My homeworld recently experienced some unplanned restructuring thanks to an asteroid. The planet remained intact but there are now some wicked craters on the surface. The world map onboard my spacecraft has correctly updated to represent the new geography, but the menu map hasn't.


Spacecraft Map:
   


Menu Map:
   

Would like to see a few "fun" skills added to the avatar skill screen that might be used to entice other in-game activities and perhaps lead to the addition of leader-boards for a selection of skills.

With the new changes to the decay and "Empire Standings" page, I think is is about time we discuss how empires should be ranked on the leaderboard once again.

We have discussed it at least once before, and I'll link to what I found here for discussion.

• (Idea thread) Scoring on Empire Standings
  
• (Idea thread) Empire ranking by population
  

Server Deadlock
A server deadlocked last night while a world was being destroyed by asteroids.

This was a great bug to flush out. The relevant code hasn't changed in years but the flurry of activity involved in hitting a world with all those asteroids made the deadlock situation happen. It's a good day.

Officer Trade
Officer could not buy tools at an airport.

Fixed numerous bugs that were preventing this from working.

Request Cargo Bug
Landed at airport in ship without transporters. Requested cargo for sale. No answer.

Fixed.

Trade With City On Road
Ship cannot trade with a city while sitting on a road of the city.

Fixed. The ship has to be on a road. The location of the ship must be within the city limits, as defined by its capitol and police station jurisdictions.

Government Target Value
Government target value was used as the basis for assassination mission payments. It was multiplied by an empire reward value that no longer exists. The result is that the payment for assassination missions is very low.

Government target value is now expressed in cronos. It will appear on the avatar's web page that way. That is the amount that the payment for assassination missions will be.

Conditions Error
An error message keeps appearing while loading avatars from the database. Something about a bad condition.

Fixed an error reading pregnancy conditions that were stored before the DNA change.

Founded City Stats
Someone suggested that showing all the cities founded by every avatar was giving away too much information about them.

Removed city stats from avatar web pages. Also removed solar system name containing their home building, which appeared there briefly.

I have some suggestions for an improvement to how spaceships and fleets are handled. Most of this focus is on the current follow command.

The goal: Be able to form groups of ships with each performing a specialized function. This could include, for example, a fleet consisting of a heavily shielded command ship, an atmospheric harvester for remote refueling, an orbital bombardment ship, and an anti-ship craft.

Key components:
-When going to warp and a follow ship command is active for a ship within a certain distance that belongs to the same empire, fix the ships relative to each other so they stay together during warp and system transition.
-Include a "Follow at relative position" command. This would allow a ship to always be positioned in a formation.
-Allow "Fleet" mission orders to be issued at once. For example, a mission disk that tasks ships 1-3 to orbit above a planet 120 degrees from each other while ship 4 harvests hydrogen then transfers this fuel to ships 1-3 in order.

Together, this would allow much better coordination of groups of ships for military or harvesting missions. Discussion would be helpful.

First, this is amazing. The asteroid impact you recorded haxus, truly breathtaking. 
Now on to the suggestion, currently it seems the results are:
Whole asteroid -> world destroyed
large chunk -> world destroyed
small chunk -> city wipe

I'd like to suggest a slight change:
Whole asteroid -> world destroyed
large chunk -> world transformed into lava world
small chunk -> city/life wipe

Inspired by real life, a simulation of a 500km asteroid hitting earth.

For reference the asteroid that caused the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs (and most life) was 10-15km in diameter... I know scale is 'wonky' at times, but I think this change would be more interesting, imagine you are exploring and find a lava world in the habitable zone. You then realize, it used to be someone's home. The poor buggers.

Lag Spikes
Servers are getting hit by crippling lag spikes that last for minutes at a time.

Found/fixed a problem when stacking items that have DNA. They weren't stacking, resulting in inventories at meat packing plants with tens of thousands of discrete items. This was causing a huge lag spike during a periodic maintenance function.

Avatar Page Cities
How do I know the current status of my cities that I have lost?

Cities founded by an avatar are now listed on their individual avatar web pages.

Empire Standings
The empire standings page shows a big confusing table of numbers.

Reworked the empire standings page to simplify the information and freshen the appearance.

Made links of avatar names.

Building Decay Enabled
Building decay due to abandonment was implemented in the last update but the actual decay of buildings was delayed through the weekend, to give people plenty of time to tag the systems they wanted to keep

Buildings and cities will begin to decay in this update. The rules posted in the previous thread apply.

A lot of buildings are going to disappear soon after the servers wake up. The current count on the empire standings page is 124,044.

City Founder
Someone suggested that the founder retain some level of control over their cities.

This was an interesting idea that has several effects:

• City founder is now in the chain of command of their own cities, if the founder is in the same empire as the city. No government office is required.
  
• Government office can add other people to the chain of command of a city.
  
• Cities are surrendered using the Cities and Bases page of the Governance window.
  
• Cities can only be surrendered by the founder, unless the founder is not a citizen of the empire. In other words, the emperor can't give away cities founded by citizens but it can give away cities founded by non-citizens, such as cities it captures or cities surrendered to it.
  
• This enables the founder of a city to transfer their own cities before changing empires, unless the cities belong to another empire, in which case they aren't listed on the Cities and Bases window.
  
• City founder permissions were removed from empire policies. No office is automatically granted to the founder of a city. No office is needed.
  
• Founder of a city never changes, even if the city changes empires. However, you must be in the same empire as the city to be in its chain of command and to surrender it.
  
• Founder relationship to city empire affects morale.
  • 0 if founder is not in any empire
    
  • 0 if founder is dead and gone
    
  • +2 if founder is in city empire
    
  • +1 if founder is in friend empire, based on founder empire's stance toward the city's empire
    
  • +1 if founder is in vassal empire
    
  • -1 if founder is in neutral empire
    
  • -2 if founder is in enemy empire
    

• Right To Found Cities - All citizens can now found cities on any world in their chain of command and any world they claimed. That means a citizen with no government office can only found cities on worlds claimed by them.
  
• Zone Build Permissions - Removed zone build permissions because they were no longer compatible with new city build rules. No code was using zone build permissions any more.
  
• Trespass Policy - Trespass policy was removed. A Trespass diplomatic incident is logged when a neutral city or station is detected within sensor range of an empire station; that is their ADIZ. Cities are also supposed to log an incident but they aren't currently doing it; it's on my to-do list.
  
• Rewards - Rewards page removed from empire policies.
  

So I heard mention of asteroids not too long ago and blew it off, it being many many months since I last played. 

..

Logged in today to find my homeworld destroyed and only one small moon base remaining. Guess I should have listened closer!