VO 1.8.583 includes:

- Four new missions: "Dragon Variations", "At the Heart of It All", "Nemeses" and "Safari Cruise".
- New capital ship command-set help, by messaging "help" to a capship that is owned by the player.
- Expanded Russian localizations on Android, including Gamepad controls and configuration.
- No Fire Zones in Nation space no longer allow any weapon to fire (including PCB or repair-gun). Mining is allowed. Special "unlawful" weapons may become manufacturable that will be able to circumvent this barrier, and require smuggling across borders.
- Added a notification when attempting to use weapons or turrets inside the NFZ of stations in Nation space.
- Improved "highlight" features for Missions to more easily display control information, for new Tutorials.
- Added "highlight" arrows that can point to the nearest docking bay, in space and on radar, for updated Tutorial usage.
- Additional Tutorial analytics, to help determine when new players run into difficulties during tutorial missions.

The NFZ changes were initially suggested by the userbase, to simplify handling of cases, including:

- A player hiding within a hostile capship's docking bay, in the NFZ, and using the Strike Force to attack the capship.
- A troll "attacking" new players using PCBs or Repair Guns to trick the new players into firing back and getting themselves Temp KoS'd.

But, aside from this, the new change also drastically simplifies the new-user tutorials, which is part of the current goal-set. Explaining the old NFZ system was challenging, and the prospect of then trying to translate that explanation across many languages was even more of a concern. Simply "locking out" weapons is a hell of a lot easier, and seemed to help mitigate a variety of problems.

VO is still fundamentally a "no absolutely safe place" game, and we may eventually offer special "black market" weapons that can be Manufactured in grayspace, and used within lawful No Fire Zones to attack, for instance.. in assassination type missions. But, this will at least be a controlled and rare case, compared to trolls taunting newbies, or various other challenges.

As always, everything here is a "work in progress" and shouldn't be taken as cast-in-stone. If problems emerge with the new system, we'll continue to evolve it. The "Suggestions" and "Bugs" forums are available if people want to contribute constructive (and respectful) feedback around any of these issues.

The current Russian localization can sometimes push the "old-style" interface out of alignment a little bit, due to longer words or phrases. It's still functional, but not ideal. The new-style interface is still in development, but we needed to start actively testing with translations, so this should all settle out and improve over time.

That's all for now, Happy Holidays!