The Expanse has been a very good show we've been watching on Amazon Prime TV. The first two seasons are free. You have to pay $30 for season 3. The fourth season is under contract to be made but not done yet. After the first two seasons, we did not hesitate to pony up for season three.

The Expanse is set 200 years in the future. The solar system is heavily colonized but no FTL drive has been developed yet. There are three main factions, the Earthers, the Martians, and the Belters.

They grabbed me early on when a rail gun punched a hole through a ship during a battle. Someone slapped a metal plate over the hole and pulled out a huge menacing looking black gun. It was a glue gun, lol.

The story is deep and detailed. Space is depicted as a dangerous brutal unforgiving place. 

Things I found interesting.

• Rocket drives. Their ships use basic rockets and act like rockets, turning their butt to decelerate toward their destinations and flying realistic orbits. Their drives are slightly advanced, with the development of the "Epstein drive", which grants them super fuel efficiency.
  
• Newtonian physics. If their ships aren't accelerating, people are weightless inside. People aboard ships are constantly brutalized by the effects of rocket drive acceleration. Spin is used at space stations to provide simulated gravity. They make heavy use of "grav boots" to gloss over weightlessness when it isn't a factor. 
  
• No energy weapons. Their ships have rail guns, missiles and swiveling Gatling guns for missile defense. People carry large caliber pistols and machine guns.
  
• Mormons. Who puts Mormons in a sci fi thriller?
  

Should the long contrails be removed from spacecraft and vehicles?

Server Deadlock
A server deadlocked due to a complex query involving the environment.

Fixed deadlock situation.

Orientation on Mount Wrong
When I mounted an animal, I found myself sitting at a 90 degree angle to its body, with my head sticking off to the side.

Fixed orientation problem introduced by environment query changes.

Fog Render Error
Enter atmosphere in a space fighter. Fly to the ground without moving your dude. Atmospheric fog is incorrect until you move.

Updated environment query when vehicle or spacecraft environment changes.

Environment Query Lag
Servers are working a little too hard after the environment query changes.

Found/fixed some code that was invalidating the environment query data unnecessarily.

University Morale
University does not give its morale bonus unless it is actively researching patents.

University morale bonus is now counted, even if it is not researching anything.

City reports now show total number of levels of manufacturing buildings, plus the number of levels in use. Previously, it was only reporting the number of manufacturing jobs enabled at each building (the "in use" number). That is why the university did not affect morale unless it was researching patents.

Stuck When No Wormhole
Crew got stuck on a wormhole to system order when no wormhole existed.

Navigator now plots a direct course to the target system when no wormhole route can be determined.

Carcass Immune To Lava
Animal carcass on the ground seems to be immune to lava.

Items that fall into lava are now destroyed quickly.

Special Weapon Hits Mount
When using the special weapon on my mount, an area effect weapon will hurt the mount.

Area effect special weapons are harmless against other creatures with the same DNA as the attacker. The attack code was modified to allow for two DNAs that are immune to the weapon effect, the mount and the rider. This also protects the mount if the rider uses an area effect weapon.

Slow Down Due to Burden
Leg movements should go slower as I get more heavily burdened.

Various body rhythms are now slowed by burden, as appropriate.

Running Mount Turns/Walks
My mount stops running and walks if I turn it slightly while it is auto running. Similarly, my avatar drops to a walk if I move left|right while auto running.

Fixed movement controls to keep running when appropriate.

Mount Stamina Never Decreases
It doesn't seem like mount stamina decreases anymore.

Fixed an error in a data packet sent to the server while riding a mount.

Vehicle Destroyed Where?
Generic "Vehicle destroyed" mail notification seems to not bear location data.

Added location information to the death mail message sent by a destroyed vehicle.

Empire Standings Scoring by Worlds
Empire standings should be ranked according to worlds, rather than population. This would be a better measure of how expansive an empire is, without motivating players to max out the population on every world they claim.

Empire standings are now scored based on the number of worlds on which an empire has a city or military base. This was changed a while ago but I don't remember if I announced it here.

No City Facilities
Cities window no longer shows the facilities present at each base and city, unless you destroy or build something there.

Fixed an error when initializing the state of the facilities report at server start.

Air Construction Material
Air is required as a construction material for buildings that have life support systems. The amount of air is huge compared to other components.

Air was removed as a construction material from buildings. It was there from code copied from spacecraft; they require it because it is their lifetime supply of air; they never need a recharge.

Pirates REALLY REALLY want me to come fight them. Saying the same message very 10 seconds.

Should universities give a positive morale modifier even if they aren't researching any patents?

Currently, morale effects of buildings that manufacture things are based on the number of active manufacturing jobs. Universities manufacture patents so they don't get the morale bonus unless actively conducting research.

It is impossible to join someone else in the online design studio.
The building window's list of studios simply always says "Vacant". If someone does attempt to enter a studio with you, they will enter their own studio, even if the design studio looked like it only had one studio.

Empires Lost
A player started a new avatar and created a new empire. After a few days, their empire was gone.

Fixed an error in an SQL statement that caused all empires created since the 8/17 update to be lost. Those lost empires will show up as "Forgotten Empire 1234", where the number is the empire's unique id.

I sincerely apologize for any work that was lost as a result. If you were affected by this bug, I will gladly credit your account with two weeks of activation time. Just communicate your situation to me somehow: this forum, email, in game.

The empires that were lost are impossible to recover. They never got saved anywhere.

Lost empires will have to be recreated. I can help to change the empire of any buildings you already built. If you have not built a military HQ, doing so with your new empire will change the empire of all existing buildings on a world. If you can claim the world for your new empire, that will also change the empire of all existing buildings.

No Echo to Voice in Primeval World
In primeval world, the voice comm channel can be opened but none of the things people say show up in the channel. There are messages on the screen but they aren't in the comm channel window.

Fixed an error in some code that handles comm channel window visibility changes.

Enemy Primeval Healer
Why is the healer my enemy in primeval world?

Changed avatar initialization in primeval world so it no longer assigns an empire.

Damage|Destroy Buildings Diplomatic Incidents
When buildings are damaged or destroyed a diplomatic incident should be created.

Created diplomatic incidents to report damage and destruction of buildings. Added these to the war criteria dialog. Created a scroll area on the war criteria dialog because of the number of controls in the list.

Cryo Survives Recovery
A ship was destroyed. When the wreck was recovered, it still had all of its cryo passengers.

Destruction of a ship now empties the cryo berths.

Destroyed Buildings
Buildings with no hit points continue to burn and appear intact. How can I visually tell that a building is toast?

Destroyed buildings (0 hit points) now draw themselves as a partial framework of burnt boards, like when it was under construction. The wreckage of the building smolders but it does not burn. Fire and acid are removed.

Fyi, buildings are immune to complete destruction if there is a military HQ on the world. To destroy every building, they must be destroyed in this order: military buildings except HQ, HQ, civilian buildings except capitol, capitol. The capitol building is immune to destruction as long as the city has police.

To conquer a world that has a military base and one or more cities, the base must be destroyed. Then you can claim the world for your empire; that changes all remaining buildings and cities to your empire. Then build your own military base.

Environment Query
Information about an atom's environment is sometimes incorrect for a split second. This has visible and invisible side effects. The most visible is the blink|flash you see when stepping in|out of a spacecraft or getting in|out of a vehicle.

The fix for this required some data to be managed differently than it was before. A lot of code in many files was affected during days of work. Too bad the result couldn't be more interesting.

I tested this change on the debug servers until I can find no more problems. This is going to result in some server lock ups on the public servers; there's a lot more going on there than the debug servers.

I waited until this morning to update the servers, to give me the entire day to ride this out. Please be patient.

Later...

Travel Via Wormholes Crash
Open the UI to add a mission order. Select the travel via wormholes order. Client crashes.

Fixed crash when querying current sector.

Cannot Climb Ladder
When I attempt to climb a ladder, my guy seems to grab it then lets go right away.

Fixed environment query error related to ladder wells.

Fighter Thrust Sputters
When using the thrusters on a space fighter, sometimes they sputter on for a bit before shutting down. This can be deadly.

Fixed client/server vehicle throttle sync bug.

Cannot Buy Company Spacecraft
Go to spacecraft factory. Try to purchase a company spacecraft. Nothing happens. No response.

Fixed backward empire 0 test when purchasing a company spacecraft.

When making a road with the new-style system, you can choose "Sloping Grade" or "Level Grade". This is likely the old "Road" and "Road Slab" options renamed.

Level grade work like old-style road slabs, keeping the terrain level with the originating point.

However the look of the road looks like an old-style road slab. Since road slabs no longer exist under the new system, it should look like a normal road.

PS: Why does all the cities I have seen use "Level Grade"?

Right now labour cost seems to be at a base of 20 in addition to an extra labour point per unit of material used, this becomes very apparent in harsh environment buildings.


So now what happens is that buildings take an obscenely long time to construct since Air which is a primary material for harsh environment buildings (a lot of air is required per volume of Life Support assigned) makes up more than half of the building's construction cost.
I'm mostly fine with different materials costing a single labour point, but Air is a too big of an offender to ignore.
So here is what I think should be the case:
Air should be 0.01 Labour per unit.
Life Support materials (Electronics/Mechanical Parts, Plastics and Textiles) should be 0.5 labour per unit.
And the labour for each of the basic building materials should decrease the more advanced they are (or the other way round maybe?), for example, 2 for Logs/Lumber, 1 for Stone, 0.5 for Metal, 0.25 for Magmium and etc. 
This could also apply to Spacecraft construction as well.

On a new-style spacecraft with a damaged warp-drive. The spacecraft damage report did not report the warp FTL drive was inoperable, instead it just couldn't be engaged.

Design: Starman Pucurty A1 by Barbiturix
Damage: Warp FTL Drive 90% (-18 antiflux), Wormhole FTL Drive 96% (-8 lumenite)

I could get the warp-drive to engage by using the power relay console. But still no indication on the spacecraft damage report.
PS: Can't tell FTL drives apart on the power relay console.