Scan grid while drilling, a soft focus cone, a gentler pull from the Core.
- Scan grid instead of an arc: While the drill laser is working, a glowing wireframe sphere sits over the chunk. It rotates with it, a scan line sweeps across it, and the ore veins light up as nodes. As the supply runs down they go out one after another, and the one currently being drilled flickers out. The grid fades in and out smoothly.
- Supply bar: Above the chunk, a bar in the ore’s color, with one segment per unit, shows how much is still inside. The fill glides, and a bright trail shows the part that was just mined. After you stop drilling, the bar stays up for a moment.
- Steady mining: The ore unit in progress already counts. The chunk now shrinks evenly instead of in steps, and a fine stream of sparks flows at the drilling point.
- Focus without a hard switch: Aim cone, focus ring and aim line blend smoothly. On switching, angle, range, color (cyan → magenta) and strength glide to their new value in about a fifth of a second, and the focus ring contracts from the outside.
- The Core’s pull tamed for keys and stick: Mouse control always quietly compensated for the pull, because the ship seeks the pointer. With keys and stick, though, it pulled at full strength: when idle the ship drifted noticeably toward the Core, and near the center you could barely make headway against it — in focus only about 48 px/s. Now the attitude thrusters almost hold against it when idle (drift near the center ~10 instead of ~86 px/s), and while flying the pull takes at most 15 % of your own speed (against the pull 264 instead of ~234 px/s, in focus ~113 instead of ~48 px/s). Beyond the edge of the system it pulls you back as before.