The wake got deeper.

Something new is cutting the old capitals apart — and it isn't you. Strip a dead dreadnought now and TWO of them rise out of the ribs. Salvage reavers. They hunt as a pair, they take turns with the rockets, and they are patient in a way that machines should not be.

They carry something worth the trouble. The old minds left RUNES in the wreckage — and three of them, in the right order, in your own hold, will speak a WORD the dead still remember. What answers is yours to keep.

The whole economy runs on one bar now. Your reactor feeds your targeting mind. Your guns pour heat into the same bar and crush it. Cook yourself and you go blind before you go quiet — and clawing it back at the last second is the whole game. Fuel is for the road. Jumps are free, but every jump lands where THEY know you'll land. Bring friends. Or be very, very cold.

The presses are waiting. The junk is real. The stranding is real. The ion thrusters never fail — that's not mercy, that's just how long the dark is.

— THE OPERATOR



**PATCH NOTES — THE SYSTEMS OVERHAUL v2.0 (test branch)**

THE ONE BAR

* Reactor recharges COMPUTE (your targeting bandwidth). HEAT crushes it from the other end. One bar, one balancing act.
* Nothing locks out anymore. An overheated ship goes blind and slow-witted instead — and recovering mid-fight is a legitimate play.
* Ammo is GONE. Every gun is energy-fed and pure heat. Heavy ballistic cannons became directed-energy lances.

CONTROLS

* T cycles a real target lock. Big ships lock fast, small ships make the computer work.
* LEFT CLICK fires guns at your lock. No lock, cold guns.
* RIGHT CLICK is ONE missile per click — no cooldowns, your free bandwidth IS your fire rate.

MOVEMENT

* Jumps cost nothing. The spool is the price — it makes heat, and it won't start with combat heat aboard.
* Every jump lands at the destination's CATCH point. Camping a catch is legal. The arrival wash scrambles ALL targeting for 6 seconds — theirs and yours.
* Fuel burns on quantum cruise ONLY, and cargo mass makes the road dearer and the spool slower.
* HOLD Z: eject your entire hold as a marked, persistent cache. Lighter, faster, poorer. Come back for it. Or don't.
* Star types matter now: red dwarfs run cool, blue giants irradiate their whole well, and a few DEAD STARS give you nothing to drink at all.

THE LADDER

* Loot climbs WHITE → BLUE → GREEN → GOLD → BLACK (military grade). Deep and uncharted systems roll higher — the map is a risk curve.
* White junk is junk ON PURPOSE. It has one fate: the reclaimer press. There are about seven presses in the entire wake, plus the one at your home yard.
* GOLD and BLACK items don't inflate numbers — they BREAK RULES. Fifteen powers so far: kills that vent your heat, cruise that's half-price but blind, locks that shrug off the catch wash, and more.
* SCHEMATICS drop from capital wrecks — the recipe IS the rare drop. Hunt its component bill, pick a donor module, and the press stamps the pattern in.
* RUNES drop only from reaver pairs. Three of a color, in the right order in your hold, bind into a named RELIC.

THE WAKE FIGHTS BACK

* SALVAGE REAVERS: every capital strip wakes a pair. A third of a boss each, escorts, five rockets apiece — and they stagger them. Never both at once.
* Every gravity well now holds at least three capital wrecks.
* Every rule above applies to the machines too. They cook, they go blind, they run home. No cheating, ever.



ok real talk for a second. i know this patch isnt live yet and i feel genuinely bad about that. you guys have been patient and the test branch has been "almost ready" for a while now. heres the honest reason: this is the biggest redesign the game has ever had. i ripped out the entire economy — ammo, fuel, the works — and rebuilt it on one bar. i was not going to drip half a surgery onto the live build and let you all find the broken pieces for me. so its been getting built behind a fence, and ive had bots flying hundreds of full playthroughs finding the dumb stuff before you ever see it (they found plenty. it was humbling). also im one guy and sleep keeps happening. its close. the bots are on it right now while i work on the art. thank you for waiting — the wake is going to be worth it.

\#salvorAdrift #indiedev

⟨ SIGNAL INTERCEPT · 53·4C·56 ⟩