Pretty fun so far! This is quite a good update!
A few things I've noticed on my first playthrough (these are intended to be helpful criticism
)
-It's reallllly hard to be a a smuggler. Trading with the pirates at all sends your reputation through the ground REALLY quickly! It seems absolutely impossible to become friendly with almost any of the factions (enough to buy a ship that doesn't suck) if you are smuggling at all!
-I think the pirate flag could be embellished a bit!
-For some strange reason, "pirate" is lowercase for everything. Probably something to do with the .faction.
-Doing bounties on pirates sends the game into easy mode very quickly. Everyone quickly decides they like you, and you start rolling in the bounty money. Speaking of bounties, there are no bounties for anyone besides pirates.
-I get scanned 2-3 times per system. Often once before I dock somewhere and once immediately after by the same faction (even if they are neutral/favorable!). If I tell them I don't want to pay, they'll simply wait a few seconds then try to scan me again! I mean, yeah it's fine to get scanned every once in awhile, but this is INSANE!!!
-Jump gates and planets often become completely hidden under the sheer number of fleets sitting around. Fleets seem to accumulate quickly in the more peaceful systems like Sindria and Eos.
-It's often completely possible to destabilize a smaller planet with a very small amount of illicit goods. On my first trade in the new update, I accidentally permanently destabilized Asharu by giving them all of my drugs.
My one wish for any future versions of this is to have a "pirate" start at the character selection screen. Right now it takes absolutely forever to make them friendly with you and they'll often try to attack you while you're doing that (which makes it even harder!).