Deep Survey and a kinder prestige

Perks

• Repriced at both ends. Synergy Schematics, Starting Level and Aegis are far cheaper: their final ranks used to cost close to a whole prestige and now top out at about a quarter of that. Weapon Slots, Draft Choices, Targeting Computer and Deployment Network cost more, since all four were finishing inside three runs. Perks you already own are unaffected.
• Battlefield and Programs. The Research Center's two tabs are renamed. Battlefield is what a run fights with, Programs is what you put in orbit.

Prestige

• Prestige keeps your flux. Buying a rank clears your perks and nothing else. The price of the rank is the whole cost.

Economy

• Flux cells. Now and then a wreck falls still holding a charge, glowing blue. Tap it for a lump of flux worth far more than the kill. Cells need nothing unlocked, so they appear from your first run.
• Salvage Refinery. Three ranks under Programs, each raising what a salvage glint is worth. It appears once you own Salvage Beacons.
• Automated Defenses. The largest program yet. Each rank arms another battery that holds your site in real time while you are away, and recovery crews bank the scrap. It appears once your first satellite is up.

Orbit

• Deep Survey Program. A survey probe is a third thing you can launch. It rides the same launch run, keeps going once it clears orbit, and reports back about four hours later, real time, with a world worth taking. Charted worlds never expire.
• The star chart. Deep Survey lists every world your probes have found, what it would take to hold it, what it would pay, and the odds against the fleet you have in orbit right now.
• Survey Analysis. Four ranks that narrow a world's defense estimate from a wide guess to a number you can trust. It sharpens the estimate, not your fleet.
• No cap on satellites. Launch as many as you like. From the sixth on, the price climbs far more steeply.
• Earlier platforms. The Orbital Factory Program is offered at two satellites instead of five, and command tells you when it is available.
• Orbital Command. It opens once you have a platform in orbit, not merely the program to launch one.
• The globe pulls back. As your sky fills, the globe zooms out so satellites and platforms stay in view.

Interface

• One mission select. It opens with a run type picker: Defend, or any launch you have unlocked. The picker only appears once you have more than one choice.
• Funding slider. A full bar is now the biggest investment, which buys the shortest countdown.
• Leaving a run asks first. Navigating away pauses the field and asks, and closing the tab warns too. The game's own exits, like returning to command after a launch reaches orbit, never ask.
• Announcements wait for you. They arrive in a window that stays until you read it, instead of toasts that could pile up and time out. What your satellites, defenses and shipyards banked while you were away comes as one card with the figures on it.
• Minimal effects. The effects setting now has three levels. Reduced thins the particle work; Minimal removes it: trails and contrails stop, decoration is skipped, bursts drop to a single spark, and floating damage numbers switch off. Explosions and hit feedback stay on at every level. If you had Reduced on, it stays on.

Fixes

• Vapor cover on wide fields. Vapor banks sat in the middle of the field however wide it was, so extra cannons got no cover and the banks piled up. They now spread across the whole field.
• Globe labels. Site names and beacons are back on the mission select globe.