First Flight
MARQUEE
▶ DOCKMASTER stamps your clearance now.
Finishing the welcoming committee's three lessons used to end on a radio line and a quiet unlock. Now it ends on a Clearance Seal — a hard-snapped vector stamp that fills the tube for two seconds and names what just happened. No confetti, no "Achievement Unlocked," just your galaxy's mark, full scale, gone as fast as it arrived.
It doesn't end there. The Awards Tray keeps a lit monogram parked in your HUD spine after the Seal fades — proof you did the hard thing, sitting quiet on the left side of your screen for the rest of the session. Graduate once, carry it every flight after.
REF · #403 · #404 · #407 · #408 · #409 · #411
NEW
-
A real first-flight primer. New pilots get a one-shot FIRST FLIGHT panel laying out the controls, with a persistent ? cue if you need it again later. Dismiss it once and it's gone for good — GOT IT means got it.
· #535 -
Fresh spawns don't land on DOCKMASTER's desk. Dropping into ORION used to drop you right on top of the welcoming committee. Now you spawn on a ring around the welcome point instead — DOCKMASTER gets his space back, and so do you.
· #536 #538
FIXES
-
The welcoming committee is back on station. A publishing miss took ORION's manifest offline in production — DOCKMASTER, PIP, and BULLSEYE were AWOL for new pilots. Caught and fixed.
· #116 -
Graduation broadcasts the moment it happens. The Mission checklist now updates live the instant you clear an objective, instead of waiting on a refresh to catch up.
· #401 #402
PILOT'S NOTE
This one’s about the first ten minutes. ORION teaches you to fly; First Flight is the patch that makes finishing that lesson feel like something happened.
The marquee is the Clearance Seal — DOCKMASTER’s graduation write now
fires a two-second center-screen stamp instead of dying on a radio line and
a silent unlock. It’s deliberately restrained: no achievement toast, no
loot rain, no lingering glow. Cool vector lines snap to full scale, hold
long enough to read, and vanish. That’s the whole ceremony. Six tickets
shipped it end to end — the epic (#403), the Seal presentation
(#404), the felt signoff (#407), and the Awards Tray that carries
the keepsake forward after the Seal dies (#408, #409, #411). The
tray is a quiet, collapsible spot in your HUD spine that stays empty until
you’ve earned something — then it holds a lit monogram for the rest of
the session. Graduate once, carry the mark.
Two smaller features round out the “first flight” theme. New pilots now
get an actual primer — a one-shot controls panel with a ? cue if they
need the reminder later (#535). And fresh drop-ins to ORION no longer
land squarely on DOCKMASTER’s coordinates; spawns now ring out around the
welcome point so the committee has room to work (#536, #538).
Two fixes ride along. The uglier one first: ORION’s manifest briefly
shipped in draft state, which meant production was silently skipping the
whole welcoming committee for new pilots — caught and republished
(#116). The other is smaller: the Mission checklist now reflects a
completed objective the instant it lands, instead of waiting for the next
refresh (#401, #402).
— Ray