17 August 2026: The Shipwright Update — your fleet in true 3D
Ships are becoming ships
- Fly the camera in, and the blip becomes the ship. In the solar system view, ships now carry full 3D models. From tactical range you keep the clean shape-coded markers; close the distance and the marker cross-fades into a plated, textured hull hanging in space. Pull back out and the readable battle view returns.
- Lit by their own star. Hulls catch the light of the system they fly in — a red dwarf paints them red, a nebula tints them — with a true sun side and a night side. Shadowed faces fall to near-black, the way things do in space. No two angles look the same.
- They fly like they mean it. Hulls point their nose along their course, so a squadron in formation reads as a squadron, and a fleet burning for a jump point looks like exactly that.
- Inspect the real thing. VIEW a ship and you now orbit its actual model, not a stand-in.
The first hulls
The registry is being modelled ship by ship, starting with the human fleet. In this update:
- Celestia Long Range Corvette (and the ECG Celestia variant)
- Hercules Class Escort Frigate
- Rapier Gunship Mk IV (and the Defector Rapier)
- Dirac Class Strike Cruiser
- Widowmaker Class Battle Cruiser
Ships without a model yet keep their markers at every range — more hulls, and the other races, arrive in the coming updates.
Small changes
- Call signs, decluttered. The full class name that appeared under a selected ship's tag has been retired — it added noise without adding much. The three-letter call sign stays, and a ship's class still reads at a glance from its marker shape.