Whoops, forgot to post here yesterday. Let's pretend it's Tuesday again ...
The system modifications are in their final stages. What's left is to merge the changes, insert the updated infocards, and tweak the economy to fit the moved bases. Maybe the PvP and Effects folks will have something new cooked up by the release date as well.
As for the update itself, while our highest priority has been Kusari, due to the business and departure of various system modders, only part of the planned Kusari changes will be in this update. We've also been working on Rheinland and the "Nomicrons." With luck all goes well, and all three of those will be included in this incoming update.
"Why has this all been taking so long since the Gallia Update?"
Well, with the departure of the former leadership of the team as well as the forum downtime, there has been a lot to reorganize. Fortunately, we've found a few new system modders who seem very competent. As many of you may recall, there was also a "Great Guard System Cull" planned several months ago. These updates contain the results of all that planning, so a lot of the work has been a result of removing or de-guarding those systems, in addition to the storyline progression. We've been lucky to find so many ways to reuse those old bases.
Future updates, after 4.88 Final is done, will be much quicker as a result, since the guard systems will already be taken care of.
