New release with a few new gameplay additions. As I've previously stated, we're moving towards removal of Friendly Fire and altering the faction system. As such, we need improved defenses for newbies, capitol stations, nation borders and so on, and we've revived the old Defense Turrets to serve this function. At present, they're only in testing, showing up in Dau L10, L11, and Itan J11 (these were simply the most conveniently implementable locations for testing, nothing against the Serco). They are temporarily armed with capital cannons and 30k armor, and respawn (flying out from the station to their old positions) 30 seconds after destruction. Once they're proven fundamentally viable, we'll be tweaking their positioning, weapon loadouts, armor, behaviour and so on. You'll be seeing this and other visible changes occurring over the coming weeks, as mentioned in my Friendly Fire Removal suggestion forum post.

Secondly, we've added some new mining medals, specifically for Denic, Pentric and Heliocene ores, with medal levels at 50, 500, 5000 and 50000cu. I know 50k cu of any of these ores is a major task, these are not intended to be easy, or beginner medals, and the descriptions are quite clear on that. Also, as we move towards player-owned capital ships and large mining support freighters, I expect the quantities that can be extracted by organized individuals will increase. Anyway, for the moment, consider the top levels of these medals as "long-term goals". There are not currently any special benefits or equipment from achieving these medals, but I do intend to add them as we move along. I need a few other changes to take place in the game before I can start adding more varied equipment again (more on that down the road).

On the Kourier front, Michael and Andy are making great progress, reworking lots of fundamental aspects of the game's functionality to make for greater gameplay possibilities and better scalability/stability. They still believe they're on target for their end-of-June release date. In the meantime, the Test server may be broken a bit more often, as they're reworking some pretty fundamental code.

I am reading the "quick and dirty" type suggestions forum posts, and other ideas for things that could be added more easily, and appreciate the input. I have a whole list of forum posts that I'm intending to rework into tickets for our Trac system, so keep the ideas coming. Thanks much everyone, hope you're having fun :).

Changelog:

- Itan J-11, Dau L-10, and Dau L-11 are now testing automated station defense turrets
- Three new ribbons for Denic, Pentric, and Heliocene ores