Making room in Hollow Haven

We’ve taken Hollow Haven from an asteroid port concept to a place we can fly into, dock at and build inside. We’ve also been working on what happens when the next module needs parts, and what it feels like to keep a ship running from the inside. Here’s what we learned from 2 to 4 November.

A working port inside the rock

The Hollow Haven runtime merged on 2 November. The station now has three excavated bays where modules can expand into the cavern. When we place a module, the editor checks the space it occupies against the rock and the protected docking route. That leaves room to build around the berth while keeping the way in and out clear. The warm window glow and cavern lighting help mark out the port as we approach.

We put the merged revision through 55 checks in the rendered DirectX 11 test map. We flew the approach, occupied a real berth, exercised module placement and rejection, and checked that the station layout persisted across a save and reload. We also undocked and recovered manual flight outside the rock. We exercised this in the dedicated fixture. Integration with the wider galaxy and walkable accommodation are still ahead, along with packaged performance checks.

Getting the next module its parts

In a local economy experiment, we gave couriers a reason to serve an essential shortage or an uncovered construction order before routine commerce. In one replay from the same saved outpost, the first solar module waited 18 minutes and 13 seconds for materials, down from 55 minutes and 28 seconds. The assembly rate stayed the same. We were getting the missing parts there sooner.

The matched two-hour simulation completed 21 construction orders, up from 17. It also exposed a cost: research projects spent about 45% of their time waiting for goods, up from 23%. Both runs were headless with ship damage disabled. We’ll need to check how construction and laboratories share supplies before we call the new priorities a better balance.

We also tried reusing delivery queue calculations while evaluating freight routes. Across short replays of three saves, mean simulation step time fell by roughly 4–11% and all 90 compared economic checkpoints matched. One repeat from the middle save was slower. These local runs measure simulation work on this test setup, and rendered frame timing is a separate question.

A ship we can look after

We kept fitting out ship interiors in a separate development branch. In the Corvette we exercised a service panel and watched emergency lighting take over after isolating the main circuit. A repair gives the engineering space a purpose, and the fittings still have to leave a route through the hull that a standing player can use.

At the end of this window, fleet clearance and walkthrough checks were still in progress. Compact rooms can be useful without accommodating the full crew listed for the ship, and we’re keeping that constraint visible as we test.