Version 2026.10.2 – The forecast update: weather from space, abandoned stations and plumes on the right nozzles 🌦️🚉

October 2, 2026

Until now, the planets you saw from your ship were painted guesses: most of them had no clouds at all, and what you saw had little to do with the world below. 🪐 From now on, the planets in the flight view are the worlds you land on – with their real ground (each region with its own soil, snow and ice on cold peaks and frozen seas, the world's own water and plant colours, craters on airless moons) and with their live weather. 🌦️ From above, a storm is a dark cloud mass with lightning flickering in it, a front is a band of cloud, a blizzard is white, acid rain sickly green and ash dark, and in an ion storm the rim of the atmosphere shimmers. The weather keeps running on every planet of your system while you fly: if you fly down into the storm you saw from space, that is exactly the storm you land in. And the lit side of a planet is its real day side – land on the dark side and you land at night. 🌙

🗺️ So you can pick your weather, the landing map (L in flight) now shows the planet's weather with drifting fronts, and every pad says what is waiting for you there – "⚡ Storm" or "☀ Clear", for example. Better take the sunny one! ☀️ The system chart (M in flight) and the travel screen show a small weather glyph on every planet, and the planet map (M on foot) has a weather layer with the fronts crossing your area right now. A few bugs are gone along the way: 33 of the 51 planet kinds had no clouds from space at all (and an airless crystal world had some), and the planet maps are now painted in the background, so the game no longer stutters as you fly up to a planet.

🚉 And then there is one of Justus' ideas. His very first wish for the trains was "abandoned stations!" – back then it turned into the working intercity line. Now the abandoned version is here too: on some new worlds, the ruin of an old monorail station stands somewhere out in the open. The roof has partly caved in, the lamps are dark, plants grow through the platforms, and on the track bed sits an old wagon with broken windows and a bush on its roof. You can even still sit on its benches. 🪑 In the wagon and on a platform you'll find salvage: old line parts and sometimes a few rail pylons or a rail stop – enough for a little line of your own. Station notices tell a bit of the station's story: a timetable, a lost-and-found tag and the driver's last log. The station is not on the map, so you have to find it yourself – but VEGA gives you a hint when you are close. 🔎

🚀 There are two small fixes too: the engine plumes from the last update came out of the middle of the stern on most ships – which is the rear door. 😅 Now every engine has its own plume, and the starter ship's nozzles are real engine nozzles with a glowing ring (your ships get them on their own). And in the browser, the "What's new?" window could end up behind the main menu after an update. Now it always sits in front, and with a gamepad the selection stays inside the window.

The network protocol stays at version 8, so your saves simply carry on. The terrain generation rises to 20: only new worlds can have an abandoned station, and existing worlds stay as they are. An older game version can still join, but it shows no weather from space – so better update (the desktop game does that on start, and the browser is always current). All new texts are in all 14 languages. Happy landings – and check the weather first! 🌤️