For returning
players/sysops

For players:

• Nebulas are a new sector type. A nebula hides you from other ships, but also keeps you from being able to scan outside it. Planets and wormholes can exist in nebulas.
• Cybertrons now attack other NPCs as well as user ships, and you can gain bonus points by helping the NPCs in distress.
• There will always be four planet updates per day. Planets now have a timestamp saved in their records. If for some reason the game is not able to complete all four updates (for example, the board was brought down early), it will catch up any missed cycles the next day.
• Men now eat. They don't in classic GE. Make sure you leave them enough food.
• Flux pods always automatically reload any time it's needed. You never have to manually reload flux.
• Ship upgrades offer new features. There are eight new optional upgrades available for ships. Not all ship types can use all upgrade types. For now these are available at Zygor, but will be obtained in different ways in future versions.
• The "can't exit" restrictions are (a little) loosened. You won't lose your ship if you're in combat during midnight cleanup. You can exit at any time while in 0 0, as long as you have no projectiles incoming. If you blow up a ship and no one else is around, the "can't exit" time is cut in half. Firing weapons that don't hit anything no longer sets the timer.
• Ships have a set number of torpedo/missile launchers instead of just yes/no, and can only fire that many projectiles before a small reload delay.
• REP ORD is a powerful new tool that will help you keep track of both incoming and outgoing ordnance.
• Missile behavior has changed. Missiles can be charged between 2000 and 20000. (20000 causes equivalent damage to 50000 in classic GE.) The entire amount of the charge is drained from your ship's flux, so three max charge missiles consume almost an entire flux pod. The larger a missile's charge, the slower it travels, so there's more of a reason to use different types of charges. You can shake off missiles by traveling at high warp until they lose lock or run out of power.
• Overspeed damage scales smoothly when traveling over the recommended top warp speed, instead of dropping by half.
• A new jamming effect will appear on scans instead of scans not working at all. The closer you are to the source of the jammer, the more severe the effect is.
• Easier in-game chat. You can use '>' now in addition to 'SEND A'.
• Cybs will pursue even if only one player is logged in. This famous legacy bug has been addressed.
• Check the release notes for more info on what's new, or just discover as you play.

For sysops:

• No registration number required. Just install the module. You can set a REGNO if you'd like it to appear on the console.
• ge-next will run alongside classic GE. Different filenames, no shared resources. The game will even skip the login-time advertising if it detects it's installed on the same board as another GE.
• Old game data is not compatible. Classic GE games and ge-next 0.2.x or earlier games cannot be migrated to ge-next 0.3. Start a new game.
• No NPC refreshes required. Each NPC class will create the correct amount of ships based on their SXXMAKE value, no more, no less. You can change these values without resetting a game and the game will adjust itself accordingly. Cybs will no longer crowd out the non-Cyb ("droid") NPCs.
• Nebulas and Cybertrons attacking non-Cyb NPCs can be adjusted or turned off if you or your players want a more classic experience.
• Plenty of new SYS commands. Check HELP SYS.