SpaceCorps 2027 0.4.7

SpaceCorps 2027 0.4.7 puts ten missions about your Skylab into Mission Control and gives Solar enough power for the whole station. Rockets hold ten times more, weigh nothing and fire with no laser fitted; a shield on a drone counts; the Engine III, Thruster III and Heavy Shield Core are made in Assembly; and aliens stay on the first pilot who shot them. The Ironclad is slower (base speed 92), so the "If you already play" list below is worth reading.

The game plays on the public server https://spacecorps-game.sliplane.app. Your pilot, ships, items, credits, clan and world carry over.

Download page: https://spacecorps.github.io/play/
On Hangar: https://hangar.sliplane.app/p/spacecorps/spacecorps-2027

What's new

Highlights

• Ten Station missions in Mission Control, from your first Solar panel to Core 10, with a section, three slots and a flat pay of their own.
• Solar powers the whole station: at level N it makes what every module draws at level N, and a tenth more.
• Rockets: stacks ten times larger, no weight, no laser needed to fire; the N.U.K.E. does 50 percent at the edge of its blast (it was 25).
• A shield on a drone counts as a shield in a core slot.
• Engine III, Thruster III and the Heavy Shield Core are made in Assembly. The Starfire-3 is made out of a Quantum Laser 3 and keeps its tier.
• The Ironclad's base speed is 92 (it was 140): a nerf of its speed.
• Aliens stay on the first pilot who shot them, and packs keep apart.
• The galaxy gate's standard scan finds a part 5 percent of the time (it was 1).
• Numbers of 1,000 and more are grouped in every language.
• In-order missions are unmistakable; Reduce screen shaking is its own switch; a network readout (off by default) tells whose side lags.
• The wiki is in all 11 other languages (first translations, not read by native speakers yet).
• For administrators: a server console and TCP_NODELAY on every connection.

If you already play: what changes for you

• The Ironclad is slower. Base speed 92, not 140: a stock one flies at about 99 (it was 147), with Basic Shield Cores at about 60 (92), with Heavy ones at about 39 (60). A nerf of its speed, made after the Engine III became craftable. Its hull, slots, lasers and price are as they were.
• Solar makes more power at every level, so nothing that ran stops, and farms the old Solar left dark produce again from the server's first start.
• Station missions are in Mission Control. A Skylab you already built counts: a mission already true when you accept it is done at once and pays in full.
• Rockets: carry 5,000 common, 2,000 rare and 500 epic ones (N.U.K.E. 10, N.I.K.E. 20), at no weight, so a Transport Cache they filled has room again.
• A shield on a drone now works, its speed penalty included, and a weak one lowers your absorbance: check the Hangar before you fly.
• Starfire-3: the recipe asks for a Quantum Laser 3, at the same total cost. Yours are as they were.
• Aliens turn on the first pilot who shot them and stay on them.
• One alien has a new name: the one that fights from 800 units (speed 180, between the Bulwark and the Crystalys) is the Goombah. Its kill statistics, Wipe Points progress and missions carry over.
• The standard gate scan is 5 percent; the deep scan is still 10.
• Reduce Motion no longer stops the camera shake: that is Reduce screen shaking now. If Reduce Motion was on, both are.
• Numbers: Spanish, Italian and Hungarian group four-digit numbers (1.234, 1 234) like the others.

The Station missions

• Where: a Station section at the top of Mission Control's Missions page, with how many of the ten you have done and its own pill of three slots. The Active Quests window shows them with a Station mark and the Skylab's own reading ("Core 2 / 3", "Collected 340 / 1,000 credits").

• The ten (a mission opens at a pilot level, and after the missions it names are claimed, not just done):

  #	Mission	Opens at	After	Asks for	Pays (credits, Thulium, XP)
  1	Light the Station	pilot 1	–	Build Solar	1,500, 100, 300
  2	First Farm	pilot 1	1	Build a Credit Farm	3,000, 100, 350
  3	Payday	pilot 1	2	Collect 1,000 credits from the Credit Farm	2,000, 20, 350
  4	Heart of the Station	pilot 2	2	Raise the Core to level 3	4,000, 10, 400
  5	Brighter Panels	pilot 2	4	Raise Solar to level 3	2,000, 40, 600
  6	The Thulium Line	pilot 3	5	Build a Thulium Farm and keep the power at 0 or more	5,000, 100, 1,000
  7	Growing Season	pilot 4	6	Raise the Credit Farm to level 3 and keep the power at 0 or more	4,000, 80, 800
  8	Fifty Thousand	pilot 4	3 and 7	Collect 50,000 credits from the Credit Farm	5,000, 50, 1,500
  9	Open the Supply Line	pilot 4	4 and 5	Raise the Core and Solar to level 5	5,500, 60, 1,500
  10	Core Ten	pilot 5	9	Raise the Core to level 10	20,000, 50, 1,500

  They pay 80 honor in all, too. A locked card says what it waits for ("Reach level 2", "Finish ... first", "Claim ... first").

• Their own allowance: you may have three Station missions active at the same time as your five other missions; a Station mission can wait hours for an upgrade timer and must not hold one of the five. Accepting one does not take the tracking from a mission you are flying with.

• Paid flat: exactly what the card prints, in credits, Thulium, experience and honor. No world bonus, no boosters, no Season Store boost, no premium experience, no items.

• If you already have a Skylab: a mission that asks for a level or for power is done the moment you accept it if it is true then, and pays in full. The two that collect credits (Payday and Fifty Thousand) count only what you collect after you accept.

• A pilot who has not started sees the Skylab row in the station menu pulse (in the accent of the Galaxy Gates row) until they build Solar or take the first mission; Reduce Motion makes it a still mark.

Solar powers the whole station

• The rule: at every level, Solar makes what the Core, both farms, the Resource storage, both collectors and the Forgery draw at that level together, and a tenth more (10 to 11.5 percent). A Solar one level lower is not enough for the full station at any level, so upgrading Solar still matters. The numbers are a table of 20 levels; the old Solar made 100 at level 1 and 30 percent more at each level:

  Solar level	1	3	5	7	10	15	20
  Now	255	375	555	835	1,580	4,880	16,010
  Before	100	169	286	483	1,060	3,937	14,619

• Nothing else about the Skylab changed: no module's draw, cost, timer or output. Solar makes more at every level, so no pilot loses power.

• Farms that were dark start again. A farm or collector the old Solar had left without power produces again from the server's first start. This is a one-time step it does then (skylab-solar-v2); what the farm had stored is kept and nothing is made up for the dark time.

Rockets

• Stacks ten times larger: Common rockets (Lancet, Rivet, Ember, Scatter) 5,000 (it was 500), Rare ones (Javelin, Mallet, Corona, Barrage) 2,000 (200), Epic ones (Harpoon, Piledriver, Eclipse, Maelstrom) 500 (50). The N.U.K.E. stays at 10 and the N.I.K.E. at 20. The Shop sells up to the new stack.
• Rockets weigh nothing. They weighed 2, 3 or 5 kg each by rarity, 40 the N.U.K.E. and 8 the N.I.K.E.; now they take no room in the Transport Cache, and their one limit is the stack.
• The N.U.K.E. does 50 percent of its damage at the edge of its blast (it was 25). A ship at the edge takes 25,000 of its 50,000 where it took 12,500; the ship whose fuse sets it off takes 47,222 where it took 45,833.
• Rockets can be fired with no laser fitted. The report was that rockets could not be shot without lasers: that check is gone from both the game and the server. Each rocket is held to its own rules only (the timer, the stack, a guided rocket's lock). The laser attack itself still needs a laser. The Hangar and the pilot page show a dash for the range of a ship with no laser, since only lasers have one.
• The Kick Rocket (admins only): the slowest rocket (speed 150), homing with a lock of 10,000 units and a flight of 70 seconds. It follows the ship it was fired at, passing through every other ship, through safe zones, cloaks and the EMP window; it does no damage, and the pilot it reaches is disconnected and can log straight back in. A ship faster than it can outrun it.

Drones

• A shield on a drone counts as a shield in a core slot, in either slot of a Master Drone: its capacity and recharge with its cells, its absorbance in the plain mean of your shields, its shield bonus when it is one of your first four, and its speed penalty (Light 1, Basic 3, Heavy 5 percent). It is ranked with your ship's own shields by capacity. The drone's level still raises only its laser. The Hangar, the Ship window and the pilot sheet show the same numbers.
• A laser on a drone being upgraded no longer counts after you change ship in flight (a bug fix): its slot is offline while the drone upgrades, as it already was at a launch, but a change of ship in a station left the laser firing until the next recalculation.
• A shield on a drone lowers your absorbance the way a weak shield in a core slot does: see Known issues.

Assembly

• Engine III, Thruster III and the Heavy Shield Core are made in Assembly, each out of its lower tier. They had no source at all before:

  	Takes	Thulium	Also	Time
  Engine III	an Engine II	2,000	60 Ship Fragments, 3 Power Cores, 6 Velkonite Reinforced Plates	1 min 30 s
  Thruster III	a Thruster II	1,500	30 Ship Fragments, 2 Power Cores, 4 Velkonite Reinforced Plates	1 min
  Heavy Shield Core	a Basic Shield Core	2,000	20 Cataclysite, 8 Reinforced Hull Plates, 6 Velkonite Reinforced Plates	1 min 30 s

  They are upgrades like the Helios Beam: the piece you use must be loose (not on a ship, not fitted into another item), keeps its tier, and rolls its buffs again.

• The Starfire-3 is made out of a Quantum Laser 3. The step takes the Quantum Laser 3, 15 Ship Fragments, 8 Velkonite Reinforced Plates, 1 Reinforced Hull Plate, 1,500 Thulium and the same 100,000 credits, in 60 seconds; a Quantum Laser 3 and the step together cost exactly what the old recipe did (3,000 Thulium, 25 Ship Fragments, 10 plates, 120 seconds). A Quantum Laser 3 of a higher tier gives a Starfire-3 of the same tier, with its buffs rolled again. So the dice are rolled where the laser is made, which costs no credits: a roll for a good tier no longer costs 100,000 credits, you pay them once for the one you keep.

The Ironclad's speed

• Base speed 92, the lowest of the roster by far (Protos 150, Wraith 225). It was 140. With the Engine III craftable, an Ironclad built for speed passed the Wraith's best build, and the rules the ships were balanced by broke; 92 is the highest base speed at which every one of them holds.
• The numbers: a stock Ironclad about 99 (147 before), a typical build about 215 (269), the fastest build of the model's table about 545 (602). The Wraith's best build, at about 876, is the fastest of the six ships (the Ironclad's best, about 827, is next). A build of Heavy Shield Cores in every slot flies at about 39: the slowest ship a pilot can build, and the black hole's point of no return for it is about 2,600 units (the help card says 1,200 to 2,600).
• Why it is a nerf: only its speed changed, after the Engine III made the old figure too fast. Fit Engine IIIs and Plasma Thrusters if you want it quick.

Aliens

• The first pilot who shot an alien keeps it while the alien can still chase them (they are on the map, outside a safe zone, not dark, alive, and hitting it within the last 10 seconds). Others who shoot it do not take it, however near they are; when the first drops out it turns to the next in order of first hits. It follows up to 32 pilots per alien. Company pilots count after every player.
• Packs keep apart: aliens after the same pilot keep 150 more units between their hulls, and an alien that lets go of a pilot, by a cloak, an EMP, a safe zone or distance, roams from where it stands, away from other aliens within 600 units. They no longer pile up on one spot or fly to the place they last saw you.
• A siphon volley that finds no shield to take no longer turns an aggressive alien on the shooter.
• A pilot who shot an alien first can hold it with a shot every few seconds while a partner hits it from outside its reach: see Known issues.

The Goombah

• The alien that fights from 800 units and flies at 180 (the fourth of the five, between the Bulwark and the Crystalys) is called Goombah now, in the game, the wiki, the missions, the statistics and the Wipe Points page. Its stats, spawns, loot, model and Wipe Points milestones (4 Wipe Points for each 50 kills) are as they were.
• Your progress carries over: at its first start the server renames the alien in the database and in every pilot's kill, death and sector statistics and Wipe Points progress, and adds up counts that were kept under two names. A mission that names it keeps its progress and now reads "Goombah".

The galaxy gate

• The standard scan, for credits (5,000 a scan), finds a part 5 percent of the time, where it found one 1 percent of the time. A 100-part gate took about 10,000 credit scans (50 million credits) and now takes about 2,000 (10 million). The deep scan, for Thulium, stays at 10 percent.

Numbers and fields

• Every number of 1,000 and more is grouped in every language, in the pilot window, a world's pilot count, the map's sizes, the Skylab's power, positions on a board and the amounts in the server's messages. Spanish, Italian and Hungarian used to leave four-digit numbers ungrouped ("Honor 1234" beside "1 234 567" experience).
• A number you edit in a field ignores the separator: a group separator is only a display aid, so typing 1,5 in English reads 15 and typing 1,00 reads 100. A tile too small for its digits shows 2.2k, not 2234.

Missions in order

• A mission whose tasks must be done in order shows an accent In order tag in Active Quests and in Mission Control, and its tasks as numbered steps joined by a line: done steps are checked, the current one is lit and bold, later ones are locked ("Locked until the step before it is done"). Missions in any order keep their quiet "Any order" caption.

Reduce screen shaking

• A new switch, Reduce screen shaking (Settings, Graphics, directly under Reduce Motion), turns off the camera shake from explosions and blasts, hits on your ship, the Afterburner and a black hole's pull. Reduce Motion keeps holding effects still (repair drones, the black hole's disk and warning, ability glows, the pulses of the HUD, softer N.U.K.E. flashes) but no longer touches the shake. If your Reduce Motion was on, Reduce screen shaking is on too. The part count of the Galaxy Gates' scanner, which shook while a scan played, is held still by Reduce Motion now.

The network readout

• Settings, General, Show network info (off by default) shows a small card at the top right with the ping (the round trip to the server), the jitter and snapshot age of the server's updates, the longest gap without one, the server's own tick time and your computer's frame time, and one line that says which side is slow: Network slow, Network uneven, Network lagging, Server busy, Client slow, Connection stalled or Client froze. The numbers also go to spacecorps2027.log once a minute and at every stall, so "it lagged at 21:10" can be answered from a log you send.
• It needs a 0.4.7 server for the ping and the server's tick (an older one shows n/a there; every other number is measured by the game).

The wiki in 11 more languages

• All 39 wiki pages exist in German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Swedish and Simplified Chinese, shown in your interface language, with the English page where a page is missing. The tables the game writes itself (quests, abilities, drones, the Skylab, Resources) are written in each language from the game's own texts and numbers. A translation whose English page has changed since says so, with a link to the English page. These are first translations, made by AI and not yet read by native speakers: please tell us what reads wrong.

For administrators and the server

• The server console: Admin, Server, Console, and scripts/server-console.sh in a terminal. The server's own ticks per second, the tick time (median, 99th percentile, worst) and the time of each of its phases, late and missed ticks, the container's CPU throttling and the VM's steal time, memory, connections, a table of the pilots online, and a log viewer (the last 5,000 lines) with a log level an admin can raise for one module for ten minutes: it goes back by itself, and both changes are in the admin actions. Chat lines are in the log it reads, for admins only.
• TCP_NODELAY on every connection the server accepts (SPACECORPS_TCP_NODELAY, on by default, shown as tcpNoDelay in /health), so a small message written right after a snapshot is not held for the delayed acknowledgement.
• Admin seed saves: a save that failed before it changed the file says so, and a save that failed and could not put the old file back shows as failed in Recent admin actions.
• For the record: the release job can upload each release's Windows build to a private Steam branch by itself; nothing changes for players.

Smaller changes

• Texts and help: the Speed, Range, Drones, Shield absorbance, Reduce Motion and Gate cards and the wiki follow the numbers above. A Master Drone's third slot, which does not exist, is refused with a text that says so (API only). The Reduce Motion help of French, Swedish, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese names the Repair Drone as the other languages do.
• The Mission Control cards show the Skylab's reading of a Station task on a line of its own under the task text.

Updating

• From 0.2.1 or later: the game downloads 0.4.7 by itself. Click Restart to Update, or quit the game, and it installs. If you installed the game with Hangar, Hangar updates it.
• From 0.2.0: download it once from the download page and replace the old app or folder.
• Update the game. The server updates first, and a 0.4.6 client keeps working, but it shows some things the old way:
  • Station missions: it shows none (its board has no Station section). A Station mission you accepted on a new client shows in its Active Quests in English with its progress as a plain count, and claiming it there pays what the card said. The Skylab row does not pulse.
  • Rockets: it still refuses to fire a rocket with no laser fitted (that check is on its side); the stacks and the weight come from the server.
  • The Ironclad's speed: its Speed help card and its wiki page say 140, and its black hole card says 1,200 to 2,000; the ship flies at the server's 92.
  • The gate scan: its card says 1 percent for the standard scan; the server finds a part 5 percent of the time.
  • Drones: its help card says a shield on a drone adds nothing; it counts.
  • Settings: no Show network info, no Reduce screen shaking (a saved Reduce Motion is its one switch for both), no In order tag and numbered steps, no Console tab on the Admin page.
  • Numbers: Spanish, Italian and Hungarian four-digit numbers and the pilot window are not grouped; its wiki has English pages only.
  • The Goombah: it draws the alien as before and shows the new name; its Season page's Wipe Points sources reads that alien's kills under the old name, so that row says 0 kills and 0 claims until it updates (the progress is kept, and the milestones pay).
• A 0.4.7 client on a 0.4.6 server (a private server, or while the update is on its way) still plays: no Station section, the readout shows n/a for the ping and the server's tick, the Admin page's Console tab says the server has no console yet, a rocket fired with no laser is refused by the server, the Season page's Wipe Points sources reads the Goombah's kills under its new name, so that row says 0 kills on an old server, and the help texts about shields on drones and the gate scan describe what only 0.4.7 does. Update the server first.

Platforms

Package	For
SpaceCorps2027-macos-universal.dmg	macOS 12 Monterey or later, Apple silicon and Intel
SpaceCorps2027-windows-x86_64.zip	Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit
SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.AppImage	Linux x86_64, glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Fedora 36 and later), Vulkan
SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	the same Linux build, as a folder to unpack

Graphics need Metal (macOS), DirectX 12 or Vulkan (Windows), or Vulkan (Linux, Mesa 22 or a vendor driver). The game needs 4 GB of RAM at the least and 8 GB is recommended: measured on a Mac for 0.4.6, the game's footprint in flight peaked near 3 GB at Low and near 4 GB at High. It needs 400 MB of free disk space; the wiki translations add 1 to 2 MB to the download. On computers with 8 GB, Medium or Low uses noticeably less memory than High.

First launch

The builds are not signed by Apple or Microsoft yet, so on a first install your system asks once before it opens the game. Updates the game installs itself don't ask again.

• macOS: open the dmg and drag SpaceCorps 2027 onto Applications.
  • macOS 15 and newer: open the app once and click Done. Then go to System Settings › Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway next to "SpaceCorps 2027 was blocked".
  • macOS 12 to 14: right-click (Control-click) the app, choose Open, then Open again.
• Windows: right-click the zip, choose Extract All, and start spacecorps2027.exe from the SpaceCorps 2027 folder: the whole game is in that one file. If SmartScreen says it "protected your PC", click More info, then Run anyway.
• Linux: run chmod +x SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.AppImage, then start it. Or unpack the tar.gz and start SpaceCorps2027/spacecorps2027.

Known issues

• The builds are unsigned, so macOS Gatekeeper and Windows SmartScreen warn on a first install (see above).
• The lag investigation goes on. The readout and the console are there to tell whose side is slow, and they do not make the lag go away; when we measured the live server its tick was healthy while pilots saw 18 to 22 updates a second, so the connection and the hosting proxy are the leading suspects.
• The readout can call a second server hiccup a stall of the connection when it comes in the same minute as an earlier one and is no bigger than it: the server's own lateness is a worst value of the last minute, and one that does not rise is not seen as new.
• A weak shield on a drone lowers your absorbance exactly as a weak shield in a core slot does (the absorbance is the plain mean of your shields), so on a ship held by its hull it can make you tougher in shield and weaker overall. Check the Hangar's absorbance before you fly.
• Beyond 32 pilots shooting one alien, the 33rd and the ones after take no part in who it fights until one of the 32 drops out.
• A pilot who shot an alien first can hold it with one shot every few seconds from inside its reach while a partner hits it free from outside. That is the rule as the first-shooter rule is meant, and we are watching it. An alien that cannot catch you cannot fire either, so a faster ship can still hit one for nothing.
• The power tasks of The Thulium Line and Growing Season (keep the power at 0 or more) are almost always true now that Solar is stronger; they only fail for a pilot who has raised another module far past Solar.
• Upgrading Solar still switches off the whole Skylab for the length of its timer (up to 6 days at the top), and the production is not made up.
• The wiki translations have had no native-speaker review, and neither has any new text of this release in the languages other than English. Please report anything that reads wrong.
• A 0.4.6 client does not show Station missions until it updates (see Updating).
• The average range changes the balance. A ship shoots as far as the average of its lasers, so mixed fits reach less than they did; fit lasers of one kind to keep the reach.
• The shields are tougher to build up and weaker to start with, and small ships are less tanky; the numbers are in one file of the server and may be tuned.
• The Windows fixes of 0.4.6 have not been tried by us on a real Windows PC (dragging the window with the picture moving, Copy, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V). Windows fullscreen has had very little testing. Please tell us how it goes, with your .spacecorps2027\spacecorps2027.log.
• Nobody has heard the repair drones' sounds, the toolbar clicks and the quieter hum on a real speaker yet: they were set by measurement. Tell us if they are too loud or too quiet.
• The Mission Control bubble is absent when the station's roof is off the screen, and from farther than about 3,000 units nothing in the flight view shows where the black hole is: use the minimap.
• The death screen waits for you: there is no timer and no automatic respawn. Dying on purpose is a free ride to your base, the nearest portal or where you died, limited only by the 3 and 5 minute locks.
• Hide Global hides everything on that tab, the server's own lines too. Hiding and ignoring are on your side only, and a report is only as good as the pilot's line.
• Pilots on a shared network share the 3 invite codes a day per address.
• Rockets can destroy small ships in a few hits, and a N.I.K.E. in one. There is no cap, on purpose, and with stacks of thousands a pilot can carry a lot of them. Return to Base is still an instant exit, also from a Danger Sector fight.
• Groups put enemies together and live only in the server's memory, so a server update ends them. The same goes for Dark Matter crates and the one-minute cloak recharge. The Global chat has a rate limit and the tools above, but no filter.
• In flight, far from a map's centre, the stars can still shift slightly while the camera moves. On older or integrated graphics, High and Ultra can lower the frame rate: pick Auto or Medium if flying feels less smooth.
• There is one public game server with limited capacity. It may restart for updates, and your ship is saved when it does.

Report problems at https://github.com/SpaceCorps/play/issues or on Discord.

Verify your download

SHA256SUMS lists every package's SHA-256 and is signed with the SpaceCorps release key
(SHA256SUMS.minisig, minisign). With both files next to
the package:

minisign -Vm SHA256SUMS -P RWRhY8TTCr07i1iOS7MT45OHD3LFJJnWXWCF19fy7hjV1RD8cwWlVKF1
shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing   # Linux: sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing

Checksums

Package	SHA-256
SpaceCorps2027-macos-universal.dmg	66c3e7c4add6df0b5e24496ede12f6b83282dfe30e66cf5a756535255b2b963b
SpaceCorps2027-windows-x86_64.zip	d63eda464574fb6cc88cbb303188801c9b324b9cb2f9b5da59fff0ac0deea4dd
SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.AppImage	2390f43a6115689a7f7ab63392a9ae038333cb606c1a6787ba003bb25638e659
SpaceCorps2027-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	60d12ecbaa66b74dd3401ddf066813dfeadabfe97867a67200a383c462eed26c