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What happens when a ship is wrecked ? What happens with the ship, cargo and the player ?

It depends on what kind of ship we are talking about and also on what mode you are playing.
For now in SP mode we want to go easy on the player, so even if your ship is destroyed you don't lose anything. I think it would be just too much. But in multiplayer it is entirely possible for server admin to make it a hardcore server where you would lose your ship if you are destroyed. So, you would be able to destroy other player's ships and loot their wrecks.

Blogpost: http://atomictorch.com/Post/26

Hello again. It's Friday and here is another developers update!

This time we finally started implementing space stations, or "bases" as we call them. In the game you will be able to dock to many different stations and use their services such as shops, shipyard, visit canteen, etc. Different stations will provide you with different options of what you can do. For example on a mining outpost you can sell your ore for a better price.

Anyway, here is a detailed list of changes this week apart from implementing the bases as I described above.
* It is now impossible to change your ship equipment while in space. Well, it does not make much sense if you can just swap your weapons in the middle of a fight, right?
* Now it is also possible to change your ship hull. What that means is that you can now buy better ships with the progression of the game.
* Better galaxy generation. It is now all script based and can be easily changed in mods. We are also continuing working on the map editor that would allow us to make the game campaign as awesome as it can be!
* Many enhancements to the faction system. All factions are now defined in XML files and you can add your own. You can also script any custom features for them. One of such features is that when you belong to a particular faction they will offer you better prices when trading. It will be in the game by default, but you will be able to add any other features like this.
* And finally we tweaked the physics of the ships a little bit. Now it is possible to precisely define the mass distribution across the hull. For example a ship might have it's center of mass right in the middle, or to the side which would completely change how it behaves in combat.
* Oh, and we added money! Yes, no game like this can be without money!

Here is a picture of our map editor in progress and an example of galaxy that it can generate. I think it is quite nice gameplay wise. Colored zones represent zones of influence of a particular faction.
(http://atomictorch.com/Images/Upload/25.png)

And here is a render of the space station.
(http://atomictorch.com/Images/Upload/26.png)

Blogpost: http://atomictorch.com/Post/25

Main addition to VoidExpanse this time is a new ship which you can see in the screenshot below. I think you can guess its purpose from its look. Yes, it is a cargo vessel. It has very spacious cargo holds ideal for trading missions or transportation of mined ore. Now, thinking about it, it is actually a very smart idea if one player does mining in a specialized engineering ship, while other player helps him to transport ore to a processing facility in one of neighboring star systems. I should certainly try it to see how much more effective it is compared to mining alone.

And here is our usual detailed list of other important features this week:
* Crates. Now it is possible to loot destroyed ships. Or you can jettison some or your cargo for others to pick up. The crates themselves were done some time ago, but this week we finally implemented UI for actually picking up these crates, or rather their contents.
* Better planets. We have adjusted how the atmosphere is displayed and increased the polygon count for the planet models.
* Better shaders for the sun, now they take into account actual 3D space fore more realistic look.
* Energy calculation. Generator, capacitor and all energy requiring equipment now take into account all associated ship stats. That means you can be left off without energy if you spam-shoot your weapons non stop for some time.
* Tractor beam. You can use it to draw containers closer to your ship if you are too lazy to pick them up manually. I know, I will certainly use it often!
* We have also started working on the galaxy editor that would help us in creating the campaign for the game later on. For now though, it is mostly needed to tweak the galaxy generation in the game.

Can you land or send a party down to the planets surface? Is so what are the plans for planet gameplay?

Firstly, welcome to forums Xander
Now this is actually a very interesting question. We have several possible ideas for this particular feature and this is certainly gonna be a big part of the game regardless of which one we decide to go with. But on the other hand we want to get the game out for people to play as soon as possible, so before we even start thinking of implementing it, we would like to start open beta first.
Then, based on feedback we can decide on a particular implementation. It is also likely that we will share our ideas for people to decide which one they like more.
But maybe you have some good ideas how you would like this to be implemented?

Please tell us what you think about the game!

Also here are some pics to get you started 

I think it is about time we created a forum

It may take a while for this forum to get enough people for any big discussions, but at least we are happy to answer your questions here