Release Notes - Expanse

[molp]

Expanse Release

Open all frequencies, blast the commercials and go knocking from door to door: It’s election season! Every planet may now elect a Governor to rule over local legislation. And while core systems are subject to Faction-imposed constraints, those planets further out are entirely at the mercy of their ruler…

Release date

The Expanse release will be released on December 12th 2019.

General Notes

If your APEX console is stuck in a loading state after the update, please make sure to refresh it once after the update to ensure you got the latest version.

New features

Planetary Administration Center

The planetary administration center (command ADM) is a planetary project that allows to elect a governor. Everyone (not only site owners) can run for office, but only site owners can vote for a candidate. A typical term lasts 14 days and allows the governor to redirect the production and local market fees to his faction or corporation. A corporation is not required to run for office.

Local Rules

The local rules (command LR) provide an overview of the current rules of a planet. They show who is collecting the production and local market fees, their currency and height. Governors can change the fee collector and the fees. Fee changes are limited to 5 changes per term. On faction planets and in faction space the height of the fees has to be within certain bounds.

Corporation Finances and Dividend

Corporations now have a minimalist finance overview (command CORPFIN) that shows the current liquid assets and amount of shares. This is important since the Expanse release includes corporation dividends that are being paid out from the local market and production fees. The dividend payout is triggered whenever a accounting period ends, usually in the early hours each Monday. The payout is on a per share basis and every shareholder in a company receives a divided (if there is enough liquid assets for one). The overview also shows a list with recent dividend payouts.

Changes

The CXPO command now shows the highest bid and lowest ask price (if available) and allows to use these as presets. Also the last price has been replaced with the average price.

[molp]

I’ve been asked how the faction affinity, local rules and production fees are connected. Usually I would link to an article in the handbook, but that isn’t finished yet, so here is the answer.

There are three types of faction affinity:

• Faction worlds: Faction worlds are the starting planets that can be selected during company setup. A governor can change the production and local market fees only within limits: production fee: 10-30, LM base: 50-150, LM time: 3-8.
• Faction space: Every planet within one jump of a faction world belongs to faction space. The fee limits are: production fee: 5-40, LM base: 25-200, LM time: 2-10
• None: On planets without a faction affinity the limits are: production fee: 0-9999, LM base: 0-9999, LM time: 0-9999

The fee’s currency will always be the one of the local faction if there is any, or if there is none the currency of the faction / corporation the governor selects as fee collector.

[Mjeno]

The wiki is now also updated to include information on the Admin Center and Governor: WIKI

And as is the case for all major updates, there is a dedicated release page now if you want to get a quick overview: RELEASE PAGE

Last but definitely not least, here is the Expanse artwork by Maciej Rebisz:

[molp]

So, the first election happened and of course there has been a bug. Instead of @Rubicate (who has the most votes) I got elected

Here is what we can do about it: I found the bug and will fix it as soon as possible. Since we cannot easily change events that happened in the past I’ll probably stay governor for this term. I do feel very bad about this, so here is a suggestion how Rubicate (and the corporation GDP) can still be kind-of-governor:

• I’ll join GDP
• Rubicate can tell me how they want the local rules to be changed and I’ll change them accordingly.
• After the term ends, I’ll leave GDP.

What are your thoughts on that?

[Prdgi]

I’m not a fan of point 3.