4.89 Final is well on its way, and if we're fortunate, it will be out by the end of this month. I'd like to give a definite date, but at this juncture it's a bit unwise given the penchant for unforeseen delays that occur at the mid-point of work on a release. The storyline will see multiple advancements across the sector, and we're approaching some large turning points in 4.90 Initial.
@Alex. has been made the new Department Head for the group of programmers and website techs, and the Models and Effects teams have been combined into a single Art Department, given the already high amount of crossover. Dev Team Structure
@Xoria and I, with consultative support from @Kijiro Nambu, are working on a comprehensive mining update. It's still in the early-mid phases, but will likely see an across-the-board raise in bonus for many factions, with route and sale price reform as well. I am personally seeing to the former part of that, making bonuses much more uniform and dependent on the type of ore, factions primarily meant to mine it, plus factions secondary to them which have lore reasons/capability to mine along with proximity/ZoI to mine there. There's a lot more I can discuss, but I'll cut it short for this post. I'm still working out some details at this point, yet if there's enough interest from the community for insight, I might put together an independent thread for it.
