To keep this thread nice and up to date, here are the latest major changes over the last week.

- You can now interact with nearly all windows while doing an idle activity, such as travelling at sublight
- Combat simulations have been added so you can try combat without risk of loss or death
- A new Mettle mission was added specifically for doing combat missions
- A new Bait mission was added that sees you used as bait to attract Outlanders
- A new Speed Running mission was added that sees you attempt to deliver Sodium-24 before it decays
- A new Care Package mission was added that sees you drop supplies for Outlanders if you want to support their cause
- A new Postcard mission was added that sees you visit vibrant and beautiful bodies to collect visual scans for the art community

and of course various other minor changes and bug fixes.

Hi there Jason, for the core skills used to unlock ship roles to command, you can find an FAQ for these or view them on this page: https://www.textspaced.com/skills/

Generally for all skills, you simply do what activities you enjoy, complete missions or criterions and your factors will change accordingly. For instance, if you enjoy mining, mining in a ship over time will move your factors in the direction to realise the mining craft skill.

So I've been meaning to check this game for a while now.  I became a patron during the early-access period for access to the game and then... never really accessed it.

When I play games like this, I always like using wikis to learn as much as I can before spending time developing a character.  Does this game have something like that?
What are the mechanical differences between the races? 
I struggle playing idle games because I forget to check them.  In fact, I think that's what happened with my character on here.  I was traveling somewhere and it was going to take 6 hours and I got so busy with other things that I forgot to look back at it.
Can wait times be improved through the course of gameplay? or is every aspect of the game primarily an idle experience?
I really love this kind of game.  I feel like it would scratch the same itch as Aurora 4x without also frying my brain in the process.  I'm just kinda struggling to get into it though.

Another week, another set of changes.

The biggest change this week was the addition of basic flight training. This mission is accepted on behalf of new players (and was added retrospectively for existing players) with an accompanying tutorial. Completing this mission realises all the ship craft skills meaning you buy and command all the level one ships available for each role, allowing you to specialise early on and focus on what you are interested in.

This change also means that missions are no longer required to be done to unlock these craft skills, so instead one of each mission available is now generated for you giving you a long list of something to always do. This also allows us to create more challenging missions or missions with unusual rewards since they are no longer gate keeping. Talking about mission types, the following new types were added:

- Care Package: Support the Outlander course and drop them supplies
- Squad Goals: A mission to encourage enduring combat with a squad
- Bygones: Hunt through the universe to find forgotten bygones
- Geiger Counter: For combat research, survive 25 nuclear saturation in live combat
- Family Matters: Using passenger accommodation fitted to your ship ferry dignitaries and amassers through hostile territory
- Shady Business: Collect illegal cargo from one deep space position and eject it at another (or maybe its a trap)
- Physical History: Retrieve meteor fragments to piece together the history of local planets
- Starry Eyed: Orbit and study specific star types to further scientific study

Finally, another large change was the implementation of the Worker class ship, an entry level construction ship replacing the old Engineer class ship which now has a higher skill requirement. There were of course other minor changes and bug fixes as noted in our change log on Discord.

Hello. My main problem with the game is the time it taes to fly from a planet to an other, itt is even worst if said other planet isnt in the jumping range of my ship. I thin it'll be better if for example, i want to go to a planet that is 50 LYs from me but my ship's jumping range is 30. So i jump 30 LYs, and fly just the other 20 with normal engines. That'll help a lot

For a low reward like that it is likely that the courier distance is quite small (the distance to get to the mission start is 143.10 LYs). If you don't plan to head that way you can let the mission replace itself after a day or reject the mission for a cost. Most sensibly , however, it might be best to do a different mission. In total there should be around 50 mission types assuming you are reasonably close to civilised systems.

^ Celina

Another week, another host of new features - this time some rather large ones.

The very first quest has been added "Collision Course". A quest is a communal mission thats designed for every player to help take part in and this first quest will be the first of three before we get to version one of the game. The best way to describe the quest is to include its brief that can be read from the mission window, so here it is:

Secondly we have begun adding the much requested feature of narrative text that was in the previous game. We have begun by rolling this out for describing bodies you arrive at, bodies that you orbit, text about entering sublight travel and character quips while you are travelling. Now that the foundation of this narrative system is in we should be able to more quickly get all of the text from the previous game imported, while also expanding the variation and of course more triggers for different types of event.

Objectives have been added which are broken into ongoing objectives and daily objectives both of which can be found in the missions window. Ongoing objectives work on a track basis, with different tracks for such things as lightyears travelled, planets charted or NPCs killed. As you level these tracks you will be rewarded capsules of a rarity related to the level of your track. These capsules contain rewards of all different types of cargo ranging from books and parts to consumables and ports - they can be opened at asteroid bars. This system allows you to continue doing the activities you enough and get rewarded for it.

The daily objectives are a set of the three same objectives given to every player that are simple tasks to reinforce social interaction, such daily objectives including sending a message to your faction or joining a squad. These daily objectives provide varying credit and skill point rewards.

Surveys have also been added to help us with information gathering but also for when voting is required, such as for rewards. The surveys can be found in the computer window and provide a small credit reward for completion.

Books have returned from the previous game, but this time with a twist. NPC factions will stock books their faction has written and so will player factions. Books are written by your own colonists and once written automatically go on sale at every faction merchant. Books are collected so that your character can read them while they are idle to increase skills related to the subject matter of the book.

Lastly, NPC merchants now stock their own line of weapons which are a persistent stock covering all weapon types and different per NPC faction. Conversely, captains and above can now pay to stock weapons and equipment in merchants for weapons their faction have researched and found the recipes for.

There are of course lots of other minor features and bug fixes which can be read in Discord or on our website.

Can someone please help me? I flew to somewhere that does ship trading, but I can't buy any of the ships. I have enough credits to buy the ship. Could it be a skill thing? If not, what could be preventing me from buying it?

@42
Thank you for the help.

Very pleased you are enjoying it. We’ll be working on interactive charting next, but this of course will take a bit longer.

That’s the plan yes, where feasible. But if there is a section you would like is to prioritise adding narrative text for just let us know.

There is no definitive timescale for this yet as its not considered a primary features (players are meant to work together after all), but of course to support solo factions this will be available in the future. To reiterate the orders will be rather simple and issued to faction NPCs (not crew), with the possibility of hiring freelancers in the future. Since faction NPCs belong to a colony and therefore have an anchor point (the colony), the orders will be something along the lines of:

- Mine
- Follow
- Patrol

We do also plan to have "away missions" in the future as well for crew.