Changelog:
- Escort missions now pay less within the space of a single Nation.
- Luxury goods now more valuable in deep grayspace, less valuable elsewhere.
- Organic Solvents have new grayspace routes.
- Newbie sectors now only allow new players. Other players entering those sectors will be fired upon.
- Linux right-ctrl/alt keys are now bindable.

We also added some new testing stuff to the BS sector, new LuaJIT sector daemon. Please let us know how BS works over this weekend.

may i request one of the guns the new turrets in the newbie sector fires? cause they are evil!

nice update, i'll run a bs later on

newbie sectors allow newbies only!?! lame

Yay update!

The good points of allowing new players into the newbie sectors only is that pirates (like peytros, hehe) cannot go and find an easy place to newb-kill.
The bad part is that maybe more experienced players would like to help new players, but they couldn't go into the sector to help them. But I guess the new player could go to another sector.

Also, what if the new player advanced past 'new player' status while in the sector? Would they be killed?
Just curious.

They advance at the end of Training III, when they jump to a new sector, so that's not a problem, bill316.

Heh, that's well thought out :-)

This sounds suspiciously like allowing new players invinciblity. Add another system a la Runescape's tutorial island, while your at it.

I kid. But seriously, would the tutorial system be a good or bad idea?

Gotta say this.. but I love the newbie laser beams that protect them. But, I have a request: could you put a little delay in there so I can at least get a screenshot? Thanks!

Btw, coolest looking death I've ever had. :)

FYI: we built in a capability for a new type of "mentoring" badge, that will allow non-newbie players into those sectors, to help out. We just haven't built up a mechanism for giving the badges out, and also revoking them if someone kills a newbie.

cool!

i'll buy 10!

I knew this was coming so i bought a few hundred newbie guns. If you need some let me know in game.

Inc, will there be some sort of in-canon explanation for these sectors, and why nations will fire even upon their own? I do really like the fact that newbies will not be frightened away from VO's wonderful universe by a freak resurgence of good ole' Icarus, but for the sake of immersion, we need an explanation that is just as believable to our characters as it is to us.

Strictly speaking, the canonical explanation could be as simple as the real one. Given that a nation is funding the training of new recruits and pilots, and given that pirates and evildoers are out and about (from any given) nation, and given that the training sectors only allow training weapons.. it doesn't seem too far-fetched that a nation would consider such territory "off limits" to those who were not either trainees or instructors.

Look at it this way, these new pilots are a critical resource for the nation, an important investment being made in the future of their defense and economy. There are even real-world and historical comparisons that can be made to government facilities with "deadly force" permission in the event of intrusion. These orders are not usually made very public, as they don't make for great PR.

One can nitpick over the "why do the newbie locations have these crazy turrets, but the capitols don't?" etc.. but the other stations do also have patrolling guards and such, and have to deal with a great deal more varied traffic. The training stations only deal with trainees: known, authorized, and certain to be carrying only non-lethal weaponry. That can hardly be guaranteed for the rest of the galaxy.

Well said. I think it's a great idea. Next time I come back to the game I'm excited to see up close all the stuff I've been only reading about! I can't wait to get shot to hell by one of these new defense cannons. :)

Well done. The new-character creation process is far better than it used to be.

Oh, and: We apparently have the technology to immediately recognize hostiles as they jump in-sector, with multiple guns training on them instantly. This displays an awesome level of technology for the three nations. Can I haz galactic-wide trading system now?

Look, just make it magic insta-death to jump in. That's what you want and have de facto achieved. The use of hyper-efficient turrets has now reached the point of being silly. New players are no longer just "highly protected but not entirely safe"--they have magic shields.

So stop trying to pretend that they don't. And I don't ever want to hear that "your never completely safe anywhere" crap again.

Heh, worried that you won't be able to kill new players once they have had about 15 minutes of safe training Dr L ?

Even when I am in-game, the rules of VO have been changed enough that I don't waste my time doing that. Subfactions with which I have impeccable standing suddenly don't let me dock if I off a UIT in a UIT sector. Turrets have been whored all over WH and station sectors, and avoiding their fire has nothing to do with skill--the turrets have been spread so thick and use such unrealistic (from a VO pilot's point of view) technology that one is more or less rolling the dice to see if they survive. Now this.

I couldn't care less--I play less because of it, but VO is increasingly low on my list of ways to spend my time anyway. But it's now time for the Devs to revise their statement of vision w/r/t "VO: the game were you're never completely safe!" Because that's a lie.