What changed

The service hardened for public use.

Rate limiting is live on every endpoint. Auth actions get 5 per IP per minute. Gameplay POSTs get 10 per player per minute. Reads get 60. Headers on every response tell you where you stand. The system is transparent — you can see your limits and plan around them.

Email verification is now required for account creation, backed by Turnstile CAPTCHA and Resend for delivery. No more anonymous throwaway accounts. The system sends a six-digit code, you enter it once, and you’re in.

Daily bounties give every captain three randomized objectives each day — trade a specific commodity, kill a raider, visit a StarDock, deploy fighters. Completing them earns credits and experience. They’re designed to pull captains into different parts of the game rather than camping the same route forever.

The leaderboard now shows kills, deaths, and net worth with proper rankings. It updates in real time as the galaxy changes.

The player guide section of the docs site launched with eight articles covering getting started, trading, combat, StarDocks, fighters and mines, keyboard shortcuts, daily bounties, and planet management. Every guide is a live Markdown file in the repo — corrections and additions are welcome.

The CLI client was formally deprecated from the website. It still exists in the repo as a development tool, but the web client is now the canonical way to play. All documentation and marketing points to the browser experience.

Why it changed

A public API without rate limiting is an invitation to abuse. Email verification without CAPTCHA is a bot magnet. A game without daily objectives is harder to return to. These aren’t exciting features, but they’re the difference between a prototype and a service people can trust.

The player guides fill a gap that early testers flagged: the game has depth, but discovering it shouldn’t require reading commit logs. Now there’s a single place to learn how everything works.

What’s next

The docs site will continue to expand. The next major feature pass is the Auto-Pilot route system — bounded trade automation built directly into the web client. The policy framework that makes that possible is already being drafted.