Server Crash
The servers crashed three times in the past few days. Two crashes happened over the weekend.

All three crashes were caused by the same bug, triggered by a spacecraft lighting up its FTL drive while someone aboard was in a design studio instance. The bug was fixed.

Stellar Black Holes
I had a to-do item to make more black holes that are not supermassive black holes.

Stellar black holes may now be encountered as you explore the universe.

• These are the smallest of the black holes and they do not have intergalactic wormholes.
  
• Stellar black holes are always accompanied by one or two companion stars that may have planets.
  
• Wormholes in a black hole system terminate at the first companion star, like at the core. Errors were fixed here. They may have been positioned incorrectly at the core, before this update.
  

• Neutron stars are the dead husks of large stars that went supernova, not quite massive enough to collapse further and form a black hole.
  
• Neutron stars have twice the mass of regular stars. This is adequate for game purposes.
  
• Neutron stars spin. The surface speed of some real ones approaches the speed of light.
  
• Neutron stars pulse in a repeating pattern that is unique to every neutron star.
  
• Neutron stars pulse in the visible light spectrum, though most real ones emit only invisible radiation.
  
• Neutron stars may be primary or companion stars.
  

I really want cloaking shields to make an appearance, at last. They've been tantalizing us on that list for ages. I've been replaying some Mass Effect recently, which has a lot of lore about stealth systems, and I thought some of their concepts would translate quite well to Hazeron's existing mechanics.

Detection in Hazeron basically works by emissions. We know this because of the "emissions" detected on your starmap, and because spacecraft on the ground without power can't be detected. As in Mass Effect, your "cloaking shield" could basically be a giant heat sink. It can absorb emissions up to a certain threshold, after which it has to be discharged. While active, a cloaking shield would protect a city or a ship from sensor scans and negate any starmap emissions. You couldn't lock onto it to fire a weapons bay, but you could look out of a window and see it, transport aboard it with manual aiming, shoot it with a turret etc.

The cloaking shield system would have an absorption rate and a buffer. The system would use heat sinks for a buffer, more advanced sinks (vulcium) being more effective than simpler ones. A Cloaking Shield Module (perhaps divided into tiers, like warp drives?) would modify the effectiveness of the sinks, according to its own quality. The volume of the system would define the absorption rate. Let's say a Q255 vulcium heat sink, used by a Q255 shield system, gives you a buffer of 10 joules (obviously the real value will be astronomically higher: many terajoules). Your ship draws 5 watts of power when manouevring normally. If you have 10 heat sinks in your hold, you can stay cloaked for 20 seconds, till all are consumed. Now, your system volume gives you an absorption rate of 3 watts. You are now putting the 2 overflow watts into the buffer, so you can last 50 seconds. When the buffer is full, or when the shield is deactivated, your ship will vent the stored energy in a burst, allowing it to be detected, possibly at long distances. In this example, using low power ratings, a Q87 system using Q87 cryo sinks might only buffer .3 joules per sink. If you have no sinks, you can't activate the shield at all. You need X sinks to press start- maybe enough for 10x the "idling consumption per second" value?

If you reduce your power draw, hurtle through a system with grav drives and sensors off, shields down etc., you might be able to stay cloaked for a long time. Some ships might be able to cloak permanently,but they would be good for little else. Perhaps you can't fire or use transporters while cloaked. Black Ops bases with good supply chains and low power requirements might be able to stay cloaked indefinitely. But warping around, manouevring or running lots of manufacturing processes will quickly exhaust your heat sinks. 

I'll run some numbers, but I think this could be quite a solid basic mechanic. Any thoughts?

Would like the production facilities to have smoke coming out when they are working. or even add the strobe light for different effects.

I saw that we were limited to just one head light. 

Wondering if it is still just as complicated if we could have more but only 1 could be on at a time and can be controlled at one of the stations? 

I am thinking a turret light, a hover light, a docking light. ect... You wouldn't need them all on at once but maybe being able to cycle which one is on.

Bulldozer Broken
Bulldozer is broken in old style cities. It does nothing. You cannot delete buildings.

Fixed a logic error in recent changes to select items under the cursor. This was the primary reason for the update today. The bug was too obnoxious to let it live all weekend.

Creature Turn Jolt
Creatures sometimes make a strange jolt when they start turning.

The sudden huge turn bug, recently fixed in spacecraft, existed in two other places in the code, animals and sentients. They are now fixed.

NPCs Repeat
When talking to NPCs, they often repeat their responses.

Improved NPC decisions about what to say. They will now rarely repeat things they have said recently.

Design Preview Crashed Server
A server crashed because of a preview in a designer.

Fixed a bug where a pointer was accessed by the designer in a way that was not thread safe.

Server Deadlock
A server locked last night.

Reworked some code to prevent deadlock.

STL Import/Export
I had a note to import STL files if no license was required.

The STL file format is described here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_(file_format). The file format is not proprietary and it was trivial to implement. Here are some key facts.

• The STL file format is commonly supported by 3D printers.
  
• File data can be either binary or ASCII format.
  
• The file unit of measure is not defined.
  
• There is only one solid model in each file.
  
• The file only contains surface triangles.
  
• There is no color, texture, transparency or other information to describe the appearance of each triangle.
  

• Binary and ASCII formats are supported.
  
• The unit of measure is specified when imported.
  
• The solid in the file is imported as a mesh, at the current position of the grid.
  

• Data is exported to the file in binary format. I wrote an ASCII exporter. The files are a bit bigger. Does anyone need the option to export in ASCII format?
  
• The unit of measure is specified when exported.
  
• The current position of the grid determines the position of the exported solid.
  
• Visible faces of parts are exported.
  
• Doors, landing gear, turbo lifts, and turrets are exported in their current states.
  
• Hidden parts are not exported.
  
• Parts invisible in the final model are not exported. e.g. voids, barriers, paths, etc. You don't have to hide them to get a sensible export.
  

Spacecraft Repair Quality
The inability to repair a spacecraft with lower Q components presents a frustrating roadblock. I had a note to rework this.

Spacecraft can now be repaired using any Q of components.

• A system's module Q is reduced to the lowest Q component that is installed into it.
  
• The UI to request repairs has a control to set the minimum Q components desired.
  
• The UI to request repairs shows the relevant module and its Q next to each system.
  
• When repairing a system by hand, the best Q parts are pulled from the hold first. If no parts are found there, the best Q parts are pulled from your gear.
  
• Repair mission order now has options for choosing the minimum quality of parts the officer should use when carrying out the order.
  • System Module Quality repairs each system one by one, using the current module Q of that system as the min Q for parts. This is the default.
    
  • Spacecraft Manufacture Quality repairs all damage using the manufacture quality of the ship as the min Q.
    
  • Specified Minimum Quality uses a min Q set in the mission order.
    
• This change eliminates an exploit where high Q components are removed from a system and replace using low Q component, ad infinitum.
  

• Parts that are not available at the minimum Q requested.
  
• Parts that are in short supply at the minimum Q requested.
  
• Parts that are not available at all.
  
• Parts that are available in sufficient quantities if minimum Q was lower.
  

• Craters destroy the pavement on the entire road segment. It becomes a dirt road.
  
• Road segments are not destroyed so building connections are not affected.
  
• Building structures can be left partially or totally floating in space, making them vulnerable to attack.
  
• New roads and buildings can be built in craters.
  
• A road reduced to dirt by bombing can be restored by paving it. The paved road will fix the crater deformation.
  

I find the way money works in Hazeron slightly confusing. If you want to load lots of electronic parts onto your ship and transport them, you have to pay for them. If you want to load them onto imaginary ships and ship them via broker, you don't. If you want to put metal in your cargo, you have to pay for it. If you want to use metal to build your cargo bay, you don't. I've had some very rough thoughts on how to improve things.

Mortius recently suggested increasing ship material costs, to scale with new cities. Without judging that question yet, I wonder if the best ships could be made more valuable and sought-after by eliminating the government's 100% discount, in all cases where it exists. No more statism, no more governmental highway robbery! Those millions of materials, even at the current shipbuilding costs, are worth a vast amount of money. 

Changes would work like this. Existing shipments and perhaps old-style cities should just be exempted, otherwise it gets too complicated to rebalance your shipments etc.

• Each city has State Resources. This is a special area on the city report, and a value true or false for every individual commodity. A State Resource is any commodity which has arrived by broker or been given to the city by a Fleet ship. Fleet ships can no longer sell directly to the citizen account, unless they are donating things (say, stone for a new city)
  
• Broker Shipments Cost Cash. When you send materials via broker, the government account pays for them.When they arrive, they enter the State Resources. This eliminates a weird situation where you can essentially steal vast quantities of things you'd ordinarily have to pay for, hide them away in a government warehouse and remove them permanently from civilian circulation without ever having to pay a penny; juts by sending them somewhere else. Governments cannot usually do this without some kind of compulsory purchase order, which still costs money.
  
• Civilians pay for State Resources. When a commodity is fetched from the State Resources, the civilian bank account pays for it at market price. The government is thus remunerated for moving materials, just as a merchant is: only if they are needed. If you ship electronics to a computer factory, you won't lose money. If you ship them to a warehouse where you hold them against emergencies, it costs you to do so. Certain resources can be made available free, to help you jump start a colony or let it fetch food and air even when it is bankrupt. You can control this from some tab, which might give you same sort of options the "sell" tab does now (e.g., required minimum price).
  
• State to State Shipments are free. Self-explanatory. You don't have to pay to ship something you already own, since it's out of circulation. Brokers attempt to fetch shipments from State Resources before buying things from elsewhere.
  
• Cities have reserve levels in the government account. A city can be set a reserve level of cash. It doesn't ship this cash to its sector or empire capital, but holds it back to pay for shipments and other necessities - the flat "send on half your cash" is abolished. At midnight, if the account is below its reserve, the Empire Capital Bank attempts to refill it, so money flows down as well as up. Thus, the reserve level should be enough to pay for one day's expenses. You need the "can set reserve account level" authority to control this, which the Emperor may wish to withhold from local governors, managing the budget centrally. This system is more flexible than the flat half we have now, and gives the central government more control over the provinces.
  
• Ship parts are bought. For repairs and construction on Fleet ships, the government account pays for things used by shipyards. It's never been entirely clear why this has been free in the past. If the parts are fetched from State Resources, they are already paid for and you don't have to pay twice.
  
• Ships and military bases have a maintenance cost. This is a flat cost, deducted from the government account. Ships can be assigned a parent city, like avatars. Instead of the confusing old "hail to pay wages" system, the cost is just added to the city's periodic budget. When a ship or base is unpaid, the officer releases the con, base buildings begin to decay. They go back to normal when payment resumes (with arrears or not?). Ships could pay their own costs to keep running in emergencies - and you can still complete orders manually.
  
• Colony Cost: Cities have a maintenance cost, depending on their population, to represent the salaries of administrators, roadworks, repairs, local government work in general. This cost is quite steep for small populations, since setting up a city and connecting its services is expensive. It flattens off a lot at higher populations, when economies of scale become viable. When the cost is not met, citizens begin to leave and decay sits in. Empires with only one system/planet (whatever) are exempt (?). Together with the account reserve, this allows Emperors to control how powerful their subordinates can grow - unless ambitious border governors want to engage in covert smuggling on the side (Foundation stuff!), or are permitted free enterprise in a more liberal empire. 
  

anyone please call chicago police and tell them my soon-to-be girlfriend is in trouble. they block all my phones and i cant do anything. i cant even reach the police. PLEASE HELP

dean you have done this before, please help me this one last single time i dont fucking care what you think about me but please call them.

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because who would hate slave shields?

In the new style designer, how do I set what type of vehicle is loaded by a parking spot?