So with that, what's in 3.1?

So with 3.1, we've got 3.0 out there, we've got the feedback, so 3.1 is all about a big drive to solidify all that stuff. There are one or two new features we're going to push for. But mostly it's about the biggest one, and we're focusing on it already: performance. Getting all of the 3.0 stuff, all the different base tech, and just getting the features working was a massive deal. And what we're doing now is we've got some of our more senior guys really taking the time out to go in and do these huge optimization passes. We know where we need to optimize. There's a lot of stuff where, when you're doing the feature creation side, we now need to focus people on the optimization. So that's a big one. So the plan for 3.1 is that it should be much faster than 3.0 is, and it should be a much better experience for the community. We have our goals for what that's going to be. Hopefully, at the top end of our goal, everyone will be happy. But the point is that the experience, when it comes out, will be a lot better, because there are a lot of things we do on the network side, on the rendering side, and also on the gameplay side in terms of the way we do multi-threading. There's a lot of code we know is basically redundant and needs to be changed and fixed or thrown away and rewritten. So that sort of work is going on. That's one of the big things.

We're also going to be polishing up a lot of the UI, because that's a big, important part, the readability, so you can use the HUDs a lot better. We have a bunch of work we'll be doing on combat and on space UI as well. We're going to have a bunch of work on the economy, because right now there are a lot of exploits, so we're going to do work on making that better. And we want to obviously balance interdiction better. And then one of the features we really want to get in, and hopefully we get this in, is this: now we have interdiction, so let's say you're on a planet, or you get interdicted, or you're in space and someone attacks you. It's called the service beacon. We just want to get the first level of it, which is basically the ability for a player to communicate to anyone else who's near them or in the system and can get to them: this is where I am. And if they're under attack: help me, I'm under attack. And they can send basically a nav point for people to go to to help them. So that could be whether you crash on a planet and you've got no way off and you can say, hey, I'm here on the planet, someone come pick me up and save me, or I'm being attacked by pirates, please come and help me. And this will be the first element of it. Now, this whole system will build into, I'm sure Tony's talked about it, the ability for players to make missions for each other, because then you'll go, hey, I'm here, I'll pay you 500 UEC to pick me up, or whatever it is. Don't quote me on prices, I'm just throwing them out there. But that's the idea.