Short note from Command. A mill that already held pig-crystal alloy or vapor still refused to climb it one tier. Beacon research was asking for T3 of those compounds while the building said the combination was invalid. That was a hole in pairing, not missing chemistry. I also opened the orbit slot ring on the hub, put a hop estimate on automatic routes, and started an early way to group fleets on the map dock.
Mills - compounds climb like ores
- Two matching stacks in the same mill phase still become one tier higher of the same material. That now includes named compounds, not only raw ores.
- Pig-crystal alloy is born at T2 from liquid pig-iron T1 plus liquid crystal T1. After that, two liquid alloy T2 stacks become alloy T3 - the Beacon deployment IV cost.
- Vapor-frubin-orizin is born at T2 in a gas mill. Two T2 vapors become T3 for Beacon deployment V and plasma reversal. Same ladder through T5.
- You still need the matching mill and the processing research for the output tier. Yield is below one, so T3 takes more than two T2.
Mixing two different materials at mixed tiers is not a second named alloy. That is still discovery - you name a new compound. Catalog alloys stay the seeded births. Full rules: /docs/refinement-phases.
Orbit slots and route hops
- The colony Orbit hub now shows the eight planet slots even when hangar is empty. Tap a parked fleet to recall. To launch, pick a hangar fleet first, then tap an empty slot.
- Automatic routes show a one-way hop estimate next to cruise speed - time and Frurozin - once both waypoints are set. It is an estimate from waypoint distance; the real burn still depends on that courier's mass and engines.
- Move-only routes are still not in. Relocate an empty freighter with a normal map hop for now.
Grouping fleets - early stage
I started letting you organise the map dock by dragging fleet pins together. Treat it as a HUD sketch, not a finished command layer.
- Drag one pin onto another to group them. Drag to a gap to reorder. Open a group to pick a member or pull one out.
- This is local to your dock. It does not merge hulls, share orders, or persist as a real fleet on the map.
- Decay alerts still surface on a grouped pin when a member is already declining. If grouping feels clumsy, tell me - this is the first cut.
Short bullets land on /release-log. If a mill still refuses two matching T2 compounds after this deploy, or the orbit ring is missing on an empty hangar, ping me on Command Relay.
Sebastian "Degola" Lagemann