Core Exiles TimeLine

Coalition Step up and Complete AJL

Here's one for the books folks! News Just in that the Coalition have stepped in over at Krall II and as a payback for the AJL's help with the Naristro message have completed stage 2 outright of the AJL project!

Yes that's right apparently three super carriers docked at Krall II this morning and began offloading a major delivery of resources and commodities.

Here's the Official current statement form the AJL

The project to create an Alien Language decoder (A.L.D) has now reached it ultimate stage. The AJL Team has collected enough resources thanks to the efforts of the public and their scientists are placing the finishing touches to the schematics required to build the Decoder.

Captains that took part in helping the AJL complete there research can be assured that they will be receiving a set of Schematics sent directly to them in the very near future.

So those of you that took part can shortly expect to be hearing from the AJL! Good luck to you all! Plus don't forget those captains that were unlucky enough to take part and when you have the Schematics make some of these Decoders for your friends!

ISN News Desk

The Truth is out!

Press Officer Release : Coalition High Command Official Report pertaining to The Expanse.

16 days ago we received a communication from Our lead 'Fleet Command' vessel in the Expanse. The communique was decoded and to our astonishment was sent from a planet deep inside the Expanse and it appeared to be of Alien origin.

We have since confirmed the transmission came from the Banran system in the Expanse. The communique was from a Race of Aliens calling themselves the Naristro.

This is a partial military vetted release of that statement. This statement has undergone several further translations to allow it to be fully understood. (our thanks to the AJL for their help).

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE.

The above press release was given to us this evening from the Coalition Press HQ on Sharaia. Our tech department have confirmed the message has been heavily modified and cut in places it seems, but what exists is part of the original message.

The destruction of so many planets and their populations explains why the Alien race known as the Javorans are hell bent on the destruction of all humanity. Who can blame them.

Apparently the Coalition are scanning all vessels entering into the Expanse for 'Pulse Wave' capable technology and we for one can't blame them either. Whilst it seems in the mean time we are tied into a prolonged and drawn out war with the Javorans the possible gains of Trade with such an advanced race as the Naristro greatly outweighs any other considerations.

We will be running a number of stories over the next few days relating news as we get it but one thing is for certain the Expanse is about to get a whole lot hotter!

News Leak - Pending Announcement!

In the last few hours there have been several 'leaks' to our news sources, much of it is sketchy and uncorroborated at this time.

But in the mean time we can report that part of this news conference will uncover the fact that the Coalition have been in communication (although one sided) with an alien race in the Expanse!

It appears that events which took place earlier in this year seem to have devastated entire sections of the expanse and it's inhabitants. Unconfirmed reports have stated that there are two main Alien Races in the Expanse.

The Javoran with their 3 caste system and the Naristro, the latter so far unseen by the Coalition Forces to date. The powers that be have been receiving communications from the Naristro and it seems that all is not as we first assumed.

We can't report on much of what has been leaked as these are unconfirmed reports and our news sources are unable to validate them, but we have been promised a front row seat at the Press conference when it's held later tomorrow.

For now there is much hustle and bustle over at Coalition1 in the Expanse and there have been major purchase spikes seen on the open market as traders brace themselves for an inevitable trade war.

Mean while Benton Steele and his group the Alien Justice League have become quiet the celebrities. They have armed Coalition troops stationed outside their offices and several of the high command senior officers have been seen coming and going for meetings with the AJL in the last few hours.

ISN News Desk

Christmas Tagging Returns

It's that time of year again folks, yes you guessed it the graffiti gangs and their spray cans are back out once again. It seems at this time of year Captains have to be extra vigilant for these 'practical jokers'.

Their art work can be seen popping up all over the place, there really is no limit the places they wont tag. Many Captains are unhappy about the way the officials seem to look on this form of graffiti as 'just kids letting off steam' others have taken matters into their own hands and are reporting the taggers when they spot them.

Either way we can expect to see the Christmas message plastered all over the Galaxy this year.

Those interested in helping report tag incidents can do so through official channels.

ISN New Desk

Disaster Stikes San Ticlaws

Disaster has struck the San Ticlaws yearly collection for the children at the orphanages!

Capitan Blyth Mc'dear had to jettison the entire cargo he was hauling for San Ticlaws when a fire broke out on-board his ship 'Christmas Spirit'.

Once he realised the fire was going to reach the cargo bay he decided the only hope of saving the gifts and festive presents was to jettison them into space. Unfortunately he was on final approach to a Jump gate and the entire cargo entered the jump gate system and has been dispersed over the four human Galaxies.

San Ticlaws has made an appeal to all Captains to look out for this precious Christmas cargo and to return it (unopened) to the temporary office he and his little helpers have opened on Cinq Port promenade.

This does not leave San Ticlaws long till he needs to deliver the festive presents and goods to the orphanages. A deal has been struck with the local businessmen at Cinq Port and they have amassed a large amount of XP tickets for those that help out. The XP being awarded on the morning of the 25th of December.

So folks - look out for these Festive items drifting in the space lanes, and remember the sad faces at the orphanages, lets give them a Christmas smile this year!

ISN News Desk

Coalition Declare Victory

There has been a long, hard and arduous battle being fought in the Expanse these last months. Since the Coalition-1 Star-base was completed the Aliens have thrown nearly every conceivable ship and raid against the coalition forces.

Coalition command, made up of all three 'Human Faction Forces' has been hard pressed to stay on top of the situation and much of the battle has been fought by the 'Privateers'.

But today Coalition Command released a communique update that Yam is now Officially Classed as 'Coalition Territory'. They have commended the hard work by both Privateer Combat Pilots and the sterling work of the Explorers who have all worked so hard to turn back the Alien Foe.

On that Topic the Coalition Command is staying tight lipped. There are rumours that they may know more about the Alien situation than they are letting on and it also seems that several Coalition ships have been spotted attempting to get past the Alien blockades.

Never the less along with the reclassification of Yam to 'Coalition' they have also raised the Law Levels of the planets and Coalition-1 Star-base within Yam itself.

This has been warmly welcomed by many of the Commercial and Industrial companies that have sat on the sidelines until now. I suspect we can expect to see more stores and services opening up in the Yam system in the near future.

ISN News Desk

Save Professor Wade!

Hi viewers, I'm Mike Fingal bringing you all the news from around the galaxies right here, right now. We interrupt our scheduled broadcast to bring you an urgent report from Bex Gregory, who's talking with Professor Harriet Guildham on Aliarnus.

Thanks Mike. Yes viewers, I'm here once again with Professor Harriet Guildham who has further news about the dilemma the Carbodyne Institute is facing. What have you to tell us Professor?

Well Bex the appeal has been going very well and all of us here at Carbodyne extend our sincerest gratitude to all the selfless captains who have made donations to our appeal. The only problem is, we have discovered that during Professor Wade' experiment the dimensional stability unit was inadvertently damaged. We were unable to detect this problem at first due to the chaos that was going on all around us, but now we have been able to begin rebuilding Dipsi we have determined that Professor Wades return will be highly unlikely and dangerous unless we are able to rebuild the unit.

So what is it that you need?

We need to once again ask the kind captains out there to donate further resources that will allow the unit to be rebuilt. We know it's a lot to ask, and we appreciate all the help we have received thus far, but it will all be for nothing if the dimensional stability unit is not repaired.

READ FULL STORY HERE

WADE SAVED - READ HERE

Sven in court again!

Sven Yarrell was back in court again today, amid allegations of trading mech parts to ConFed. A GalFed raid on a number of Sven's outlets confiscated a number of mech packs that had been traded to him, and found evidence that some components had been partly cannibalised so resources could be sold.

The charity "Mechs for Peace" which had been buying mechs from Sven to give away to users of Intergalactic Relay Chat (IRC) reported that some of their beneficiaries had assembled mechs and sent them into the arena, only to find they did not detect or attack nearby mechs.

The judge warned Sven that if he was in court again for his shady business practices, he would be likely to face a prison sentence. Sven's lawyer pleaded insanity, claiming Sven had been unbalanced by the sight of captains handing over huge numbers of high-value crystals in exchange for data cubes.

The judge conceded that Sven had a very strong case, which was locked and made of steel and had just been delivered to his chambers, and agreed to defer sentencing indefinitely on condition Sven no longer receives or trades in any mech parts.

ISN News Desk

USA Expansion Plans

I've been speaking today with the Managing Director of the Universal Staff Agency. It seems they have been busy making plans to expand their business throughout the Sphere and Verecian Galaxies.

Their services and staff are highly respected throughout the commercial community and their 23 point entrance exam is an excellent way to ensure you are always getting the best of the best when it comes to employing staff.

USA has been under increasing pressure to open new offices and expand their staff lists. Well they are rising to the challenge and have embarked on a new employment strategy which they claim should help alleviate most of the issues that Settlement and Commercial company owners are currently facing.

We look forward to seeing this plan in action and urge captains to think before you sign the dotted line. A staff member is paid from from the day you take them on regardless of their assignment.

ISN News Desk

Ribblez ?

Hi viewers, I'm Mike Fingal bringing you all the news from around the galaxies, right here, right now. Shortly we will be bringing the latest report on the great Sport Scandal, but first we have news of the utmost urgency for all captains in every galaxy. Over to Bex Gregory , reporting from a ship repair centre on Fieron where Ribblez are running amok.

Thanks Mike, urgent news has reached us at ISN about the devastating effects that the Ribblez are having on many brave captains out there. We are receiving unconfirmed reports that captains are experiencing problems with structural integrity as the Ribblez start EATING their way through bulkheads, cargo holds and mainframe stabilisers. Captains have reported missing cargo, miscellaneous items and integral systems. I'm here with Gerard Thomasino, head mechanic at the ST Repair centre. What can you tell us about the Ribblez Gerard?

I've never seen anything like it Bex, they're just horrendous! They look so cute as well and then all of a sudden -Wham! You're up to your knees with the dang things, each one capable of stripping a hold of its contents in double quick time. If there's nothing in the hold they start attacking the ship structure and before long, if not stopped, you're wondering why your port engine is floating past your cockpit window.

Is there anything that can be done Gerard?

At this moment in time Bex I'm not sure, thats the truth. We're looking at a wide range of solutions, but until a surefire deterrent is found we're just doing our best to stabilise the condition of the ships and keep them space worthy.

Thanks Bex, and thank you Gerard. Important news there for all captains in all the galaxies I'm sure you'll agree. Now over to Serge Kilmer, live at the Galactic Central Courtrooms.

ISN News Desk

New resources. But are they new?

According to a shocking report by renowned Scientist Dr. Albert Dreyfuss of the Akar Institute, over-harvesting and advanced extraction techniques have had unexplained effects on the raw resources of some planets. Dr. Dreyfuss has done an in depth study of certain planets and the effects massive extraction sites have on their environment and has discovered that certain resources' properties have changed wildly and unpredictably after long term exposure to the advanced extraction technology that is in use today.

“It is the entirely random change in the base monocular structure of these resources that got me interested in investigating further.” said Dr. Dreyfuss recently in an interview with one of our field reporters. “The technology that is currently in use by extractors is causing a resonance change and electromagnetic shift in certain, until now, undiscovered deposits of what was at one time very common resources, but the very nature of some of these materials has been changed drastically.

“We now know that planetary geological and ecological effects are part of the reason some deposits of resources are different between planets. Were all things equal the changes would be exactly the same from one place to another, however even tiny differences in the environment can cause massive differences in the structure of these new resources. And I do not have to tell you the ramifications of this discovery, the potentials for these new resources could be limitless!”

READ FULL STORY HERE

Stowaways

One of our network affiliates picked up on a news story which we feel needs a little more exposure. Often Gal-Fed is more than happy to sweep stories of interest to the public under the electronic mat.

For a few days now captains have been finding 'stowaways' on their ships. Not the normal type you'd expect but small furry pink looking creatures. The Galactic health organisation (another Gal-Fed run body) has stated clearly that they pose no hazard to captains unless you are allergic to their fur.

What they failed to mention was that these creatures have an astounding ability to procreate on their own, and once you have more than two your in deep trouble! If you let them reach critical mass they will even go into overdrive and become extremely hungry eating almost anything in their path!

We have heard rumours of them eating through cargo containers in ships stores and chowing down on anything they find. Of course these reports are unconfirmed but it makes you wonder where these creatures came from, and if the The Galactic health organisation is actually hiding a more sinister problem?

ISN News

O.R.S.A Strikers Win!

ORSA strikers win concession - offices to close daily

ORSA offices were closed today in a wave of unofficial strikes by employees, who claimed overwork was leading to intolerable working conditions. This followed the sackings of a number of ORSA employees, after an unnamed captain removed extractors without them noticing. The hard-pressed workers were fired after sending the captain an extractor from ORSA stores, having entered in their records that the extractor had been confiscated.

ORSA management have now agreed that ORSA offices will be closed to captains from 17:25 to 17:35 to allow staff to concentrate on the flow of extractors being automatically removed upon expiry of the resource lease. The sacked ORSA employees have been offered their jobs back, but refused after receiving huge consultancy fees for a forthcoming holomovie about the strike, titled "Extractor Salvation".

News source: RH1 Network (Reporter Captain Hannah)

Scanner Revision Update 0.117

It seems that at long last Gal-Feds boffin's have overcome the Nebula Scanner issue. Up till now Nebula have been one of the most dangerous spacial phenomenon. Simply trying to approach one without a scanner that can 'see' it was next to suicidal.

The Gal-Fed boffin's have eventually managed to resolve the interference issue that beleaguered all scanners to date. An update was sent thought the software update systems this morning and by now all Captains Galaxy wide should now not only be able to see the Nebula on their scanners but also navigate towards them.

The security network dotted around these Nebula is still active and anyone approaching will find their AI interacting with the nearest Automated Beacon System.

'Harvester Systems' are imminent now that Captains can approach and safely navigate these Nebula so expect them to hit a retailer or schematic store near you in the very near future. How these work and what they require has been a closely guarded secret known only to the techs and manufacturing crews working on these new systems.

What we do know is this will allow Captains the first opportunity to Mine / Extract these rich Nebula of their resources, what they may be and how this is to be done is anyone's guess at this stage!

ISN News Desk.

Court Case Upheld - Sven to Pay!

It seems that Sven Yarrell is not having it all his own way this week. An 'unnamed' Settlement capitan took Mr Yarrell to court over the practise of fair trade and commerce. He was claiming that whilst Sven charged captains for the right to open a Sven Franchise on their promenades they should see some form of income from these stores.

A similar court case came to court a few months back relating to the business practices of Commercial Storage. This was thrown out in the opening statements and never made it any further.

The case against Mr Sven Yarrell has been upheld and the judge decided that Sven should pay 18% of the barter value per item bartered to Sven on any settlement.

This means that from an hour ago any items bartered to Sven's will gain the settlement in question 180 credits per barter point. With over 7000 items being bartered in the opening week of business since Sven's major relaunch many settlement captains will find this a welcome addition to their settlement finances.

ISN Reporter.

This reporter needs to make it clear for legal reasons : Items Purchased from Sven using barter points will not gain said settlement any funds from the purchase.

Settlement Docking Looms

The Galactic I.R.S. bureau today issued a final warning to three Settlements for lack of payment on their services. It seems that a few of the settlements out there have decided to 'not pay' their settlement daily costs and allowed their settlement banks to run into the Red.

Settlements :

Tagons Tribunal
Tagon Slag Pit
Tierra del Fuego

The G.I.R.S is not known for their sense of humour and have summarily ordered a docking closure on the settlements in question. These closures will take place this coming Saturday if the settlements do not pay their outstanding fees and return their settlement banks to good standing.

Closure of Docking facilities will mean that their respective settlements will be closed to ALL visitors until the fees and fines are paid.

Already a crowd of angry protesters have massed at the docking bays of these three settlements and riot police have been dispatched to attempt to keep the peace.

Many of the captains using these settlements services and having stocks stored there were today clearing their accounts and moving to a more reliable provider.

ISN News Desk

The Alien Justice League

Benton Steele - is the new name turning heads around the ISN News Office. He and his whacko errrr I mean scientist friends have formerly announced a new research project being headed up by the Alien Justice League over on Krall II in Sharaia.

The Alien Justice League sprang to life a few weeks after the Gate to Sharaia was opened and the first Alien vessels were destroyed. Its the A.J.Ls contention that the Aliens are misunderstood and don't want to fight.

Benton and his cronies errr I mean followers have set up a project for Captains to help them design what they call an Alien Language Decoder (A.L.D). This they promise will help us to fully understand and communicate with the Aliens.

Each Capitan that helps with this three part Project will be awarded a Free set of schematics for the ALD device when the AJL finish their research project.

They may be whacko's but at least they are attempting to figure out the Alien langugae so we here at ISN wish them well.

Spend Victory Points - Lora Summers

News just in - Lora Summers has been given the long awaited role of Official 'Victory Points Representative' for Power Forge Productions.

Many Captians have been quietly ammassing these victory popoints during their more successful bouts of mech combat, but been unable to turn the points to good use. Well that time has now arrived.

It appears Miss Summers has been given an office over in Ferra on Spark where captains with Victory points can convert them in to 'Official CE Store Gift Certificates'.

It's good to see such a large company as Power Forge Productions giving something 'back' and we applaud the opening of this role and office!

ISN News

G.R.P Clean House

The Galactic Research Project (A Privately funded Group) has come under close scrutiny this last few weeks by the Gal-Fed 'Technology Release board'. It seems that not everything the GRP was showing in their annual reports has been as truthful as they would like us to believe.

In fact it was found that the board of directors had been in collusion with several private companies selling the GRP contracts in a closed bidding system. The TRB uncovered this after an anonymous tip off was received last month.

The GRP themselves announced a 'cleaning of house' and several board members resigned rather than face criminal proceedings. The TRB insisted that the next project which is already a major controversy in scientific circles be started from scratch with a TRB oversight commitee having the final say in the contracts once the project reaches its final stage.

The Project 'Dark Matter' research has raised many eyebrows as practical application research into this subject has always had disastrous consequences. The GRP insist they have the technology and equipment to do this with complete safety.

Only time will tell!

ISN New Reporter

Verecian Open Doors

In an unprecedented move the Verecian Sales Bureau made a move against their own central governments political division. Up till now the Verecian stance on their stores has been a 'closed window' affair. If you wanted to know what they were selling you had to visit one of their stores directly.

The Verecian Sales Bureau made it clear that their member stores were suffering badly due to this and that many of their potential customers were heading to the non VP stores for their goods.

In the last 24 hours many new reactors, systems and even specialised cutters have been released by Sphere based companies. This lead the VP Sales Bureau to have emergency talks and they decided to uncover a portion of their sales stock to the public.

This means for the first time since the gates were reopened to Verec-Per that normal everyday non Verecian citizens can view some of the VP stores wares.

A spokesman was quick to point out that you would still need to have the correct Vereician Standing to enter their stores and that this move was just to open the public's eyes to the options available to them.

ISN New Reporter

Break-in at Gal-Fed Supply Office

It seems reports are coming in of a breakin at the Gal-Fed Supply office at Port Ross in Franklyn.

Lt Quire has been working for the 'Special Acquisitions' Department of Gal-Fed supply. He is often brought in to overview large projects and to ensure they are filled on time and in an efficient and effective manner. With the successful deployment of Coalition 1 in the Yam System it didn't take long before the large corporations saw the massive potential in untapped new resources in the Expanse Galaxy.

O.R.S.A quickly opened a resource office on Sul-Redet but this didn't overcome the issue with beacon based transporter technology. This has caused major delays in the Expanse Galaxy as traders and captains are unable to use many of the distance calculation devices that they would normally use.

Because of this the Military was tasked by several large private corporations to 'fix' this technical glitch if they wanted their funding to stay intact. No one needs reminding that the fight against the Aliens is expensive. So Lt Lutac was called in to start the collection of resources for this project.

Lt Lutacs contract was coming to a close and the shipment of exotic ores and much needed materials was being prepared for transportation to the Research and Development laboratories when the complex was raided by a well armed and extremely competent team of thieves.

They managed to remove a large proportion of the contracted exotic materials along with a % of non exotic resources required by the project leader. This set back will severely hamper the planned research and development of Transporter based technology in the Expanse.

Lt Lutac has carefully taken an audit of the missing resources and renewed his efforts to complete this contract.

More ORSA Points

Captains have been busy exploring the far flung corners of each and every Galaxy it seems lately. We have had three planets added to the list where you can now seek safety and repair.

This increase in activity has also prompted O.R.S.A to roll out even more resource points, The Expanse, Sphere and even Verec-Per have all recently seen the opening of new Resource spots.

A recent audit of O.R.S.A offices showed some 1227 Harvesters in use with the numbers steadily growing each week. Hopefully O.R.S.A and the exploration captains can keep up with the demands for raw resources. :)

This report must be tempered with a word of warning for those Captains out there not paying full attention, as although Commercial Stores have been quick to react to these new Offices it seems that whilst C.S.T.S is undergoing review by the Credit and Fraud Beuro they are NOT currently opening any more stores.

Dev News

66 Settlement Licenses

The Official Planetary Settlement committee today increased its members list to 66 planets available for Settlement Licensing.

This was due in most to recent exploration by captains around the known Galaxy and also an increase in Licence pricing and payouts to member planets offering the licences.

Miss Durant at San Ferran has the new list of settlement licenses already added to her database and has been ordered to implement the new pricing schedule.

Dev News

G.R.P Gets Boost

The Galactic Research Project (A Privately funded Group) have been working on their latest research project. This is the advancement of the Cutter systems and it's applications.

All Ancient Artefacts found from archaeological digs or Privately funded Exploration missions are taken to them for data analysis. Well this morning they got a very big surprise. It seems a private collector died last week and left in his will some 80+ Artefacts.

This was enough to push the research team in to hysterics as they tried to catalogue and extract the data they required to complete the project.

As it stands the GRP project is now 96% completed! There have also been hints that this latest mass deposit of artefacts has changed the overall direction of their research, but I've not been allowed to comment any further due to a legal gag order.

ISN News

Mechs Arrive

Hi viewers, I'm Mike Fingal bringing you all the news from around the galaxies right here, right now. We will shortly be bringing you all the news from the Miners Union Annual Meeting. But first, we sent Bex gregory over to Grelia to witness some of the action coming out of the Mech Combat Town.

Thanks Mike, yes I'm Bex Gregory here at Grelia in Drakos casting an eye over all that's happening in the combat sectors. For those viewers who don't know, the combat town is divided into 3 sectors. Alpha sector is the only one in use at the moment but the other 2 will be opened up as more and more mech commanders gain the points needed to move up. Earlier in the day I watched an interesting battle taking place between 3 mechs which left me quite breathless, beautifully constructed machines scarred, torn and twisted into lumps of scrap metal by lasers, missiles, electro-magnetic weapons and kinetic projectiles.

The devastation caused by these A.I controlled machines was awesome to watch as shop fronts, street lights and buildings were pummeled, bashed and destroyed as the mechs tried to engage each other. I was lucky enough to catch up with Varin Yowt, mech spokesman and leading light behind getting this project up and running.

Hi Varin, let me begin by congratulating on the combat town, it's quite a sight. Is everything going to plan?

READ FULL STORY HERE

New Verec Per weapons unveiled

Hi folks, this is Mike Fingal and ISN bringing you all the news from around the galaxies right here, right now. Shortly we will be bringing you all the environmental news from around the galaxies including a report of a potentially life threatening chemical spill that has occurred in Wimbourne. But first, we sent our roving reporter, Bex Gregory, to Verec-Per to check out the opening and unveiling of a new range of weapons.

Thanks Mike, yes I'm here in Verec-Per looking at all the new weapons that have been made available by the Verecian government. Until now these weapons have only been available to Verecians but with increased trade and passenger routes opening up, the government has seen fit to make these weapons available to captains from other galaxies. Though these weapons are ready to buy, off the shelf, anyone wishing to purchase from Sarab-Eta Technologies will need to have earned the respect of the Verecian people, so don't turn up if you have little or no standing in Verec-Per. We asked a passing captain, who had just made a purchase, what he thought of the new addition to his arsenal.

'It's awesome, absolutely awesome. It may cost more than a conventional Sphere weapon, but it just blows the competition away. And I can keep coming back for bigger and better has I gain more experience'.

Well there you have it viewers, any captain wishing to make a big hit in the combat zone should head straight to Verec-Per before the opposition does. This is Bex Gregory for ISN, back to you Mike.

Thanks Bex, and now over to Wimbourne and a report on a chemical spill that has the environmentalists running scared.

Mike Fingal ISN

Kharm-Kai Shipping Launch

Kharm-Kai Shipping has broken ranks with the Verecian Honour Bureau and decided to open it's doors to all visitors to the Verec-Per Galaxy. The one and only Verecian shipping company had been in discussions with Honour Bureau and after their last round of talks an agreement had still not been reached.

A spokesman for Kham-Kai shipping is quoted as saying 'The Honour Bureau is slow to move on such difficult shifts in our economic and political view points, but we have a company to run and share holders to answer too. We have taken the decision to go against their wishes at this time'.

The Honour Bureau themselves refused to comment (well we are reporters) and we can only speculate how much damage this will do to future inter-galaxy trade relations.

Meanwhile the salesmen at Kharm-Kai were happy to show the neural interfaces to the newcomer customers, although some Captains obviously found the Verecian idea of 'control interface' to go somewhat further than they were comfortable with.

Mike Fingal ISN

Gleso & Mall Stall

Last week we reported that 'Brad Shellon' our economics advisor told us that Gleso and several other large corporate groups could open other stores and malls throughout the Verecian Galaxy. Well it seems he was correct and indeed Gleso and Mall Stores have begun appearing in the Verecian Galaxy.

It's no mean feat and I'm told that the Verecian's have driven some very hard bargains with these two corporate companies. It also appears that rumours about Gal-Fed making headway on a deal that will enable Planetary Settlement licences to be purchased for placement in the Verecian Galaxy, is in fact currently under review by the Verecian High Council.

We have also a news report in from Verecian Affairs that there is to be a unavailing of a Verecian Vessel Company. So far they have been out of bounds to non Verecian inhabitants but a recent shift in Verecian policy has made it possible for this company to make plans to sell to the rest of us.

Similar deals are on the table with Verecian Weapons manufactures and we may see more follow suit as the Verecian's break rank to make a profit. Apparently this is almost unheard of in their culture and one wonders what long term impact we are having on the Verecian people.

More when we get it.

ISN News Desk.

Gal-Fed attack RAID!

In a fairly unprecedented show of strength the Northern Gal-Fed Patrol fleet engaged the Pirate RAID that has been causing so much trouble to shipping in Palolon for the last few weeks.

We have scanned our data banks and it's been over 6 years since a Gal-Fed Admiral wasted valuable ships and man power on the Pirate RAID's that seem to plague our shipping lanes these days.

Admiral 'Jet' Heller has been known to break the odd 'chain of command' orders, but when you make the rules I guess it's easier to break them. By all accounts the RAID was far better prepared than the Admiral realised and four frigate and two destroyers were disabled by the RAID during the prolonged attacks this morning.

The RAID eventually moved to the Jump Gate to make a get away and Admiral Jet was unable to muster enough ships to stop it jumping through to the Yaralista System.

The admiral decided to stop there and has docked what's left of his sizeable fleet in the Palolon system for some pretty extensive repairs. The RAID is currently repairing itself in the Yaralista system but does not seem to have attempted to move any further.

Dev News

My God It's Full of Stars!

Unless you have been stuck on a garbage scow or on a tour of duty in the Expanse you cant have missed the fact that those wacky Gal-Fed scientists have done it again! Not happy with finding a Gate to an alien Universe now they have located jump gate paths that join up The forge and Anvil Galaxies!

Seems this new Galaxy is called Verec-Per. Apparently 'Per' in the Vericians language means Galaxy and some confusion was had for some time until the universal translators figured it out. It seems that the Verec Galaxy was in fact once part of the Glorious Core territories. It seems that when the Core annexed all our systems and Galaxies some 500 years ago they removed all reference from the Jump gates and left each Galaxy essentially stranded.

Our Gal-Fed boffins and hard working techs managed to download all the Gate data and have already published an unofficial Stellar Map. This will no doubt come as a major shock to the inhabitants of the backwater Bolus and Belus systems.

As we reported earlier this week the Trade corporations were already on hand to jump through the gate almost before a small Gal-Fed battle group was able to finish transitioning the Gate network.

We are trying our best to glean what we can about the Verecian's but they are a tight lipped bunch. It seems that when they were separated from their trade and support routes from the core they fell into a close to anarchy state. This existed for 100s of years and only in the last 50 years or more have they actually started to make peace with each other and begin to form trade and military alliances.

From Gal-Feds perspective they have classified the systems of Verec-Per to be contested and for the time being that is unlikely to change. Whilst the Verecian inhabitants recognises the Gal-Fed flag they show no allegiance to it.

Forge & Anvil - Bizarre News!

It's been many months since the Sharaia Galactic Gate was brought on-line and Gal-Fed have been tight lipped about the inhabitants of the Expanse and what if any progress they are making to setting up a foothold station in the expanse.

But that's not where my attention has been this last few weeks. One of our 'friends' on the science council has been feeding us tips to check out the Forge and Anvil Galaxies. Whilst this information was somewhat sketchy it has indeed panned out with some strange and somewhat bizarre news.

It appears that a large series of science and military vessels have been arriving in both Bolos and Belus for the last few weeks. These far flung corners of the Galaxies are normally known more for their trafficking in illegal goods, but even as I speak we have reports of more and more vessels arriving.

They all seem to be congregating around each systems jump gate and any attempt by the press to find out what's going on has been thwarted.

What I find most surprising is that along side the War Vessels and Science exploration ships there is also a large contingent of Civilian contractors and envoys. Many of the largest names in the corporate industry are also there, including emissaries from Asahr, Wesbec and a handful of other well know companies.

We intend to get to the bottom of this as quickly as we can but in the mean time your guess is as good as ours!

ISN News

Gal-Fed Engineering - Asteroids Unlocked

Gal-Fed Engineering have been working with the science department from the Morgan Institute for the last few months to release the locks on the Asteroid Fields in the Anvil and Forge Galaxies.

These fields were locked from navigation scanners to stop Captains wandering into there dangerous fields and mining 'Lord knows what'. As it is the Engineering team are now happy that whilst the fields contain some new and exciting ores, there is nothing dangerous about these new finds other than the normal hazards of Asteroid Mining in space.

Already large barges have been seen making their way out to these new fields in search of the new ores that Gal-Fed have given a 'clean bill of health'. The corporations were warned ahead of time and we can already see a few of the huge Refineries in orbit in these systems.

Miners should be aware of the dangers from Pirates and the many myriad of accidents and hazards that mining in low law levels can bring, but as one passing captian was heard yelling as he dashed for his ship 'sod the risk - If I don't get there soon Xaero will have mined the place dry!'.

Reporting on behalf of ISN News.

Galactic Four

Many have wondered how the Galactic Federations prepared their four vessels for their recent exploration enterprises, curious as to how exactly these vessels discovered what no one else had caught sight of.

Through personal connections, ISN news reporters were able to locate one of the technicians involved in the outfitting and general preparation of the ships. Due to lack of clearance and permission to speak of such GalFed activities, our technician requested that his identity be withheld.

We were told that initially, all GalFed survey vessels were recalled and brought in for general repairs. Four of the finest ships of the fleet were ordered to remain behind. Their captains and crews were kept relatively in the dark regarding GalFed intentions for their ships. The vessels were first stocked with enough life support materials to support one hundred men for six months. Then their scanning systems were removed entirely and refitted with sensitive, new, longer-ranged scanners.

While the scanners were installed, the ships were kept in complete lockdown at a location our contact could not disclose, although he referred to it as a GalFed stronghold. The devices were heavily guarded, and only extremely high-ranking GalFed officials and properly identified technicians were allowed even within viewing distance of the vessels. After 24 hours of intense and complicated labor, the new scanners were equipped. Captains and crews were called back to their vessels and give further technical, scientific, and military personnel.

READ FULL STORY HERE

New Systems Located

It is no mystery now that several new systems and planets have been discovered along those of the familiar outer Sphere systems, but their origin and findings are another matter entirely. This reporter, lucky enough to have secured a position aboard one of four GalFed survey vessels, will attempt to shed some government-regulated light on the subject. The Galactic Federation, amongst other groups, has long believed that there was something more beyond the reaches of the outer rim of the Sphere galaxy. Until recently, this hypothesis remained untested. The appearance of long-range scanning devices in government hands has finally made it possible. These new devices are more than a bit expensive, to say the least, but they are certainly top of the line and worth the cost to GalFed officials.

The scanners can detect slight gravity sinks and disturbances in otherwise open space, guiding the vessels they are equipped upon to these new destinations. Full technological and scientific crews are available on board to collect and analyze data, along with ensuring proper function, usage, and care of the sensitive equipment. My time spent scanning aboard the survey vessel Carpathia was uneventful, though the ship is to credit for the new systems near Castalan, as her sisters Discovery, Endeavour, and Goliath are for Tig, Sabot, and Taithinarl, respectively.

As they are found, planets are assigned a series of letters and numbers for a name, corresponding to the ship that surveyed them, the system name, and a temporary planet number. The further exploration and investigation of these planets will presumably lead to names that are more conventional.

READ FULL STORY HERE

ISN News

Expanse Causing Concern

After several weeks of probing the new territory, some of the brave explorers are returning to their base camps in Sharaia with diminished morale. As they return they pass droves of new ships heading off into the unknown.

Many of these returning adventurers report that their equipment, which has to be certified by Galactic Federation Officials, before entering the portal, is not sufficient in defending themselves against the alien attackers. Those with phased shielding and kinetic weaponry, the items most recommended by the Gal-Fed officials seem to fare better, but their ships still take a beating.

With all the disheartened captains returning to Sharaia, the Gal-Fed has begun a large scale investigation of the alien ships. They are modifying the Beacons already needed by pilots to track data about the attack patterns and damage inflicted, hoping to be able to compile this new data and develop a better means of fighting the dangerous adversaries.

The danger from the Expanse has attracted some strange attention. A group of activists began to blockade the Expanse Gateway claiming that attacks on the Aliens were ungrounded and pleaded to the Gal-Fed to disallow passage into the new galaxy. The Gal-Fed quickly responded by sending in warships in a show of force. The protesters quickly dispersed. A local bureaucrat who was discovered to have issued the order to send in combat personnel later commented that any further attempts to prevent passage would be treated as treasonous and any ships involved would be given no warning before being fired upon.

READ FULL STORY HERE

ISN News

GFS Venture

Gal-Fed today held yet another press conference at Port Ross to discuss the ill-fated expedition of the GFS Venture. There have been a number of these such conferences in recent days, this reporter has elected to spare you the pain of reading about them. Finally today I found myself in one with some information worth disseminating.

Gal-Fed scientists are finally ready to release some of the information they were able to glean from the expedition's surviving drones. A picture of this new threat is finally starting to emerge.

The first revelation was not about what the drones observed, but which ones survived. As I mentioned in a previous story, drones were prepared with each type of shielding in order that they might stand up to a variety of potential spacial distortions and phenomena. The interesting thing is, over 90% of the surviving drones had phased shielding, and were for the most part unscratched.

Further study proved almost conclusive - alien weapons seem to cut straight through both absorption and reflective types of shielding like they're not even there. Captain (formerly Admiral) Stark seized on this information during the conference.

"The GFS Venture was too large a ship to equip Phased shielding - the instability caused by extending the field so far makes it impossible to protect such a large area. It is for this reason that the aliens were able to force us into a retreat. But our scientists are working frantically on phased shielding adjustments, and we will be back to turn the tides of war!"

READ FULL STORY HERE

ISN News

Sharaia Galactic Gate

I was invited today on a technical tour of the brand new jumpgate facilities in the Sharaia system - and it was an invitation I had to accept. The speed at which Gal-Fed's science team has been able to harness the wormhole and connect it to the gate to provide a new intergalactic link is astonishing to say the least. Clearly they wanted to take control of the link, and fast - not to mention saving some face after recent less positive events.

My journey took me through much of the gate superstructure - to be honest not much stood out, it was primarily technical mumbo-jumbo. I was more interested in what further information I could find about the so-called 'Expanse'.

Unfortunately the scientists were only interested in talking tech, so I wasn't able to glean much from them. I did however get the opportunity to speak with a security officer who has been assigned to the gate. She was actually quite excited to talk to a renowned reporter such as myself (turns out she used to live on Welling too, and remembers my work on 'Good Morning Fieron!' a few years back).

According to her brief, Gal-Fed will be controlling the gate to the Expanse closely. Given the mess that Admiral Starch found himself in, access will be restricted to those who have made a significant impact since their arrival from The Core. "We're not sending anyone fresh off the transport through to become ali... unidentified combatant food!" she joked.

Travellers will also need to equip a beacon so that they can be tracked in the broad reaches of the Expanse - without such a beacon any damaged ship would be impossible to find for Search and Rescue teams she explained. She wasn't sure where those beacons were available, all she knew was somebody had been given the license to issue them and was set up somewhere in Sphere.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Strangletorn Industries Disaster

Strangletorn Industries have had a disastrous week. First they came under fire from the investigation department of Fair Trading and Scientific studies (F.S.S). It seems they had been failing to keep their research and development reports up to date within the government guidelines. It was also rumored that their chief exec was under investigation for embezzlement charges, but this has not yet been confirmed.

The company today went in to receivership after their stock plummeted due to a shipment of their Data Storage devices being hijacked and subsequently lost in the police chase.

It seems once a month their research and development department transfer all their research data via secure shipment to Lorat where their H.Q offices are located. Only this time the shipment was hijacked and through a sheer fluke the vessel was destroyed by chasing Police vessels as it entered into the Jump Gate system.

The entire Jump Gate system was shut down for 20 minutes whilst emergency checks were made but it seems that the Hi-Jacked Transport ship was no where to be seen within the Rail Network. In fact engineers believe it was 'disassembled' and various parts of it scattered across the entire network of gates.

Gal-fed officials were quick to step in and state that the jump gate system was entirely safe to use and that accidents like this were extremely rare.

ISN News Reporter - Jet Heller.

GFS Venture's Return Explained

Note - This ISN report picks up from the end of the ISN's "History - The Expanse (Alien Territory)"

After what seems like an eternity to this reporter, Gal-Fed have finally made official comment on the incidents surrounding the massive damage inflicted upon their recently launched flagship the GFS Venture. Of course ISN also have the unofficial story for you - and it isn't pretty!

Gal-Fed made a short statement, but did not take questions this afternoon in an attempt to control the speculation and rumour which has been rife since the unexpectedly early return of a battered and bruised GFS Venture. The captain of the Venture, Admiral Starch, made the official statement approximately half an hour ago.

According to Gal-Fed, the initial jump was a success - while the wormhole did provide some minor hull damage, the shields remained intact. However the wormhole did create a time dilation localised around the juggernaut, possibly linked to its size, and as such its short journey seemed like a number of days to the crew on board.

Upon reaching the other side Admiral Starch was greeted by a vast empty area of space - or so it was first thought. There was however indecipherable communications chatter. Initial drones were launched and left in the vicinity of the wormhole entrance to gather information necessary for its future stabilisation and the Venture headed off into the unknown - which Gal-Fed are now referring to as The Expanse.

READ FULL STORY HERE

History - The Expanse (Alien Territory)

Note: this is not an ISN report, but is from a history series produced by ISN, and is useful background to the ISN reports.

ISN - Gal-Fed looking for something?

Postby Mac Flanders on January 16, 2007, 07:38:30 PM
It has been brought to my attention by my undercover man (who will of course remain anonymous) that there has been an increased Gal-Fed presence of late in one of the systems in the Sphere.

The communication was rushed, and of very bad quality. Our AV department have been unable to rebuild the transmission completely, so details are very sketchy, though we have managed to get some information out.

It seems that a large Gal-Fed science vessel has been moving through the southern sector of the Sphere, though at this time we are unsure of its destination. All we do know is that Gal-Fed have a very large team assembled, made up mainly of science officers. It is however reported that this vessel has a number of assault teams on board, we do not know at this time if these assault teams are there in an offensive, or defensive position.

Information of this nature sends shivers down this reporters spine, the last time we had reports of large scientific teams assembling, an entire planet, including all of it inhabitants was completely wiped out. Let's hope that Gal-Fed officials don't have another conspiracy theory running through their minds. I would really hate to have to report the deaths of another 7 million people.

READ FULL STORY HERE

History - The Alliance Bloc

In the early age of the Core a group of Scientists and academics realised that the Core was closing its boarders and foresaw the dark days ahead. Fearing the chaos that would ensue they set about creating facilities to continue their scientific research.

As the Sphere became wrenched by wars and lawlessness the facility shone as a beacon of research. As law became chaos many scientists fled to the facility drawn by the stability it seemed to offer. This success though also attracted those who thought they could use the facility for their own purposes.

In desperate expediency a leader emerged, Dr Akar. As a practical man and a powerful orator he persuaded most that they must use their science to protect themselves. Science was now only channeled into purposes that could be used to protect themselves. As the Sphere fell further into entropy Dr Akar found himself at the head of small but technically superior fighting force.

After proving their armaments against various raiders surrounding planets soon pledged themselves to Dr Akar for the protection they would receive. The Alliance was born. It was independent and able to protect itself. Do not think though that this was an altruistic paradise of scientific research. Dr Akar put in place an authoritarian government structure and many planets found themselves paying for the protection they received.

Over the years the Alliance has continued to base itself on an academic aristocracy. Science is held to be the answer to all problems but its practical application is the reason for it. Research has always been to ensure an advantage, deliver an end product not just prove theories.

READ FULL STORY HERE

History - The Confederation Bloc

The real history of the Confederation is murky. Over the years the propaganda produced has rewritten events many times. What is definite is the ruler of the Confed is known as “The Edict” - this seems to be a reference to an early book of laws that apparently still defines the core values of this bloc. The current “Edict” is Grant Popov.

Outwardly the bloc expounds the virtues of the common man but the few exiles that have escaped regard it as a dictatorship where freedom doesn’t appear in the dictionary.

There is a legend that the Confed planets were an early Core experiment in mind control that worked too well! It produced drones with unyielding loyalty but with so little free thought that the results were pointless. If this was the case then the bonds have lessened over time. The regime is certainly harsh but nowhere will you find people more willing to die for the cause.

This unyielding single mindedness seems to have given rise to an amoral value of individual life. The means always justifies the end. No other bloc has committed more atrocities under the name of patriotism. Their controlled space is small with only 5 solars but this allows the territory to be easily “policed”.

All Confed society is ruled by the “Edict Force”. This is an indoctrinated military establishment that has unswerving loyalty to “The Edict”. All “Edict Force” are rigorously trained and remorseless in carrying out their duty. When encountered, which is not often outside Confed space, they are easily recognised swaggering around in black uniforms.

READ FULL STORY HERE

History - Humanities Core

Humanities Core, or simply the Core, consists of 268 systems all ruled by the Gestalt, a shadowy organisation of humans that are directly interfaced with a network of planetary super computers that are rumored to be true artificial intelligences.

The Core is, as it's name suggests, is situated roughly in the centre of human controlled space. All human controlled systems that are outside of the Core are known as the Human Sphere, or the Sphere.

The Core was set up 650 years ago in the dark days that promised the end of the old Galactic Federation (Gal-Fed) and the dawn of a new dark age. With dissension ripping the Federation apart, petty autocrats carving out empires from its territory and alien invasion fleets rumored to be on the frontiers waiting for the Federation to fall, the citizens of the central, most highly developed worlds, realised that they needed to do something to protect themselves.

The politicians, military and religious leaders fell to squabbling amongst themselves and could come up with no workable solution that would not end up with the central Core worlds being fought over and dismembered.

In to this power vacuum stepped Cynthia Chang-Valdez, a respected academic and head of the Arcon Institute of Human Possibilities. The AIHP was a think tank known to contain some of the foremost scientific and technical minds in the fields of bio-genetics, artificial intelligence, computer and medical sciences.

At a meeting convened by Chang-Valdez and before the central worlds most important politicians, business leaders and military authorities,the AIHP laid the foundations of what would become the Core.

READ FULL STORY HERE

ISN Returns - AJL Bomber Unknown

The ISN News office suffered a major disaster last week when a supporter of the 'Alien Justice League' got past security with an explosive vest. The woman yet unknown then detonated herself!

We here at ISN mourn the loss of our crew, news casters and of course the office doughnut and coffee boy. We have been off the air for a while now but some semblance of order is beginning to return.

As we come back online we will be re-posting our older news posts so you can once again revel in the news that can only be ISN NEWS!

ISN News Desk (temporarily situated in the hall way at ISN Head Office)

Stomp The staff - Mech War

26th of December we will be holding a Mech Attack Competition!

That's 26th of December GAME TIME!

Simply enter your mechs into the Combat Zones (A and B) and be the Mech Commander who takes down a STAFF owned Mech to Win Prizes!

Please note: Prizes will only go to those Mechs that Get the Killing blow in.

This competition will be run all day throughout the day on the 26th so keep your eyes on the Mech Zones and look out for the Staff Mechs to Drop in!

READ FULL STORY HERE

There was 582 Kills in the Mech Zone since the competition Start!

Over the 50 Staff limit was reached so we will also be awarding 1,000 Fuel to ALL players (again as a Furl Ticket) so keep an eye open for that being added!

There are 58 Mechs in Repair and 353 in the Mech Hangar over at Grelia!

Dev News

Expanse Expands

Expanse Basics:

The expanse is 56 systems of Alien Territory. We added nearly 200 new planets and Asteroid Fields to keep you busy and a twist in the storyline that you have all been guessing at (read the ISN's as they appear).

To gain access to the Expanse you need a 'Inter-Galactic Telemetry Beacon' fitting to your ship. This enables you to navigate around the initial systems in the Expanse without becoming lost. (nothing new there).

If you've read ISN reports over time you will know that Gal-Fed launched ships in to the Expanse and a battle ensued over the initial systems. Yam has recently become Coalition Territory and as such its law levels increased. But players are still being hindered from exploring any further into the expanse than the first few systems.

These initial systems were mapped by Gal-Fed when they arrived in the Expanse. (Read ISN's to gather more info on this) From there on the Expanse has seen a constant fight between an Alien Race who it seems are hell bent on killing as many humans as they can. (Still no change there) :)

Alien Justice League

The AJL as you are aware is currently working on a translator for the Alien Language. This in turn will aid players in 'unlocking' the expanse and so starting a new chapter in their captains lives.

READ FULL STORY HERE

New Festive Items

We have been really busy lately not only working on more content and the coming release of the Expanse (fully explorable) but also on Christmas events, competitions and now CE Store Items.

The first one bends the 'Dev Laws' so to speak.

The Rudolf Device increases your Structure Points. Errr Yeah you can get up now. We held this one back under lock and key for a LONG time and many of our more senior players will tell you they lost count of the times they answered new players questions for 'how do I get more Structure Points?'

The Rudolf Device will ONLY be on offer during Christmas New Year periods each year. Starting today the 20th of December and ending on the 1st of January (Midnight Game Time). If purchased the 'Rudolf Device' can be used all year round and even traded. - See the STORE for more details.

Festive Sales
Next are a set of Store items that are only available when we have 'Festive Periods' Example, Christmas, New Year, Halloween, Independence Day, Guy Fawkes, Thanks Giving etc. These timed sales will be posted prior to them becoming available in store.

The items being added are an opportunity (during the periods above) to purchase Skill Points for your captain. Skills can be purchased in bundles of 50. Each skill set has its own cost related to its in game IP relevance.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Guy Fawkes

I've added another 'Festive Event' today. It's to celebrate the 5th of November and the day we in the UK call Guy Fawkes night / bonfire night.

I realise that this event is mostly a UK celebrated event but we wont penalise you just because you don't live in the UK :)

This is a SHORT life span event and can land on any one via normal in game events and also the 'play today to win' style ticker. As the time frame for this event for these Festive Items is short they have been given a nice 'Festive Point' count - so keep your eyes open!

Dev News

IRC Client Upgrade

We spent some time last week looking at the Mibbet client that we use in game to connect to our IRC server for chat. Some of you may use external clients to connect and that's fine but we offer the in game mibbet widget client for those that simply want to connect to chat without any fuss.

Historically we have used the 'Free' Mibbet widget which has served us well but this week we have upgraded to a licensed version specifically for Core-Exiles. This Premium service is hosted on their enhanced infrastructure and is 'add free'.

Prev spent some time today and re-jigged the client so there was more 'visual space' which certainly helps when chatting with your fellow players.

Hopefully this service will ensure the Mibbet client is somewhat more stable and the lack of adverts Im sure will make a few happy :)

Happy Chatting.
Dev News

Festive Center Open

The 'Festive Center' as it's known is located on Toliver Station in Kendra. The station was set up to enable intrepid Captains both old and new to trade in their 'Festive Goods.

Festive Goods range from Christmas, New Year, Halloween and other festive activity Core-Exiles Staff deem to get themselves involved in.

Should you find 'Festive Goods' in your ships hold hang on to them and pop over to this location and trade them in for 'Special Packs'.

Keep your eyes on the Festive Center though as more packs and special 'One Off's spring up in the store from time to time.

Dev News

Dark Matter Items on Sale

We have had a lot of interest from players asking why we didn't add the Dark Matter items to the CE store and in answer we wanted to ensure that players had a chance to Engineer some of these items first.

Those that have managed to lay their hands on them certainly seem to enjoy using them from what we can see. So it's time to add a selection to the Official CE Store.

Not all the items have been added but enough to quench the thirst that a few have shown to gain access to these new toys.

All support shown for the Core-Exiles game through the store is gratefully received and ensures we can keep the lights on and future expansions coming. (also pays for my Tea and nails for Prev's Nail-Gun.)

Dev News

Halloween Gifts

To celebrate Halloween we have started a two week Festive Period starting today. Captains out there will find that a number of Halloween events have been added to the current ones available.

Don't worry these are all 'Good Events'. You will find your Ship has Zapped the 'trick or treat' kids and nicked their Pumpkins. Collect the Pumpkins as you will be able to trade them in shortly for in game prizes.

Collect them whilst you can as they will only be available during the Halloween Fest here over the next two weeks.

Dev News

Dark Matter GRP Complete

It took you folks some time - but you eventually completed the Galactic Research Project (GRP). Projects are pushed along by the players exploring planets and locating 'Ancient Artefacts'. These are then used by the GRP to advance the 'current' research topic.

With the completion of the Dark Matter project it now allows me to release some 'initial' Dark Matter technologies that we have been working on. More will be forth coming over time and the major push on this will be when the player base completes the 'Alien Justice Leagues' Device :)

Subatomic Moleculiser
For a while now we (the dev's) have been pondering over the long term 'removal' of items from within the game. IE looted items and things that are crafted and then eventually become 'dead weight' in your ships hold. This was talked about by players recently in a thread and made us move towards a final decision on this front.

What we have is a device called a 'Subatomic Moleculiser Unit'. Simply put the device rearranges subatomic particles, which are abundant everywhere in the universe, to form molecules and arrange those molecules to form what are now called 'AZ-Pat' resources. (You can read more from looking up the device - Pod).

This basically means that a Very LARGE chunk of the game can be converted in to Six new resources. Currently this copes for most of the normal day to day items and a large section of the crafted materials in game. We WILL be expanding this list but if you look in the ships store and there is not a 'Sub-Mol' option listed for that 'item' it cannot be converted.

The Subatomic Moleculiser has a range of items each enabling the recovery or more and more of the six base resources. Again I will let you work this out for yourselves.

READ FULL STORY HERE

6 Hour Fuel Bonus - Chat Winners

We here at Core-Exiles are always trying to find ways to 'enhance' your fun and lets face it running out of Fuel pretty much puts an end to the fun. So why not enter the IRC chat channel and stand a chance of winning a 6 Hour Fuel bonus!

This bonus is awarded at random to active (non AFK) IRC chat members. Simply be there chatting and stand a chance to win.

The bonus itself is active on your account for six hours and gives a 'Six' unit bonus for each tick for the next six hours.

So what do you have to loose!

Dev News

New Titles & Factions

Up till now you have been able to track your progress in various factions like Gal-Fed, Confed, Ashar, Union, etc. These have allowed you to apply some modicum of 'progress' with the respective factions and companies.

Today we have added a few more for you to track. Some are straight forward and will be applauded by most I'm sure, one may be a surprising addition.

To view what I'm actually talking about simply go to your 'View Standings' page from the top right drop down. You'll notice (if your not new here) that there are four more box's added to this display.

Left to Right :

VP.H.B = Verecian Honour Bureau
F.O.M = Federation of Miners
C.A.M.P = Crafter's Association of Manufacturing & Production
Alien = errrr I think that speaks for itself

OK down to brass tacks, having added a faction for miners and crafters you no longer need feel left out in title or progression through the ranks. Both of these gain Faction XP just by doing your normal tasks.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Dev News

New Login Portal

As many of you will have probably seen by now, the login screen for the game has had a makeover.

The old version was outdated, and frankly looking a little tired, so I have been hammering away for the last few days to get the new version out.

The new login screen still has much of the information from the old one (forums posts for example) but new information has been added.

Most notably, you will see the latest activity showing. This is what you see in the top header of the game, and will allow you to scroll back before logging in to see what has been happening in your absence.

We have also added a couple more tabs to give you information on recommended browsers, links to the forums, and access to Live Help.

Not much more I can say. Enjoy it, and if there are issues, please bug report them ;)

Dev News

Changes to NPC (Alignment)

This particular change has been a long time coming but with the addition of so many new NPC's and the update of Coobrand to the new CEDB it appears we needed to make some changes to the NPC system. These changes ensure the NPC longevity and our ability to continually add more and more NPC's.

Up till now you have been able to take and complete any NPC mission within your abilities and ships store / cargo hold level. That is except the Verician NPC's. These needed you to be Faction Aligned and have sufficient standing. As you increased your standing so they began to open up and offer you missions.

Well the change today is to modify almost all the NPC's to this method but based on your Faction XP. This means that you will need to have X standing with a certain Faction to be able to get missions from an NPC 'Aligned' with that faction.

Each NPC will now show their Faction Alignment when you go to talk to them. They will inform you if you have insufficient Faction and offer you missions if you have enough.

This change is not to just make life harder, its there to ensure that new players don't come in and through 'support / loans etc' sit and complete mission after mission after mission without even un-docking or even having a CLUE how the game works. We have seen recent players gain over 8 levels in the space of 20 minutes using these methods and that's not really 'playing CE'.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Dev News

Commercial Store - Lockout

Ever since the game has been on-line Commercial Storage has charged daily for the items you keep in their giant vaults. We took a hard line with this one, credits were taken from your bank account (bank NOT ship store) and non payment meant you lost the lot!

Now - over the years a number of players have fell foul of this and we have added bolder and bolder messages on various screens even images to try to and jog players memories ect. But still it happens from time to time a player will draw ALL their funds from their bank, meaning to put some bank and forget. Or for one reason or another get caught with insufficient funds in their bank to pay the daily CS bill.

Well no more....

From now on when you fail to pay a CS bill you will find that they 'lock the door' on your goods and no longer offer you access to them. They WILL however KEEP them for you. You will of course get the usual 'non payment' PM but access to the Commercial Store will be denied till the bill is paid.

You will need to wait for the next billing cycle and if you have sufficient funds you will once again have access to your goods.

This has probably been one of the most bitter aspects of the game (player to GM at the point of loss) and after discussion Prev and I decided to move to this less 'stressful method'.

Dev News

CE Stocks Change

We have been monitoring the use of the Stocks & Shares system we implemented in to Core-Exiles some time ago. Nearly 400 players have bought and sold stock in the game and of those around 75% have made a profit over time.

Many players tend to forget to factor in the buy price and handling fees on both purchase and sales, this is often their downfall when it comes to making a profit.

But as with all 'things CE' there are those that are happy to milk the system to its max (note I did not say exploit) simply work the system to its limits. This in itself has unfortunately meant we have had to place limits on the system.

Up till this morning you were only limited by the volume of stock you could purchase at any one time. This has now changed and we have placed a limit on the total stock portfolio entries you can have.

This limit is set at 30 Entries. To counterbalance this we have raised the minimum purchase limit to 3000 from 1000. This allows for a player to attain up to 90,000 units of Core Exiles shares.

Those of you with more than 30 entries in your portfolio need not worry, you still have access to your excess shares you simply cannot purchase any more till you drop below the limit of 30 in your portfolio. In case you wonder why we have done this let it be known that some players have over 800 stock entries!

We have also added monitoring tools so we can see how this change affects the stocks system and will tweak it further if we feel the need.

Dev News

Core-Exiles FAQ

First off a big thank you to those that took part in the recently closed competition for FAQ entries. We have spent today going through these entries and have chosen the ones we felt were applicable at this time and were closest to our requirements. If your entry was not chosen don't worry read on.**

There were 16 winners totalling 37 weeks of 'Premium Accounts' that have already been awarded to the lucky winners captains accounts. Prev and I marked up the ones in the competition thread that were winners for clarification.

These winning entries have been added to the new CE-FAQ (Knowledge Base). This has now been released and is available here :

http://faq.core-exiles.com/

Many thanks to Prev for hunting through dozens of paid and free FAQ systems and eventually settling on this one, and tailoring it to our new portal theme. We looked at lots of systems but felt this one best suited our needs. We will be adding to the FAQ system over time and it will eventually become a repository of all things CE.

The FAQ has an excellent search feature and is easy to use from a visitors point of view and also easy for us to administrate and update.

** I said read on.. :) We will be starting a new thread on the competitions section which will be an 'open ended' competition enabling players to submit new FAQ's. Same rules will apply we will only take those we feel are well written and FAQ material. Prizes to be announced when the thread is live.

For now - you have anew FAQ system & again congratulations to those that were added!

Advertise in Core-Exiles!

A while back we added banner advertising to the bottom of the Core-Exiles game. At the time we said it was on a trial basis and we would see how it progressed. After many months of looking at the figures we have decided to remove the external advertising.

Instead we are going to allow 'internal advertising'. That means that if you own or run a Guild or Settlement and want to advertising its whereabouts and services you now can (for a small CE support fee). Perhaps your a crafter and want to advertise your crafting services or a Miner / ORSA collector who wants to advertise your resources.

Waaaa! I hate banners
OK so some of you wont want to see these banners and we have been wise enough to realise this. So by default they are on. But you can toggle them on and off in your player bio. that way no one is hurt if you don't want to see them.

Banners can be linked to forum threads or player external websites so as to allow players to link to more information.

To purchase your banner simply visit the store and add as many months banner display to your basket as you need. Then either use an image from below and create your own or use our (paid) service and we will create one for you.

Banner details and submission is covered on the store and you should READ CAREFULLY the information there before making a purchase.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Dev News

Commercial Store Change

As most of you have spotted by now we have made a change to the display and filtering of the Commercial Store and the Commercial Store Transport Office. This is a simple change that adds tabs to the offices breaking down the very long lists that some of you were finding.

We have split the items store display into Seven Tabs and an extra Tab 'All Items'. These are simply 'views' on to your Commercial Store allowing you to categorise the lists.

Should you not like this change no problem simply use the initial tab which lists all items.

This change was added as we currently have 340+ resources / commodities in the game now (items that can be stored in your commercial store) and the scrolling involved as getting pretty silly.

Using these tabs you can now lessen the wear and tear on your mouse.

I will point out there is no CHANGE to the way the CS / CSTS works its just a filter applied using tabs to the stores.

We hope that changes like this will make your life somewhat easier and also allows us the ability to continue adding more and more content :)

I'd like top take the opportunity to thank an old friend of ours for the (errr hours) it took to make this add :) Many thanks Monk :)

Dev News

New Courier Faction

Today I've released a new Faction to the Game, namely the 'Courier' faction.

You gain courier faction strangely enough by doing courier missions. This new faction will gain some bonuses later when I've seen how much courier 'missions' are used.

You will also notice on the Faction Standing screen three more spaces for three more factions. Get your caps on, or revive the post from a while back with Faction Suggestions. (Please start a new thread and don't reply to this one about new factions).

Dev News

Certificate Bonus

I have been working on a little side line addition to 'Certification' which I thought those of you taking part in the training would like.

Today I completed stage one and thought I'd explain (briefly).

As you are aware certification is towards being able to fly those pesky player made ships (when I release Sets level 6). Well I can see that it's an expense that some of you have baulked at and not knowing what's coming some have been slow to start getting certified.

Well a small sweetener has been added. Now when you complete a certificate you will be awarded an amount of 'Certification Points' . (These have been added retroactively to all those accounts where captains have been training already.)

These points you can amass and then trade in for IP points at officially designated IP Trainers dotted around the Galaxies. The trainers will follow very shortly, so don't go rushing off looking for them just yet.

I've added this bonus as reaching level 60 and investing in a Superior head implant and then millions more in Certificates is not an easy task, so this is a bonus from me to you :)

Dev News

More Missions & Pods

Been a whilst since I posted another Dev update.

Mainly because we have been busy dealing with 'other issues' of late whilst still trying to move forward with current add-ons and projects already under the code knife. But we have the staff mostly to thank this week as they have rallied and added yet more NPC's to the game.

This week sees another 50+ NPC missions added to the game along with New NPC's for you to find and complete. Thanks should go to Hannah Praetorius II for their sterling work this last week. I know some of you out there enjoy their story lines and humour and you can expect these new NPC's to keep on rolling out the door whilst these two are putting pen to ditigal paper.

We also extended some of the Pod lines this week and there is rumour that there will be two new types arriving soon one that many of you will clamour for I'm sure :)

Meanwhile work on the Expanse is moving ahead as is the Level Six settlement code. We are also preparing for the completion of the current Galactic Research project which will release a new vein of 'Dark Matter' items so keep up the good work those of you exploring the planets.

The 25th will also see the close of the current competition and the awarding of prizes and addition of more 'Events' both normal and exploration wise.

If that wasn't enough to keep us busy we have also lined up the next competition which will involve all of you should you wish to take part. Well I'm back off to my cave to hack away at some more code. No doubt a few of you this week feel I should be kept in it and only allowed out for Dev posts.

Dev News

SED Chief Explorer : Part 1

Many of you have been working hard exploring the diverse planets on offer in the various Galaxies and four of these planets have had their S.E.D. (Survey, Exploration & Discovery) completed.

Those that were the Chief Explorer at the time receive 1 Million credits at the point where the SED is completed (by any one). They will also now receive a % reward on every settlement licence that is purchased from the Official Planetary Settlement Office.

Payment is direct and via PM when any Captain purchases a settlement licence for the planet they were the Chief Explorer.

There is also a small % reward for the Capitan that completed the S.E.D.

This is stage one in the 'rewards' and I will be implementing stage 2 shortly.

I have also added Settlement License purchases to the header and news.

Dev News

Growing Pains

Core-Exiles is growing folks that's for sure. As each week goes by we get more and more players, we get more and more feedback, suggestions and from time to time this means the game grows and expands once more.

Settlements
Today saw the demise of three older settlements. The owners of these settlements are no longer playing and over time the pirates whittled down their defences and morale. Their staff left, their promenade contracts were withdrawn and all their services folded up one by one.

The last stage is an official audit and the settlement is closed. Any of you with resources in these local settlement Commercial stores will have found them moved to Cinq Port.

Whilst we see the demise of these settlements we have also seen this last few weeks the completion of new settlements to take their place. Currently the settlement list sits at an impressive SIXTY TWO. That's a LOT of resources and hard work. Owning a settlement is not just having enough credits these days its about working your butt off to not only afford it but collect the resources, buildings, staff and infrastructure to support it once deployed. (Oh yes and a licence lol).

Level 6
I've been working for many months now on Level 6 settlements and there is still a lit of work to be done but its coming along. Because level six settlements will give us access to Player crafted Ships, Starbases, Manufacturing centres and the ability to more 'personalise' your settlement you can imagine its a slow process to get ready - but its moving along :)

READ FULL STORY HERE

Dev News

Item Prune & Return (Important Change)

There has been some confusion over how items are dealt with when you place them on the Player Market and when you send them to a User via the trade option. I have spent some time today working on resolving that and this post is to clarify this.

From now on :

Player Market
When you place items on the PM they will remain on there for up to Seven days. After this they are returned to the collection point if not sold. IE returned to you. You then have 14 days to collect them from the Collection Point. (or re-list them) After this time they are automatically deleted from the game.

Player to Player Trade
When trading any items to players you have a choice to send along with request for funds or to just send the item with no funds request. The latter we will now classify as a 'gift'.

The first type where you send an item to a player and attach a funds request will be classified as a trade. ALL trades to another player will have SEVEN days to complete. If after this time the recipient does not collect and pay for the item it will be returned to you.

You then have 14 days to collect the item before it is automatically deleted from the game.

GIFTS are exactly that. If you send an item to a player with no cost attached and it remains in the system for 14 days and it is not collected it is DELETED.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Dev News

New Forum

OK, you'll have to be completely daft to have not spotted that we have changed forums. So I'll start off by saying that we 'planned and actioned' a perfectly good forum upgrade on phpbb today and as with all 'well laid plans' it went totally to pot! In short, after many hours of tinkering and fiddling with code and SQL uploads we figured it was time to call it a day.

Now this isn't the first time this has happened to us. In fact its the third time in as few years. First it was a complete failure on an upgrade using an expensive Vbulletin site. Next SMF died a death during a mod / upgrade and this time what we have hoped would be a simply upgrade of phpbb turned out to be another nightmare.

So here we are with vanilla. Now I realise that its not everyone's taste (even I took some persuading) BUT.... its an easy to upgrade and run system. It's light weight and also helps promote discussion through its clever method of showing the latest active topics on the main page as a defualt. The Categories are still there just not in a long old fashioned list like 'normal' boards.

This means you are far more aware of what's hot on the board, what's being discussed and replied to. Rather than having to plough through each section looking for new posts.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Dev News

10 Planets Cleared for ORSA

We can all thank those intrepid explorers in Core-Exiles for their devotion to duty and a desire to clear a planet and make it dockable. Since the exploration and completion process enabled by S.E.D has been in place 11 planets have been converted to 'dockable' locations.

Some of these now have Stores, NPC's and even ORSA spots. Today sees the release of 10 more ORSA agreements and the opening of ten more ORSA spawn points.

Five of these are due to the hard work of your fellow Captains and the other five due to in game mechanics and our devotion to continually updating the game :)

This adds another 800 spawn points to the games resource options. Bringing us to 93 resource points for you in total!

Go find em folks!

P.S Metal is appearing as it should in you know where :) + For those in need I counted a fair few plasteel, wood and water spawns in this last kick start :)

Dev News

Harvesters Released

Last week the Nebula became 'visable' to scanners. Earlier this week we added 40 new resources to the game - Today we add Harvesters.

To start with don't get Harvesters confused with Extractors. The latter are the 'lazy man's tool' to collect resources from ORSA spawn points on planets with an ORSA Office. Safe, easy to figure and with a calculator you can almost predict your weekly income and resource collection.

Harvesters are somewhat different. A: They can only be deployed in Nebulas. B: they require ORSA Faction and Survey Skill. They are player made (yes the schematics have been released. 27 new schematics for you to collect.) The schematics are the first in a line of items that will force Set owners to work along side non set owners. I'll let you figure that out for yourselves.

The new Harvesters come in 8 models, based on Level, and ORSA rank. They have a Max extraction rate but dont expect to always pull all the resources out of the nebula at the max rate.

So what can you get from a Nebula ?

Well there are some of your old friends in there and some new ones too. These new ones will be needed when you have all finished the current Galactic Research project. (well that is if you want some nice Dark Matter items to fit to your ships) :)

A few words of Caution :

READ FULL STORY HERE

Dev News

New Resources & Commodities

I posted an in game announcement but I know a few of you use pop up blockers and never get to see the in game news announcements. So for those of you interested read on :

We recently ran a competition to add more resources to the game. These AND many more have been added today. You can expect to start seeing them appear in the general loot methods in the game.

There are also new Resources in the Nebula and these will be waiting for you to start mining them with the new Harvesters (currently under final checks on Dev).

This last addition brings us up to 253 separate resources and commodities that can be used for crafting, NPC missions and the odd red herring :)

You will also spot that I have added a the 'official' Joes / TDK prices for the Settlement Loot. This is to give the set owners SOME idea of its BASE value. I say BASE as I know that means very little when some players are willing to pay silly sums for certain resources :) But its my job to layout the base values and base the schems ect off that.

Happy Hunting / Mining / Exploring.

P.S Don't forget TDK and Joes wont always agree on a price and sometimes they wont even be interested in the item at all! So always worth checking both stores.

Dev News

Universities & New Lockouts

Universities & New Lockouts

First the good news :)

A while back a few of the settlement owners posted they would like University buildings for their settlements, affecting SRP and possibly some form of income stream. Well after consideration I have added just that.

Currently three new buildings. (a few more to follow later). These Universities require at least one Research Facility (any type) to be fitted. They take this data and increase the SRP by a given factor.

As a sideline they also increases the settlements Attraction Value thereby generating income for the settlement as well. On a down side, once fitted you cannot remove a Research Facility before first removing the University but with planning you will be fine.

Of course a university requires staff, so you will also find that you need X specific type of staff to be able to place these buildings.

Lastly they are player made (as requested). They ARE NOT cheap as they are for level 4 and 5 Settlements. Helping you save SRP for level 6 to come. :)

The schematics for these new buildings will be added shortly to the game database.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Dev News

Sven's Store Franchised

In an unprecedentied move Sven Yarrell has given the go ahead for his stores to be franchised out to Settlement owners. This follows an extensive overhaul of his store front.

Sven's stores now will barter for a lot more than they used to and also have secured wholesale contracts with several of the larger mining consortium's to bring his customers much needed resources.

The basic mechanics of Svens is still in place, you barter items to Svens staff for a set price and then use the barter points to purchase given items on sale.

Svens barter list now contains some 250 items available to visitors although the actual content on the visit is dependant on what's on offer at the time, so a few visits to Sven's may be required to locate what you need.

Dev News

Extended Lines Contiune

We have been hammering away at the 'Anvil of CE' lately and have been extneding various line sof in game items.

The most recent to gain our attention was Mining Drones with the release of the Deep Core Heavy Retrieval drones. These are Player made and before we hear the trumpets of disgust are Yes expensive.

Mining Drones are a mostly one time time thing, buy them / craft them send them out and once in a while keep an eye on them. The convert all that lovely ore in to Refined ore and then on to further refining or the use of in other schematics.

That ease of use and lack of interaction comes at a cost both in Skill and in the pocket so don't expect these to be cheap and if you do use them KEEP an eye on them, loosing a multi million credit drone would create screams even we could hear all the way over here in the office of CE.

We haven't stopped and our creative hammer and anvil is working it's way through old lines and some new ones so keep your eyes peeled.

Dev News

More Schems, Pods & Engineering items!

In the past two weeks we have added a number of 'unsung' items to the game these have been in most cases extensions of lines relating to things like Blitz and Hammer reactors. A new line of Fusion Reactors.

Increased the line of Teslas and bought out an extension to Cutters. Also we added a new line of TW-NRC's extending the usefulness of the NRC range.

Yesterday I also added a new line of PODS in to the game. For those of you that don't know pods can be fitted to the Pod section of your ship. You have 10 pod points to spend on pods so choose wisely when purchasing them.

Pods come in two formats, firstly the Player made 'Engineered' versions. These come from engineered modules and resources, using up all that debris you find in loot.

Engineering requires you to have an active Premium Account but the end products can be sold and used by anyone (Captain level permitting).

The new pods are :

Taser Shield Generator 1,2,3,4

The Shield Generator series is a clever piece of technology, and will take 1 unit of Bio fuel and converts the expended energy to a shield burst energising your shields.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Dev News

Missile Shake-up

Missles have been in game for a long, long time. Added shorlty after Guns and added to make peace with the Haulers who at the time were getting Combat 'Drag In' events. If you've not been with us since the start these were actual combats you had to fight in.

You could escape but it meant paying the piper. So we added Missiles as a form of defence. They hadn't really been tweaked or adjusted since then.

As most of you are aware the last Galactic Research Project enabled us to re-visit Missiles. What I will say now is - If you never use missiles or never intend to you can stop reading now.

Missiles as you knew them (the old 16 variants) have been picked up shaken down and added to the new list. This now contains 40 Missile sets. There are Six player made types each requiring a certain amount of crafting skills.

Missiles were totally imbalance when held against other weapons. This has now been slid back in place and although missiles cost credits to purchase or resources to make now they are lower in skill req's than guns on the whole.

Non Trade. After much wrangling we have kept with the NON trade feature of missiles. That means you can purchase the non player made versions from the stores, but if you want to use Player made (more powerful versions) you will need to invest some skills in crafting.

This has been done on purpose and not as an afterthought. If you want to use the higher level missiles you will need to sink some extra skills. We have made them accessible and they start as low as 15 prod and manf.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Combat Change - Action Points

If you don't take part in combat or RAID combat then this post will mean pretty little to you, if you are a combat player or one who frequents the RAID combat system then you need to READ this post.

We have been monitoring player 'play styles' and methods of levelling for some time and have agreed (Dev wise) that its time to put a balance back in to Combat. When combat was added to the game a long series of balance and checks went on under the hood, placing Enemy vessel, threat, XP ect all in to the mix and working up palatable figures.

At that time a Red ship was a RED ship and not something you loaded up a few more 100 Matix's and Combat Drones for. These days the balance of the Threat rating is way out of kilter with players able to just about kill anything given enough time, credits and the insane ability to click a mouse for 40 mins.

AP (Action Points).

These have been now added to the game. Each player (regardless of level) has THREE. When you enter combat (or a RAID) you will see these AP points in the top centre of the combat system.

Drones and Matrix's now have a 1 AP cost to use. When you reach Zero AP you can no longer use either.

This WILL make a large change to combat, and in a sense I wish we didn't have to add this kind of limiting but it is obvious without rebalancing the entire combat system captains will continue to fight WAY ABOVE their combat abilities.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Bank Loans

Today we see the addition of loans within the galactic bank..

Click the loan tab and you will be presented with a list of available loans.. the loans are based on your captain level, the higher you are, the bigger the loan you can get.. you will only see loans listed that you are able to take.

Loans are paid back over a 10 week period, starting 7 days from the date you take the loan out. All loan repayments are taken from the ship account, so you should ensure that you can make the repayments before clicking that button !

You can only have one loan at a time, so you will need to pay back any existing loans before you are allowed to take another..

The loan amounts may change over time, we shall see how the initial release goes, and what feedback (if any) we receive...

Dev News

Happy New Year

I would like to wish all our players & staff a very happy New Year! Without you the players and your feedback and suggestions and the staff giving their time freely to support the game we would not have got so far in 2008.

As for 2009 we have lots of plans on the whiteboard to move through to development and release. We have Settlement Level 6 to come this year which will see the addition of player made ships and also player made Starbases. These will allow players to not only own a settlement on the ground but begin to stake out real areas of space on the map.

With the release of the Buddy Program many of you that wanted friends and family to play along side you from the same location can now do that with a full 30 day Free upgrade to PA status for you and your friends.

We have gained over 7500 players since our re-release earlier last year from that we have a solid player base of around a 1000 players. Sadly only a small % decide to take part in the forums and even a smaller amount in chat but we will strive to increase this number in 2009.

We have plans to expand the role of outlaws and pirates this year (as they have been the underdogs since the release) and also the addition of many new NPC's are on the cards.

Lastly please bear in mind we are not a large corporate company and that only Prev and Myself work as developers on this game along with artwork by Gravenmetal and a few close supporters who work together to provide content. We will all work towards building you a better Core-Exiles but at the end of the day it's you the players that really mould the Universe.

Have a great new year and a prosperous 2009.

Settlement Tourism

A small cry from the wilderness broke my line of thought this morning, concerning settlement Tourism and it's research.

Months back I added the ability for Settlements to add 'Union Offices' to their list of options on offer. Along side these I added settlement 'tourism buildings'. These increase your settlement 'Tourism Rate'.

Opening a union office allows for passengers to be generated from your settlement wanting to 'go' to other locations. It also allows passengers (those 16,000 + passengers out there) to request to be taken too your settlement.

Raising your 'Tourism Rate' increases the amount of passengers that your Union Office can handle and the volume that is generated. (IE keeping the office as full as possible). Don't forget the settlement ONLY earns credits from Union for passengers TAKEN (and delivered) too their destination FROM the settlement.

So far no surprises - But what I had missed was the following!

I had added Tourism 'Research' BUT forgotten to activate the button. (seems I was a bit distracted that day) :)

This allows you to increase your Tourism 'INCOME' by a % (incrementally larger as you invest more SRP over time in researching this topic) This figure is linked to your Settlements Passive income from Tourism. This is the part I intended to activate (and now have).

READ FULL STORY HERE

San Ticlaws

Once again San Ticlaws has donned his red jolly persona and started the yearly collection for the orphanage over on Sassion. This yearly collection ensures that the children on Sassion have a fun filled Christmas morning.

Last year saw a bumper turn out by the Captains who gave willingly to help such a cause. Of course the high XP payout and bonus on the morning of the 25th of December didn't harm their goodwill any :)

You are reminded that this is for the 'children' and you will NOT be paid in credits for your kind deposits other than in XP. But the bonus XP payout on the 25th should more than make up for any losses in credits.

This 'Holiday Contract' will terminate on the morning of the 25th of December and the present handed out to the children of the orphanage.

Dev News

Settlement Morale

I said I would warn you when this code went live - so here's the warning.

25% - Stores / Offices Close Doors

Under section 4, subsection 3 of the charter of licensed trade agreements when a settlement Moral drops to 25% or below key non essential Offices / Stores will close. These offices / stores REMAIN on your settlement promenade but simply close their doors to the public.

If you raise your Morale back above 25% they will automatically open once more. There is a specific text shown to yourself and visitors to your settlement when attempting to access a store / office under these conditions.

Note this only affects non essential stores and offices.

10% - Stores / Offices Pulled

Should your Morale drop to 10% or below ALL non essential store / office licenses will be revoked and the aforementioned store / offices pulled from your settlement promenade.

Final Wrap Up -25%

Should your settlement reach Minus 25% a wrap up command will be given and your settlement will pass out of your control and begin to be dismantled.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Pirates Attack!

OK first off an apology for the delay of this release. I had a great 'plan' and like most things the plan was trashed within a day of starting the code. At one stage I was actually finished then we ran into issue of players simply choosing to 'not defend' their settlement. Threw me for a while and I waited to see if this would change.

Needless to say I have recoded the settlement combat from scratch to take this into account. That doesn't mean that if you choose not to defend your settlement all will be well (far from it) but it does mean that at a certain stage you will LOOSE your settlement but NOT until after numerous attacks and prods with a sharp stick to resolve the situation.

OK on to the release.

Settlement Combat

This evening I let loose the Pirate fleets who will be roaming your space looking for settlements to attack. By the time you read this at least one of you will have been attacked.

You have had a LONG time to prepare for this so please no complaining if you get attacked in the next 24 hours. :) Settlement combat only affects those that own a settlement.

Although should a settlements morale drop below a certain stage the settlement may start to see Offices / Stores close and eventually if unattended the settlement will be closed and removed. (this would affect those using the stores / offices and of course as a CS and Crafting centre / Player Market.)

READ FULL STORY HERE

GRP Completes

The Galactic Research Project has been completed, thanks to the efforts of many of you!

Each time Ancient Artefacts are found from archaeological digs or Privately funded Exploration missions the artefacts are taken to the G.R.P. who use them to further their current research project. (top left drop down).

The completion of the latest one has enabled the release of a new type of Salvage Cutter. This is for use on Alien Derelict Vessels in the Expanse. This will enable those players with sufficient skill, level and of course an ITB (to gain access to the Expanse) the opportunity to salvage Alien Derelict vessels as they are located.

The next Research project will be on-line shortly.

Dev News

New Metallurgist

In the last few days we have added a number of new NPC's to the game. Two are in the Expanse, one similar to Lutac but for another project for you folks to work together to complete. The other NPC in the Expanse is there to aid explorers and will Trade you exploration packs for certain Alien Loot.

Meanwhile back in the Sphere we have a new Metallurgist working for you converting all those unwanted and previously used Ablative Armour and Nanao hull plating.

This one is for the Settlement owners amongst you but that doest stop other players converting their unwanted Armour in to Settlement Armour and then selling it on to settlement owners.

More coming!

Dev News

Alien Loot - Expanse

As promised I have released a new and separate Loot table for the expanse. This means that when looting either from combat or from exploring you will be offered Alien loot.

All the Alien Resources and Commodities looted are currently being looked at by the Coalition Research teams at Yam on Coalition 1. A representative from this scientific group will be making an appearance there shortly asking for donations of the alien 'loot' so they can figure out their uses and applications.

As the Coalition is currently funding combat sorties and mass building, research and defence contracts in the Expanse it is likely that this will be an XP only reward but the Coalition will see to it that every Capitan is rewarded with extra IP when handing in the Alien items.

With the addition of all the new Alien resources this opens up a new path in advanced crafting with more items to come!

Dev News

Lutac - New Task

With the successful deployment of Coalition 1 in the Yam System it didn't take long before the large corporations saw the massive potential in untapped new resources in the Expanse Galaxy.

O.R.S.A quickly opened a resource office on Sul-Redet but this didn't overcome the issue with beacon based transporter technology. This has caused major delays in the Expanse Galaxy as traders and captains are unable to use many of the distance calculation devices that they would normally use.

Because of this the Military was tasked by several large private corporations to 'fix' this technical glitch if they wanted their funding to stay intact. No one needs reminding that the fight against the Aliens is expensive. So Lt Lutac was called in to start the collection of resources for this project.

Hopefully upon its completion many services like CSTS and other distance calculation based technology can be placed into operation in the Expanse.

So take a look at Lutac over in Franklyn and see if you can speed up the process and earn Credits, XP and our thanks all at the same time!

Dev News

Expanse Resources & New Harvesters

It will come as little surprise to some of you that have spotted that a few new resources have started to creep in to your ships cargo holds.

New Resources
There are 30+ Exotic resources from the Expanse that have now been released. To go along with this there is now the ability for O.R.S.A to extend it's reach to the Expanse. I'll let you figure that one out yourself. (some have already).

New Extractors
Along with this release Mero Brothers have released 14 new schematics for new Industrial sized extractors. (Seems they won the race to create the first Exotic Extractor)

Coming Changes
To stop me answering the same question 50 times in chat, PM's and emails, I will be creating an entirely new loot table for the expanse. This will mean new loot for combating Aliens. Its a been a long time coming but as you might have guessed I've been working on other elements of CE (see the recent addition of 136 new schematics). The new loot table in in development on Dev so be patient with me.

You should also keep your eyes on Exploration loot in the expanse and even lookout for a new contract from Lt Lutac.

Dev News

29 Planets Join ORSA

Due to recent shortages in many various basic economic growth resources O.R.S.A has increased it membership with 29 new planets coming on-line today. This give approx 1400+ new resource spots for Captains to place their harvesters.

Gal-Fed, Con-Fed, Alliance and even Verecian economic leaders were present at the latest ORSA fund raiser. Whilst Captains get more resource spots the planets them selves receive a very handsome % profit on the service. Meanwhile the politicians and various government bodies line their pockets.

There is also news of the latest deployment of a outpost on Sul-Rodet, in the Urnagh system in the Expanse. This has lead the O.R.S.A group to investigate the plausibility of adding resource points in the Expanse systems.

Of course it would mean new harvester technology but anything is possible!

Dev News

136 New Schematics Added

Today saw the release of 136 new schematics to the game, they were a little later than expected but better late than never I say :)

These are all related to the Settlement Defences and will allow players to craft a wide range of defences for their settlements. These schematics range in cost and diversity of requirements. The modules are available from five different Schematic stores (with sufficient Tech level) and the end product schematics obtainable from Universal.

All the items should now appear in the CEDR. I should point out that special care should be taken to the NAMES of the schematics when purchasing. The top end schematics will also now create a need for much higher crafters whilst most of the component modules cna be crafted by a mid to high level crafter.

There are still more schematics in the pipe that have been designed but are being held back for a while. Lets see how you progress with these first.

As it took me longer than I expected to release these I am extending the 'safety net' on settlements by another week to give you extra time to scramble to build any of these items in your reach - before we let the dogs of war loose on your pride and joy. So you still have two weeks (from now) to complete your initial defences.

Dev News

Settlement Defense

Settlement Defence Part 1

OK - its been a long month of adds and testing but settlement defence part 1 is now out. As this did not affect the overall game play I could put this out without waiting for Sunday maintenance.

First thing to ensure is you all understand that you have a TWO WEEK window in which to prepare for ANY attacks. Second item is to confirm that at THIS STAGE settlements will be attacked by NPC's and NOT player <> player.

Were we to bring in settlement attack settlement it would be after long lengthy discussions and not something we would just throw in. We have talked about it several times in the public forums both in SU and CE and also in private staff forums and the consensus is there is no general agreement, so until we find one combat for settlements will be NPC only. (so relax).

Lastly - Combat against settlements will be based on a number of settlement stats, namely level and location but also many other secondary stats. So level one settlements don't have to worry about being bombarded by a Death Star 10 minutes after setting up shop.

But a Level Four settlement that's been in operation for many months and is a well known port may well have to think about defence!

As I said - you have two weeks before we begin any tentative attacks so take your time, read everything !

OK onwards...

READ FULL STORY HERE

More NPC Missions

Recently we have been hard at work behind the scenes working on a few new ideas, but whilst doing this took the time to add another 30+ NPC missions and ALSO a new NPC 'Type'.

I'm being held at gun point (by the staff) to not say too much about these new NPC's, other than they are 'courier based' and not the normal run of the mill NPC's. I've added five of them to get you going and they are dotted around.

One thing I will say is that they are aimed at players who have good astrogation skills (IE you know your way around). Whilst anyone can take these missions those that know one end of a Galaxy from another will benefit here.

Normally we might be a bit more 'informative' but these NPC's are there for you to work out. Once final word of warning - there are penalties to aborting their missions. You have been warned.

If we ignore the currently new NPC types we now have over 400 Static NPC missions - not bad seeing we have only been back in action 4 months.

Dev News

PODS Released

We have been busy in the bat cave working on new code and new items for the game. In fact this update takes us well past the 2000 items in game mark. That's 2000 items for you to find, buy and fit you your ships, use in your settlements etc.

But enough of the waffle...

A while back we removed 'Engineered modules' from the schematics builds for crafting. This was because it was generally thought that even after numerous attempts on our part to make it easier for you to locate debris there was a major blockage in crafting.

This has left Engineer's sat puzzled and twiddling their fingers, pondering over what to do with their debris other than for the few missions that require them.

Twiddle your fingers no more. Pod's are now active in game.

We added the pod screen before the release of CE and many have asked what are they for where do they get them. It's taken us a long time to decide on a format for pods and several aborted starts on pods in the design stages, but we are now happy we have found a balance which 'we' are happy with.

The pod screen activated from your bottom tool bar and shows how many 'active' pods your ship has. Each ship has a restricted amount of pods -this can be seen from the ships listings when looking at them in their respective stores or the CEDR. It's the same principle as special slots so this should not be confusing.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Engineering Change

Ever since we introduced Engineered items there has been a strong resentment to their presence and the use of them in schematics. We have tried every way we can to make it easier for players to collect debris and engineers to pass on these end items but it seems that a small % of the community need them and a vast % of the community are unwilling to sell them to the those that need them.

This has all but stalled the crafting process in game and as such I have this morning REMOVED all Engineered items from schematics. I will review over the next few days the cost affects and probably increase the values of a few items to slightly compensate but the need for 'Engineered End products' in Schematics is gone.

Engineering will become a crafting process of it's own creating items directly and not as part of an end process for normal Schematic crafting. This will mean those of you with PA accounts will be in a position to craft items that you can then sell on to players as an end product. (or fit and use directly yourselves).

I personally find it sad that the community could not resolve this itself, but I guess not every add will be met with open arms. I have taken this step to ensure the long term playability of CE and to restore order to Crafting and Player advancement.

Engineers please bear with us for a while whilst we add a new function for Engineered items. This will in no way lessen the need for end product items but will add items that you can personally use and sell. (This should effectively place the shoe on the other foot with your items being highly sought rather than being a blockage to trade.)

Dev News

Settlement Tourism

It's been a while in the making but the first initial phase of Settlement tourism is now out.

Up till now settlement owners could not open a Union Office (the small guy on the promenade icon section). This add enables them (credits and level permitting) to open a Union Passenger Office and start to have passengers pass through their settlement.

There are two elements to this phase of tourism. The first being the addition of a Union Passenger Office to the JR Galactic sales office. The second is the implementation of an initial 8 buildings that settlement owners can purchase and install into their settlements to increase their 'Attraction Value'.

A settlement starts off with Zero AV and each building will add a certain amount of Attraction Value to your settlement. The more AV the more likely passengers are to want to come to your settlement.

We will be tinkering with new buildings and extras so settlement owners can add to their settlement items that will be player crafted but that's for another phase and besides you may have some ideas of your own :)

Have fun Folks...

Dev News

Level 2 & 3 Implants

Today sees the release of some new implants to the game. I wont go into much detail but for those of you that have began the 'unlocking' of your implant sockets you can now plan for some implants to go in them.

I have added a new Store to the game that sells a new range of Implant Schematics. These can be player crafted and will also require some help (albeit a small one) from Engineers.

The implants fill a void that has been there for a while and will be followed by more over time as players advance beyond level 60+.

This adds another 23 schematics to the game and something tells me we might be in for a bumper schematics week this week :)

Dev News

Verec-Per Stage 2

Whilst we had the server down for a small patch to the combat Offices we thought we would roll out the second slice of the Verec-Per update.

Some of you were questioning 'how to access' the NPC's and Stores in Verec-Per and some were frustrated that they could not see any progress on this subject - to quote one player ' I don't mind looking I just don't want to burn fuel and waste it'.

We had intended to add a system by which you could - 'view' your VP standing but we wanted to test it more before releasing it. So that's what we have been up to for the last 24 hours :)

Should you venture in to the Verec-Per Galaxy you will see that there is now a new progress bar on the right hand side of the top of the screen. Whilst in VP this replaces the ships name. Once back in a non VP Galaxy the information reverts back.

Some of you had already gained a few standing points whilst others none, but to show we are not completely mean we have given every one a small amount of Verec-Per standing points to get them going.

Please read the following : The Verec-Per Galaxy is a large add-on and as such there is a lot of content there. We decided to make it something players would have to 'work at' and not like the current Galaxies where you walk up, walk in or start up a conversation with an NPC.

READ FULL STORY HERE

New Galaxy (Verec-Per)

As you may or may not be aware the Server was down this Sunday morning for an extra update on top of its normal 10 minute weekly maintenance. This was us adding a whole new Galaxy for you folks to go 'play in'.

Storyline.....

500 years ago the Core spanned 1000's of systems across 10 known Galaxies. When the core decided to close it's borders all these non Core systems were left to fend for themselves. The central body governed by Gal-Fed at the time formed the sphere. As we have seen in the past as we uncover more and more of the core technology we also discover how much of a draconian empire they ran!

One such recent discovery made whilst working on the Sharaia Super gate (Expanse) led techs to discover they could boost the gain on all the current known jump gates and they would automatically look for any connecting Jump gates previously unknown to the gate network.

Having done this they discovered that the gates in Bolus and Belus were in fact 'Galactic Gates' and could connect to a previously unknown Galaxy. During the initial data download from the gates the network addresses of all the Verec-per Jump gates was obtained.

As for the Verec-per Galaxy - little is known. Humans cut off from their own government and trade routes, they became divided and no central government exists. Each system is 'Contested'.

What's that mean for You ?

READ FULL STORY HERE

Guild Changes

We have slightly modified the guild level requirements this afternoon, so you may find that your guild has dropped a level or two. (you may need to leave your office, then enter again for changes to be reflected)

The reason for this is that we have been working very hard on new additions to the game, and have not had the time to re-visit the guild area (which has been pencilled in for quite some time) and as a result, you have been levelling your guilds far faster than we had originally intended.

Please don't see this as a negative thing, as you shouldn't lose access to any of the features that your guild had, instead a positive change.

This will enable us (once the MAJOR new addition hits a screen near you ;) ) to go back and revisit the guilds, and add the various perks and additions that have been planned for some time...

If anyone has any issues as a result of this change, please contact me in IRC (I am normally there most of the day) or if I am unavailable, PM me through the forums.

Dev News

Medals & Ribbons

Today has seen the addition of a new screen in the game for awards. (medals and ribbons)

There are numerous medals and ribbons that can be obtained in the game, and some of you will likely find that you have some of them already...

Once the ribbon or medal is 'won' it will become colored (as opposed to greyed out) and a mouse over will be available to give you information on the award.

You will find the new screen at the bottom of the right hand drop-down menu.

I will not tell you what each award is, as it will give you a direct target to aim for, but the first person to color ALL the ribbons and medals, there is a 5 million credit reward.

Good luck, and enjoy !!

Dev News

Engineering

Following my post yesterday regarding Premium Accounts (PA) and upcoming additions, I am pleased to announce the first addition (or Perk) for Premium Account holders. (PLEASE NOTE: Following a post in the General Discussion area, I would like to point out that all future additions will be suitably balanced !!)

I will briefly explain the process, requirements, and uses for the end products.

STEP 1
Firstly, to get started in Engineering, you will need a Premium Account, and at least one Blueprint. Blueprints are available from a store to be found somewhere in the Sphere (not telling where :P). They are not trade able (as with schematics) and while in the Store, you will be shown those you own, and those you don't. Purchase the Blueprints that you want, and away you go...

STEP 2
Once you have the Blueprints, you can then go off and find an Engineering Processing Station (E.P.S). There are a number of E.P.S stations dotted around the galaxies on promenades. Enter the E.P.S, and you will be presented with the list of Blueprints that you own. If you do not own any Blueprints, a message will inform you that you don't own any. Those familiar with the crafting process will recognise the displays that you will get with the E.P.S. Choose the item that you would like to build, and click the "Engineer Item" button to enter the build stage. As with crafting, if you have the sub components required, you will be able to build the item...

READ FULL STORY HERE

Guild Bonus System

Early this week we bashed guilds good and hard with a limitation of the way resources were stored and could only be accessed / used via crafting.

Today brings a much needed 'bonus' to guilds. Prev and I hatched this one some time back but I've been busy angle grinding corners of the game and only just found the time to add this fairly large section for guilds.

As such at the moment guilds have no central 'bonus' other than a free resources store, bank, email and forums. So now we add a new facet to guilds...

Guild Bonus System

Every day a guild will now earn X amount of 'Guild Faction XP'. This is based off the level of your guild. So if you have a lowly level 1 guild it will earn 50 Faction XP per day. As your guild increases in level so does the Faction XP awarded each day.

This Faction XP pools until a Guild decides how to spend it. (All members may view the selection of items on which to spend the XP but only the Guild owner can actually spend the XP.)

So what can we purchase with this Faction XP Coops ?

Initially we have set up the following :

READ FULL STORY HERE

Change to Chat

New Channel

Prev has been working for a while now on a system to pull all the game header news injections in to a single channel in IRC. This means that if you missed out on something or simply want to see who's doing what you can now simply login to chat and watch the #game-channel.

We are still 'tweaking' the channel input / feed somewhat so bear with us in the early days. We have been running tests on it for a while now and from our perspective is a real handy way to see what's going on.

IRC Client Change

We have struggled for a while with chat clients for players to use whilst playing Core-Exiles and over time tried a few. Recently we upgraded our account status with Mibbet paying for their 'premium' client package. Supposedly clients are supported on an enhanced infrastructure and contain more features than the basic ad-supported widgets.

Whilst the features may be true we have found that if anything we get more dropped clients using their pay as you go system that before. This along with the above addition of the #game-news channel have led us to move back to our original Chat client.

This client is a java app called PJIRC and simply clicking on the chat icon in the footer logs you in. If you have a space in your captain name it will place an underscore for you.

READ FULL STORY HERE