The biggest change with the widest impact: Increased player cap at approximately 100 players. This little blast from an almost forgotten past changes a lot. Almost everything in the PU is optimized for low player counts. The mission availability, the spawn rates, the difficulty and even the size of mission locations. The cargo system with both its low inventories and laughable profits. The size of profitable mining locations. All of that has been optimized over the last few years for a very small player count. The increased player numbers basically guarantee a dry spell if you are trying to do the missions provided by the game. Trade routes will be even less profitable than ever before and I do expect some very interesting competition for the mining locations especially on Lyria. In the PTU I already noticed that players with CS rarely travel alone anymore as player bounty hunters are in abundance and even small fights tend to quickly escalate into veritable battles as more and more players join the fight. Ultimately it shows you how small Stanton really is or rather how few spots are frequently visited.
The much anticipated wipe will only increase the click battle for the few well paid missions and the fight for resources will be fierce. Pirates and thieves are no longer limited to very few numbers to ensure availability of victims though I suppose well have a week before the pirate orgs have grinded enough money to have all the tools of their trade available. On the other hand, we should be on our toes from day one.
The events, especially Siege of Orison and Jumptown but probably also 9tails lockdown will run a lot in the first two weeks of the patch cycle as announced by CIG. Siege will probably be griefers paradise and even if not, during the last playtests there were still a lot of gamebraking bugs. From a monetary standpoint that event is not worth the invested time and the risk. If everything runs well and you are in an organized crew it can be quite enjoyable for a few rounds... If you want to make good money you use the time the event runs to do stuff that pays well.
And JT will be very interesting with the increased player count. I have no clue if anything less than 25 players will be enough to hold onto the location now. At least I dont think well see any large scale cooperation between random players happening anymore as the payout would be ridiculously low. Unfortunately there was no playtest with the increased player count so its just guesswork at this moment.
Significant changes: All stations now have hangers to spawn your ship. Means, the scrubs are now fleet uniform... There are still a few pads outside and you can land there without requesting permission. And restock, if and when that works. Restocking is still very inconsistent.
Most ships, actually all that i tested in combat have significant shield holes. That is also mentioned as a known issue, meaning there wont be a fix. Be aware of that. Shield holes are always in the front and some of the larger ships also have additional shield holes on the side.
Friendlies on bunker missions and on some events MIGHT have an IFF marker (a blue chevron above their head). Until the last build it could still happen that the marker is missing. So you still need to be careful who you shoot at.
100 player servers, obviously. Though CIG already stated that during the Siege event theyll cap it at 75 and they might go as high as 120 when no event is running.
There are several new missions on derelict Reclaimers in space at Arccorp, Crusader and Microtech. Microtech also has a Reclaimer derelict on the ground that is the location for several missions. There are also several ruins on Microtech that are sites for cargo and investigation missions. Be advised that during the PTU phase it was quite hard to get ahold of any of these missions as everyone wanted to see the new sites. This will probably be a little easier a few weeks into the patch.