• Changed Hunter Fleet composition to have a slightly lower quantity of ships, but their level can go up to 60. Also changed gold/silver percentage chance and their overall behavior.
  
• Hunter Fleets may now spawn in 3 modes: Normal, Swarm, or Tanks.
  
• Gunners will now learn bonus effects according to which weapons they are using. Any weapon type manned by the gunner (or in the ship in case of a co-pilot) is eligible. Please note: once they decide what to learn (which you can only see if you have 'Tutor' Perk), they won't change their minds.
  
• The Galaxy Map now shows a "line circle" to represent your warp distance, in addition to the "bubble circle" for your sensor range.
  
• Added Buff Icons to indicate when a particular equipment is being used (example: mobile refinery or automated repair).
  
• Optimized blast/explosion FX pool, which should improve CPU performance, specially in fleet battles.
  
• Fixed friendly fire system not affecting stations.
  
• Fixed Asteroid Rushes always dropping green asteroid loot.

Follow up fixes:

• Buff Icons now properly disappear if the effect is automatically turned off.
  
• Hunter Fleets will now wait a bit longer before spawning in sequence.

• Added Friendly Fire toggle option (default is Off). This is in preparation for Ship Crew part 2, where you'll be able to create your own fleet.
  
• Added crew % progression on bonus effects, for 'Tutor' Perk.
  
• Reduced space used by ammo and increased market stock for them
  
• Ancient Relics now uses zero space.
  
• Mobile Refineries now have better stats but refining is much slower.
  
• Added item: 'Ardonian Mobile Refinery'
  
• Increased market price for iron and basic ore types (gray, red and green).
  
• 'Marauder' now has "+50% credit looted from destroying or extorting enemies"
  
• Increased ship weapons interface size and fixed slot space numbers being rotated.
  
• Fixed lag spike when Hunter Fleets arrive.
  
• Fixed Galaxy Map zoom out blurring background stars.
  
• Potentially fixed save files becoming corrupt when background update thread would try to change values while game was being saved.

- Added Kurma: Independent Cruiser.
- Added Karma Perk: Tutor.
- Reduced Theseus cargo space from 320 to 280.
- Added visual warning and tutorial message when you have unattended crew positions.
- Fixed zoom with Optics skill bonus resetting when leveling or changing the ship.

• Fixed Lacewing weapon mounts and collider. Removed both gunner seats and added one engineer seat (optional).
  
• Added Gunner Bonus effect: Weapon Heat Generated -X%
  
• Replaced 'Galactic Lore' exploration skill with 'Optics', which gives an additional zoom-out level.
  
• Saving the game is no longer needed for Lacewing unlock to take effect.
  
• Increased target lock distance from 300 to 400 units.
  
• Increased Archimedes turret weapon spaces to 4, 5 and 4.
  
• Increased base seat efficiency with no crew member from 10% to 20%.
  
• Increased base turning, speed and acceleration when the ship has no gear, to avoid becoming stuck.
  
• Increased base item drop chance for bigger ship sizes.
  
• Ravager bosses of any level will now drop Ancient Relics, but normal gold star enemies won't.
  
• Ravager bosses now add +1 rarity to loot generated while still maintaining minimum blue rarity.
  
• Fixed 'Burst Light Laser' drop rates on higher level enemies.

• Added Epic Spaceship: Lacewing (size 2: yacht)
  
• Added Feat Perk/Achievement: Battleship Raid ("Defeat 5 bosses your level or higher, using a yacht or shuttle.") which is also the only way to unlock the new epic ship Lacewing.
  
• Added Gunner Bonus effect: Critical Damage Bonus +X%
  
• Credits dropped by enemies or locations are now auto looted.
  
• Fixed independent(civilian, marauder, mercenary...) ships having a 100% item drop chance.
  
• Fixed Relics and other items not stacking properly.
  
• Fixed crew description issues on Spanish language

• Added option to add text notes to sectors.
  
• Increased XP gained by crew members. After reaching max level (50) they will improve skills and bonus effects faster.
  
• Fixed Gunner bonuses not applying right after loading the game.
  
• Fixed visual glitch caused by "off the charts" gunner level. Specialized crew members can now properly reach "Legendary+" skills and T7 bonuses.
  
• Base efficiency for apprentice skill level increased from 90% to 95%.
  
• Fixed BUG that caused shield levels to drop when changing equipment or leveling up.
  
• Fixed items remaining on destroyed stations and box icon not disappearing on galaxy map. Note: This will not work on stations destroyed BEFORE this patch.
  
• Fixed quests to obtain 'Indoctrinated' and 'Rebel', not starting up properly.

• Added more information on crew member tooltips.
  
• Gunners will now check for a better target 3 times per second instead of 2. They will also use weapon range a bit better, in regard to big targets.
  
• Now you can set Gunners to not take control of the turret they are assigned to. This way you can have manual control of the turret while still benefiting from the Gunner bonus effects.
  
• Added Vietnamese localization (courtesy of merctrans.vn).
  
• Added Gunner skill Perk (bonus effect): Max Weapon Heat both flat and % based.
  Note: I will be adding tooltip information to individual turrets, where you'll be able to see bonuses like this.
  
• Added more information to Help Screen.

• Fixed stations not firing at enemies.

• Fixed ship not updating properly after crew skill level up.
  
• Changed attack drone default key to 'K'.
  
• Fixed Gunner bonuses being highlighted on First Officer position.
  
• Fixed BUG when a replaced item would go to the bank when not at a station.
  
• Fixed starting ship size showing "Kraken" when no perk is selected. Now it shows "Corvette" since it's the max starting ship size allowed without any other perk bonuses/penalty.
  
• (Fixed) Unequipping an item now makes it go to the cargo instead of the bank. 'Unequip All' however, causes items to go the bank instead.

Small Update 1.2.0b

• Marauder Perk is now temporary and will "expire" after 30 minutes. This time is extended every time the player kills another civilian (PMC and Syndicate also counts as civilian).
  
• Every 5 minutes the civilian kill count towards 'Marauder' is decreased by 1.
  
• Fixed BUG that made most new crew members have only apprentice level skills.
  
• Navigator (crew) efficiency now also affects Warp Cost.
  
• Level 10 or lower sectors will no longer be Nebula.
  
• Finishing the first part of the Tutorial now also unlocks 'Pirate' background perk.
  
• When starting a new game with 'Pirate' as background perk, the initial sector will now be controlled by the Red Skull instead of being independent.
  
• Crew skill efficiency now has a bonus of 1% for each level difference between the crew member rarity and the skill rank. Example: a blue(3) crew member with apprentice(0) engineer, gets +3% efficiency. Gunner aiming also gets +1 point per level difference.
  
• Ravager Bosses level 10 or higher now drop an Ancient Relic.
  
• Venghi Heavy Blaster damage increased from 12 to 14.
  
• Fixed crafted laser beams causing weird behavior on gunner aiming.
  
• Default key for Scavenge is now J
  
• Pressing H now order gunners and mercenaries to Hold Fire. This is only momentary and will not work against hostile ships that are constantly attacking your ship. If you want them to not fire at all anymore, for now you can lower your weapons energy to zero, just don't forget to turn it back on later. I want to add more commands and a way to make it easier later.
  
• Added more placeholder names, including female ones.

Greetings Commanders!

After so long, Ship Crew Update (part 1) is finally here!
There is a lot of changes in the game, not only on the ship crew but lots of little improvements and BUG fixes.
So let’s dive right in:


Most spaceships now require a Crew to function, especially bigger models that will hardly move without a pilot or generate energy without an engineer, for example. Smaller ships like shuttles and yachts, although not required, can benefit from Co-Pilots, which can improve any function of the ship, including it's weapons. You can hire crewmembers at stations or even rescue them around the galaxy.
Gunners can be assigned to turrets and will automatically fire. They will prioritize drones or missiles if they have a PD weapon installed.
Ship Crew will level up, slowly increasing their skills and eventually gaining new ones, and also improving (or gaining new) bonuses.

You’ll get more in-game instructions on how Ship Crew will work but that’s the basic info. So lets get to the features:

• Ship Crew added, with 6 different skills for now: Engineer, Pilot, Navigator, Supervisor, Gunner and Instructor.
  
• Added the missing Social skills with crew related bonuses.
  
• You can now Deposit/Load using Shift + middle mouse.
  
• 'Unequip all' (and other functions) now deposit everything in the bank instead of the ship cargo.
  
• Added Heavy and Capital Impulse Drives up to Mk.V, and a pirate version for both sizes.
  
• Reduced top speed on Heavy and Capital Impulse Drives plus other small changes.
  
• Speed Boosters now stack better and use less energy, but are less effective than before.
  
• Cloaking will now properly hide weapon turrets.
  
• You can now set weapon energy to zero, which will prevent you or gunners to fire.
  
• You can now order gunners and mercenaries to fire at the selected target by pressing 'F' (default).
  
• Basic Ship Crew will now be added to required positions when starting a new game.
  
• Added HP regeneration to Venghi ships (They can't have crew, except gunners for now).
  
• Fixed a BUG that would prevent weapons from being installed on some AI ships.
  
• Fixed BUG that allowed you to unlock ships in Arena mode.
  
• Fixed Mi'Iaoshu drop chance.
  
• Initial station on the Arena will start with a higher level.
  
• Fixed Marauders target aquisition.
  
• Added a 5 base energy storage to all ships to avoid certain issues.
  
• Higly increased distance relics will travel in the dead zone before disapearing.
  
• Pirate Impulse Drive now uses 2 spaces instead of 3, but had the acceleration power reduced to 19.
  
• Fixed crafted weapons losing their names after changing language.
  
• Fixed Jettisoned ship not keeping its loadout.
  
• Fixed weapon mounts appearing with the wrong orientation in the ship panel.
  
• Fixed message stating that a faction lost 2 billion percent reputation after a station is destroyed.

OBS: Part 2 will come next, with unique crew members, taxi missions and more. The ability to add pilots to your other ships and create your own fleet is coming soon too.

Be advise there may be more BUGs, as usual for a big update like this. So I'll probably be updating the game very soon and try to keep it more frequent from now on :)

Have fun everyone!