Dear Shipmates,

After a scorching summer spent mostly working but also a little bit relaxing with family, here we are again with a new release!

This release is mostly technical, fixing a couple of issues among which the embarrassing "strength adjustment explosion". We apologize for having left you all these weeks with this bug, but fret no more, install this update and this bug will be a distant memory of the past!

This release also sports a new background music track from Kukan Effect. This artist was a real discovery, we think their dreamy and at times eerie music perfectly fits Floating Sandbox's atmosphere, and they kindly agreed to lend one of their tracks to this release. Please let us know what you think of this new track!!!

Here's the changelist for this release:

• Improved "Ship Load" window, allowing to sort by different attributes, and allowing to load ships flipped and/or rotated

• Small user interface changes here and there, mostly to improve experience on Windows 11

• Fixed bug which would cause ships to explode when increasing the "strength adjustment" setting

• Fixed sporadic ShipBuilder crash while the Ropes tool was setup with "no rope" material

• Added one new ship, "Steffinton Class Hovercraft" - by Pocketwatch

• Added new background music track, "Nightmare" - by Kukan Effect (https://kukaneffect.bandcamp.com/)

Before we close, a quick preview of what's to come in the next release.

As you remember, seven months ago we released the ShipBuilder for the first time, marking the beginning of the 1.17 series. That release was the first release of the builder, containing essential ship-building tools such as pencil, line, and eraser. That first release was then followed by four additional updates, each adding new features to the ShipBuilder.

At this moment there is only one large, planned ShipBuilder feature missing, namely Copy'n'Paste, and we plan to deliver it with the next 1.17.5 update. After that, we'll finally consider the ShipBuilder *complete* and we'll be able to move on with the master grand plan that was concocted two years ago, and start working on optimizing the spring relaxation algorithm.

That's all shipmates, talk to you again soon when the next update approaches!