It’s getting close to time to start on the actual combat system, but there’s just a little more preparation before that can happen. Everything here is coming in version 0.7.4, which will be the last of the minor updates leading up to the combat update. So, without further ado, let’s see the changes!

The major feature of the update is the addition of AI pirate ships. They can’t attack you yet, but they’ll follow you around in the world. They’re currently set to use the Gazelle I (the same ship you’re given at the start of a new world), but they can technically be set to use any ship design. In the world, they’re colored red to distinguish them from your ship.

In terms of smaller changes, there’s a new weapon: the Railgun. It’s a high-damage, high-complexity, fixed ballistic weapon. At 5×5 tiles, it’s also going to be the largest weapon in the game.

Beyond that, there’s a lot of UI improvements and a new taskbar icon replacing the default Java icon. Also, a very old bug, which had caused a copy of the player’s ship to spawn when warping to a new sector under certain conditions, has finally been fixed. It was caused by the command to spawn the player’s ship being called twice from different parts of the code.

As always, I don’t have an official release date but you can expect it within the next few days. After that, it’s on to the big one: version 0.8.0 with proper ship combat.