Knowledge that keeps the frontier moving

This week, we’ve been connecting the frontier’s big ambitions to practical things: a laboratory that stays useful, a reactor upgrade that has to be manufactured, and a distant station that keeps producing while we’re elsewhere. Research, the economy and our station-building tools all took a step forward. Here’s what came together between 20 and 25 October, and what still needs work.

Six labs with a longer working life

Our merged research system now has 72 projects across six permanent domains: Power & Propulsion, Materials & Construction, Computing & Automation, Weapons & Defence, Biotech & Cybernetics, and Science & Exploration. Each domain contains 12 discoveries, with prerequisites connecting the branches. We want investing in a laboratory to open a continuing path through the technology tree.

Discoveries are permanent knowledge, while research data and manufactured upgrade kits remain physical goods. That distinction matters: knowing how to improve a reactor is a different achievement from producing the equipment and fitting it. Compatible upgrades replace equipment in the same slot, so successive generations do not stack endlessly. One concrete example in the implemented catalogue is Fusion engineering, whose reactor retrofit multiplies power generation by 1.45.

The rewards currently implemented are equipment and statistical effects. Bigger ideas recorded alongside the research designs, including wormhole prediction and automated clinics, still need their own gameplay. We’re excited by those possibilities, but they are not finished features.

A working economy beyond the cockpit

The persistent economy integration also merged this week. Production, mining, trade, research and construction can continue across unloaded sectors, with save-and-reload reconciliation. Faction leaders hold the wallets and divide available money between competing priorities, while protecting operating costs and existing commitments. Persistent requests give authorities a reason to fund and physically build needed laboratories.

For players, the purpose is a frontier whose activity continues beyond the place we happen to be visiting. A shortage, a research ambition and a construction project should connect through goods, transport and funding. The implementation is in place; judging the resulting traffic and pacing still takes more than reading the source.

A ten-hour headless campaign on the merged six-lab revision completed on 25 October with 36,000 observations, 11 snapshot invariant audits and ten lab-request audits. It recorded 69 powered laboratories, 59 distinct new projects discovered across the participating factions, and one newly operational station. Those 59 discoveries are a combined result across factions, not one faction finishing most of the tree.

Better tools, and honest rough edges

Station Foundry gained a versioned home in the game repository, including its account hosting and phone controls. The merged release includes station-module selection, location picking, account saves and version history. Move, Rotate and Delete controls sit beneath the 3D view on phones, making the selected module easier to work with. Its release checks exercised desktop and 390-pixel layouts; this remains a separate web planning tool rather than proof of in-game construction.

We also have useful unfinished business to follow. The ten-hour campaign still showed substantial factory supply waits and research funding pressure, and it produced no retrofit kits. It used one authored scenario with wages at zero and raids disabled. Those results help us find the next bottlenecks; they do not establish normal-game balance, rendered performance or a complete player upgrade journey.

The final research PR passed all 319 native tests, alongside Editor and game builds. That is a solid implementation checkpoint, with gameplay checks still needing their own evidence. We’re looking forward to following these discoveries all the way from the lab bench to the ships and stations they improve. Thanks for building this frontier with us.