- Back up! - 16 May 2026
The planned maintenance window is over, and we expect no further disruption. We apologise for the inconvenience.
- Server Maintenance Today - 15 May 2026
Servers are going offline today for maintenance. We will post another announcement when they are back up.
- We Are Back! - 16 April 2025
Apologies for the inconvenience.
- Power outage at data centre - servers offline - 16 April 2025
The power is out at our data center. We have shut down cleanly, so expect no data loss. Will post an update when it returns or we have an ETA.
- Aaaand we're back - 10 December 2024
We have had to roll back a few hours of the database but everything is back to normal now. Apologies for the inconvenience.
- Unscheduled outage - 9 December 2024
Our data centre is without power right now and we will be offline for the next several hours. Apologies for the inconvenience. We will post an update when service is restored.
- System Maintenance Window - 19 October 2023
From 9pm Thursday 19th October to 6:30am Friday 20th October, UTC, there will be a maintenance window. Players will be unable to connect during this window. We apologise for the inconvenience.
- Power System Maintenance - 21 June 2023
Our systems will be offline for a few hours from late Wednesday night (21st June) UTC to Thursday morning. Players will be unable to connect during this time. Apologies for the inconvenience.
- Server side email issues resolved - 19 June 2023
Our game servers have had some issues contacting people with gmail email addresses. This is now resolved - you should no longer have any problems with email. We apologise for the inconvenience.
- Upcoming update: The Procedural City - 25 March 2023
We're working on a new client update which will include: A new engine version, the latest stable available to us meaning performance, visual and stability enhancements The new "Procedural City" system for displaying colonies. The Procedural City renders each of your buildings uniquely, so that, for example, no two residential buildings or two office buildings look identical anymore. As you can see from the screenshots, this is well underway and already looking like a huge improvement for colonies. As part of the update, "transport grid" tiles will be expanded into a combined road and rail tile, with upgradeable utilities (power/water/sewage) in the future. How will your colony look after the update?
- Power Infrastructure Maintenance 02:30-03:30 10-March-2023 UTC - 9 March 2023
Due to power infrastructure maintenance, Ascent servers may be offline for periods between 02:30-03:30 10-March-2023 UTC.
- Develop Exploits for Operating Systems - 13 January 2023
Your NPCs can now develop an exploit for an operating system. This is a difficult task requiring InfoSec theoretical and practical knowledge. The task gets harder for higher level operating systems, however it's easier for operating systems you have a copy of, and even easier if you have the source. Exploits will later be used for hacking. Developing exploits against your own operating systems will make upgrading your OSes to higher levels easier - making them harder to hack for other players.
- Server-Side patch: New NPC Missions - 3 January 2023
New NPC Missions have been added: InfoSys education job at universities (used to install software etc) Install Operating System job In addition, NPC Missions can now be unique (i.e. can only be run once or one at a time). Some minor bugs have also been fixed.
- Develop your own Operating System - 30 December 2022
There is a new NPC mission type: Develop New Operating System You can (so far) only have one OS per player account, but with upgrades will come many versions. Exploits and upgrades are next!
- New NPC Missions, Update Season - 22 December 2022
In the first of a number of updates, there are new NPC missions available for training: Software Development Information Security These skills will be used in offensive and defensive Information Security missions within Signals Intelligence. Intel missions build (or defend against) Intelligence Networks which are used in other missions. Up until now only HumInt missions were available. SigInt will comprise all aspects of Intelligence from intercepting EM (radio) signals through Information Security and hacking.
- Unplanned service interruption (RESOLVED) - 29 April 2022
Update: This situation has been resolved. We have restored the service without needing any rollbacks and everything is operational again. Once again we apologise for the unexpected unavailability period. Our game servers are temporarily inaccessible right now. This outage is unplanned, but we hope to restore service soon. We expect resolution today so don't panic. Update #1: ETA to resolution is about 12 hours from now. (It's 10:34 UTC now) The problem is a faulty storage controller, and those are always lots of fun. The good news is we're able to recover the live data, which means no rollbacks, the bad news is that this is a slower process than reverting to yesterday's backups. So nobody loses anything except playing time, but we're going to be offline a bit longer than expected. Apologies for the inconvenience!
- Small patch to resolve network issues some players were experiencing - 9 December 2021
After testing some different build options, we have found a combination that appears to resolve network issues some players were experiencing. We were never able to reproduce the problem ourselves, so this was a bit of a nightmare to resolve.
- NPC Crew Missions Are Live - 22 October 2021
A series of missions have been added for your NPC crew. You can now send crew on missions away from your ship. At one of your colonies or any other player's colony, new missions can now appear under your "ship and crew management" tab. Crew sent on missions can develop their skills and attributes. Some missions are designed specifically to develop NPC skills and attributes, while others can have a lasting impact on the colony. Education missions train skills and attributes. Ground Combat Patrols can increase the political stability of a colony that has lapsed Intelligence missions can establish or expand your Intelligence Networks, which can aid in other missions More of these missions are being unlocked every few days as we expand this feature, so keep an eye out for them. New missions will be in these categories, and new categories will be added soon: Propaganda missions (can influenc…
- Quick Patch - 16 August 2021
Biocomputers now increase ship traits 5% faster than regular computers Window opacity has been increased for most UI windows for readability’s sake The physics response to collisions has been toned down in some circumstances to make landing easier and reduce issues people were having with Customs Patrols colliding with them on warp-in Some in-progress work to the Crew Away Missions system (not usable by players yet)
- Ship Traits! - 16 July 2021
Ships can now earn special traits when you fly them and undertake activities in Ascent. So far players have discovered three: Miner - gives a small bonus to yield and a significant one to mining beam range per level Fast Turner - gives a bonus to turning speed for large ships Tough - gives different bonuses to combat resilience at each of the first three levels All ship traits are open ended, with the difficulty of upgrading to the next level getting harder with each level attained. We will add more traits in the future; the system was designed with lots of open-ended expansion in mind. Make your ship truly unique today with the new trait system!
