One of the debug servers started dying about a week ago and finally slipped below the waves a couple of days ago. This killed the debug server grid for a while. It was up and working again by the end of yesterday. Consequent to the down time, some of the changes in this update were not tested yet.

Shields
Shields should charge faster when down. Shields on big ships take a long time to charge, like a month.

Shields received a few changes.

• Shields now have three states: Up, Down and Off.
  
• Shield station power button cycles through the three states.
  
• Shield capacitor charge time is 10 minutes when shields are down, if enough power is available, unless the old charge rate was faster, then that is used.
  
• When up, shield capacitor charge time is 1/10 of the shields down charge time, unless the old charge rate was faster, then that is used. (Should they charge at all when up?)
  
• Shields maintenance power is consumed when the shields are up; this did not change. Maintenance power not consumed when down or off.
  
• Shield capacitor does not charge or discharge when the shield is off.
  
• Stand down order is satisfied by shield down. Off is not necessary.
  
• Repairs and hiding in ground clutter require shields off.
  
• Crew turns shields off when the ship is moored.
  
• Shield projector bases now take 10 minutes to charge from empty, if enough power is available. They are never off or down.
  
• Tool tips, mission orders and NPC verbiage were update to distinguish between "down" and "off" appropriately.
  

• Framework is now the default volume for buildings and spacecraft.
  
• Other volume categories are considered to have the minimum framework necessary to exist. The framework category adds to that minimum structure.
  
• Volume allocated to framework is valued at 4x the hit points of other volumes.
  
• This has the effect of taking away hit points as volumes are "carved out" of the framework, without breaking existing designs.
  
• Street lights no longer allow cargo storage volume. I will republish my street light designs to the exchange.
  
• Increasing framework enables a building to be built in harsher conditions, the way armor does, with thresholds at the same volumes. Armor still works too, so existing designs are not broken by this. They do not assist each other in this determination. One or the other must be sufficient for the environment.
  

• Refit is not really done now but it might work without breaking the ship.
  
• The quality of the resulting systems will likely be incorrectly reset back to the original construction quality of the spacecraft.
  
• All damage to the spacecraft will likely be repaired.
  

You can access a thorough design analysis by pressing [TAB] while seated at a ship station. This analysis does not include the blueprint ID. It would be useful if it did, I think.

As of a recent update, I have begun phasing through certain walls in my ship, passing from room to room unexpectedly and without using a door.

The void and barrier structure of this ship has not changed materially for nearly a year. I am certain this is not due to any changes at my end. Possible to put it back the way it was? The ship is a Dulcinee Croiseur de Poche, ID ending in 501. You can test by phasing between the bridge and the transporter room.

If I remove my helmet while phasing, I will suffocate in the space between room voids.

userfriendlyness

I want to refine QL 211 air on an inferno planet with exotic atmosphere at 58% density.  I am only able to research and refine at QL128 on this same planet.  Is this a bug or something I missed on the wiki?

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Hailing in fleet channel doesn't open ship channels anymore (apart from in-system ships), nor do ships reply in the fleet channel, their replies are however visible onscreen.

probably related to the fact that ship channels now open when hailing in the hail channel.

Worked fine about a week ago.

planetary shield hosted on a space station and will only go down if the station dies

Is there a good resource for designing buildings?  I enjoyed the videos on space craft design, but was unable to find anything specific to buildings.  For the most part it seems intuitive after watching the space craft design videos, but things like site choices and how to design buildings for use on the shore are not entirely clear to me.

Taking some inspiration from Stellaris' Species Rights system.

Currently we only have one species per city/building, this is defined by the avatar that builds them. The only way to change the species that live in the city/building is by removing all population and debarking passengers of the desired species. This might even be harder for new-style cities, since species DNA is per building.

I suggest that we get empire-wide controls over the species in our empire. List the DNA of all avatars in the empire and let us chose which we want to consider citizens, soldiers, crew, troops and officers.
Then whenever citizens are going to spawn they are chosen at random between any species that has the right to be a citizen. Same with crew and other spacecraft boarding, take a random species with the right to be that role.

Could extent it to also list species DNA of avatars that belong to allies or vassals. Other than that I don't know how else to determine which DNA should be listed, any ideas?

I seem to recall that we had the capability to maximize the ability points during the Avatar's creation.   Is this no longer the case, a bug, or am I missing something on the interface to add health, stamina or strength?