Added a Clear Input button next to the input box to clear its contents and give it the input focus.

Moved the ginormous but valuable tool tip from the input box to the Clear Input button. The input box now has no tool tip at all.

Designer Preview Turbo Lift Bug
If a turbo lift is in the wrong state it will not work properly when the design is previewed.

Fixed.

Designer Preview Crash
Designer preview crashes a lot when I fly the ship down into an atmosphere.

Fixed.

Designer Associate Doors With Launcher
The space vehicle launcher opens doors that are associated with it when it launches a vehicle. It then closes those doors after launching. This association is made automatically. 

Doors that are intended to open and close with the operation of a space vehicle launcher should now be associated with the launcher for positive identification. 

The code that makes the association automatically still works when no association has been made. It looks for doors that are intersected by the launcher path when the door is in its closed state.

Designer Associate Doors With Turbo Lift
The turbo lift responds to calls by turbo lift doors associated with the turbo lift. This association is made automatically. 

Turbo lift doors should now be associated with their turbo lift for positive identification. A warning will alert you to this condition when finalizing.

A turbo lift door created by a turbo lift jig will automatically be associated with the turbo lift.

The code that makes the association automatically still works when no association has been made.

Designer Decor Door
A door can be used for any detail that has multiple states, like a cabinet that opens, a drawer that pulls out, a trunk lid, etc. This works ok but I don’t like getting a warning about not associating the door with a room void. 

Decor type door was added. This works like a regular door except that it makes no noise and it does not cause warnings. Use door properties to change a door to a decor door.

Rearranged door properties window. Hid the wall of text in tool tips.

Designer Finalize Cancel
When I cancel the finalize process, usually because I forgot to select the picture to go with it, the buttons are left grey. The finalize dialog has to be closed and reopened to start again.

Fixed.

World Map
It would be nice if the world map showed my current location.

Done aboard spacecraft. Buildings do not do this.

Cargo Door Ramp Air
Gulliver has a large door that deploys a ramp when it opens. While recognized as a hull door, opening the door did not allow air pressure in the room to equalize with the external environment.

Fixed confusion caused by the association of a named room void and an unnamed room void with the open state of the door. The unnamed room void creates the accessible space on the ramp itself.

Ramp Obstruction Bug
While working on the ramp I encountered a weird hull obstruction bug that prevented me from ever getting on the ramp in the preview.

Fixed.

Helicopter Taxi
I put a helicopter in the vehicle bay on Gulliver. I couldn't taxi it out of the bay. When I tried flying it out I got stuck in the ceiling.

Helicopter now has taxi forward (F), taxi backward (V), and taxi brake (Space) controls so it can taxi. 

I saved the stuck in ceiling bug for another day.

I had a situation where the helicopter was too feeble to taxi up the ramp of Gulliver without getting a run at it. The ship was on the raised landing pad at an airport, which could have been a factor. I will work on this.

Planetary Approach Too Slow
When approaching a planet, the pilot reduces speed far too early and approaches the planet slowly from a long distance away. Zzzzzz. 

Fixed.

Harvester Quantity
The quantity that is harvested by harvester bays is far too low.

Fixed an incorrect calculation that increased harvester quantity significantly. Fixed a bug that resulted in harvesting nothing. Now you will get at least 1 unit if any amount of harvester energy hits the target.

No Unobstructed Parking Spot
Spacecraft factory manufactured a Gulliver class ship in a little over 5 minutes. Then it complained there was no unobstructed parking spot. It is a big ship for spawning on the ground but there were no units in the area.

Improved the function that looks for obstructions to be much more precise.

Beer Process
Beer process makes a LOT of beer, many times more units than the commodities consumed by the process.

Fixed.

Persistent Paralysis
A creature stuck me with paralysis. It seemed to never go away.

Fixed decay time on all conditions.

Colony Factory Needed
A basic factory that can be used in a harsh environment is needed.

Done.

ParcX Delivery Guy Died
ParcX delivery guy suffocated and died aboard Del Rey Station when I opened the door to get inside.

ParcX guy now dons an EV suit if the air pressure drops. Previously he wore one if the air was already low. If it started out ok he did not wear a suit, then he died if it dropped after that.

Flying Sailboats
When sailboats spawn at a vehicle factory they go shooting up in the air, eventually settling on the water where they belong. I think they do this when fetched by wharves too.

Fixed.

Rocket Parking
Rockets are parked in rocket parking spots and also space vehicle parking spots. They don't really work that well when parked sideways in a space vehicle parking spot; they can be hard to get out of a hangar. Is this “feature” needed?

Space rockets are no longer parked in space vehicle parking spots.

Solar System Map Names
Right-click menu on worlds in the solar system picture lists worlds with their catalog name, not the name of the solar system.

Fixed.

Comm Channel Column Width
Comm channels have a column that only shows an icon. For some reason, that column started taking extra room.

Fixed. I just noticed this on the mission orders window also. It's on my fix list now but I'm not going to rebuild everything just for that.

Passengers in Restricted Areas
In my design I can restrict passengers from certain rooms. However I constantly find passengers in those rooms.

Fixed maybe. As I write this I caught a passenger in my cabin. :/

Hospital
I entered the examining table at a hospital because I was injured. Nobody showed up or did anything.

Fixed hospitals. A doctor will show up shortly after you enter the examining table, if one is not already there.

Spacecraft Designs Updated
Several of the stock spacecraft designs were updated with minor improvements due to the designer changes. They are included in this update. It may take a day or so to update them in the workshop.

All designs were finalized. Every warning was eliminated. In some cased, the analysis was updated to be more precise about what things deserve a warning. This meant adding warnings for things that did not previously cause a warning.

Ships using the older designs will not be affected. None of the warnings was severe. Resolving them mostly fixed consoles being unlit in some of the oldest designs.

Harles Trick Blueprint
Harles gave me a blueprint of a space station. Later it was gone from my gear.

Fixed story item that vanished when the story ended. Set it to permanent so it would remain in the game.

Delete Game Confirmation
Delete saved game at startup should have a confirmation dialog.

Done.

Rocket Can't Get Service at Station
Rocket holding next to station can't get service. Says "Stop moving" but I am stopped.

Fixed.

Design Report
Move shields, sensors and life support to the top of the AVIONICS/ELECTRONICS section of the design report. I don't care as much about the list of consoles and panels.

Done.

Redundant Comm Message
Atmosphere Condenser Bay Module harvested 55 Hydrogen Fair Q174, 55 units. <- Redundant count of units.

Fixed.

Ringworld Sector
Sector containing dig site was diagonal to my starting sector. I thought this was changed.

Fixed. Starting location was good. Story found the wrong sector with a ringworld when more than one neighboring sector contained a ringworld.

Black Hole Sun Wormhole
Pilot in black hole system could not hit wormhole at sun orbiting black hole. The nav point was too far off to the side.

Fixed.

Harvest Attitude
When parked in orbit for harvesting, rotate ship so it's not facing the target.

Done.

Hold Windows
Windows and tool tips that refer to accessing the hold incorrectly state that your sea chest is different in conflict vs neutral zones. What zones?

Fixed.

Too Many Surgery Modules
A surgery station adds two surgery medical modules to the manufacturing process.

Fixed.

Solar System Survey Report Broken
When requesting a survey report from the star map of a system I surveyed, the solar system map came up blank.

Fixed.

Stargate Blocked
Pilot cannot enter stargate at companion star. Says "Stargate blocked by the sun." when it's not.

Fixed.

Helicopters Aboard Atlantis
Atlantis' vehicle bay looked funny full of helicopters.

Spacecraft no longer fetch helicopters to space vehicle parking spots. They will only fetch helicopters to specific helicopter parking spots.

Location Desync
I saved the best for last. This bug has been a plague for years. It happened to me most often when getting into a new vehicle. About one in twenty tries or so I would suddenly find myself at the bottom of the sea instead of on the vehicle.

Fixed. It turned out the vehicle did not have to be new; you just had to be moving when you got into it. This could also affect moving vehicles and spacecraft if you were controlling them when they changed atom domains.

Web Site SSL Certificate
I finally got the SSL certificate for the web site. I will proceed with setting it up after this update is posted.

We just had a player report that they had a supergiant sun and no local moon. Meaning that they can't leave their world's local gravity well in a space rocket without being falling into the sun.

   

The only thing a player can do in this situation, would be to attempt a slingshot orbital maneuver to get out of the solar system. This might be easier if they make a spacecraft with massive rocket-drive engines, but the chance is still slim.

I would suggest an edge-case check be added to the spawning algorithm. Ensure that if the solar system has a supergiant sun, that the homeworld has to have a local moon.

Alternatively, add a small story with a tiny meteorite hitting the players world and spawning some eludium for the player to pickup. I'd love to try writing it myself if the tools become available.

The only workaround we currently have, is to make a new avatar, so they spawn on a new random world. This can be done using the Citizen of the Galaxy starting scenario, so the player can easily send a shipment with some eludium home to their first world.

I had a little issue where a ship I was flying on would navigate through a wormhole, and then re-appear in the same system. Apparently, even though the locator showed the old system, the game thought I was in the new named system.

Exiting the game and re-loading resulted in a crashed UI. The previous save also crashed the UI. If I had a a few more saves from the current day, I might have been able to recover from a playable point, unfortunately I have to go back to a save 5 days earlier. 


there needs to be more save game points, rather than constantly re-writing over the current one. On top of that, there is something up with navigating through wormholes causing some kind of referencing issue. There are a number of nasty pointer errors in this game, looks like this is another one.

Stargate Beams Render
The energy beams from the cones to the sun are clipped incorrectly by the ringworld arc section I am on.

Fixed.

Commodity Demand Prices
Commodity prices used to be modulated by local supply and demand. That was lost when the new cities were implemented.

Done.

Ladder Pose
When climbing a ladder my body is straight and stiff, not animated.

Finished ladder stationary and climbing poses.

Close Stories Bug
I started a new game and created a new avatar. I didn't like my starting location so I returned to the main screen, deleted my avatar, and started again. This time Targoss never appears even though the story shows as running.

Fixed data cleanup error when restarting the universe from scratch.

UTC Nerf
Dates and times are expressed using UTC notation. Is this necessary?

All dates and times are now expressed in the local time. The UTC was a holdover from when the server was formatting some of those strings. They won't be doing that any more.

Mission Orders Crash
The Harvest Minerals mission order cause a crash when it is selected and your ship is not near a world.

Fixed the crash. This mission order is obsolete and it was removed in a previous update. I restored the obsolete commands to reproduce this crash, mainly to insure the crash could not be cause in any other way.

System Gen for Scan
Solar system scans and starmap searches must regen solar systems in memory to search or display them. This is due to the fact that the server does not send the entire universe to the client so the client must improvise. Unfortunately the result is not always correct, particularly in systems where one or more worlds have been destroyed by asteroids.

Solo game now accesses the full game universe data rather than regening systems for that kind of information. This applies to several processes: solar system survey scan, starmap search, mission orders, XML export.

Mission Orders
Mission orders are limited to the data available to the client. This results in buggy feeling things like the Go To Space Station order not listing any space stations in the system until you get near them.

Mission orders ui was changed to access the full game universe data.

Starmap Search
The starmap search ui needs work. There are too many controls on one dialog box. It is difficult to see the results.

Starmap search ui was split into two pages. The first page contains the search criteria. The second page contains the search results.

Added a button to the range section of the search criteria to fill in the galaxy location with your current location.

Eliminated the use of solar system regen to display results. Solar systems are displayed using global universe data.

Looks like two old bugs have come back to life:

Since the update, none of my pads are producing spacecraft, even ones on moons, and newly created ones. All give the same error that there is some obstruction on the pad. This check needs to be fixed, and have the pad clear/push any obstructions that aren't vehicles away before spawning.

There is s till an issue with removing items from the ship's cargo hold to to personal inventory. This is still causing crashes.

I'm running Hazeron Starship under Proton in steam. 


There was also a weird save game issue where the game loaded, but only NPC models loaded and nothing else, not even planet foliage.  This save was lost though.

Even if every solar system within a sector has been surveyed, the starmap sector status will only ever show "Unexplored" for the sector itself:


I assume this isn't intentional, so am posting a bug report about it

Since Starship was introduced, a few people have noticed many elements of the UI have strange delays, some seeming hardcoded. This makes the UI feel very unresponsive

I imagine these delays were added to lower server load in the MMO days, but given Starship is singleplayer and any possible future MP would be player-hosted, it should be safe to remove these delays, small change but would make the game feel a lot better

An example is switching between items in the Handcraft menu:


Notice the inconsistent and sometimes ridiculously long delay between selecting an item to craft and the UI actually updating (Like when I first swap from backpack back to animal meat)
If it matters, this was tested in deep space with my game running at a smooth 60fps

This applies to most UIs in the game, from building management to ship interfaces. Might be caused by how starship is simulating the server locally but that's a wild guess

Citizen of the Galaxy Story
I used the Citizen of the Galaxy scenario to add another emperor to my empire. It seemed like a new player could use a few tips on how to do this.

A very brief story chapter runs when you enter the Citizen of the Galaxy scenario. The story provides a few useful tips including how to become a vice emperor.

Particle Harvester Story
The final two chapters of the Relic story are finished. It is final in the sense that the conclusion I was after has been reached. The goal of the story was to teach a new player how to use a stargate, which is a big feature that is not at all obvious how to operate.

It is hard to say final. I fully intend to continue writing more stories. At this point there is little left to teach, which is a nice turning point. It means future stories can be written purely for the purpose of telling a fun story.

The story ends with finality; there is no suggestion of more to come so the story can rest for awhile. I will work on the AI avatar emperor now. That is going to take a lot of work.

Particle Harvester
A new small spacecraft blueprint was published, 1011 Particle Harvester. It is needed by a new story chapter that was added. In developing this ship I found that it was not possible to make a small particle harvester because of the range required to harvest from a sun.

Harvester range calculation was changed to produce a minimum of 6000m, enough to harvest particles from a star even with the smallest particle harvester. You might only get one particle per sweep but it will work.

Officer Doesn't Harvest
There are harvest orders to configure the harvester bays. The officer never marks those orders completed. The ship gets stuck there.

I fixed that problem only to discover those harvest orders were obsolete. The obsolete harvest orders were removed from the order list. They will function if you have them in a mission but you can't add them to new missions.

Village Encounters Aboard Vehicle
Village encounters only happen when you are on the ground not in a spacecraft or vehicle. That means you can never find the village while searching on a motor bike or a sailboat. 

Village encounters can now occur while you are aboard a vehicle or in a spacecraft, on the ground or in the air. If you are moving quickly in a vehicle you might not notice as you whiz past the indigenous people who show up to greet you.

Bulk Mail
Bulk mail does not work in solo play. I discovered this after adding a second emperor to my empire. Neither of them received city reports by mail any longer, because they are sent to multiple recipients.

Fixed.

Henge Fire
Henges should not have a pile of logs at the center when the world does not have an indigenous species. There might not even be logs in the environment there.

The fire already did not burn when there was no indigenous people. Now there are no logs either.

Henge Point of Interest
World maps do not show henges on the list of points of interest.

Fixed. Henges are now listed on the points of interest of a world map. That enables them to be selected as a transporter destination.

Henge Portal Fire
When the henge portal is open, a fiery effect appears. Some changes were made here.

• Henge portal fire color is no longer always blue. Instead it is the same kelvin temperature as the ringworld sun to which it is connected.
  
  
• Henge portal fire is now bigger and more vigorous than the bonfire that burns there when the world has indigenous people. This helps to distinguish the portal from the fire since the kelvin color of the portal can be very close to the bonfire color.
  

• Rings overlap the planet incorrectly as you approach the planet from a distance. They look correct up to a point then suddenly they overlap the planet completely, incorrectly, where the back side of the ring is in front of the planet instead of behind it.
  
• Rings are clipped by the atmosphere incorrectly when you are close to the planet. This is seen as a ring seeming to disappear as it passes behind the transparent layers of the atmosphere.
  

Many tooltips in game look like this one. When a tooltip text is longer than a few words, it become unreadable.